Eric the invisible, rainbow farting Unicorn, who does indeed live in my garage, would like to know where you get off saying I am delusional? Seriously? Me? He will have words I suspect.
4 Likes
Yes this is an exercise of imagination. Is that futile perhaps. But am i right in saying that every scientific discovery began from asking a question that was raised in an imaginary realm?
Christians say “that is god, nothing else” but if god was something different than their claim, would they then reject what was reality because of preconceived notions.
I get your point but this sounds too much like religion to me. I don’t desire to change anyone’s beliefs. I i can’t be who i am then i don’t want that God even if it exists.
I don’t believe the God if the Bible is mean. I hate religion because the moment you create one it becomes incompatible with God it’s suppose to serve, unless it’s a cult. Which for me means all religions are cults.
Are you saying you wouldn’t rebel against that type of a god? Would you never question whether that was right? If atheists can have a moral compass without God, And i agree they can, then would we not have a compass in a world where we this type of God exists that would lead us to question his actions.
A similar scenario is when Christians say that hell will be eternal. So they will worship god while even some of their loved ones are being tortured for not choosing that god. Would they never ask god to end their suffering? Even if that meant undoing humanity as a whole. Would they not follow in the steps of christ and ask for themselves to be sacrificed? Do you get my point? I hope i understood what you where saying.
Yes, you are wrong. Science seeks to explain the world around us. It does this with observation. If imagination is used, it must be operationalized not asserted. Then it is tested. Nothing at all like your assertion of a God. The god hypothesis (and I am being generous in calling it a hypothesis) fails.
HYPOTHESIS: “a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation.” NOT ON AN IMAGINATION OR A GUESS.
This is specifically why the burden of proof lies on the person making a claim. No scientist has the time or energy to run about debunking stupid claims. It is a waste of time, energy, and one’s life.
2 Likes
So, @TheChristianAtheist having one of his true believers swallowed by a large fish that was just a friendly prank. Or what about wiping the world clean of all life with the exception of one family and breeding pairs of all animals, Or wiping out an entire city with the exception of one couple who in fleeing turned the woman into a pillar of salt. when she dared to look at what was happening. Have you ever noticed how your biblical god has a real hate on for women? If a married woman and a married man have a hook up who gets stoned? The woman. Who is blamed for eating from the tree of knowledge - not the serpent but Eve another woman. And if the garden of Eden was so perfect why was a serpent there anyway. Your Biblical god continually tests and punishes. He demands absolute Loyalty but shows none in return. He seems to hate women. No wonder so many christians think DaTrump is the second coming they have lots in common.
I’m not saying any of these things happened in reality but most of what we know about the christian god comes from the bible and from those who study and sermonize from it.
So @TheChristianAtheist how about you taking a stab at describing your god and feel free to access your imagination if it helps because I don’t think you can otherwise.
Of course I would and others as well, but as Tudor England, Cromwell’s England and Nazi Germany, Portugal under Salazar and now Russia under Putin, Korea under the Kims, demonstrate that often the moral compass is blunted in the search for social norms. Even where is an undercurrent of resistance it is not mainstream until the death of the godlike figure in control.
The basis for christianity is exactly that, they fear their god so tolerate cruelty to homosexuals, the lack of bodily autonomy for women, and will pass laws to suppress basic human rights t appease what they see as a powerful overlord. Humanity is hardwired to ensure the survival of the crowd at the expense of the outstanding. Religion merely taps into that.
Exactly my point. Hell was invented to make christians do just that. When they pray to ease their child’s suffering in that imaginary hell they are rebelling against the all knowing, all powerful JHWH…and then are easy meat for those humans that take upon themselves to police their flock…don’t tell me you haven’t seen that!
The christian god is a monster god with three heads. A model for Domestic abuse everywhere.
3 Likes
I think this might sometimes be the case, at least in part. It does take a lot of imagination to be a creative scientist, to come up with different possible and testable explanations of phenomena. I think this is one of the reasons it’s important for scientists to be properly schooled in the humanities: to help develop their ontological imagination. The possible often has to be conceived before the actual is discovered. Though of course, serendipitous discoveries are part of the story too, and the “inconceivable” happens.
Like unicorn husbandry…
Compared to what?
Yes, but it remained an unevidenced hypothesis until that - those method(s) properly evidence them, when you can do this for any deity, please do let us know.
Why would you make the unevidenced assumption “scientists” are not?
I can conceive a mermaid, and a unicorn, should I skip to belief and ignore the methodology that removes subjective bias and validates what I can imagine? In which case what can’t one believe using such a nonsensical false equivalence, between what one can imagine ti be real, and what one objectively evidence to be real?
Pseudoscience
“Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method.”
The Legends of Hercules, now are these scientific facts? I mean we can imagine them after all…
Yet you have failed to demonstrate a deity is possible?
Except it is not inconceivable, you have conceived it, and are claiming it is possible and exists, but of course have failed to offer anything beyond the claims…
1 Like
We agree! And I think I will post something fairly soon… probably next weekend. The demand has just been too high.
I didn’t say they weren’t. So you are reading into it.
But here you are reading into it accurately. I do think that too often scientists these days are insufficiently trained in the humanities. I think this because I’ve been taught by, worked with and myself taught plenty to have a fairly confident opinion on the matter. But I can’t assume that for any in particular.
And I also know some for whom that doesn’t apply. A close friend of mine who worked in one of the LIGO groups before leaving to become a priest was translating Ancient Greek poetry while writing his dissertation on black holes!
———
@Sheldon, is this just a troll moment ?
You’ve posted 50 times, so far nada, just endless bare assertions, and irrational arguments?
Good grief?
No, but I can see why you’d want to deflect the response to your original assertion:
We are not discussing the inconceivable, we are discussing the deity you conceive as real.
Ok. I would like anyone to reading this to pause for a moment a remember that truth is more important than defending one’s camp or ideas.
Look how @Sheldon quotes me:
And then read with a calm mind what I actually wrote:
(I bolded the text for emphasis)
It is very hard for me not to see him as quoting out of context to create the illusion that I’ve contradicted myself. I’ve been very patient, but I draw the line at blatant intellectual dishonesty.
shit, the popcorn is good this year! Well folks we have a challenger to Shelley’s undisputed title of Unicorn wrangler and Mermaid baiter.
Lets see how we go when the promised hard evidence is laid out…I am agog. Here Tin I saved you a seat, Skriten, perch just there buddy, Cyber and Whitefire are tag teaming as referees. Cog, oh CoooG! come here boy, (hides diaper until cog can be grabbed) now sit here mate and don’t squidge around. You’ll squash that nice banana. Canuck, yep…you too! Sshhhhh now folks the curtain is rising!
2 Likes
Well I am happy to take another look. Here is the original claim I responded to:
Here then is my initial response:
So that a question to be fair, as that was how I was reading that assertion. but asked for clarification from you. You’re response was a denial here:
I don’t think anyone could call that dishonest, and I partially quoted for brevity, and anyone can use the links to expand any quote to see the full post, or the link to go to it, and the preceding posts.
However I don’t think it is very honest to focus on this one point, and ignore all the rest in my post, since my intellectual honesty is being questioned. However if you want a contradiction you’ve made try this one:
What have we here then:
That sure looks like a claim to me, and of course as I pointed out several times your profile contains a claim, as it states plainly you are a theist.
Honestly, Sheldon, I don’t believe he realizes when he has made an assertion. I’ve also called him out for doing such as well. He writes what he thinks he means, assumes it is clear, and then reads it the way he writes it without the ability to critically look at what he has written. He runs off on such tangents as to appear scatterbrained. Whatever happened to the complexity thing? I guess we thwarted that line of thought. He just rambles on a nitpicky shit without ever really saying anything at all. Just like all the other theists, his arguments and assertions are as oily as whale shit.
2 Likes
Well his profile alone is sufficient of a claim to justify any atheist to ask him if he can evidence a deity, this is an atheist debate forum of course, so there is little point pretending that it is a coincidence he brought his beliefs here.
He has implied that atheists and theists approach and view “evidence” (for a deity) in very different ways, and while I can’t speak for others, I have to say that is also an impression I get when thests and pologists describe what they think is compelling evidence for a deity. However this is largely irrelevant until he actually defines the deity he believes exist (I suspect it is some version of the Christian deity), and offers what he thinks are the reasons he believes it exists.
Well I still don’t see why it was even relevant, and of course I’m not sure Dawkins and Piers Morgan were agreeing a deity must be complex, but rather Pr Dawkins was drawing a rational inference from how many people define a deity they try to insert as a first cause. Either way simple or complex, god did it has no explanatory powers whatsoever in any of the theistic arguments or apologetics I have seen.
A basic error I sense he is making is that he views atheism as a claim, belief or assertion someone makes, but of course atheism is not, it is solely the lack or absence of belief in any deity or deities, that some atheists go farther and make claims doesn’t change this. We are all born atheists, and some people remain atheists and others do not. I remain an atheist because I do not find any of the arguments or “evidence” I have encountered to be sufficient to support their beliefs.
So when someone comes here to an atheist debate forum, and claim to believe a deity exists (it’s in his profile) I think it is reasonable to ask them to justify that belief, the long preamble just seems pointless to me.
1 Like
Setting aside the semantic point about the order of meanings for the term “atheism,” perhaps worth discussing, but a side issue, I happily concede again what I take to be the core concern of @Sheldon here. But it is not an error I am making.
If anyone merely doesn’t believe or claim a god exists, without ever saying a “god doesn’t exist”, then such a ‘position’ does not have any burden of proof. (This does not mean someone is automatically justified in holding it!)
And so, such an atheist should not hear from a theist a question like “How do you know god doesn’t exist?” because it is just plain stupid to ask such a question to someone who never claimed God doesn’t exist in the first place (or even that they weren’t willing to consider the possibility of God’s existence.) I concede all this happily: it seems plainly true. And it’s unclear to me why anyone would find this difficult. I do not.
———
As an aside, I want to add that I don’t think the position “ god doesn’t exist” especially if taken probabilistically, carries any or much burden of proof either. I guess it requires that one has looked at available evidence and accurately determined it to fail to establish that god exists. That alone might be enough to say with some confidence that God doesn’t exist. Of course, an unknowable god could still be real, and theoretically one might acknowledge that possibility while still reasonably affirming that god most likely doesn’t exist.
Note that this is not much different than what is required to continue to merely not believe in god. You actually have to consider the evidence with an open mind. For a clarifying comparison, consider people who continue to say that they merely don’t believe in evolution or even more obnoxiously that the earth is round, all the while not intelligently considering the evidence. It might be true that they merely don’t believe, but this mere non-belief is not thereby automatically justified.
That said, in any given debate/discussion, it is the job of the theist to prove that god exist, and the atheist’s to listen, consider and critique intelligently. If the atheist has truly done so, he can be justified, for the moment and relative to that debate, in continuing to disbelieve in god.
I think his writing indicates snobbery.
Not a snob. Just French 
1 Like
Well I don’t think it is set aside, it is an oft used and vital first error that means assumptions made about atheists are often straw men. There is a reason we compile dictionaries based on common usage, it’s for clarity and accuracy, and again if one were to define atheism as a belief or claim then I would not be an atheist, despite not holding any belief in any deity.
That is exactly why the distinction is of such epistemological importance, it is not a coincidence or semantic dishonesty that I stop short of making such a claim. I can hardly claim my criteria for belief is that sufficient objective evidence be demonstrated to support any idea, claim belief assertion, then make an absolute claim that appears to be unfalsifiable. If the concept of deity is an unfalsifiable one of course I remain agnostic, but withhold belief from all unfalsifiable claims, as I can see no other rational or open minded response. To believe them all would inevitably lead to contradictory beliefs and thus be irrational, to believe some and not others must involve subjective bias and thus be closed minded, to believe none then is the only rational open minded position.
Well they don’t hold anything yet, since not holding a belief is everyone’s default position, since all beliefs are the affirmation of a claim, then they carry an epistemological burden of proof, so if one does not accept this has been met, then one is justified in continuing to withhold belief, but not necessarily in making a contrary claim.
I agree with the first part, and yet we experience this all the time, but that last part (emboldened) needs clarification. Since the claim something is possible, would be subject to the same criteria I set for all claims, that it is supported by sufficient objective evidence, until I am satisfied that epistemological burden has been achieved, I don’t believe something is possible, NB this does not mean I claim it is not possible of course.
I would agree that where an atheist makes a claim no deity exists, it does not carry an equal burden of proof, as theism seems to me the larger claim.
However is this a false equivalence? Since as you state there is overwhelming objective evidence for evolution, and that the world is spherical, if anyone could demonstrate anything approaching that for a deity I doubt I would withhold belief. Though of course even prima facie we also know natural phenomena like evolution or a spherical planet are possible, I am not aware of any objective evidence that deities are possible.
I concur. Though if one cares that what one believes is true, or cares that one holds no untrue beliefs, then one would by necessity set a bar for credulity that best achieves this. the higher the bar for credulity the more likely it will achieve this, but one has to balance scepticism of lest it become unreasonable or irrational scepticism, as is the case with those who deny objective facts like the shape of the earth or well established scientific theories like evolution.
Parenthetically even irrational scepticism has some use as a philosophical tool, and no idea should ever be beyond critical scrutiny, as long as we follow the objective evidence in the end of course.
1 Like
Oh, here by “it” I just meant what you are calling the ‘default position.’ Not a view per se since it’s a lack of view but I think we both used the same term to describe it: a position. 
1 Like