Unfortunately, this is my impression too. Lots and lots of assertions, even accusations. yet when pressed, does not offer anything tangible and real to support those assertions.
@derekreedball It would be a pleasure to engage in a vigorous discourse with you. But please understand you have offered your opinion (I respect that) but absolutely nothing but more unsupported assertions to support those assertions.
I do not see any point in continuing a conversation with one who is not reciprocating in good faith.
I donāt care what you believe, go consult a dictionary.
Rubbish, this is an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy.
Perfectly, weāve seen it offered countless times before. Youāre wrong, and itās irrational by definition. Again go look up the definition of atheism, belief, and disbelief. Contradicting the dictionary is just embarrassing yourself, and you still havenāt presented a shred of objective evidence for any deity?
Except David didnāt say you couldnāt cite the bible did he. The bible has no objective evidence for any deity, just unevidenced anecdotal claims whose authorship are not even verifiable, and often known fabrications, like the names assigned to some of the NT gospels, which were fabricated, and this is written in the cover of most bibles. Not that authorship remotely evidences claims of course.
I have at least the same standard as you, a subjective rationale. If you think the deity depicted in the bible is moral, then Iāll take my own secular morals any day.
I do for a start, as do a great many atheists, throughout human history. Morality is the ability to differentiate between right and wrong behaviours, all animals that evolved to live in societal groups have this ability, and human morals are subjective.
However, please do offer an objective moral that as an atheist I am incapable of understanding or possessing?
There were some logical fallacies offered as well, and the popular but specious argument from morality.
Not me, anyoneās entitled to an opinion, but they bring it here it will be respected only if it merits respect. His facile irrational bombast isnāt worthy of respect, especially since heās dishonestly misrepresented the meaning of atheism, and opened by telling me what I fucking think.
Now there we are in one mind, he strikes me as either extremely closed minded, or trolling. Anyone who tries to lecture atheists on atheism, and doesnāt even know what the word means isnāt going to get my respect.
My interpretation is that everyone has the right to hold beliefs. Whether they are true or that the person is debating in good faith is a separate issue.
When the FUCK did you go exploring and glean such a clear understanding of what is beyond the fucking universe. Are you ever going to stop being ignorant? How in the FUCK would you know if it is impossible for anything to exist outside of actual reality? Who gave you the knowledge to define what is actual reality? That in which the universe rests, should it rest in anything at all, isnāt actually real? Into what, do you fucking imagine the universe is expanding?
asĀ·serĀ·tion
A confident and forceful statement of fact or belief.
STOP WITH THE FUCKING ASSERTIONS. YOU SOUND LIKE AN IDIOT!
I didnāt say that (although I believe itās true that you deny God ā that was not my argument). I said that saying āI lack beliefā is the same as saying āI do not believe,ā or, āI believe not that God existsā. Belief is absolutely a knowledge claim. You can replace āI believeā with āI thinkā, and it is saying the same thing. Thereās no substantive difference between the two.
If thereās no God, whatās wrong with twisting your words and being dishonest?
Nope. Follow the formula. If P, then Q ā If not P, then not Q. Thatās not what Iām doing here. Iām saying that you canāt simply not believe that there is āPā because it implies that you believe ānot Pā.
Iām here to answer the debate topic: āWhy Are Theists So Sure of Their God?ā
My answer ā without Him you couldnāt know anything.
Who says? Objective by whose standard? You cannot account for objective morality apart from a transcendental standard to which you appeal. Youāre trying to appeal subjectively to an objective standard that is relative to your own mind, that perhaps some people may agree on, but isnāt founded in transcendental authority.
Does this apply to your own statement?
Then it isnāt objective, itās subjective, by the very nature of your statement.
Whatās wrong with slavery, murder, or rape apart from an objective, transcendental authority outside of the natural processes of natural selection? You canāt say anything is ultimately wrong with them. The universe doesnāt care. If thereās no heaven above us, no hell below us ā above us only sky, then what objection do you have to those things?
Not even close, my dude.
You should have no problem with contradictions if there is no God. Weāre just biological meat computers fizzing brain gas. To say one kind of fizz is true and another false or irrational is meaningless. I donāt care if you think my argument is irrational ā you have no justification for your claims. You canāt even account for knowledge apart from God. (I am most emphatically not saying that you canāt or donāt know things. Iām saying that you cannot account for the things that you know).
You have no idea what youāre talking about.
You donāt know the historicity of Scripture.
Who cares if they were fabricated if there is no God? What objection do you have to falsehood or lies? If you were a consistent atheist, you would have none.
You get your morals from the Bible. āSecular Moralsā are meaningless, subjective, and empty. Itās absurd to try to uphold a standard of good/justice/virtue or anything else without an ultimate authority.
Right and wrong according to whom?
I didnāt say that you canāt understand them. Iām a Christian and believe the Bible. I believe that Godās Law is written on your heart, and so your conscience either condemns or approves you based upon your actions in accordance with the law of God. So I believe that much of your morals come instinctively through the law of God written on your heart (this is me being consistent in my Christianity, this isnāt my argumentation, though I do believe itās true).
Yes, God most certainly is necessary. You rely on His natural order to even use your senses and reasoning. The only God is not one among many. And yes, Iāll gladly tell any other religion that their way is false, and that the only way to be made right with God is through the cross of Christ.
Nope. I hold to a transcendental epistemology (everything that I know has come by or through revelation from God, and I would say that thatās true for everyoneādonāt misunderstand and think Iām saying Iām prophetic lol) The modes being nature, Scripture, and Jesus Christ. My argument for the truth of God is that without Him, you canāt know anything.
Iād love to continue the discussion, but I have yet to see anyone engage with my argumentation. Maybe itās because it isnāt easily understood, but my argument is that atheism cannot give an account for knowledge (or truth, morality, or anything objective). Itās called the transcendental argument for the existence of God. You want me to give you evidence (like an evidentialist, which I am not; I am a presuppositionalist in my apologetic methodology ā hence the transcendental argument), but Iām not here to give you evidence and set you as the judge over God. The question of this debate room is āWhy are Theists so Sure of Their God?ā Not āTheists Must Present Empirical Evidence for Their God.ā My argument will not deal in evidence, and neither do I suppose a general deity, but the Triune God of the Bible, (as other worldviews & religions are internally inconsistent). My argument deals in philosophical systems, and my argument is that the atheistās system is internally inconsistent. That has been my argument throughout this forum, and will continue to be. If you all want to accuse me of engaging in poor faith, thatās fine. It doesnāt change the topic of this debate room, nor my apologetic methodology.
Iāve realized that Iām outnumbered 10 to 1 here, both in terms of skeptics/believers (I seem to be the only one in this room), as well as number of comments. I wish I could respond to all of you in the future, but it is unlikely that Iāll be able to keep up. I will try to engage with those who attempt to be philosophically consistent, engage without hostility, and who do not falsely accuse me of logical fallacies (Iām looking at you, @Sheldon)
Hmm so you are into Emerson? Based upon the doctrine that the principles of reality are to be discovered by the study of the processes of thought?
I get it, you thought it, it became so, and when you read your book you are convinced, so it must be true. You are right. Nothing else matters, only your thoughts.
That is the biggest load of horseshit I have come across on these pages.
Debates here, and religion in general, seem to attract the arrogant half digestible faux intellectual, with pretensions to understanding, and literary ambitions entirely unaided by ability.
Now do go count your fingers and toes and avoid some of the fallacies that riddle your work, ably illustrated by Sheldon. and of course, try and bring some actual objective evidence for your deity.
A complete misrepresentation of my position followed by a slew of insults. If you want to engage in debate, thatās fine. Iām happy to do so. But to blatantly misrepresent me and then insult your straw-man, while calling me a faux intellectual is quite rich.
No god is necessary for senses nor reasoning. These are things which evolved in us as humans. There was no natural order anything happened in, and earth only came to be after the universe was here over 9 billion years.
Yes it is and they are all human made.
You can not even hang a person on a cross in that way, as they would have to also be tied to it to have their hands not break apart and fall off of it.
Give me some actual evidence that your god is right, and there god is wrong. Can you give any evidence that your god is right, just because a book tells you so?
Thereās religions older than Christianity so I guess they are wrong too? What evidence do you have that some other religion didnāt get it right somehow? Your bible suggests that we were the first inelegant beings and pretty much first on the planet. The problem is thatās false.
No god is necessary for personal morals or treating others in certain ways. You keep claiming a god is so necessary but the fact of the matter is much of that can be proved to have evolved as we did. If Adam and Eve were the first humans and had incest sex to start population lets see some evidence for that too.
Natural selection didnāt even choose us as there were other beings here before we were. If the bible was true how come it can only be tracked back thousands of years? If this book were true how come it isnāt millions of years old? Seems to me if any world religion were actually true one could easily track it back into millions of years, not just a few thousand years.
Senses and reasoning? Evolution gave that to us and it took millions of years for it to develop.
Your bible was written by man who didnāt understand what we know today. Nearly none if none relied on anything which can actually be proved. The same goes for many other religions if not all and you wont get far convincing others their way is false.
Our entire free-will was evolved in us as humans first evolved from an ape type creature. Emotions and feelings were not just a given, neither was anything else for that matter. Morels and respect was evolved not just given.
No god or deity gave us what we have in morals nor respect for others, it evolved over a period of millions of years.
Give some objective evidence that your god is real or shut the fuck up.
As it turns out, he began as an ancient israelite war god. He had a wife called Asherah***. Recent archaeology has discovered that the people who became the Jews were polytheists as late as fourth century bce.****
YHWH is only one of literally **millions ** of other gods (hinduism has 30 million)
The Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam are three of an estimated ten thousand religions world wide.
That the Israelite religion was still polytheistic up to and including the time of the putative exodus is shown clearly in the first commandment. Now this my interpretation in which I have more faith than that of any presuppositional apologist.
Exodus 20: 2 āI am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
4 āYou shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.
*** Did God Have a Wife?: Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel*** , (Eerdmans, ISBN0-8028-2852-3, 2005),[1] is a book by Syro-Palestinian archaeologistWilliam G. Dever, Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Archeology and Anthropology at the University of Arizona. Did God Have a Wife? was intended as a popular work making available to the general public the evidence long known to archaeologists regarding ancient Israelite religion: namely that the Israelite god of antiquity (before 600 BCE), Yahweh, had a consort, that her name was Asherah, and that she was part of the Canaanite pantheon.
The Bible Unearthed: Archaeologyās New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts , a book published in 2001, discusses the archaeology of Israel and its relationship to the origins and content of the HebrewBible. The authors are Israel Finkelstein, Professor of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University, and Neil Asher Silberman, an archaeologist, historian and contributing editor to Archaeology Magazine .
You refuse to give evidence because your only proof is in your bible. Otherās have bibles and would say you are the one who is wrong. And btw just prove a simple story from your bible.
Why is there no evidence for the great flood?
Why and how is there no evidence that Jesus ever lived here?
If he were a carpenter whereās at least something he built.
So basically you just go on blind faith of something which is more likely than not a fantasy. Evidence must be presented and if there isnāt any than god is not real.
No I do not have all the answers. And no I donāt know what caused the big bang or if there was even anything in existence before hand. Thereās much we do not know and none of us are relying on some bible to give us those answers. Science of course can explain some things as we also know that rapid expansion happened in the past. But no matter how much science has tried to explain on anything it has never found a super natural being to have done anything.
So you donāt deal with evidence I see, keep all your fantasy stuff it wonāt bother me in the least that you are so convinced in some higher power which lacks any evidence to prove.
Your bible was written a few thousand years by humans, weāre going on millions of years oldā¦ the human race that is.
And the order to things were not very organized as most things happened in a random order. Or was everything which happened before our existence all planned out some how?
Why are the dinosaurs not in the bible?
Why is it your bible assumes we were first when not even the universe spat us out when it was first born?
