How can you call yourself a seeker of truth if, when shown the evidence for something being true, you deny it?
Are these not the workings of a mind that is closed to the truth?
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This is not true, atheism is not a belief. The claim a deity exists is yours, you sought atheists out to make the claim, in a thread entitle âWhy do you believe any deity, or deities exist?â giving any apologist the maximum latitude for what they consider evidence, and you have provided naught but subjective claims, and I must say have avoided answering direct questions about the claims you have made.
Religious faith has nothing whatsoever to do with atheism.
Faith (religious) OED
- strong belief in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual conviction rather than proof.
Atheism
noun
Disbelief in the existence of God or gods.
Atheism no more requires faith than your lack of belief in mermaids does.
- No one mentioned irrefutable.
- Irreducible complexity is a decades old creationist canard, that has been thoroughly debunked by evolutionary science, go to the www.talkorigins.org website, it has a massive archive of scientifically debunked religious claims.
- The 2nd law of thermodynamics does not evidence any deity, and I doubt anyone claiming it does understands it, and you have been asked specifically to explain why you think it represents evidence for any deity and failed to do so. If it did, it would get you no closer to Jesus than to Zeus or Apollo, or any other of the countless deities humans have imagined.
If those objections are invalid then offer something more then vapid handwaving, but as we see you cannot.
That is petulant bias, and of course represents ad hominem, as it fails to address the objections to your claims, and is aimed at those making it, the irony of you accusing others of bias is of course palpable.
Since faith (non-religious) is defined as âcomplete trust or confidence in someone or somethingâ, thatâs a rather stupid assertion, I have faith (non-religious) that the world is not flat, are you going to pretend it is not justified, unlike religious faith which is based on wishful thinking.
Itâs in any dictionary for anyone to see.
Of course, it is true that all living things evolved slowly over time, things that are supported by overwhelming objectively validated evidence can quite rightly be said to be true.
You have not offered any, nor has any other apologists I have read in the 60 years I have been alive. However since the claim a deity exists is yours, it is for you to justify such a claim, not for others here.
I care that what I believe is true, and that I believe as many true things as possible, to that end I set a threshold for credulity that best achieves this. the âevidentiaryâ standard you have offered is so low, that it could not only be used for just about any religion or deity humans have imagined, one could argue belief in just about anything.
Is that why human cultures have only ever espoused truths about one deity? Dear oh dear.
What utter nonsense. Absolute truth simply implies an utterly closed mind, and it is clear that some truth claims are demonstrably more reliable than others, and they are this way because of the amount of objectively verifiable evidence that support them. Though are of course you are free to believe the moon is made of cheese, if it makes you happy.
A rather trivially true claim, do you imagine no one here knows of or understand the law of non-contradiction? Do you know what it is, or the other laws of logic?
Since you are claiming something exists (supernatural) beyond the physical natural world, then it is for you to evidence that claim, it is an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy to argue anything is true because no alternative explanation or evidence can be offered.
Thoroughly debunked for decades.
All fossils are transitional, that you donât understand this is embarrassing.
Straw man fallacy, since no one has claimed it can, why would a biological fact evidence something that is in the domain of theoretical physics, this is truly asinine preaching now.
So what, the fact people can derive succour from a belief and thus want it to be true tells us absolutely nothing about its veracity.
Speak for yourself, I and others here derive meaning from our own lives without imaginary deities, that others delude themselves they need such superstitions is not evidence those superstitions are true.
Youâre not part of this group, you came here to sneer and preach, and this last tirade is ample demonstration of that.
Well there you go, your supercilious sneering is doubly ironic given you have not offered any objectively true evidence for any deity, and are simply sulking that your snake oil has been thoroughly rejected, as naught but subjective wishful thinking.
Given it was you who came to us, to preach and peddle your superstitious wares, thatâs pretty hilarious.
How fitting you end with a vapid threat, you are as charmless as you are clueless.
IIRC this has been touched upon a time or two in recent months but if you want to establish a thread with this info in more detail for future reference (as itâs sure to come up again) I think that would be nice to have around.
My suggestion would be to lead with the point that this has been discredited and the original authors have had the good grace and integrity to abandon their hypothesis before delving into the details, because Iâd imagine an apologist would not read very far or thoroughly so as to actually TAKE that point, lol.
I just put JCâs claim as question into Google AI.
Is there any trace of the evolutionary transition from fish to amphibian to reptile to mammal?
This was the answer.
Yes, there is extensive fossil evidence mapping the evolutionary transition from fish to amphibians, reptiles, and mammals. Key, well-documented transitional fossils, such as Tiktaalik (fish-to-amphibian) and numerous synapsids (reptile-to-mammal), display intermediate features like limb-like fins, sprawling-to-upright gaits, and specialized jaw bones, demonstrating a clear, gradual progression over hundreds of millions of years.
[image]Reddit +4
Key Transitional Phases & Evidence:
- Fish to Amphibian (~375â365 million years ago): Early tetrapods evolved from lobe-finned fish. Tiktaalik (375 mya) is a crucial link, with gills and scales but also wrists, fins, and a neck to lift its head. Acanthostega had fully formed legs with digits but lived in shallow water, showing limbs evolved before walking on land.
- Amphibian to Reptile (~300+ million years ago): Early reptilian ancestors (amniotes) evolved from amphibian-like creatures, developing a specialized egg that allowed them to reproduce away from water.
- Reptile to Mammal (~300â200 million years ago): This transition is marked by a group called synapsids (or âmammal-like reptilesâ). Fossils show a gradual shift from sprawling, lizard-like bodies to upright, warm-blooded mammals. This included a transition from multiple jaw bones to a single jaw bone and the repurposing of old jaw bones into the mammalian ear bones.
[image]Reddit +5
These discoveries provide compelling evidence for the gradual, step-by-step evolution between these major vertebrate classes.
So whatâs going on here, JC?
I found this evidence in just a few minutes.
Is your mind closed to this evidence?
Thatâs exactly what heâs done, he is as good an example of a closed mind as one could ever wish to see, and so has zero interest in any facts arguments or evidence, all he wanted to do was preach at the hapless heathens, and all the while trying to project his own closed minded bias onto others, pretty ironic really.
Oh pish posh man, godidit, and thatâs all he needs to know.
I can almost hear him shout âLA LA LA LA LA LA, I canât hear youâ at the top of voice, then breaking into a hymn or two.
I think there is as much chance of that, as of him offering any credible remotely objective evidence for a deity.
Oh oh oh, me me me, I know this one, pick meâŚ
Delusion
noun
- a false belief or judgement about external reality, held despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, often as a symptom of serious mental illness.
JustCurious wroteâŚ
You asked for evidence to substantiate my belief in God, irrefutable evidence for my belief in the irreducible complexity in Design which attests to both Intentionality and Intelligence, etc. And, I cited some of those things (e.g., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the Law of Entropy,
And yesterday I showed, with cited evidence, that before you can make any claims about the way thermodynamics and entropy work in this universe you first have to say if the universe is a closed, open or isolated thermodynamic system.
I also showed, with cited evidence, that itâs impossible to know which type of thermodynamic system the universe is.
And yet JC blithely ignores the evidence shown to him and repeats his false claim that thermodynamics and entropy show that the universe is a closed system.
Are all of these denials from him evidence that he is not the seeker of truth that he claims to be?
It would seem so.
Judging from this and his parting shots, heâs a fairly typical apologist in that he has a lot of out of context ammo to fire over the transom without any real understanding of the source material.
I cut my teeth on Josh McDowell (Evidence That Demands a Verdict) and itâs all designed to be a Gish Gallop of contextless âfactsâ with some word salads sprinkled in, to give the faithful the sense that Smart People have Profound Questions about the Theory (and here they totally and perhaps purposely misunderstand what that word even means in context) of Evolution when in fact only crackpots question the settled science.
I think what started to peel the scales from my eyes was the long list of âscientistsâ that believe the creation myth and disbelieve the Evolution âhoaxâ that was released by (IIRC) the Creation Research Institute years ago. From the 100+ names on there I believe there were a couple of actual scientists (none of whom were in a field relevant to evolution and hence constituted an appeal to authority fallacy) and the rest were technicians and hangers-on. The guy who came up with their hypothesis for how the Flood could have happened was an engineer with expertise in hydraulics, for example. So when it comes to the YEC crowd, anyone with a degree or two who works in anything science-adjacent is a âscientistâ (who is a well-versed expert in the TOE even if heâs in an unrelated field) and anyone who has written down something about it has âpublishedâ a âpaperâ. These people do not understand how science even works.
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Just curious seems to hsve been onr of the most incompetent preachers in the long sad line that arrive here.
Ah wellâŚmay be next time.
I wasnât going to post anything else, but thought Iâd leave you all with this thought: âIf God doesnât exist, then what Hitler did wasnât wrong & if we think it was, then thatâs just our opinion since thereâs no objective Standard of Morality.â
Well, you got one thing right.
So, was what Hitler did right or wrong?
Thereâs something called Godwinâs Law, or Godwinâs Rule of Nazi Analogies, that states that the longer any Internet discussion becomes, the possibility of Hitler being mentioned approaches 1. And there it is!
I donât need a deity to tell me what is beneficial or harmful to myself and others. All I need is working mirror neurons (AKA âempathyâ). But unless you want to start another thread about that (and it appears you donât) then please address the objections already raised to your extant points. Otherwise you are not debating, you are preaching.
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When your god commanded the Israelites to kill everone except young girls and to take them as sex slaves was he ârightâ or wrong?
Would you have done it?
If he is citing life as evidence that contradicts the 2nd law of thermodynamics in favour of a deity using supernatural magic, then we can see the planet that we know life exists on, is not a closed system, as I pointed out to him yesterday.
Heâs not listening though, has no interest in listening or in debate or in objectively verifying claims, he is here to preach. It just makes his grandiloquent claims to be seeking truth all the more hilarious.
Precisely, this makes his rather terse and petulant parting shot all the more hilarious though. One is irresistibly reminded of a small child stamping its foot in a sulk, and refusing to accept the facts.
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You have it in reverse, JC.
As the claimant it falls to you to present objective evidence that an objective Standard of Morality exists.
And since thatâs objective evidence, whatever you post canât be based solely upon faith.
But whatâs the point of me continuing to negotiate with you, of me citing evidence for you to read and digest and of me asking you further questions?
Your persistent denial of the evidence thatâs already been shown to you indicates that you will just continue to persist in ignoring and denying any evidence we show you.
But let me try one more time.
Is your denial of evidence in this forum evidence that your mind is closed, JC?
Please answer honestly.
Well, itâs interesting that you donât see how having an objective Standard of Morality has any correlation to the existence of any deity or deities. But, any honest thinker will realize theyâre inseparably intertwined: because if what Hitler did wasnât morally wrong (regardless of oneâs religious, philosophical or ethical beliefs), then itâs okay to torture babies and rape women.
Please answer my question, JC.
Is trafficking children as sex slaves / spoils of war objectively moral, or objectively immoral JC, also you didnât offer an example when I asked, after you claimed objective morals existed? How about global genocide, is that objectively moral or immoral? Now do bear in mind that the more autonomy or choice one has the more culpable we assume them to be for those choices JC, even evolved apes have laws that recognise this, with our subjective moral codes.
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Well, Walter, answer mine. In reality, what weâre doing is pitting your opinion vs my opinion. And, with regards to your above-cited examples of sin and evil in the world, we must remember that we donât judge Beethoven if someone plays his compositions badly.
Not answering straight questions seems to be your forteâŚ
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