No, you are still clearly confused about the difference between not believing in “something”, and believing that the “something” does not exist. Just because someone does not believe in absolute certainty, it does not follow that they believe it does not or cannot exist, although that too might be the case.
I (currently) do not believe in Bigfoot. That in no way indicates that I automatically believe that Bigfoot does not exist. (Although I lean hard toward this stance)
Do you understand the concept of unfalsifiability?
Whether you recognize it or not, there is a distinct and observable difference between withholding belief and claiming non-existence.
I also do not believe in absolute certainty, and built into my lack of belief is my lack of absolute certainty. Clear?
Actually I think what he’s doing is mistakenly equating irrefutable facts with immutable claims. This is a common error in religious apologetics. For example it’s an irrefutable objective fact that all living things evolved slowly over time, but it is not nor can it ever be immutable. As even though the likelihood all the overwhelming evidence could be refuted now, is so low as to be effectively nil, it must nonetheless remain tentative in the light of new evidence, this is also a basic scientific requirement, to remain open minded, it’s also one of the method’s greatest strengths, that avoids clinging needlessly to ideas that are demonstrated to be wrong.
Religions must secretly envy this with their immutable claims that have been utterly falsified, like global floods and humans created in an instant in their current form. This requirement is essential as well, since oddly enough evolved apes are not infallible, and neither therefore are their methods, even the most successful ones like science. Again the danger of making immutable claims on behalf of imaginary deities is as good an example of why this is folly as one can imagine.
Setting the needless tautologies aside, are you really suggesting without any irony, that it would be sound reasoning to assert one was absolutely certain that absolute certainties can’t exist? Rather than my assertion that I disbelieve absolute certainties are possible?
Leaving room for doubt, is not the same as having doubt, another error you seem to be using in your rationale. Leaving no room for doubt is as good an example of being closed minded as I can imagine. This then is the position of religions that claim to have immutable truths, though of course I doubt such fallacious bombast is limited solely to religious apologetics.
@WhoAreYou Still waiting for an answer to this by the way, the more you dodge it the more inevitable the inference one must draw from such reticence:
Indeed….
I have seen the nonsense argument several times of “If there’s no absolute certainty, then how can you be sure of anything?”, which you alluded to with immutable vs irrefutable…
I’ll tell the truth. I think atheists need faith. I look at anything that is claimed by an atheist and immediately i see the faith that is needed to believe in the things they beleive. I think Christians need faith too. And at the end of the day every single person on earth uses faith. No one truly goes on to prove everything they use whether physical or mental. I honestly don’t think most of us can look at the origin of life papers or the scientific papers written and truly understand it. Neither can i read hebrew or greek. So we do have to believe the people that interpret these things. However, when with all that aside whether i can understand a scientific paper or not or i can do all the math proofs or not one big question remains. Why do we need intelligence to do all of this? And I am not referring to just elementary but highly educated and when it comes to origin of life highly educated people from many fields. It truly begs the question why do we need a mind when the claim is there was no intelligent design? Second, when i look at people in general including this community there is an awareness of good and evil. By my own experience many of you have said i am liar or arrogant etc. that to me makes it clear you know good from evil. That begs the question who gave us the law of good and evil? Thirdly when i wanted to speak of the evidence left which is the old and New Testament there was a closed mind to it but i was just told religious people have closed minds. So obviously i won’t be able to answer your question when atheists will immediately close their minds to the bible, it will be futile. When i attempted to make the case by comparing to alexandar the great it went nowhere quickly. I don’t understand why would there be writings preserved so well and in great number of writings close to 70 years of someone’s life being a carpenter from a small nowhere town and the same isn’t true of a great king like Alexandar the great but a gap like 400 years? Doesn’t this beg the question why him? Why preserve his life in writings?
If you mean religious faith, then this is demonstrable nonsense, as that is defined as strong belief in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual conviction rather than proof. However even if you’re dishonestly equating complete trust or confidence in someone or something with religious faith, it still is not necessary in order to withhold belief from any claim, all I need to disbelieve a claim is that no or insufficient objective evidence be demonstrated to support the claim, as you have been told so repeating this is very dishonest, and you have pointedly failed to demonstrate any objective evidence for any deity, despite being asked multiple times.
I don’t believe you, and again the dishonest way you use the word faith here, without defining it speaks for itself.
Well religious faith is defined as strong belief in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual conviction rather than proof, so this tells us nothing we don’t already know, given that Christian apologetics has championed this empty bag for 2 millennia.
What “origin of life papers” what are you talking about? Confidence in the methods of science has nothing at all to do with the religious faith, they are two different definitions, is it possible you don’t even know this? please note below the primary and secondary (religious) definitions of the word faith.
Faith
complete trust or confidence in someone or something.
strong belief in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual conviction rather than proof.
So please stop making the inane and dishonest assertion they are the same, unless you’re actually claiming that one needs “belief in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual conviction rather than proof” in order to accept objective scientific facts, which is utterly preposterous. Nor does my atheism require scientific facts, again then it is based on the fact that no religious apologetics offers any objective evidence for any deity.
That’s gibberish sorry, I have no idea what you’re trying to say?
Straw man, who has claimed this, not me and not ever? You seem unable to grasp the fundamental difference between disbelieving a claim, and making a contrary claim, nonetheless there is a significant difference. If you are claiming there is an intelligent designer then as i keep asking you, demonstrate some objective evidence to support your claim, or I will disbelieve it.
Good and evil are subjective terms, do you think the SS who ran the death camps thought they were evil? They were all theists as well by the way, you had to be in order to join the SS, and this means they were Christians, so evil is a subjective notion as is morality, even among Christians and theists.
There is no law of good and evil, humans create laws to reflect their own subjective morality.
Nonsense, that’s a blatant lie, I disbelieve the claims in the bible for precisely the same reason I withhold belief from any other claims, this is when they are unsupported by any or insufficient objective evidence, this is quite obviously unbiased, so it certainly cannot be described as closed minded as there is no bias or prejudice?
Open minded just means one is willing to consider new ideas without prejudice. Since I submit biblical claims to same level of critical scrutiny and standard of credulity as I do all other claims, it’s dishonest to imply bias on my part, so I suspect that like many theists you simply don’t understand what closed minded means.
That’s because it was a risible straw man fallacy, and a false equivalence fallacy as was explained, as a) no one had made any claims whatever about Alexander the Great, and b) no historian claims there is historical evidence that Alexander the Great was anything but human. The failure here is in your ability to understand that your argument was based on two known logical fallacies and ipos facto your argument was irrational. It is also as clear an example of whataboutism as I’ve ever seen.
Forget about Alexander the Great ffs, it has zero relevance to your inability to demonstrate any objective evidence for any deity or deities.
Gibberish again sorry, ffs forget about Alexander the Great, it’s a straw man red herring, as has been made abundantly clear.
Whose writings, what on earth are you talking about, it has already been explained to you that the four gospels were unauthored, and not one contemporary writing exists about Jesus. The names Mathew Mark Luke and John are fictional names assigned over 3 centuries later by early Christian church leaders at the First Council of Nicaea, in an attempt to lend the hearsay of those narratives some gravitas and credence. they amount to anonymous hearsay, by definition. this isn’t closed minded, it is simply a statement of fact, that you didn’t know this speaks volumes, if anyone is being closed minded here it is you, as you believe unevidenced hearsay here, but reject it elsewhere, and this can only involve bias or prejudice against other such hearsay claims.
Now once again you’ve repeated the same fallacious claims and failed again to even respond to my question.
@WhoAreYou one more time then, since you keep ignoring this question…What objective evidence can you demonstrate for any deity or deities, or that a deity is even possible?
Ignoring this question is a very dishonest way to conduct debate.
As far as I know; there is no such thing. Could you please expand on this? I’m currently of the opinion you made that up out of whole cloth; care to change my mind?
Biblical Faith? (Faith is the evidence of things not seen) No one needs it.
Scientific Faith: Evidence demonstrates the chair will hold my weight. (We don’t call it ‘faith.’ We have a real word for it. ‘Confidence.’ Calling it faith is disingenuous and leads to a lack of clarity.
Personal or social faith: I have faith in my wife. You mean ‘Trust.’ I trust my wife because she has given me many reasons to trust her. We have a real word for this secondary definition of ‘faith’ that makes a lot more sense than calling it ‘faith.’
If Atheists have ‘Faith’ it is only due to your illiteracy. If you had an adequate vocabulary, you would not be making this mistake.
Yes.
Faith is belief with conviction, in the absence of evidence. If there was any evidence, faith would never be given as a reason for believing.
I had a JW try that shit on me a couple of years ago in front of my house. When I asked her why she believed, she said it was faith. I then asked her if there was anything she could not believe in, based on faith. Sensing a trap door, she reacted with hostility. Since she knew my wife from many years before, she snapped,
“You have faith in your wife”, to which I replied “No, I have a high level of confidence in her, mostly based on past performance, her reliability and so forth.
She refused to answer my question and then accused me of being hostile. I politely reminded her that she had come to MY house trying to convert me to her belief.
I figured wtf and gave her another question to mull over…”Do you think faith is a reliable path to truth?”, which she also declined to answer.
She uncomfortably extracted herself from what was clearly an unexpected situation for her.
As she was walking away I invited her to come
back anytime and talk some more…she has not accepted my heartfelt and sincere invitation…
.
.
Edit (All Along the Watchtower)
The real irony of this disingenuous false equivalence apologists use, erroneously equating religious faith with the primary definition of faith, is that even were it true it wouldn’t lend any credence to religious beliefs. Since an unevidenced belief would not suddenly be less dubious because others held equally dubious beliefs. It’s a risible argument, it really is.
I don’t use faith to conclude that your god, or anybody else’s, doesn’t exist. There is zero evidence for any of them being real. The Bible isn’t anything other a collection of stories put together by the Catholic Church.
Do you believe in any of the stories that were excluded, like the book of Enoch? If not, why? You can’t use the Bible to prove the Bible is the truth.
The only thing that is an absolute fact is this, we will all die one day. End of story, including you.
First we have to define stability.
It’s the property where a body can remain in equilibrium on tip or edge if centre of mass is located above the base.
So as you stepped on slippery surface your body’s centre of mass remained above the feet.
Some more variables in our equation can be muscle control and nervous system that made automatic adjustments to control your body’s movement and stability that are indeed the underneath cause of biological stability.
Case 2
Conservation of momentum.
Ever wondered why voyager doesn’t need billion gallons of fuel to continue its journey outside of solar system.
It’s because conservation of momentum says that a body will continue to move unless external force is applied.
So why objects stop after sometime.
Well friction is a force responsible to stop its forward motion ,it can be air drag,surface friction.
Run a marble on smooth surface it will move more farther.
So when you were moving on icy surface your forward momentum was being conserved in accordance with classical laws of physics.
Now combining case 1 and case 2.
Your body balanced your momentum itself, it acted as amazing biological gyroscope.
Dynamic Balance + Conservation of momentum = Motion is Conserved.
Uh, well, HAHAHA! As someone who has grown up and lived my entire life in a subarctic climate with long winters, I have a lot of experience with walking and running on icy and slippery surfaces. In fact, it is everyday experience during winter where I live. So trust me, I know from personal experience that it is perfectly possible to run on icy roads, slipping and sliding without falling. It just requires normal balance and to not attempt sudden changes in the momentum vector. In short, your personal anecdotal “evidence” of a “miracle” don’t impress me much. There is a perfectly rational explanation to it.
Your presuppositions on this matter do not dictate the reality thereof. And since you manifestly need the requisite schooling on this matter, i’ll provide it.
Atheism, in its rigorous formulation, is nothing more than suspicion of unsupported mythology fanboy assertions. That is IT. In case you need the point reinforcing, NOT treating unsupported assertions uncritically as fact, is the very antithesis of “faith”.
We all know how you “look” at our output - by ignoring salient facts when they’re presented to you.
This is steaming bullshit of the most feculently stinking order.
First of all, those of us who paid attention in class, reject “faith” itself. Because as you and your ilk routinely demonstrate, “faith” consists of uncritical acceptance of unsupported assertions. As I’ve just stated above, atheism is the exact opposite of this. Likewise, we dispensse with “belief” itself, for the same reason. But we’re used to seeing your ilk peddle this lie here.
Indeed, my own output alone destroys this sleazy little well poisoning assertion of yours, let alone that of several other regular contributors here.
Oh, no kidding? It’s takes a special brand of incredulity, to believe the assertions in the requisite goat herder mythology, several of which I’ve demonstrated are farcical and absurd.
Wrong. I’ll elaborate on this as I deconstruct your nonsense in a moment.
When we have reliably repeatable events occurring around us, then we can safely draw inferences therefrom. Which, unlike “faith”, involves taking account of observational data.
You really are an amateur at this, aren’t you?
I happen to be the exception that you should be afraid of. All the more because I have a track record of presenting the contents of relevant papers to non-technical audiences in an accessible manner. I’ve been doing this in various places for 14 years. This includes presenting papers to lay members of my Entomology Society, on such subjects as the laboratory replication of a speciation event in Heliconius butterflies.
And unfortunately for you, Classical Greek was a subject I learned in order to familiarise myself with the nuances of taxonomy. Keep digging that hole.
Not in my case. I have the requisite scholarship under my belt.
Oh this is going to be good …
Oh dear, it’s canard time, folks … a canard I’ve already dealt with. Let’s see you dig that hold deeper, shall we?
BZZZZTTT!!! WELL KNOWN CANARD!!!
[7] The operation of natural processes, and the intellectual labour required to learn about those processes, are two separate entities.
That I have to address this explicitly, and deal with this particular canard, after it had been repeatedly erected by one particular creationist of my acquaintance, after he had been repeatedly schooled upon this, really does make one wonder if some of the people purporting to be in a position to critique valid scientific theories, have ever attended a real science class in their lives, let alone paid attention therein.
Let’s knock this particular nonsense on the head once and for all. Just because scientists perform experiments, for the express purpose of determining how a particular natural process operates, and the details of whatever quantitative laws that process obeys, does NOT in any way, shape or form, support “intelligence” at work within those processes. The only “intelligence” in operation here is that of the scientists trying to learn about the natural process under investigation. In order to demonstrate the fatuousness of the converse view, consider gravity. This is a regularly observed real world phenomenon, and, as real world phenomena go, is about as mindless as one can imagine. The idea that “intelligence” is at work when something falls off a cliff is asinine to put it mildly. Now, in order to deduce the quantitative relationships at work when gravity acts upon objects, scientists can perform various experiments, to determine, for example, the speed of impact with which objects strike the ground when dropped from tall structures of varying heights. That they have to do this in order to deduce these quantitative details, and derive the requisite laws operating within the world of gravitational phenomena, does NOT in any way support the idea that “intelligence” is operating within that natural phenomenon itself. Indeed, applied mathematicians can postulate the existence of all manner of alternative forces, obeying different quantitative laws, and determine what would be observed if ever instances of those forces were observed in the real world, but again, this does NOT support for one moment the idea that those forces are innately “intelligent”. So those who try to erect this nonsense with respect to experiments in evolutionary biology, or abiogenesis, will again invite much ridicule and laughter.
For those who really want ramming home how absurd this canard is, the online satirical magazine The Onion has published this hilarious piece on “intelligent falling”. Anyone who reads this without laughing, and regards the content as a serious exposition of scientific thinking, is in dire need of an education.
It’s also apposite here to deal with the duplicitous assertion that a scientific experiment intended to eludicate the workings of a given physical system, implies that said system was “designed”. This is apologetic bullshit of the most steamingly foetid order. First of all, scientific experiments are performed, frequently because the behaviour of the system in question is not yet known, and as a corollary, can hardly be said to be “designed” for this reason alone. Second, that system isn’t “designed” for another reason - namely, that the outcome of the experiment may be surprising to the experimenter, and yield unexpected (or even counter-intuitive) results. One cannot be said to have “designed” something that delivers an unexpected result. Of course, I’ve dealt with the duplicity of the whole “design” apologetics elsewhere in a separate exposition, but it’s apposite to point out salient ideas here, for those who haven’t read that exposition.
Indeed, I recently encountered a creationist who, farcically, claimed that cosmological models of a hypothetical cyclic universe inplied that said cyclic universe was “designed”, which again is fatuous nonsense for one simple reason. Scientific models are intended to be descriptive, NOT prescriptive. They’re simply intended to describe the workings of an actual or hypothetical physical system, with NO “design” or teleology implied (I’ll cover other relevant bases in other sections of this exposition). We leave prescription to mythologies and their unsupported assertions.
In case you’re wondering, I first penned this at another place way back in 2010, so you’re peddling a canard that has been KNOWN to be a canard forTHIRTEEN YEARS.
Moving on …
Oh dear, I smell the erection of the “you need my magic man to be moral” canard coming up any moment now …
Oh dear. It seems you need educating yet again …
First, there’s the matter that those of us who paid attention in classes devoted to ethics, learned a long time ago that this subject is far more subtle and complex than the fatuous caricature thereof that mythology fanboys embrace, namely “Magic Man says so”. Which of course is recognised by those of us who paid attention in class, as not merely a caricature of genuine ethics, but a dangerous one, as anyone familiar with Susan B. Anthony’s famous and succinct critique thereof is well aware. In addition, a paper I have presented in several places about differences between secular and religious societies also has significant input at this juncture., one that also presented in another thread here, which I cover in some detail in this post.
Those of us who paid attention in the requisite classes, learned some time ago of a simple and powerful test that can be performed, to determine the ethical status of an action, that is independent of any “authority” - namely, what benefit or harm is bestowed upon the recipients of the action in question. Being able to perform this test, courtesy of our ability to place ourselves mentally in the situation of others, doesn’t require a comsic Big Brother, but empathy, a property that is actually to be found possessed by eutherian mammals all the way down to rodents (about which I shall say more shortly).
Likewise, the concepts of reciprocity and fairness are to be found distributed much more widely than the usual suspects imagine. Indeed, there now exists an abundant scientific literature, documenting in exquisite detail the evidence for the evolutionary and biological basis of:
[1] our capacity for ethical thought, and;
[2] the motivation to act thereupon.
Give me time to look up some relevant citations, and I’ll provide them in another post.
Among the topics discussed in said literature, are:
[3] The evolution of brain development genes expressed in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that has been known to be implicated in ethical decision making for over a century;
[4] Observed instances of ethical behaviour in non-human species, none of which know about our mythologies or invented cartoon magic men.
With respect to [4] above, I was recently introduced to peer reviewed scientific papers, documenting experimental determination of ethical behaviour in rats. Which have been shown in the laboratory, to reject behaviours that would inflict pain and suffering upon a fellow rat, even when a substantial reward for those behaviours is offered. Seems rats have a better ability to reject avarice than a good many human beings I can think of.
Looks like once again, a large body of real world data is destroying your smug, complacent presuppositions.
WRONG.
Apparently you need to learn an elementary fact again, namely that mythological assertions do not constitue fact. Indeed, many of them have been destroyed by real world data. That you are unaware of this specak volumes.
Oh, you mean the way in which they ignore the large body of observational data we present to them as a free education?
We didn’t “close our minds” to your mythology, we learned that it contains demonstrable and manifest nonsense, and as a corollary, cannot be trusted as a source of supposed “knowledge”. That assertion about genetics being purportedly controlled by coloured sticks being a particularly foetid example.
What’s genuinely futile, is pretending that a mythology is superior to genuine sources of fact.
Except of course, that the idea that a successful military general existed in the past, isn’t that remarkable. We have numerous examples right across recorded history to call upon. Plus, there exists archeaological evidence of Alexander’s activity, such as the causeway he built to facilitate the Siege of Tyre in 332 BCE. The stone used for that causeway can still be found today, stretching from the Al-Bass region of the modern city in the east, to the Crusader Cathedral in the west. Part of it runs through the Tyre Al-Bass World Heritage Site, and is visible in Google Maps satellite images.
I suspect other archaeological evidence can be found at other sites of his military activity.
Meanwhile, it transpires that some writings about Alexander do survive.
There’s much you don’t understand, such as facts.
Actually, the first major biographer of Alexander after the fact began writing in the 1st century BCE, 200 years, not 400 years, after the events in question. Plus, once again, he wasn’t stating anything remarkable in that biography. “Military general was successful at military conquest” isn’t a particualrly remarkable assertion. On the other hand, “Magic Man came to earth and then rose from the dead” is really far out there.
Ezekiel 26:1-5&12-14 “ “In the eleventh year, on the first day of the month, the word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, because Tyre said about Jerusalem, ‘Good! The gateway to the peoples is shattered. She has been turned over to me. I will be filled now that she lies in ruins,’ therefore this is what the Lord God says: See, I am against you, Tyre! I will raise up many nations against you, just as the sea raises its waves. They will destroy the walls of Tyre and demolish her towers. I will scrape the soil from her and turn her into a bare rock. She will become a place in the sea to spread nets, for I have spoken.” This is the declaration of the Lord God. “She will become plunder for the nations,”
”They will take your wealth as spoil and plunder your merchandise. They will also demolish your walls and tear down your beautiful homes. Then they will throw your stones, timber, and soil into the water. I will put an end to the noise of your songs, and the sound of your lyres will no longer be heard. I will turn you into a bare rock, and you will be a place to spread nets. You will never be rebuilt, for I, Yahweh, have spoken.” This is the declaration of the Lord God.”
All Along the Watchtower
