Sailingswine… do you not get that the rational position is to withhold belief, default to not knowing, UNTIL such time there is demonstrable evidence to warrant confidence/belief
If not buddy, hey, I have a shitload of financial opportunities I’d like to run by you…
REALLY! Reminds me of an old drunk skit. An old drunk is stumbling around under a street lamp, searching the ground for something.
A good Samaritan approaches the man and asks if he lost something. “My car keys” says the man. “Perhaps I can help.” says the good Samaritan. The two men spend the next hour looking for the keys under the street light.
Finally the good Samaritan speaks up. “I don’t think they are here. Where exactly were you when you think you lost them?”
Pointing up the street, “See that blue truck way over there.”
“Yes.”
“I was over there.”
“If you think you lost them over there, why aren’t we over there looking for them?” asks the Samaritan.
“It’s dark over there replies the man.”
The way you find your keys is obviously not as important as actually finding them. Grope around in silly assertions all you want. You will never find truth there.
Cog!!! Cog - here, let me respond on behalf of …
The looking for keys in the dark analogy doesn’t work because I’m not drunk 
Signed SailingSwine
I’ll post this and then sit back and shut up a bit to “allow” (hahahahaha) other posts to feed in … but given theists are fond of personal experiences, here’s mine…
I have a big imagination. I was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness. A blending from the adults around me of belief and reality and answers as to why we did certain things, did not celebrate certain things, believed certain things etc. Through my upbringing “proof” was always provided. Given my imaginative nature, and intelligence, much of what I believed made sense. I lived my life by it. I knew and wanted very much to “help” others see the truth. I am not, nor was I then, a stupid person.
Fast forward to life’s experiences, nagging doubts and unanswerable questions and ethical/moral contradictions - decisions made based on belief AND boom 
one day, in the hospital after nearly dying due to refusing a bible belief of not accepting blood transfusions 
… it hit me
What the fuck was I doing??? What exactly was I betting my life on??? The one life I knew I had and was living …
After this simple realization, it’s been all uphill since then 
Wanna bet? Isn’t it interesting that posts must not be empty here on the new site. You have to type at least 20 characters. Well, if this is the rule… How is it that all of Sailing Swine’s posts have been empty? I don’t get it?
SheldonAtheist
ROFLMAO Sorry about that…
You certainly did, but you seem to have a below par grasp of language, and your interpretation of what is said, by you and others, is errant and superficial.
Liar, I have expressed no such belief, and what’s more others have explicitly explained what we know and more pointedly what we do not.
Well there you go, remedial comprehension. It is irrational to add unevidenced supernatural magic to the emergence of life, and to claim a deity using this, is a more probable cause than natural phenomena, which is what you have done repeatedly, is moronic. Since you can’t show any deity or anything supernatural is even possible.
No it isn’t, a completely unevidenced assumption is not remotely rational. Besides there is objective evidence linking consciousness to material brains, stick a pick axe through it and the accompanying consciousness disappears.
A truly moronic piece of sophistry, but one you seem determined to repeat ad nauseam.
Again your use of language is almost childlike, and the answer would depend on what you mean by “show”. However, the scientific theory of evolution contains peer reviewed scientific evidence that we evolved from single celled organisms (no brains see), eventually into apes, with evolved physical brains. The scientific theory of evolution, which thoroughly and elegantly explains the resulting diversity of life, does not need or use any woo woo magic from imaginary sky fairies. Only the material physical natural world. QED…brains are an emergent property of matter.
There is of course no evidence for your theistic mumbo jumbo that consciousness can survive the death of that physical brain. Or that is in anyway independent of it, thus Occam’s razor applies. However there is overwhelming evidence that consciousness disappears with the death of that physical brain. As that is what we observe EVERY SINGLE TIME a brain dies, or is damaged sufficiently.
Now you’ve done your usual dishonest merry go round of false assertions.
What objective evidence can you demonstrate that a deity or anything supernatural exists, or is even possible?
More deafening silence and evasion will no doubt follow from you, but we keep arriving back at this fact, thus I will continue to disbelieve your god claim, and your supernatural creation claim.
Obviously you have invested yourself 100% into the apologetics dogma of conscious agency . I tried, I sincerely tried to point you towards learning something, anything about physics.
This does not make any sense. You think something is true, and we think something is true. We are using different methodologies to get there. One of us is wrong, unless you think all truth is relative, then it doesn’t matter what anybody believes. The goal is to know truth.
What methodology could you use to figure out if you were in a false religion? There are over 4000 of them, how do people know they guessed right?
You are definitely wrong here. If you have two computers that have the exact same hardware, and they give you two very different outputs based on the same inputs then they are processing data differently. If you need a result that is true, one of them will be wrong. We are disagreeing based on methodology. If part of somebody’s methodology is disregarding anything that conflicts with their model, then they are really just believing what they want is true, instead of actually finding truth. That means methodology matters.
I think you are just arriving at a conclusion you want to be true and don’t care about how you get there. This is why you do not care about epistemology. This is why you keep using fallacies and faith as your reasoning for god existing. Epistemology decides not only how to put evidence together, but also what should be considered evidence.
I have called you out on using faith as a methodology, and stated is not a reliable one. Why is faith a good methodology for finding truth? How is your belief using faith any more true that a Buddhist who has no faith in a monotheistic god but faith in reincarnation?
If you do not care about the methodology of finding truth why are you here? You just want to believe what you want to believe, and again, are just wasting our time…
Mine is an evidenced based faith . Taking the physical world there is more than enough evidence to suggest a creator . When this is added to personal knowledge then there isn’t anything else that explains life .
Truth is what stands the test of experience and Jesus Christ seems to be doing perfectly fine .
It’s interesting that the most atheistic country of the last 100 years - China - is estimated to be the largest Christian population in the world by 2025 . This begs the question - Why ? If atheism is logical , rational and leads to truth then why would millions of people born and raised in a godless country turn to belief in God ? Why would you give up all that rationality and logic for some make believe fairytale ?
Then you are misguided. You can not find truth looking in the wrong place and ignoring the world around you. You may invent something you call truth and pretend you have found it. You may hold onto it for an entire lifetime and never really know how deep in the dark you actually are. But to find anything near or approaching truth, you have to be willing to examine the world around you and evaluate it against your assumptions. That which approaches truth comports with the reality around us. Fantasy reality leads to a fantasy of truth.
NO
An atheist is defined as lacking belief in a god or gods. Nothing more.
An athiest may be rational, or an atheist maybe as mad as a March Hare.
An interesting reply that reveals some of the problems with pre-suppostional apologetics.
Apart from the obvious problem of framing every thought, statement, question and answer in the unconditional, though speculative belief in a god that can never be proven to exist, is the petulant commandeering of the definition, meaning and application of simple words to confuse discussion rather than to heighten understanding.
As a writer and graphic artist, I design and create things everyday. Design and creation are not the exclusive provenance of mythical gods. Both exist in nature as expressions of purely natural outcomes. Your rejection of my oil/directory analogy is a matter of perspective and as already pointed out yours is already unjustifiably skewered.
“Quantum mechanics tells us that nothing exists except observations.”
A bizarre statement. Quantum mechanics says nothing of the sort. Are you suggesting the universe does not exist, only the consciousness to observe it, and presumably a divine consciousness? Pre-suppositional apologetics in full flight, flapping wildly into the headwind of an obstinate reality.
There are several quantum theories extant and there are currently no absolute truths or conclusions about what comprises reality at the quantum level. The best known and more popular theories, of ‘Papa’ Heisenberg and John Wheeler, state that the collapse of the wave function can only be achieved by an “observer” to record a quantum phenomenon. But even here the observer does not have to be conscious, it can be a photographic plate.
Such observations/measurements necessarily need to be classical, which leads some to the erroneous suggestion that human consciousness is required to initiate the collapse.
And there are other current theories such as the de Broglie-Bohm theory, attested by further independent research by Chris Dewdney (Birkbeck College London) that discounts the need for observers or measurements to collapse the wave.
Then there are a range of ‘collapse theories’ that suggest the wave function will collapse randomly without any observation at all, as promoted by Markus Arndt and Roger Penrose (who introduces the concept of gravitational instabilities to initiate collapse).
So my point with this short imperfect lesson is to show there is no absolute consensus about quantum science but the one thing that is generally agreed is that no conscious observer is required at all.
So, no, Flying Pig, I am not wrong, but you are mistaken and misinformed.
And all of this illustrates how your pre-suppositionalism fatally negates your ability to seek truth or to follow the data to where it objectively leads.
Besides deriding my analogy merely because you object to atheist use of certain words, you also seized on the popular quirky newspaper-selling explanation that consciousness is an absolute requirement to establish ‘reality’ and ignoring all other scientifically established theories, arrogantly front-ended that idea with your faith in an mythical deity, to erect a faulty, irrational edifice (nothing exists except observations?!) as some sort of proof of your mythical belief, using wilful ignorance as its foundation.
Of course he’s fine - if he actually existed he’s dead now 
I don’t know … why do you believe a fairytale?
Let’s see 
communist China 
. Very very controlling… very depressing place (IMO) - high rate of Christianity (depressing,
controlling, fear ridden - yup the Chinese can relate)
Hmmm countries that are more secular - allow freedoms of all sorts and care for their citizens’ well being … Sweden, Denmark and Norway religion has declined big time…
AND “ Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world. In fact, if current trends continue, Muslims will surpass Christians as the world’s largest religious group in the second half of this century, according to the Pew Research Center.Apr 23, 2020
So - “the comforter” isn’t doing too bad either … again he’s dead, so of course he’s doing fine.
So what exactly is your point?
So you are in a world majority of irrational belief in god - big fuckin’ woooop
This is a deepity which is defined as: profound-seeming but superficial equivocation
The definition of faith we have been using is: belief in the absence of evidence
Your sentence would read the following if we replace faith with its definition:
Mine is an evidenced based belief in the absence of evidence.
As you can see, this makes no sense.
It is also interesting that Christianity is loosing approximately 10% of it’s base every 10 years here in the United States where people are free to learn what they want. But number of people who believe in something doesn’t mean it’s true. You need an epistemology to determine truth…
https://www.pewforum.org/2019/10/17/in-u-s-decline-of-christianity-continues-at-rapid-pace/
I think I’m done here for now; I’m tired of you ignoring my questions. I’m not trying to be a jackass, but I think you need to research this a bit more before we continue. Seriously, go to a pastor or an apologist on your side and ask them why faith is good. Determine for yourself if their answer is adequate. Ask them about their epistemology. Then do us a favor, and read what atheists think. I recommend The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens. I would also recommend my own book, but I’m still working on it. Try to understand why they believe what they do. Take your time on this, don’t rush it, we’ll still be here. Then come back, and start a new thread and I’ll respond.
I was trapped, and yes, I would describe it as trapped in Christianity for 25 years. I’ve lived as an Atheist for about 10 years now. I have never been more happy and productive as an individual.
What evidence? Almost every species in the history of the Earth has gone extinct. Everything on the surface of the Earth is continually being destroyed by tectonic motion. This entire planet is Earth II. Earth I was destroyed by a collision, from which Earth II and Luna formed.
Did someone plan all of this? It all looks pretty deterministic and mindless to me.
Please, point at this supposed evidence in the physical world. I seen a lot of people try to evidence their god idea, all of them have failed miserably. Perhaps you somehow have some knowledge hidden from everyone else. Care to share?
Oh, and:
“Because god” does not count as evidence. Sorry.
There was a robber -
Who proceeded to rob a few banks 
not wearing a mask and smiling at the security cameras.
When the cops arrested him, he was shocked 
. I wore the juice.
“The juice?”
He believed that smearing lemon juice 
would render his face invisible, because he read about invisible ink.
The cops showed him the footage - and he felt it was faked.
This man was not crazy … Dunning Kruger effect
Yah … I’ve had enough of your form of “intelligence”…
