Posted by Samurai how can you sit there and defend a fairy tale? |
Posted by Samurai I'll tell you this, 98% of the religious assholes I come across are pompous, pious and ignorant |
Posted by Samurai where was i for this? ...blah blah blah... religion should be taught in marketing classes as an example of iron-fist p.r. and having a good publicist. |
Posted by Aleksandar atheists bother me because they generally go too far. instead of pointing out the flaws in the practice of most modern religions, and attacking belief in them on those merits, they take the indefensible position of claiming to know with certainty that there is no entity out there whose traits can be characterized as supernatural, and which may or may not have caused the universe we live in to appear. ... |
"science" doesn't bother with the question of "god" because it is beyond the ability of scientific inquiry to prove or disprove. this is a fancy way of saying "we don't know, and at least for now we can't know". whatever individual scientists believe beyond that is philosophical, not scientific. |
atheists go a leap beyond the position of science and assert "we do know. there is no higher being and no supernatural." that isn't scientific, is reactionary to the flaws of modern religions, and is almost wholly a philosophical statement and not a scientific one. |
The way we can observe, test, measure, interact with and experiment upon the reality around us is as-yet very limited and in the scheme of things quite young. who knows what we'll discover in 1000 or 5000 years, and what it will teach us about our place in all of this. maybe we'll be exactly in the same place we are now, and reality ends up being guessed correctly on the first try by our contemporary theorists. Maybe reality ends up being like a beach on the ocean on a planet, and all we're seeing now is one grain of sand so we think that's all reality is. MY point is, "I don't know yet" because we're not there yet. ... |
Posted by splumer I don't think I need to remind you that the burden of proof lies with the claimant, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. |
Posted by McNulty Um...so claiming there is no God is not a claim but claiming there is a God is a claim...am I following your reasoning here? Also, it is funny that when power hungry rulers throughout history have used religion to mobilize people against other groups and to perpetrate evil it is evidence religion is evil. However when examples of power hungry rulers using atheism as a way to mobilize people against other groups and to perpetrate evil it is not damning towards atheism at all. I think somebody is suffering from case of double standard. |
Posted by MonkeyPunchBaby Or you could just believe in a higher power without all the bullshit from the bible attached. Not every Christian or person of faith "pays tribute" to their god, nor is every Christian afraid of hell. In fact a good number of Christians dont even believe in hell, or believe in a god who is a petty asshole. It's only the atheists and fundamentalists who take the bible literally. The rest of the religious population, you know the other 95% who aren't loudmouth whackjobs, are perfectly content and not doing anything pushy or insane. |
Posted by splumer The default position must be that something doesn't exist. Not just gods, but anything outside our normal realm of experience. |
Posted by splumer However, if I was to make a claim that was out of the ordinary...you'd expect some proof. |
Posted by splumer Now, if I was to claim that there's a being who exists outside the laws of time and space as we understand them, is omniscient and omnipotent, will send us into a lake of fire if we don't pay him proper tribute but will reward us with an eternity in an unspecified paradise if we do |
Posted by splumer I've already answered your second point, and I will not revisit it. |
Posted by Aleksandar ... theoretical physics rely on the freedom to develop models light on evidence that plug gaps in larger theories. the religious have used this same approach, with the idea of a supernatural entity plugging the gap in how reality and the universe came to be. |
You have made a claim that is out of the ordinary, and I do expect you to have some proof. You assert that you know with certainty that there is no entity that is "supernatural", who could have acted as the creative impetus behind the appearance of reality and our universe. Worse, you offer an equally arbitrary theory as a replacement. |
What you offer in the place of this entity, ... YOU personally believe in it because somebody else told you to. |
how does your theory require less faith? why do you consider your theory exempt from the same burden of proof you apply to the idea of a supernatural entity? |
I think you sensed the weakness of your own argument, so you felt the need to create a straw man you could knock down and appear strong yourself. Nobody in this thread has talked about a lake of fire, tributes, eternities or unspecified paradises. You're mixing in abrahamic religions to try to make the concept of a supernatural entity appear ridiculous. |
I suggest that belief in an entity is as equally valid as your belief in a random, unguided supernatural quantum state that breaks all the same rules you set for your critique of 'god'. |
McNulty was right. You're blindly caught up in one of the biggest double-standards of the modern world, and the joke is on you. As is typical in such cases, it's funny as hell to everyone else but in the end you'll just get mad. |
Posted by MutantMandias [Everything Mandias posted] |
Posted by MutantMandias Saying that gods exist and are the cause of all things, but outside of any rules, means that science might as well be abandoned, since it is worthless. |
Posted by MutantMandias So, currently science does assume a singular, unexplained beginning, and assumes certain things about it. If it makes you feel better, you can call that a faith event. |
Posted by MutantMandias Of course, maybe we are just getting all Ptolemaic about science. He was able to keep coming up with more complicated explanations for reported observations which would contradict his theory of nested spheres: nudging the sphere's centers or rotation, adding spheres between spheres, etc. But his theories never really predicted things that hadn't previously been observed, which current theoretical physicists are able to do from time to time. |
Posted by Roland I don't think Aleksander is trying to convince anyone that god exists |
Posted by MutantMandias Einstein made assumptions based on not a whole lot more than his feelings, but the theories that sprang out of it were workable and lead to models than were able to predict observations that were not even conceivable for decades. Belief in god doesn't do that. |
Posted by Aleksandar If evidences for or against such an entity ever surface, they will surface here. |
Posted by MutantMandias On UER? Holy shit! |
Posted by splumer I believe something that might seem counter-intuitive because the person presenting it to me has provided evidence, and the evidence - and thus the theory - seems plausible |
Posted by splumer May I see some evidence of this entity? |
Posted by splumer Again, no evidence, so I don't accept your hypothesis. Like Rousseau said "It is hard to prevent oneself from believing what one so keenly desires." |
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