When Does Religion Become Just Silly?

[Belz...]

Originally Posted by psionl0

OK so some of the atheists here "know" that there are no gods.

For any sane definition of "know", yes.

Quote:

Nobody is even reading (let alone addressing) my argument.

I read your argument. You're essentially saying that since we can't disprove all possible sorts of 'god', we can't say they don't exist. But that's silly. Of course we can. Look: there are no gods. I just did it. And I did it because absent any reason to believe that ANY god exists, I can safely and tentatively say that they don't.

Prove me wrong.

[Belz...]

Originally Posted by psionl0

Neither did you in that post.

Neither did you in this one!

Originally Posted by psionl0

There are lots of buildings in the world and each building has lots of rooms. Have you explored them all yet?

You do know that changing the rule of a thought experiment doesn't invalidate the thought experiment, right? It just shows that the person changing the rules would rather not have to deal with the consequences of the experiment.

There's no reason to check the other rooms. We live in this one, and we can't leave. Is there a chair in it or not?

[Belz...]

Originally Posted by psionl0

Yes, but do you?

If you say "I believe that there are no gods" then there is nothing to prove. But if you say (authoritatively) "there are no gods" then the burden falls upon you.

So you say "yes", but then go on to demonstrate that the actual answer is "no".

Quote:

You are getting far too emotional over a simple question of logic.

Irony!

Quote:

I have totally destroyed these analogies.

Strawmen do not destroy arguments. They avoid them.

[Belz...]

Originally Posted by psionl0

I said that logic is the enemy of atheism and you confirmed that by immediately reversing that statement.

One atheist using a tu quoque means that atheism is a homogeneous group that is incompatible with logic?

More irony!

Quote:

Any sufficiently powerful god that doesn't want to be revealed can easily arrange things so that he can't be revealed through any logical or scientific test.

You don't know that. You have no way of knowing if there's even a logical way to avoid scientific detection while fiddling with a universe. You're just assuming it because it fits your stated position.

Quote:

I haven't completed my search for an immortal person. However, I have known enough deaths to know that it is a very common thing to happen to people (and in not one of those deaths has the person reappeared to me in any form whatsoever).

Odd how you use different logical standards for this claim.

Originally Posted by psionl0

It says slightly more than that. It suggests that the universe was "singularity" all those years ago then suddenly started expanding.

A suggestion. Not a certainty. The Big Bang could be a continuation of something else. Don't chastise other posters on their certainty when you can't even get basic stuff right.

[Belz...]

Originally Posted by psionl0

Claiming that the probability of the existence of a god is of the same order as "quantum tunneling" of large objects (ie virtually impossible) is no less silly than asserting that it is impossible.

How would you know?

You keep making claims you're entirely certain of with zero evidence or reasoning, and you have the gall to tell people they can't say that gods don't exist until proven otherwise?

Get out of here.

[psionl0]

Originally Posted by Belz...

You do know that changing the rule of a thought experiment doesn't invalidate the thought experiment, right? It just shows that the person changing the rules would rather not have to deal with the consequences of the experiment.

There's no reason to check the other rooms. We live in this one, and we can't leave. Is there a chair in it or not?

Let me know when you are caught up in this thread. It will save me the bother of repeating 5 pages of posts.

[Belz...]

Originally Posted by psionl0

Let me know when you are caught up in this thread. It will save me the bother of repeating 5 pages of posts.

No need to repeat your silly arguments. They've been comprehensively destroyed by other posters.

You're essentially Bobbing the god argument.

[JoeMorgue]

Originally Posted by Belz...

You're essentially Bobbing the god argument.

That's all theology has been for about thousand years now, Bobbing with pretensions of grandeur.

[abaddon]

Originally Posted by psionl0

Your agenda became clear very quickly. No matter what god I described and no matter what characteristics I listed, you would say "nobody believes in that god".

Obviously false. If you described the nature and characteristics of any of the thousands of flavours of Abrahamic "gods", then everyone would agree that some number of believers exist or have existed in the past in that version of a deity. No problem.

But that is not what you are doing at all. Not remotely close.

Originally Posted by psionl0

Unfortunately, you became so emotionally invested in this dishonest strategy that you had to dig your heels in and say that Christians don't believe that God created the universe.

Also obviously false. Christians clearly believe "god" created the universe. Equally, christians do not believe in the cobbled together god you have invented out of whole cloth. Or at least not many of them. There are likely outliers as always.

Suppose I claimed that your messages to this forum and the responses to them are transferred to and from your computer or device by a bucket chain of undetectable message pixies whose sole purpose is to transparently pass on messages on the interwebs. You cannot know with 100% certainty that this is not the case. Network engineers? They merely provide a more efficient method for the operation of the message bucket chain whether they realise it or not. They are much like "pastors" and "priests" in that regard.

Your claim is that one cannot be certain that is not happening right now this minute. And that is absurd.

BTW, the first pixie on the bucket chain from my laptop to you is named Jock, from Scotland. Prove me wrong. Can you know with 100% certainty that it is or is not the case?

[JoeMorgue]

Originally Posted by psionl0

Let me know when you are caught up in this thread. It will save me the bother of repeating 5 pages of posts.

Hey Belz, psion10's entire argument is "No it's not special pleading because God is different because I special pleading a version of him just to use in arguments."

There he's all caught up now. And like I've already told you this argument is very, very old. Me and Belz both have already had it a dozens times. There's nothing new to "get caught up on."

Are we gonna get any answer to any of our points or just more responding to multiparagraph explanations of why you are wrong with a single emoji?

[Belz...]

Originally Posted by JoeMorgue

Hey Belz, psion10's entire argument is "No it's not special pleading because God is different because I special pleading a version of him just to use in arguments."

Wow. Special pleading the special pleading argument. Meta-pleading, as it were. That's new.

Quote:

Me and Belz both have already had it a dozens times.

I'm not even sure "hundreds" would be hyperbole.

[psionl0]

Originally Posted by abaddon

Also obviously false. Christians clearly believe "god" created the universe. Equally, christians do not believe in the cobbled together god you have invented out of whole cloth. Or at least not many of them. There are likely outliers as always.

I listed the characteristics of a universe creating god earlier. Which one of those characteristics don't Christians believe?

[psionl0]

Originally Posted by Belz...

No need to repeat your silly arguments. They've been comprehensively destroyed by other posters.

You are making an assertion without evidence.

[JoeMorgue]

Originally Posted by psionl0

I listed the characteristics of a universe creating god earlier. Which one of those characteristics don't Christians believe?

The idea that he made the universe and then went away/stopped.

[Belz...]

Originally Posted by psionl0

You are making an assertion without evidence.

I thought it would be too cumbersome to quote all of the posts made to you in this thread in a single post, but if you insist, I'll do that.

[psionl0]

Originally Posted by Belz...

I thought it would be too cumbersome to quote all of the posts made to you in this thread in a single post, but if you insist, I'll do that.

Don't bother. You will only cherry pick the posts that you like and ignore my responses to them.

[psionl0]

Originally Posted by JoeMorgue

The idea that he made the universe and then went away/stopped.

That wasn't one of the characteristics that I listed.

[Belz...]

Originally Posted by psionl0

Don't bother. You will only cherry pick the posts that you like and ignore my responses to them.

Oh, I read them. But that you responded to those arguments doesn't mean the response had any value whatsoever.

The point that you cannot counter is very simple: there is no evidence, in any way, shape or form, for ANY sort of god. Ergo we can safely say, pending future evidence, that gods don't exist.

You can reply that you can't 100% be certain, but no one ever needs to be 100% certain of anything to make such a declaration. If you think they do, then you need to go outside and forget the internet for a while and interact with actual humans.

[psionl0]

I knew that you didn't read any of my responses. You are just parroting the strawman arguments that others have made.

[Belz...]

Originally Posted by psionl0

I knew that you didn't read any of my responses.

What part of "I read them" has you confused?

Get down from that soapbox of yours. Your arguments are not as good as you think they are; it's that simple.

[Darat]

Originally Posted by psionl0

I listed the characteristics of a universe creating god earlier. Which one of those characteristics don't Christians believe?

The christian god is one that we can detect, nearly all of the believers who label themselves Christian believe that he intervenes in the world now, the single largest denomination of Christianity has a specific office tasked to detecting their god's interventions. If the god you posit does not intervene in the world in a way we can detect it is not the Christian god.

[JoeMorgue]

Originally Posted by psionl0

That wasn't one of the characteristics that I listed.

Again this is a:

"2+2, 2x2, 2^2, 8-4, 8/2..."
"So... 4?"
"I NEVER SAID 4!" argument.

No version of God that people actually functionally believe in on any practical day to day level, to say nothing of any version of the Judeo-Christian God, is a hands-off deity.

You're still making up new versions of God, constantly adding special pleadings to it to "Nuh-uh" every way in which his existence could actually be tested. You think just by doing it passively it's different.

For someone who's screaming up and down what you are doing is saying there's an invisible dragon in your garage, you're following the script on how to do it to a T. It's textbook.

You've gone one further in fact, invoking an invisible, incorporeal, mute, indeterminable, undetectable, dragon that once lived in your garage.

[ynot]

Originally Posted by psionl0

OTOH I am saying that there are a couple of fundamental issues that can't be answered:

Yet theists (like yourself) claim they can answer both.

Originally Posted by psionl0

* Was the universe created or has it always existed?

Theist (like yourself) answer - “Nothing can eternally exist except my eternally existent god” (special pleading for their god).

Atheist (intellectually honest) answer - “I don’t know, but I have no reason to assume it hasn’t always existed in some form”.

Originally Posted by psionl0

* If it was created, was it due to some eternal natural law or was an intelligent being involved?

Theist (like yourself) answer - “The universe is far too complex to have been evolved by natural forces, so it must have been created by my even more complex god that needs no creator” (special pleading for their god).

Atheist (intellectually honest) answer - “I don’t know, but I have no reason to assume any intelligence was involved”.

Originally Posted by psionl0

Now you tell me which one of those positions is "special pleading".

Obviously the theist "positions".

ETA - You need to define if your use of the word "created" means "something from nothing" or "something from something".

[acbytesla]

I read the title of this thread and I can't help thinking the question should be "when isn't religion silly?

I have yet to read a description/definition of God that isn't silly or meaningless.

You can easily poke holes in all the theistic models I have ever had described to me. And deism is entirely useless today. Please, someone give us a God that isn't silly.

[Thor 2]

Originally Posted by acbytesla

I read the title of this thread and I can't help thinking the question should be "when isn't religion silly?

I have yet to read a description/definition of God that isn't silly or meaningless.

You can easily poke holes in all the theistic models I have ever had described to me. And deism is entirely useless today. Please, someone give us a God that isn't silly.

You run the risk of being branded a "militant atheist" acbytesla. One John Humphrys has you in his cross hairs. Just been reading a book by this dude, where he singled out Dawkins, Hitchens, and others as being of this ilk. I got the impression that his research was not too sound because he referred to one "Sam Smith" as the author of "Letter to a Christian Nation".

John was saying with some monotony that we should respect the faith of the religious and religion wasn't responsible for all the bad things that have happened in the world because other causes, (like communism), are culpable also. The old "those guys are doing it too so there" argument.

Not seeing myself as a "militant atheist", nor considering the others of more fame than myself as such, the book didn't ring true for me. Anyone who doesn't recognise the harm being done by religious faith is ignorant.

John referred to himself as a "failed atheist" for some vague reason - possibly because of his lack of militancy.

[acbytesla]

Originally Posted by Thor 2

You run the risk of being branded a "militant atheist" acbytesla. One John Humphrys has you in his cross hairs. Just been reading a book by this dude, where he singled out Dawkins, Hitchens, and others as being of this ilk. I got the impression that his research was not too sound because he referred to one "Sam Smith" as the author of "Letter to a Christian Nation".

John was saying with some monotony that we should respect the faith of the religious and religion wasn't responsible for all the bad things that have happened in the world because other causes, (like communism), are culpable also. The old "those guys are doing it too so there" argument.

Not seeing myself as a "militant atheist", nor considering the others of more fame than myself as such, the book didn't ring true for me. Anyone who doesn't recognise the harm being done by religious faith is ignorant.

John referred to himself as a "failed atheist" for some vague reason - possibly because of his lack of militancy.

I'm definitely an atheist. I fought forever identifying as such. Anything, but an atheist!

And by forever, I mean 40 years plus. I grew up in the Christian church attending church regularly and every summer going to Vacation Bible School and Bible Camp. Yeah!

But I don't think I ever believed in it literally. I saw it similarly to say Aesop's Fables. A collection of morality tales. The problem though, taken as whole, the Bible isn't moral. I'm good with loving and being kind to our neighbors and even to a degree people we call enemies. But that's maybe 1 percent of the book. And God who is preached to be loving and wise ISN'T. He's petty, self involved, narcissistic, vengeful, racist, misogynistic, homicidal, even genocidal and stupid. He's Trump on steroids.

I finally had to give in. There is no other word. I'm an atheist. I cannot unequivocally say there isn't a god. But I can say unequivocally, I have never heard a credible reason to believe there is one. Like Big Foot, Leprechauns, Loch Ness Monster and String Theory as we know today. They are unfalsifiable hypotheses and are utterly useless.

As for having respect for faith? None.

Faith is without a doubt the most useless, absurd, even destructive concept I can imagine. That is if you define it as most religious people do such as in

Hebrews 11
Now faith is the [a]substance of things hoped for, the [b]evidence of things not seen

People use faith to justifying believing in not only the unprovable but what has been demonstably disproven.

I define "faith" as the excuse people give for believing without good reason. Because if they had a good reason they would give that. They wouldn't have to resort to an appeal to faith.

Does that make me militant? If it does, I just will have to live with it.

[ynot]

Originally Posted by Thor 2

You run the risk of being branded a "militant atheist" acbytesla. One John Humphrys has you in his cross hairs. Just been reading a book by this dude, where he singled out Dawkins, Hitchens, and others as being of this ilk. I got the impression that his research was not too sound because he referred to one "Sam Smith" as the author of "Letter to a Christian Nation".

John was saying with some monotony that we should respect the faith of the religious and religion wasn't responsible for all the bad things that have happened in the world because other causes, (like communism), are culpable also. The old "those guys are doing it too so there" argument.

Not seeing myself as a "militant atheist", nor considering the others of more fame than myself as such, the book didn't ring true for me. Anyone who doesn't recognise the harm being done by religious faith is ignorant.

John referred to himself as a "failed atheist" for some vague reason - possibly because of his lack of militancy.

After atheists are branded as being “evil, nasty, unimportant, subhumans” that “deserve to suffer an eternity of pain and torture with much wailing and gnashing of teeth”, then being branded a "militant atheist" is almost a complement.

[ynot]

Originally Posted by acbytesla

As for having respect for faith? None.

Faith is without a doubt the most useless, absurd, even destructive concept I can imagine. That is if you define it as most religious people do such as in

Hebrews 11
Now faith is the [a]substance of things hoped for, the [b]evidence of things not seen

People use faith to justifying believing in not only the unprovable but what has been demonstably disproven.

I define "faith" as the excuse people give for believing without good reason. Because if they had a good reason they would give that. They wouldn't have to resort to an appeal to faith.

Does that make me militant? If it does, I just will have to live with it.

Getting people to believe that “Faith is a virtue” is one of religions most successful con jobs.

[Minoosh]

Originally Posted by psionl0

* Was the universe created or has it always existed?
* If it was created, was it due to some eternal natural law or was an intelligent being involved?

Now you tell me which one of those positions is "special pleading".

Beats me. I'm not sure what special pleading is. I'm just picking up on Joe's lingo.

Wikipedia offers this example:

Quote:

A difficult case is when a possible criticism is made relatively immune to investigation. This immunity may take the forms of:
...
claims to data that are inherently unverifiable, perhaps because too remote or impossible to define clearly

That sounds fair enough. When I argue for the possibility of a squishy abstract God I probably do this. I may go farther out on a limb than you do because I don't even apply forensic questioning like "Was the universe created or has it always existed?" My position is more like, I can't get as far as offering an either/or scenario like that. Maybe there's a third possibility that hasn't occurred to me. I don't have faith that human reason is even capable of asking the right questions. Cognitively I'm probably farther along than, say, a sponge, but there might be in our universe a naturally evolved intelligent being whose intelligence is to my cognitive power as my intelligence is to a sponge's. And so, without positing anything supernatural, I'm already pretty sure that I'm not in a position to argue for either God's existence of nonexistence.

Quote:

* If it was created, was it due to some eternal natural law or was an intelligent being involved?

Same thing: Is there no possibility of overlap between "natural law" and "intelligent being"?

I don't bring anything to these discussions because I don't concede that human language is capable of describing what God is, not if it used every word in the dictionary and then some. In fact I would expect that it isn't. If there is a God, what make me think that I would understand It? So I'm pretty sure that what I'm doing is textbook special pleading.

[acbytesla]

Originally Posted by ynot

After atheists are branded as being “evil, nasty, unimportant, subhumans” that “deserve to suffer an eternity of pain and torture with much wailing and gnashing of teeth”, then being branded a "militant atheist" is almost a complement.

I also don't mind being compared to Dawkins or Hitchens. If only I could be as eloquently articulate as Hitch.

[acbytesla]

Originally Posted by Minoosh

Beats me. I'm not sure what special pleading is. I'm just picking up on Joe's lingo.

Special Pleading
noun
argument in which the speaker deliberately ignores aspects that are unfavorable to their point of view.
making an exception in logic for one's own point of view.

There is a simple starting principle of logic. That the maker of an existential claim is responsible for proving it.

I have never ever met a believer in the supernatural of any kind not violate this principle and out of the gate engage in some form of special pleading.

[psionl0]

Originally Posted by ynot

Yet theists (like yourself) claim they can answer both.

This is the problem. You take pro-theistic arguments made by others and attribute them to me so that you can take me to task for my "theism".

We have ZERO information on the origins of the universe so to say that the probability that it was created is infinitesimally small is silly.

I don't care if some believers claim to be in constant communication with their god nor if they claim to have witnessed miracles. I have no unambiguous personal experience of either so I have no basis to judge the truth of these claims (most appear to be false).

Similarly, I have no time for those who think that the existence of God can be argued from scientific grounds (it can't) nor those who claim to have the key to their religious text and can explain why it doesn't say what it appears to say (see Darat's example earlier).

Originally Posted by ynot

ETA - You need to define if your use of the word "created" means "something from nothing" or "something from something".

Do you understand what "ZERO information" means?

[psionl0]

Originally Posted by acbytesla

I have never ever met a believer in the supernatural of any kind not violate this principle and out of the gate engage in some form of special pleading.

You have never met somebody who simply says "I believe even though there is a lack of evidence"?

Not everybody is trying to prove that their god is real and I suspect that you have conflated theism with the paranormal which is a different thing.

[Loss Leader]

Originally Posted by Belz...

The point that you cannot counter is very simple: there is no evidence, in any way, shape or form, for ANY sort of god. Ergo we can safely say, pending future evidence, that gods don't exist.

I would phrase it as, "We have no reason to believe any sort of god exists."

[acbytesla]

Originally Posted by psionl0

We have ZERO information on the origins of the universe so to say that the probability that it was created is infinitesimally small is silly.

No, it is definitely not silly. To think it was "created" you have to imagine something that is far greater and complex than the universe and then imagine how that came to be.

Yet, everything we know about physics, chemistry, biology, engineering demonstrates a progression from the simple to the more complex, not the other way around. There is not a shred of evidence pointing to this complex and powerful being. None. Is it possible? It's possible only in the idea that all things are possible because of the unknown. But from a reality perspective it very well could be impossible.

Originally Posted by psionl0

Do you understand what "ZERO information" means?

Which is simply not true. We have more than petabytes of data going back to the Big Bang and in that nothing that suggests a creator. You can only posit its existence.

[acbytesla]

Originally Posted by psionl0

You have never met somebody who simply says "I believe even though there is a lack of evidence"?

Not everybody is trying to prove that their god is real and I suspect that you have conflated theism with the paranormal which is a different thing.

That is the very definition of special pleading.

[ynot]

Originally Posted by Loss Leader

I would phrase it as, "We have no reason to believe any sort of god exists."

I would phrase it as, “We have reasons to conclude any sort of god(s) don’t exist”.

Some reasons . . .
No credible evidence any god(s) actually do exist.
No credible method by which any god(s) actually could exist.
No credible reason any god(s) should actually exist (in modern times).
Credible reasons why people invent gods that don’t exist.

[acbytesla]

Originally Posted by ynot

I would phrase it as, “We have reasons to conclude any sort of god(s) don’t exist”.

Some reasons . . .
No credible evidence any god(s) actually do exist.
No credible method by which any god(s) actually could exist.
No credible reason any god(s) should actually exist (in modern times).
Credible reasons why people invent gods that don’t exist.

This gets down to that not quite right maxim;

"that abscence of evidence is not evidence of absence".

Because it is evidence of absence when evidence is expected. We see volumes of evidence of how the universe as we know it came to be and absolutely no evidence of this mystical powerful being. You would expect evidence.

Which leaves a critical mind to ask. What is more likely? That an all powerful, all knowing being created a 14 billion year old universe with a staggering almost unfathomable number of galaxies, stars and planets and leave no evidence of itself, or that it doesn't exist at all?

[ynot]

Originally Posted by acbytesla

This gets down to that not quite right maxim;

"that abscence of evidence is not evidence of absence".

Because it is evidence of absence when evidence is expected. We see volumes of evidence of how the universe as we know it came to be and absolutely no evidence of this mystical powerful being. You would expect evidence.

Which leaves a critical mind to ask. What is more likely? That an all powerful, all knowing being created a 14 billion year old universe with a staggering almost unfathomable number of galaxies, stars and planets and leave no evidence of itself, or that it doesn't exist at all?

Yep - Evidence of absence isn't absence of evidence.

Then there's also absence of credible method and absence of credible reason.

[ynot]

Originally Posted by acbytesla

Is it possible? It's possible only in the idea that all things are possible because of the unknown. But from a reality perspective it very well could be impossible.

From the total sum of what is currently known to be possible perspective, gods are impossible.