Yeah, ok, so? I’m glad we agree.
So you’re hijacking this thread to make a semantic point? I wouldn’t have bothered to argue if you made that clear up front. Oh well, this is the straight dope.
What do you mean? That’s an SDMB tradition!
Sure I could, at least to a much higher degree of certainty than you can show there is no god.
And I’m happy you’re confident, but I trust you won;t be offended if I do not share your conclusions. To quote Trey Parker, “Basically … out of all the ridiculous religion stories which are greatly, wonderfully ridiculous — the silliest one I’ve ever heard is, 'Yeah … there’s this big giant universe and it’s expanding, it’s all gonna collapse on itself and we’re all just here just 'cause … just ‘cause’. That, to me, is the most ridiculous explanation ever.”
Sure, but it looked to me like he was actually trying to make some kind of interesting point. If the point is just that we shouldn’t use the word “know” for anything outside logic and mathematics, I think this thread is not the place.
Also: down with solipsism!
my first post in this thread:
Pretty clear to me, dude.
No, it means that I am generally talking to Christians, and that most of the people who start talking about some generic non-Christian god are defending a god they don’t believe in themselves. A concept of God that primarily exists to use in arguments with atheists.
And now we have the changing of definitions. Yet another standard religious defense. the onimax God is the god most people who believe in a God believe in, the one that actually matters. Unless they are trying to defend their religion, then they start changing the definition of “God” to evade their opponents arguments.
Nonsense. It’s not physically impossible that he/she is Roger Cedeno. **The Bith Shuffle ** could be hallucinating that he/she isn’t, or under alien mind control - both of which are much more plausible than God. Pretty much anything is.
Eh, interesting is in the eye of the beholder. The fundamentalist Christian thinks he “knows” what he claims about God in the same way that an atheist who says he knows there is no god. It was really clear from the beginning - my very first post. I can’t help if that eluded you.
That’s unlikely, given the validity of the Problem of Evil. If the real world contains tons of things God would consider evil if he existed, their existence contradicts God’s supposed omnipotence and omniscience. So you have to show that these things don’t exist in the real world.
I won’t get offended, I’ll just assume that I can respond with arguments and you’ll respond with arguments, and so forth.
The quote you gave is both a distortion of science and a failure to be conceptually clear about what God could be supposed to be. Most physicists today think that the universe will end in a heat death, not a big crunch. But more importantly, the sort of causal baggage the quote contains: “'cause … just ‘cause’” is not part of modern science at all. The quote is more emotional rambling than anything.
And the conceptual issue with God is that you’re just pushing the prime mover back further. If we suppose that each thing was caused by something else, moving backward in a chain of causation requires us to conclude that there is either something which exists just because it does (and there is no explanation for it) or there is an infinite backward chain of causation. In the latter case, a god might exist (though not an Abrahamic one, since the Problem of Evil still applies), but any god would itself simply be the result of some previous cause.
Now, let’s suppose that the former is the true: there is a prime mover, something which is just there because it is. Why does it make more sense to suppose that that thing is a God than it does to suppose that it is, say, a big bang, or a universe, or a multiverse, or one of a bunch of different possibilities (some wholly scientific, some mystical) that one might cook up?
Not true; the atheist has facts and logic on his side.
Right. And I could redefine santa claus in such a way that you couldn’t “know” he didn’t exist. Random definitions are useless. People believe in actual things. The type of entity that anybody outside of these threads (you know, the real world) actually calls god (within these types of threads we’ve had plenty of people trying to deny gods are actually entities and I’m not going there) does not exist. I know that because it would be abundently clear if that god did exist.
If he’s not it’s possible to prove it, much mroeso than it is possible to prove the non-existence of god.
As for the rest of your post, I can’t help your hard-on for Christianity, but it is not the beginning and end (alpha and omega, if you will) of the concept of god.
and still cannot reach a certain conclusion. Please say you know god doesn’t exist, please.
It’s absurd that you’re limitting the concept of a diety to a Christian god. Have a sack. Be an atheist, not an a(Christian)theist.
Funny you think I’m talking about the christian god.
If it makes you feel any better, I don’t believe in reincarnation, buddha, allah, pantheism, spirits, fairies, ghosts, ESP, zeus, mars or any other supernatural being that I’ve ever heard of.
In other words, we are supposed to pretend that this isn’t a conversation about the Christian god. Instead, we are supposed to pretend it is a conversation about some carefully undefined version of God.
Of course I know there is no God, the same way I know there is no Santa Claus. I’m not going to go along with your little scheme of religious privilege.
Thanks, someone up thread didn’t belive people like you existed. Ironic.
Really? I’ll say it too: I know that there is no God.
eh, maybe I was confusing you with someone else. Or else, I made an incorrect assumption.
Awesome, the count grows. (we’re not limitting this god to a certain brand, right? You know there is no deity that is supernatural?)