Well, three pages later I think we can call it a drive by. But why not join the fray? We’re talking about uneatable burritos that didn’t come from Taco Bell…
(((:eek:))) <— mind blown.
Drive by? I assumed Fender was working on his rebuttal.
Of course, once again, omnipotence is not a logically necessary element of the definition of God.
No, no, no, no, no! The divine miracle would be eatable burritos from Taco Bell! The which have yet to manifest . . .
But do you mean hot in temperature or in scovilles? Because any microwaved burrito that remains intact will eventually cool to the point that it can be eaten. The other kind of hot, well, if Jesus was from Puebla, he could probably handle just about anything.
I now realise that some people totally struggle to understand the simple English sentence “there are no gods or goddesses”.
It’s not that difficult. You don’t have to tie yourself in knots of logic to unravel its mystery. Indeed, it is completely true, despite the fact that looking around this room I can see at least seven of them - they are quite decorative, and demonstrably do exist, despite me saying correctly they don’t!
I know I am never going to prove to some of you that Merlin the Wizard is a character from fiction, and not the creator of the universe. I agree that for some systems of logic this simply cannot be proved. But it’s still true, for all useful definitions of ‘true’. Spooky, huh? And, I hate to break this to you, but anyone who is genuinely unsure if Merlin created the universe, because it’s just so impossibly difficult to know, is not someone whose judgment I can rely on.
I wonder why we don’t have interminable repeat debates on the existence of pencils. Oh, that’s right, because “pencils do exist” is somehow not a controversial statement, despite all the same knotty problems of definition and logic. It seems like the most important difference between objects like pencils and concepts like the goddess are that pencils are real.
Belief in no god is different from the claim that one knows there is no god. Especially when the belief is provisional.
We can start out with lack of belief. Then we can examine dozens of gods posited by humans throughout the centuries and find that there is not a shred of evidence for any of them. Isn’t belief that there is no god reasonable at this point? Especially when any god could prove himself to us at any time.
The universe with a deistic god is identical to one without him, so there is no reason to believe in one. You might as well believe that the Star Wars galaxy is out there somewhere, Ewoks, Jar-Jar and all.
If God ever shows up, I can change my mind. Until then belief in no god is perfectly reasonable, far more reasonable than the opposite.
Wait what? Here’s how you falsify my position of atheism - prove that a god exists. Demonstrate that a god exists, and you have falsified atheism. The fact that you have set yourself up in such a way that you cannot even in theory demonstrate a god’s existence is hardly our problem.
Actually Thudlow I don’t agree but not quite for the reason BPC states, as such.
The OP is not saying atheism is inherently unfalsifiable, but rather that it is unfalsifiable because atheists won’t say what it is they would accept as evidence of a god:
So I don’t think BPC has quite the flavour of it in that the OP seems to acknowledge that atheism could in theory be falsified by proving a god exists but his accusation is that us atheists are slippery weasels who won’t be pinned down on what would constitute that proof.
The real problems here are at least twofold. Firstly, as past threads on the subject have shown, theists mostly don’t know what the frack the specifications of their god or gods are, and to the extent they do, they all contradict one another: there is no consensus. Secondly, many theists posit gods whose characteristics are such that their existence cannot be proven.
For all that I doubt the OP has sufficient intellectual capacity to understand it, I think he/she actually points up something vaguely interesting: you can’t really be a universal hard atheist in the sense of holding a positive belief that no god exists because there is no definition of “god”. The statement that X does not exist, where X is an undefined variable, is unfalsifiable (and meaningless).
All you can say as an atheist is that your belief that no god exists is - for any particular provable god -scientific because your atheism is falsifiable.
To the extent anyone posits an unprovable god, you can’t form a belief that that god does not exist on a scientific basis, but you sure as hell wouldn’t bother to pay it any mind.
What I’m saying has much in common with Ignosticism, which I would have invented myself (honest!) if it wasn’t for the fact that it had been invented already.
This is thetheological noncognitivist approach. Although that doesn’t roll off the tongue as easily as Princhester’s Ignostic…
Which brings us to a funny point about proving god. Those who are religious don’t have any problem defining god, he created heaven and earth in 6 days, rested on the 7th, he created Adam and Eve, flooded the earth, chatted with Moses, gave us the Ten Commandments, and his word is written down in the Bible.
Until you talk about disproving his existence, then it’s all wibbly wobbly, he suddenly becomes a thoroughly generic supreme being, that atheists cannot disprove, thus their own highly specific god is “possible”.
Naturally. Religious people are usually dishonest debaters. They lie - constantly and casually. Which is a pretty straightforward extension of their valuing faith over facts or logic - if they valued truth they wouldn’t be religious in the first place.
Hot Pockets are not a cuisine from anyone’s time
So it’s agnosticism or atheism for wiseasses. Works for me and it could really liven up Thanksgiving dinner.
I think it’s a bit like Pascal’s wager. It all sounds good till you realise you are being hoodwinked from the get go: Pascal starts from the position that the question is simply whether there is or is not a Xtian god. The reality however is there are infinitely more possibilities, it’s just that we are so surrounded by Xtian culture it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking it’s either the Xtian god or nothing.
Similarly, classic agnostics or atheists are being hoodwinked from the get go into thinking that the question of whether or not there is a god is a reasonable starting point. We are so surrounded by theist culture which takes it as a given that there is this thing called “god”, that it is all too easy to assume that somewhere along the way the theists particpating in the debate have defined what they are talking about.
The end result is that atheists and agnostics are all too easily swept past Step One (WTF is this darn “god” thing you theists are wittering on about anyway?) and straight into Step Two (Does it exist?). The end result is that all the endless discussion about Step Two is largely a meaningless castle in the air.
If I had my way every single post by a theist on the subject of the existence of god on these boards would receive the reply “what exactly are the defining characteristics of your ‘"god’” and no other answer at all until that definition had been satisfactorily given.
If it heats popcorn without burning a bunch of kernels, I’m in. Let’s Kickstarter this baby!
Hot pockets contain the fires of hell!
Yep. This MB is troll-nip.
Seems more like trolls are dope-nip.