Evangelical Atheists Have A God Complex

The BBQ Pit
141

Fair enough, and I am “message board angry” at you for ignoring repeated comments that the claims I was refering to were in the post of yours I quoted and debated.

Perhaps it was your refrence to trolling, but you set me on edge.

Careful with the mindreading schtick. I chose not to debate with you, as I couldn’t see any possible reason why you didn’t understand what I was saying. I wasn’t trying to ‘win points’, I was refusing to get into a discussion.

And this is why you got the reaction you did. Not only did I say what I was talking about, I said it several times. I did refuse to debate with you if you were going to pretend to be ignorant of what I was talking about, and to be honest I’m still dubious. How many times did I say that I’d quoted you? Hell, in the original post where I said you had to provide proof for your claims you claimed ignorance of what statements you were making.

Yeah, that’s it.
:smack: :smack: :smack: :smack: :smack: :smack: :smack: :smack:

I’ll lay this out real simple and then I’m going to drop this tangent as even I can only beat my head against a wall for quite so long: You said you believe in a God and that someone who believes that there isn’t a God is on the same epistemological footing as you are. I pointed out that your claim was the one that required proof, not its negation.

One does not need to disprove extraordinary claims. We don’t need to sit in judgement and ponder whether or not my car is run on the tortured souls of the damned.

Spot on… spot on.

142

You’re either not clear about what the term “extraordinary claim” means, or you’re just using it differently from everybody else. Faith and the ordinary-ness of faith don’t make a difference.

143

The null hypothesis is not the same as a claim of a proof of non-existence - it is a hypothesis, a provisional statement of non-existence until proven otherwise. The point is that we should act as if there are no gods until there is good evidence for one. Your example is invalid since we have evidence that some boxes contain spoons and some don’t.

Now, if you truly believe that god’s existence is undeterminable, I trust that you are a weak deist at best. You certainly should not believe in a Bible which cannot be determined to have been inspired by a god, and you should not follow a moral code supposedly sent from a god. You absolutely should not try to convert anyone to anything, since you say it is impossible to provide evidence that your belief is true If you believe in anything but deism, you need to ask yourself why you believe in that god and not some other god, since they are all equally mysterious and unshowable.

In particular, you should not believe in Jesus who did tricks demonstrating godhood, or most of the Torah, where God who you claim cannot be demonstrated demonstrated himself quite forcefully.

It is all too common for the religious to claim that their god cannot be demonstrated and must be taken on faith with one side of their mouth, and on the other say that this god hates fags. I know you don’t, but your position is an enabler for those who oppress others in the name of god.

144

Of course it’s extraordinary; rather crazy, in fact. If I know I can fly because I have faith I can, am I not crazy for stepping off a cliff ? Faith is not even close to evidence; it means nothing at all.

And look how screwed up human history is. Religion has had influence all right; a horrifying one. The Crusades, 9-11, antisemitism, blood eagles, the 30 Years War, witch burning, the flaying of Hypatia of Alexandria, slavery, the divine right of kings, the genocide of the Native Americans,the destruction of much of the world’s non-Christian cultures/languages/history, human sacrifice; religion had caused or excused enormous evil. It’s influence on the world is why I despise it.

Or…because we honestly don’t see any difference between worshiping 5 dimensional pink flaming orcs and worshiping a god. Both are equally plausible.

Well, they are.

Who has claimed otherwise ?

Once again, faith is not evidence. Faith without evidence is irrationality, simple as that.

145

Proof is something in math. Science deals in evidence. Faith deals in neither.

I replied to what I think about this supposed quandary above this post. You are suffering from a false dilemma, I fear. See, you have decided that the religions are “competing” and your mind says that either one is correct or none of them are and since you cannot ever find a suitable yardstick to figure out which one is correct that must mean that none of them are.

I don’t feel that way.

I consider spirituality to be a personal matter. I consider different religions to be different people all trying to find the same thing - contentment. You know the phrase that we all make our own God? You probably even believe it. Well surprise, so do I.

Consider language, for example. There are hundreds of different languages; within each language there may be many different ways to express the same word. Increasing this exponentially, the same thought can be expressed in an almost infinite number of ways. And just because someone might look at a feline creature bred for centuries as a domestic animal that doesn’t like mice and say it’s a cat doesn’t mean the person who says it’s a gato, or a *kat * or a *Katze * or a *猫 * is wrong. They’re just speaking a different language. Is any one language better than the rest?

Just because you don’t understand (insert language here) doesn’t mean that those who do are any better than you. Or any worse.

146

On preview: Marley, I see you’ve tackled this quite well… but I don’t think I can just ignore it.

Are you putting us on? This has to be some sick joke, right?
An extraordinary claim is still an extraordinary claim even if you have faith in it.

You seem almost pathalogicaly unable to address any actual arguments and need to fight strawmen instead. Nobody has claimed that faith is extraordinary, and yet you see fit to ignore the actual point and debate against a strawman.

The claim is still extraordinary, just because the (irrational) justification is common does not make the claim valid. It’s still an unproven extraordinary claim.

Again, wrong. Just flat out wrong.
Faith is not evidence, for anything other than that you have faith.
And there is actual evidence about the real world and it’s real physical laws, and no actual evidence of any God or Gods.

Ahhh, I see, you were projecting. What on earth does the ‘path’ someone is on have to do with their ‘inherent worth’? That’s just looney.

Yeah… because one tells you that you’re a bad person and they hate you, and the other says that a specific belief doesn’t have any rational foundation.

Actually, judging by this thread it’s the theists who’ve flipped the fuck out when their beliefs are challenged, and the a-theists who’ve engaged in reasoned debate. I know this is too small a sample size, but it’s interesting none the less.

And, besides, this bullshit about ‘demonizing’ is transparantly false. People stated, correctly, that young children are easier to indoctrinate. You flew off the handle.

Since you like making things up, maybe you can just invent someone to argue with? And since you like using the same tired and hackneyed “clever” phrase, maybe you can just post the same thing over and over again?

Again, get this through your head: people are not their beliefs! Showing that a belief isn’t logical is not the same thing as attacking a person. But you, oh Janus faced one, have indeed attacked a-theists on a personal level for having and communicating their beliefs.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
There is infinitely more evidence for belief in the real world than anything ‘beyond’ it.

“Reality is whatever doesn’t go away when you stop believing in it.”
“Spit in one hand, wish in the other. See which fills up first.”

147

Dave’s claim that he believes in god is not extraordinary, and I suspect most people would accept it by default. It is a lot different from the claim that god exists. In fact, if he were logically consistent, he would admit that an atheist not believing in god is very reasonable, since he has no external reasons for doing so. (A claim that an atheist can prove or know there is no god is different, but very few atheists make this claim.)

In fact, wouldn’t it be reasonable to say that a belief in something you don’t even think can be demonstrated is irrational in a literal sense - not insane, but certainly not rational. Not that there is anything wrong with that, love isn’t rational either. But people in love with someone don’t go apeshit when other people say they aren’t.

148

I will try and dumb this down even further:

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but you’re misplacing the modifier. The claim is not of “God,” but in faith in God. God may be extraordinary but faith is easy.

149

A foolish statement. Either there is a God, or not. You cannot “make a God”; no one can.

What relevance has this to anything ?

And this matters because ?

150

Thanks, Finn.

I guessed that was what you were thinking (I was just about to say so, in fact). But it’s wrong. It’s obvious that faith in God exists, and the existence of faith is not something that needs to be proven. When we have these discussions and people talk about extraordinary claims, they’re talking about this being that exists outside of nature and so on. “Faith in God” isn’t even a claim.

I’m all for live-and-let-live, and that’s what I try to do. But if we’re having a debate about this and dealing in some kind of logic, which is what we have in here, “whatever you believe is your evidence” doesn’t cut it.

151

Except that there is empirical evidence that the person will be unable to fly. So your analogy, to put it mildly, sucks. There is no empirical evidence of God and there is no way to gather empirical evidence that there is no God.

You’re truly as bad as the fundies. In fact, you now sound exactly like those moronic Creationists who need to lie in order to manufacture evidence that will strengthen their faith.

You, like the Creationists, are apparently unable to open a dictionary. If you could, you would know that a definition of faith is “firm belief in something for which there is no proof.”

Faith doesn’t require evidence so your statement is a complete nonsequitur.

152

… so?
Or are you just admitting that faith is a useless tool for dealing with anything in the real world?

Faith. Proves. Nothing.

Your fears are both unfounded and absurd.
Glad I could help.

Wow… you put forward a perfectly logical argument and then handwave it away. You’re also sounding like a loon. “My mind says”, eh?

Now:
Yes, mutually exclusive things cannot be all be true. That’s basic.
And yes, if there’s no proof for any claim there’s no reason to believe any above any others.

But more importantly, if there’s no proof for any claim, there’s simply no reason to believe any claim.

Luckily ‘feelings’ ‘faith’ and ‘belief’ aren’t proof. Your feelings mean nothing.

Ahhhh, now we get at the route of your position. Believe something you don’t have any evidence for believing is true… because it makes you feel better. Something about an opiate and masses, perhaps?

How about you use a metaphor that doesn’t involve a rather silly and incorrect view of linguistics?

:rolleyes:
So?

Or are you honestly going to claim that various Gods which are obviously contradictory aren’t… because we have different words for cat?

I could give you a linguistics answer, but it is totally off topic. Instead I’ll just say this has to be the single worst analogy I have ever, ever, seen on the Dope.

153

Atheists have claimed God as man-made forever so it is refreshing that you have gone against the party lines on this one.

By the way, this may have escaped you in your religious furor, however every response that you and your ilk make attempting to show that I am wrong only serves to strengthen my initial point that you are intolerant of any views but your own. I have never denigrated Atheism as a belief system or logical deduction. Yet the mere fact that someone feels differently than you even someone who has made no judgment whatsoever about your beliefs is enough to have you in a tizzy. Kinda like a fundamentalist Christian board when the nonbeliever comes by… Everyone wants a conversion on their mark, even Evangelical Atheists.

154

I disagree.

If there’s no way to prove anything either way, why not?

155

John. Please pardon the snips but it was a heck of a long post and I wanted to pursue these two points. In the first point about the UUs allowing that “all paths are as valid as the next.” Doesn’t this allow for belief in almost anything as long as I can get some friends to agree and we can say it without laughing? It seems to boil down to a requirement for belief in something, anything at all, that is unprovable. So why not Quetzalcoatl or Thor or Anubis or one of the thousands of other discarded dietys?

As far as “demonizing” religious pursuits, I don’t. Religion takes care of that all by itself. If the religious would simply shut up about it and stop trying to grab the reigns of government I’d have nothing at all to say to them. Regardless of how childish I might consider them, private beliefs are exactly that. The problem is that religion either breeds or attracts zealots that will attempt to enforce their particular brand of faith on others. There are both historical and present examples of this if you want to look them up.

That’s why atheists get “evangelical” at times, you people are dangerous. You have the credibility of an appeal to history and massive quantities of followers but there are no limits on what God might tell you to do next.

Regards

Testy

156

If you have a belief that is not based on facts then by definition it cannot be based on reason. Thus, it is irrational.

Only fundies know logic now?

If that’s how logic sounds to you then evidently the problem does not lie with the logical statement. PBKAC.

Oh, this is too rich.
If you were “able to open a dictionary” you’d know that one of the definitions of illogical is “not governed by or according to reason”.

And that’s why it doesn’t belong in the domain of reason, so your entire statement totally misses the point and betrayes a foolish anger at those who express opinions you don’t like.

Notice how in this thread you’re insulting many, many people who believe differently than you, on a personal level… while they’re only pointing out that a belief devoid of factual confirmation is not based on reason?

Funny, eh?

157

As has already been said, the very definition of faith is belief without proof. As such, you couldn’t have gotten any oxymoronic unless you ate some Jumbo Shrimp while enlisting into Military Intelligence.

You will now have to prove to me what is so mutually exclusive about religion.

I’m crushed.

Are you honestly going to say that mere incredulity at my premise somehow renders it false?

158

There is plenty of evidence against God; such as the universe, which functions quite well without any need for being created, and has no evidence of his existence or interference. Then there is probability; with no evidence for him, his chance of existing is no greater than any other silly idea.

If I step off of a cliff, there is the tiniest chance that all the random molecular and atomic motion in my body will spontaneously go in the same direction, allowing me to fly. As this violates no physical laws and involves things we know exist, I consider it more probable than God. So, yes, my analogy works just fine.

What the hell are you trying to say ? I know what faith is; I was calling it worthless - which you basically just said yourself.

No, we’ve claimed he’s fictional, not “man made”. A car is man made; Peter Pan is fictional. See the difference ?

I’m not “in a furor”, I’m baffled. You make no sense to me, or others apparently. What are you argueing for ?

159

You can believe in something that nobody else can even fathom for all we care.

Then maybe this rant isn’t about you.

Or maybe it is. :slight_smile:

You apparently have to reread the OP. I said quite clearly that I would be the first in line to attack those who wish to legislate their religious ldels in my country. The issue I had was that the Evangelistic Atheists in the crowd decided that a 4th grader drawing pictures of Heaven with crayons was the one pushing the law through. And eating their children. Whatever…

“You people”? That’s rich.

Nice slipepry slope. Anyway, if you were paying attention, I already said that my beliefs are more in line with Deism. If you knew anything about Deism, you’d be aware that means that I believe that God ain’t paying attention anymore. However, your position that anyone with a religious belief - even the 4th grader in Sunday School - has the potential to do something horrible because God tells them to at any given moment is telling.

160

No, silly… I’m saying you’re as illogical as the fundies.

This assumes that faith is unreasonable. I don’t feel that is always the case. Otherwise nobody would root for the Cubs.

Projection.

Projection.