Which means we can’t say anything at all meaningful about it; including what you just said. You are trying to use rational arguments about something to which you claim rationality does not apply.
Except this isn’t about honest debate; this is about them trying to beat down disagreement while being willing to lie to do it.
Nonsense, and insulting. They are entirely different. Agnosticism and atheism do not require faith; they fit the facts, they hold together rationality. Religion does neither of those things, and therefore requires the denial of facts and rational thought, the baseless assertion of fantasy over reality; faith in other words.
First, your standard religious person not only believes in something which can be falsified but believes in something which has been falsified. Second, the atheist belief can easily be falsified - a god just has to show up. I know many atheists say they wouldn’t believe even then, but we’d have to have this experience to know for sure. Those who believe in a deist type of god or god as the universe are the ones believing in something unfalsifiable.
But when that thing becomes controversial, or doubt is cast on it, it is time to move from uncritical acceptance to analysis. Until I was about 16 I believed in God for exactly the reasons you give, but then I got new information and was able to change my mind. For most people there is no excuse to ignore the evidence against a god - lack of evidence in some cases, evidence in the unreliability of the Bible for another. I wouldn’t bother to walk someone feeble minded through arguments against god, but no one around here matches that description.
I think most atheists treat claims of faith healing, quack medical cures, and astrology the same way we treat religious claims.
What trust do atheists have again? When Godot does not show up, thinking he won’t is based on evidence, not trust.
I for one, and most regulars here, are here to test our lack of belief. I’ve been testing mine for 40 years now. In that time I’ve seen pitifully few good arguments for God. I’ve seen beliefs in unfalsifiable deities, I’ve seen intelligent theists refuse to discuss the issue, and mostly I’ve seen utter nonsense - with the exception of Liberal who definitely tried and was looking for a rational defense of his faith. If all the irrational god belief - and the desire to act as if the gods they believe in were proven - were replaced by god belief that only goes as far as the evidence takes us, we’d have a much better country.
Nope, I’m using rational arguments about rationality. Specifically, that rationality can’t be used to determine whether or not there exists something to which rationality does not apply.
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Except this isn’t about honest debate; this is about them trying to beat down disagreement while being willing to lie to do it.
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Abandoning honest debate is not a good way to counter browbeating and lying, IMO.
Seeing as there is no evidence for it, it is absurd to act as if something that goes against all our observations exists.
Vampires are supernatural. I assume you don’t give that the benefit of the doubt? In fact, you probably live your life in exactly the same way as if you knew for a fact that vampires didn’t exist. In fact, if someone asked you if vampires existed, you’d say no.
Asserting that God goes against all our observations is a point that supports His existence is beyond absurd. And it surely isn’t rational.
If God is magic, then He isn’t subject to rational debate. And if he can just say that the rules of logic don’t apply to him, that’s the biggest special pleading fallacy in the history of the universe.
You consider asserting that God is supernatural, thus He doesn’t need to be logically consistent, to be honest debate?
I can’t prove a God doesn’t exist. But I can demonstrate without a shadow of a doubt that a omnipotent and omnibenevolent one doesn’t. All I need to do is point to a nearby pediatric cancer ward.
If rationality does not apply to something, then it is something that has no meaning and cannot be conceived of. It is also nothing more than a strawman used by the religious, because people don’t actually worship any gods that are “beyond rationality”; that just a line they use to deflect criticism.
Pointing out that the other side IS engaging in browbeating and lying rather than honest debate is, however. While ignoring the fact that they are doing so is essentially ceding the argument to them.
I’m not capitulating to anything. I’m merely saying that a fairly common argument that has in some circles become accepted as sound, doesn’t really make sense.
or be allowed to happen , granted.
What if the details of exactly what happened are not the point for an eternal universal being which might be God, and even us.
Who the hell is daydreaming? Keep it straight. At no time have I argued for the existence of God. Of course it’s what ifs. The argument I’m talking about that you brought up is a what if. Namely “If God exists and he/she can’t be omnibenevolent” That argument starts with “what if such a being exists” right?
I’m simply saying that it’s not logical to imagine a universal all knowing perspective and then argue “needless” suffering from a strictly human perspective.
Are you reading the thread? I stated right away that belief systems are emotion and intellect. I just think you went to far when you said it’s all emotion, nobody uses reason.
A very large portion of how we all function is “somebody told you X was true”
It isn’t that you can’t prove it. It’s recognizing what you don’t know. That cuts both ways. Believers or non believers that are to certain about things they can’t know are being irrational.
That’s the point I’m trying to make. What is rational is not just a purely intellectual analyzing of facts. That’s not how belief systems work presenting it as such with the claim “all religious beliefs are irrational” is lazy and inaccurate.
I understand the argument. I’m not saying omnibenevolant and natural evil, or unnecessary suffering doesn’t apply. I’m saying when we start the exercise in logic by saying "if a being that is , omni X, Y and Z exists, then we’ve created a universal perspective that we can’t possibly fathom. A being who sees how every moment fits together, which we can’t possibly do. As such, it’s illogical to judge suffering and evil from our limited perspective and declare it needless.
It’s completely logical , rational and fair to say, there’s no evidence to support God belief. That’s a fact. It’s rational to say the existence of so much suffering is a factor in you not believing. It’s not strictly logical to say such a being cannot exist.
What’s rational is recognizing the limits of our knowledge.
Look at everything we have discovered that was beyond the imagination of previous generations.
I understand that. My comment was more about the nature of belief systems and why we accept things as true. Religion has changed it’s beliefs over time.
Aren’t you the one constantly complaining about religion having a special status? Now here you are trying to create one for it. Atheists by their rejection of God have already defacto admitted that beliefs systems are the same internal mechanism for everyone.
Every human being uses faith, in the sense that they accept certain things as true on trust rather than verify everything personally. It is a casually observable fact.
Absurd, or in other words: not rational. Yes, I agree.
I’ve agreed with this point several times in this thread already, in case you didn’t notice. E.g.:
But if you need me to say it again: yes, it is not rational to assume the existence of an entity to which rationality doesn’t apply.
I certainly don’t personally believe in vampires, any more than I believe in God. And I certainly am well aware that no empirical evidence exists for the existence of vampires or of God. And I’m also aware that scientific models of physical reality do not just passively fail to support, but actively contradict, claims typically made for the physical capabilities of vampires or of God.
But if somebody asked me whether I could indisputably prove that there don’t exist any vampires whose unexplained supernatural powers allow them to circumvent the constraints of empirical laws and rational thought and thus escape detection by science, I would say no, I can’t. Because I’m not dishonest and I’m not stupid.
As far as I can tell, that first sentence makes no sense. What do you mean?
Which is exactly what I’ve been saying all along.
No, claiming that the rules of logic don’t apply to a particular claim is by definition not a logical fallacy. Fallacies are failures to apply the rules of logic consistently in a situation where they are presumed to be valid. Asserting that the rules of logic are not valid for a particular subject disqualifies the subject from logical analysis altogether, but it is not a fallacy per se.
It is not debate at all. Rather, it is an arbitrary denial of the possibility of debate, based on an irrational assumption.
However, IT IS BY DEFINITION NOT SUBJECT TO RATIONAL DISPROOF.
That’s what I’ve been saying.
Nope, that’s not an adequate demonstration. Because your human conceptions of “omnipotence” and “omnibenevolence” and their necessary consequences can never be adequately shown to be equivalent to those of an omnipotent supernatural being.
Look, I don’t like the fact that children get cancer any more than you do, and I don’t believe in God any more than you do, and I don’t think that the assumption of God’s existence is any more rational than you do.
I just don’t have such an aching hard-on for winning debates with theists that I’m willing to try to evade the basic fact that they are technically within their rights to call off the fight whenever they please, on the grounds that the subject is intrinsically disqualified from rational argument.
If a theist believes that God is beyond rational understanding, then since it’s impossible for me to prove that he isn’t, that’s when we agree to disagree and just walk away.
On this we can agree - we are all “irrational” in the sense that we daily accept information and assertions on flimsy premises or based on prejudiced, subjective judgement.
Again, agreed - but you seem to go one step further and say “well, since we’re all doing irrational things every day, might as well do that one too” or “why criticize this one more irrational thing people do ?”
Aaaand here comes the double standard. No, the religious and atheist positions are not equivalent, and they do have different mechanisms. On the whole, agnosticism might be more rational, or more intellectually honest I suppose ; but the idea that inventing gods and rejecting gods are on the same level is spurious. And the idea that trusting there is a god and life after death is on the same level as trusting my girlfriend that there wasn’t any peanut butter left at the store is either disingenuous or aggressively silly.
You… just said it was earlier. here, lemme re-quote it for you:
“All people operate on some degree of faith, or trust. We obviously don’t verify every piece of information that comes our way. It’s necessarily irrational to believe information we receive from trusted sources or to believe what the majority of our social group believes.”
Of course they are, assuming they espouse those beliefs *because *of groupthink or they were taught these beliefs by people they have an emotional investment in. It’s neither “good” nor “bad” - like you say, we all do it in some regards.
But why want to call it rational ?
I don’t think the act of questioning one’s beliefs is, in itself, enough to be called “rational”. It’s a step in the right direction to be sure, but if you’re questioning them using dismal logic or in that informal, rationalized way we humans have to actively reinforce our own beliefs by essentially straw-manning ourselves, well…
Besides, in the specific case of religion, doesn’t it face serious factual challenges from the get go ? Whether you’re told about The Jeebus, the wheel of reincarnation, Odin’s resurrection come the day of Ragnärok or kami protecting the trees, there has to be some point where you ask yourself “how do these people know about all these invisible/post-mortem/future things ?”.
Well, there we’ll have to disagree - as a stick-up-the-bum prescriptivist I get all twitchy when people try and fuzzy up the basic definition of words on me
You’re equivocating between two definitions of faith. “Faith” as a synonym for “trust” isn’t the kind of faith religious people are talking about when they’re asked a question such as “Why do you believe in a book when you have no evidence it’s true?” and they answer “Faith.” In that example, the religious person is using the following definition of ffaith:
belief that is not based on proof: *He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact. *
Faith that is synonymous with trust is the first definition:
confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another’s ability.
I have the first kind of faith when I have evidence for it. I have faith that certain people will pay me back when I give them a loan because I have evidence that they are trustworthy people and they are likely to pay me back. I have zero faith that a stranger would, and if I did, it would take the second kind of faith as it would be sans evidence. I have zero of the second kind of faith in anything. Religious people generally do. This isn’t the first time I’ve witnessed the “atheists have faith just like us believers do” argument and it almost always uses equivocation.
This is called the “best of all possible worlds” argument. By definition, if we have an omnibenevolent god then our world is the best there can be, for reasons we cannot fathom. But this is an excellent example of special pleading, in that any baby who dies of disease or in a natural disaster would have the made the world worse if she survived. And there is nothing to back this up except by assertion. Now, every disaster in the past, before we were born, is good to us viewed selfishly. I wouldn’t be here if WW II hadn’t happened, since my parents would have no doubt had a baby long before me, and the circumstances around my conception would not have happened. But it would be the height of arrogance to claim that the world with me would have been better than the world in which millions would not have died. Multiply a billion-fold, and you have your argument.
Well, I only assert that a subset of gods cannot exist, tri-omni ones for example, since they are inconsistent and because their existence involves logical contradictions. Other gods could exist. As far as we can tell, they do not. We have plenty of evidence that no god of earth ever existed, gods of other planets I’ll consider when we visit.
But if any religion were really in contact with god they would not change their belief system. This is an excellent argument that no human religion is true.
