“Gay marriage ruins the sacred institution of marriage.”
This is like saying that destroying my computer for scientific research destroys the sacred computer industry. I truly don’t get this argument.
I second the statement that “It says so in the Bible” is a woo-woo argument if ever there was one. BTW, where does the Bible say to test everything? I’m not doubting you; I’m just curious where it is exactly.
Good point, but I’d be very nervous living in a universe where sdlkjt7ok47 was the supreme ruler.
I skimmed a lot of this thread because I wasn’t interested in reading all the posts about Roland’s comment - so if this has been posted already, I apologize.
I can’t stand people who state that by criticizing the President I’m aiding and abetting the enemy. I can’t stand anyone who uses any variation of the “why do you hate America” argument.
Whenever someone I know starts talking about how everything is pre-determined, I push them into the road (not when there’s any real risk they’ll get knocked down) and wait for them to complain. So far, all of them have, I suppose they aren’t the real die-hard determinists.
I don’t believe in god. Same as I don’t believe in bigfoot. The burden of proof has not been met to my satisfaction. QUOTE]
The burden of proof? Hell, in two thousand years of Western Civilazation this is the first time I hear that the existance or not existance of God was a scientific matter; philosophical, yes,; Theological, yes; But scientific? Not unless you are very bad scientist.-
Oh, so only good scientists accept logical fallicies as proof of a supernatural diety? Only bad scientists question, weigh the fact that the only evidence of God is a self contradictory book written way after the events in it? It is bad science to accept personal anectode, sometimes from the loonies and shadiest of people, with something to prove?
I think it is poor logic and wishful thinking to assume that the religion you worship is the true one.
None of which has anything to do with science. Good or bad.
Speaking of lame arguments, the worst these days is the “yawn, war is terrible” argument in defense (yes, that’s what it is) of torture by US soldiers and mercenaries of Iraqi prisoners. There’s a special circle in Dante’s hell for such people.
One that I truly hate is (sorry if it’s been posted already, I read through and didn’t see it) “Everything is relative, no one’s opinion is any better or more right than anyone else’s”. This seems like the ultimate cop-out argument, as if to say there’s no point in questioning anything or debating at all.
A corollary to this is the argument “Morality is completely relative, what is amoral to you or me could be moral to someone else”. While I will concede that there is definite room for debate on many topics related to morality, it’s pretty easy to measure what is necessary for human kind to co-exist peacefully and productively.
A third one that bugs me is “You have to respect the traditions and beliefs of other cultures”. Why? Just because they believe it? What if they believe in human sacrifice? What about oppressing half their population (note, I am not trying to point to any culture, really, this is purely hypothetical)?
And of course, the classic “I was always taught to believe this”. Who gives a fuck what you were taught? There’s three pounds of sticky, mushy gray matter between your ears, use it.
Well first off if this is the first time you’ve heard the words ‘burden of proof’ and ‘existence of god’ in the same sentence you sure don’t get into debates about god much. Secondly just because burden of proof is a scientific term doesn’t mean I am saying the existence of god is a strictly scientific matter if I had said “I simply don’t see any proof I am willing to buy” would that make you feel better? It doesn’t sound as intelligent in my opinion but what the hell. Finally bad scientist? Why? If god exists he should have explainable behaviors and a detectable presence. Just because we are supposedly unable to detect him at the current stage of our scientific development doesn’t mean only bad scientists would look for proof of his existance.
Anything along the lines of “I am making a true-false proposition” and substantiate it with, “well, that’s my opinion” is crap. There’s a difference between opinions and facts. Opinions are neither true or false, they are judgments. If you make a statement that is either true or false, it is either a fact or a lie. It is NOT an opinion.
You make many fallacious assumptions about personal religious practices.
Number one: Not all people believe that the Bible is “proof” of God’s existence. Some people (including me), are convinced by other proofs: The existence of love; great deeds done in the name of compassion; the way the moon looks when its close to the horizon, by the sea.
Number two: Not all people who share their religious experiences are salesmen or people “with something to prove”.
Number three: Not all religions or religious people believe that they have to prove everyone else wrong in order to feel good about their worship.
Sciences have a defined object and a method. I am not very religious, I don’t accept the Bible or lunatics testimony as the proof of God existance. I also son’t accept logic as a way to deny or believe in god. After all the “proving or disproving god by logic” arguments are pretty unobejective, (see Descartes or Saint Anselmo).-
In this matter my friend there are no facts just faith, at least utill now, you never kow what this wacky scientists will discover.-
As I said above, in religious matter proof is meaningless.
Secondly why do the people that believe that God exists are the ones that have to provide the evidence? The burden of proof? Rubbish. Just an example: experience has shown us that every society, no matter how isolated, believes in a supreme being, therefore, the ones that are making an extrordinary claim (god does not exist) are the ones that have to prove it.
Yes, but how do you know that response isn’t pre-determined either? So you push them in front of a bus and they move out of the way. I have no idea how this demonstrates that it wasn’t predetermined that they’d move out of the way of the bus you were destined to push them in front of.
Same goes for the argument that nothing is real. Of course nobody wants to jump in front of the imaginary bus, for fear that their imaginary life would end. Hell, I don’t have any proof that I really exist in any sense other than what I can perceive. I haven’t died yet, so I don’t have any evidence that I’m ever going to die.
These are momentarily fun mental exercises, but they’re either terribly cyclic (the first one) or totally useless (the second).
Just because a claim has been made for so long doesn’t mean it’s been proven and has to be disproven. Things by default don’t exist. Bigfoot, god, alien life forms even elephants don’t exist until they were discovered and proven to exist. We’ve found elephans. I’m willing to bet on aliens but I’m not holding my breath. God? He’s still just an unproven claim. It’s fine if you wish to believe it. I however require proof.
Really? Talk to a Buddhist no supreme being there. A kannagaraist has friendly spirits but no supreme being. There’s dozens of religions that have no supreme being in it or even what some people would even recognize as a religion just a group of loose beliefs in something else. If there was a higher power why aren’t they similar? Simple answer is that man has to deal with two ideas. First of death second of explaining why things happen. So they make up reasons for this. Obviously something that controls the weather is far more powerful then man so they make up gods or karma or what have you. Then if there is powers that control the weather and your destiny wouldn’t it be nice if they did so after you died as well then you have Afterlife. Every culture also has some form of boogeyman that murders children. They also usually have some sort of blood drinking spirit. Do you believe that the boogeyman has been conclusively proven now? Or is it most of us are born afraid of the dark?
I’d like to expand a bit on this to show how ridiculous it is. Give me the guidelines necessary to disprove god through evidence.
Does it have a physical detectable presence? According to most Christians and modern religions No.
Can it be detected through not subjective means? No.
Does it behave in predictable ways that can be measured? (ie I do X it does Y) No.
Does it emit some form of energy that can be measured and detected? No.
Is there any way to interact with him that produces measurable non subjective results? No.
So anyone that doesn’t believe in God has to be able to disprove and undetectable presence that supposedly acts in ways on the same level of random chance? So tell me a way that I can falsify a non falsifiable belief? Simply put I can’t BECAUSE I am making no claim to something. Saying god doesn’t exist is NOT A CLAIM. Saying it does exist is a claim.
Provide me with the definable aspects of that power then we can talk about evidence. You want a debate that is by default unwinnable because you make no statements I can disprove.
Now I have no beef with someone that believes. I do have a beef with someone that tells me I can’t not believe then uses ridiculous arguments like that. In short you are making the exact same woowoo arguement this thread is about. (ps I used ‘it’ instead of ‘he’ not to offend anyone just because I felt silly writing ‘he’ when there’s so many religions that have female deities)
Creationism in its broadest sense is really just any belief that God created the universe. It’s most common application, though, is in reference to “Special Creation” and “Young Earth Creationism” (YEC), which are pretty much Biblical literalist viewpoints.
“Intelligent Design” is a somewhat more sophisticated innovation in creationism which does not necessarily rely on a YEC viewpoint or deny all evolutionary mecahanisms. It’s basically a teleological argument which claims that evidence of “design” can be discerned within biology and that evolution is the result of divine intervention. ID is largely dependent on assertions of something called “irreducible complexity,” the claim that some aspects of biology cannot be further reduced without rendering them useless. The anolgy used is that of a mousetrap where if any one of a few elements is removed the trap will not function. One example used by IDists is the eye which they claim cannot have evolved because any element which is removed from the eye makes it worthless. The say that there could not have been any preliminary stages to the eye, that it could only work as a complete, finished organ. Behe is the formost proponant of ID.
All of the examples of so-called “Irreducible complexity” have been roundly debunked and ID itself is nothing more than another incarnation of the the classical teleological argument for God, which is, of course, logically the weakest. ID (not surprisingly) makes no falsifiable predictions and is mostly sold directly to lay audiences who are self-selected to be friendly, credulous and uncritical.
“Whatever you were doing when [random bad thing] happened, stop doing it and [random bad thing] won’t happen again.”
My wife used this line of reasoning to argue, in all seriousness, that I should stop exercising and eating fruits and vegetables, since that what I’d started doing right around the time I was diagnosed with cancer (I got better).
