Note to English Major: Straw man doesn’t mean what you think it means.
Interesting link, but my original reference was a tad more mundane…
Yes, as any true scholar of Buddishm already knows – our philosophy is rooted in science, not wishful thinking!
So remind me again…what’s with all the hostility here? (Oh wait, it’s The Internet…n/m)
Okay, I LOL’ed. 
Au contraire. The lack of any evidence for God suggests there’s a very strong possibility that if he does exist he WANTS people not to believe in him. Having faith in God may very well be the exact behavior that gets you damned to Hell for all eternity. By continuing to believe you put yourself in great peril.
Any chance you’ll be an honest debater and actually address the questions you keep running away from?
Is there some reason you won’t retract your claim? You have utterly failed to support it.
I gather:
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God is serious business. Unicorns are not. This is apparently self-evident.
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If a lot of people believe something, their belief is evidence of that thing.
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Having a headache is a substitute for answering questions.
So, you’re a true scholar of Buddhism and a Buddhist and you think it’s both a philosophy and a religion, that it’s pantheistic, is over 10,000 years old, that it’s a faith and is rooted in science, and the rest of us are ignoring the evidence of higher intelligence. The lulz just keep comin’.
I’d say that unicorns are quite a bit more plausible. If someone found a fossil unicorn tomorrow it would be interesting; but an extinct single horned equine would hardly require that the laws of physics be rewritten. For that matter it could adhere to the legend in more than just looks without breaking physics; it could have a scent based reaction to young humans (virgins, or presumed virgins - they’d hardly admit otherwise after all), its horn could discolor when exposed to poisons commonly available at the time or neutralize them, or have antibiotic properties. That’s a lot less likely than an ordinary extinct animal, but doesn’t break any physical laws and is still much, much more plausible than gods.
There’s no way though to shoehorn the existence of gods into known physical laws like that, especially since aliens claiming to be gods wouldn’t be considered “real gods”
Then after they die, they’ll curse you from hell 
I would recommend A Physicist’s Guide to Skepticism by Milton Rothman which would show you what you’re really up against when one applies the laws of physics up against supernatural and pseudoscientific claims.
About a year ago today is when I asked the SD people what convinced them of their faith. This thread is not too long of a read, and this is the best that they came up with. Let me know if you want further elaboration or a discussion on any of it including your Miracle of Lady Fatima.
Is that so? We’ll get to this shortly.
I’m not carefully avoiding anthing. I’m flatly telling you that the issue isn’t regarding what ‘unproven’ entity you consider more plausible, as that has nothing to do with anything I’ve typed out thus far or will type out. That’s the second time I’ve stated as much. I don’t want to have to say it a third time.
You’re wrong on so many accounts. First and foremost, much to your consternation, it wasn’t just a bunch of believers who stared at the sun too long. It was both a collection of believers and non-believers, most of the latter who came out to ridicule those who expected something to happen, most of whom reported similar events. What say you about that? Or what say you about the fact that people miles away from the incident reported witnessing the same or similar events even when they weren’t specifically looking at the sun? Either between 30K to 100K people, both believers and non-believers, lied about what they saw or they all sufferred from a bout of mass hysteria. Those are your only two options, and both are equally ridiculous considering the sheer mass of witness spread across different demographics in diferent geographic areas. The fact that not everyone saw something is nothing out of the ordinary. In a crowd of 30K to 100K people, you wouldn’t expect everyone to claim the exact same events, as that would be suspicious. As is usual, 100% of any significantly large population will never 100% agree to having witnessed the same events.
The only nonsense is from you. If things such as spirits, gods and souls can’t be observed, then how do you know they violate physical law? In fact, I have a better question you-- which physical laws would the existence of sols, spirits and gods violate? I’m really curious here.
And yet again I find myself asking, how do you figure?
Irony strikes at the best time.
If 100,000 people in Portugal did indeed see the noonday sun zig-zagging around the sky, and we take this as evidence the sun was indeed zig-zagging around the sky, I’m curious why we don’t have 20 or 30 million witnesses in the rest of Europe who surely would have noticed something. After all, it was daytime for them, too.
Or what, you’ll beat me up? for all your posturing, all you are doing is avoiding answering the questions. Again; what would it take to convince you there was a divine hamster inside the earth? And why should I take the claims of Christianity or other religions any more seriously than god-hamsters?
That you are wrong, that the unbelievers who came to look didn’t see anything.
Because, again, they are claimed to do so.
Most obviously, having existence and structure without a material substrate. Interacting without affecting the object they are interacting with in the case of souls. Gods are also typically portrayed as violating the speed of light. And the classic tri-omni Christian God violates all physical laws by definition; that’s a direct consequence of omnipotence. And omniscience violates both the speed of light and well as the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and most of the rest of quantum mechanics.
Apparently my scientific understanding, and ability to engage in critical thinking, far surpasses your own.
Unless you’re emulating Richard Dawkins and engaging in an egregious straw man, then you have no basis upon which to state that God doesn’t exist because his existence would violate some scientific law (which, for the record, are not absolute). There is no law within any field of science which precludes the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent and eternal being., and you cannot provide such a law
What a ridiculous post. First of all, not all concepts can be pigeonholed into a neat category and defined away by science. For examples, neither love nor conscousness (sp?) can be quantified via science. Would you argue that neither exists? Second of all, what is truly asinine is stating that the existence of God violates some scientific peinciple while claiming that God hasn’t been defined. If he hasn’t been defined, then you have no way of saying that he can’t exist because his existence would run contrary to some scientific law or principle, as no characteristics of him have been put forth which can be tested against some scientific principle.
You’ve offered nothing reasonable except arrogant presumptions, especially as it relates to the experiences of others.
Actually, you’re so ignorant you don’t even know how ignorant you are. How meta.
Straw man doesn’t mean “something you aren’t smart enough to refute”. Seriously, look it up.
Some examples?
Der did a good slew of them, read his post.
Can’t be quantified yet. But love is obviously resident in the brain, as is consciousness. Also, get a spell checker for your damn internet browser. This is the 21st century. 
We have evidence for love and consciousness. There is no evidence for your ridiculous fairy god father.
God is commonly attributed omnipotence, which includes omniscience. This defies physics. If your God isn’t omnipotent, please let us know.
Others are stupid, ignorant and often liars. Evidence is what we’re talking about here. You have none and are simply stamping your feet at this point.
Der Trihs already responded to this, so I’ll just ask you a question. Can your being take human form and run faster than the speed of light?
Omnipotence and omniscience are mutually contradictory - you cannot have a being who is both. If you know what you are going to do your power is limited in that you cannot do other than what you know. If your power is unlimited you cannot know what you are going to do. You can state that a being has both attributes, but you can also state that you drew a four sided triangle - it makes no more sense.
BTW, we know Gods violate physical laws by definition - omnipotence, by itself, is impossible under physical law. The first thing a theist should claim is that any god violates physical law - otherwise no creation and no miracles.
Nonsense. We can measure the physical effect of love, observe the differences in behavior of someone in love and not in love. We can also tell the difference between a human who is conscious and a dog who is intelligent but not conscious fairly easily. We may not understand how consciousness works yet, but we can quantify it.
By the way, Mr. Steele, welcome to the Straight Dope. I assume you have some free time now, right?
Gravity for starters. Did Jesus walk on water or not? And define soul? or spirit for that matter. What do you have in mind. What can sometimes be tested is the claims one makes for them. And take time for example of something that actually doesn’t exist. I’ll let our ole friend, Doc Nickel from the past explain this:
Fortunately, no. I’m a lover; not a fighter. Well, I’m not much of a lover, either, but definitely moreso than a fighter.
You keep accusing me of avoiding the question, and I keep telling you that I don’t care about what people want to accept or what idea they consider more plausible than another idea, as you’ll find I quite clearly stated on page three:
But do continue on acting like I’m trying to slyly avoid whatever question you keep asking me.
Which would mean that said individuals are liars, which was one of your two options (the other being mass hysteria) :smack:. But that begs the question as to why a skeptic or non-believer would lie about what he or she saw? They, after all, would have nothing to gain from it.
Indeed, they are not.
Here’s a question for you-- do thoughts and ideas exist? Do they have structure? Do they exist even if the world from which they stem cease to exist? If they do, then under what basis could you possibly argue that God does not exist?
To use my previous example, can thoughts and ideas interact with someone or something without affecting the object in which they are interacing with?
So apparently you believe that God is a material and/or physical being and have proceded to argue that, as such, he is bound by certain laws. Well, see, that’s where you went wrong. I’m unaware of any theist-- more specifically, I should say Christian-- who takes this stance. By definition God is not a physical being, which means He is not constrained by whatever laws you and I are constrained by (/usualandobviousresponse).
I think fuzzypickles is probably breathing a sigh of relief somewhere right now because someone with even more ludicrous arguments than s/he has come along, to distract attention from his/her crass rhetoric.
Keep going, Black Conservative. I believe you were saying something entertaining? 
They’re not mutually contradictory? If a deity is omnipotent, then why can he not rescind his own omniscience in regards to his own actions? In a similar fashion, if he’s omnipotent, then why can he not rescind his own omnipotence?
As I said to someone else God, by definition, is not a physical being, which means he’s not bound to any specific physical law. You cannot break something you are not bound to.
Number one, you cannot measure love. You can observe the way people who claim act, or have them describe their feelings, but these are wholy indirect measures. The fact is that there is no test in which you can quantify love (i.e., how much in love with someone one is). Number two, the measure for consciousness hinges on us assuming we’re conscious. That is, the only way for us to rationalize being conscious is because our human consciousness tells us that we’re conscious. In other words, we just assume (and be ‘we’ I mean humans). There is no test by which to tell us who or what is truly conscious and who or what is not.
I suppose it’s easier to label something as ludicrous than to respond to them. Much easier.