The burden of proof is still on the Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or whatever.
The burden of proof is on both sides. To be totally atheist like Doomsday is he has to be 100% objectively certain that there is no God/Gods/Afterlife/Higher power beyond a doubt. He has to be able to demonstrate why this is true, which he obviously cannot. The reason I brought that up is because his dismissive attitude towards religion yet total loyalty towards a belief system he cannot prove within a shadow of a doubt either is hypocritical. I'm not merely defend Christianity (although it is mostly that way since it's the one he is directly attacking) but religion as a whole using Christianity as the example.
For practical purposes, nobody asks "How do you know for a fact that there are no unicorns?"
For the same reason no one asks "How do you know for a fact that there is no Zeus and the rest of the Greek Pantheon chillin up on a mountain somewhere". Science has advanced to the point and our ability to see all across the globe have rendered all of these things obviously nonexistant. We can see the entire planet and theres no Mount Olympus. However science and our ability to perceive the universe has not managed to make any concrete advancement that would disprove the existence of the Christian God.
The same thing applies to little grey men, ghosts and fairies.
Aside from fairies simply because that's such a broad thing to discuss (what kind of fairies are you referring to? Theres a lot of different kinds depending on the culture. Looking from a Christian perspective theres many different things that could be confused for); none of those things can be concretely proven to not exist either. No one can point to a piece of evidence that proves there is a 0% possibility of intelligent alien life on other planets and theres nothing you can point to to disprove the existence of ghosts/spirits either. If you cannot determine the non-existence of a higher being like God you cannot deny the existence of something like an alien or as abstract as a "ghost".
And I am not joking when I say that people are in earnest about those last three. Time and energy is spent. Otherwise educated men once believed vampires were real and acted as though they were. Proving a negative for everything is impractical, if nothing else.
Yes perhaps they once did but as science and time marched on they were proven to be non-existent and educated men acted accordingly. However they cannot do the same for Religious institution such as God(s)/After lives/Supernatural Occurrences caused by those God(s). The same kind of argument could be made about any creatures. Many European scholars had never seen an elephant before and simply had to go by (rather poor) word of mouth when drawing them.
Obviously these are ridiculous and absurd from a modern standpoint since we all know what elephants looked like now but back then that's all they had. Whose to say that Vampires didn't evolve from someone misunderstanding some form of physical/mental illness and it spread by word of mouth. However as time marched on and things became more accessible and science more robust we managed to figure out that there are no vampires and Elephants don't look like the hilarity that the old medieval Europeans thought they did. However as time, science and exploration has marched on, nothing has come to contradict Christianity or the idea of God(s).
And when you demand that I believe in your God
No one here is demanding anything....? Also in Christianity specifically of course they would try and get you to see that God is real and that Jesus Christ was his son. In the Christian faith denying these condemn you to an eternity of Hell. To not at least mention it would be like me watching as you walk into an oncoming car and doing nothing about it because my yelling might bother you.
you're just demanding more than that I just do a little cognitive dance in my head,
And when you tell me that you know for a fact, without a shadow of doubt that there are no Gods or afterlives that I do a little cognitive dance in my head that literally everything from the creation of existence itself to the formation of the Human species is just "pure coincidence ;^)" despite you not having the same intellect, tools or capabilities of countless other scientists who have failed to come to the same conclusion.
but that I also act in all respects like the belief is informative.
Just so the rest of the audience is clear, the definition of Informative is:
in·for·ma·tive
inˈfôrmədiv/
adjective
- providing useful or interesting information.
Are you really trying to tell me that the over a thousand years of Christian Culture, literature, Philosophy, and Art have provided nothing interesting or useful? Going back to the atheist issue it's extrapolated even further. You mean to tell me nothing interesting or useful was gained from Ancient Sumerian religious texts, Greco-Roman Culture, Literature, Philosophy and Art? That belief in a higher power all the way from Sumer to Now hasn't provided us with great thinkers inspired by Gods and Religion? That it's been totally useless?
And no matter how much a believer likes to say otherwise, nobody has some direct experience of these events, much less secondhand experience of these things.
The apostles witness Jesus committing miracles and since you can't disprove the Christian God and you can archaeologically back up what's in the Bible, you can't disprove that Jesus Christ was his son either since if you can't disprove God you can't disprove his ability to interact with the world either. Also logically if you use the common argument that Jesus was just crazy or some kinda con man why would he allow himself to be crucified when given multiple occasions to "admit" to lying. Likewise why did many of his followers who saw Jesus commit these miracles allow themselves to be killed and punished if it was all a big ponzi scheme? If they were just opportunistic liars why would they lay down their lives and refuse to denounce the things they saw if they weren't true? I'd say that's enough first/secondhand experience right there to at least raise more than a few questions.
Not to mention that no one has direct experience of other commonly accepted events such as the Big Bang or Evolution. Not saying either of these aren't true but if you're going to use the "you weren't there how do you know?" argument at least admit that it fucks up your belief system too.
Or, perhaps backhandedly, they will claim that not everybody does.
Plenty of people over the long years have claimed to felt God's presence. Do you have any proof that they didn't? If you cannot disprove God you cannot disprove that he has interacted with people in some way shape or form. Sure some people who aren't right in the head may also claim things like this but it doesn't invalidate all the clearly right minded people who claim to have been touched by God in some way, shape or form. If a crazy man also says that the sky is blue, does that make that untrue as well?
Stop trying to weasel out of this one. The ball has, and always will be, in your court. Lay it up.
Literally spending hours of my time discussing this topic. If I was trying to weasel out of it I would have made a tiny post with no sources just saying "ayy lmao ur dumb xD" while posting memes like Doomsday did in the last thread.
I seriously wish you did not do this quote-mining thing, because it's extraneous and adds nothing to discussion. It doesn't even directly address Doomsdayprepper's argument. Yes, he was probably a little unsparing and insulting. But his argument was never, "A bunch of atheist scientists agree with me."
Actually it does add to the discussion and directly address the problem with Doomsday's atheist argument. It disproves Doomsday's disdainful attitude towards Religion by showing a myriad of scientific minds (the kinds atheists claim to hold a higher importance towards than religion) have done great things while still confirming their faith in religion. Also it pokes further holes in his (absolutely logical and 100% factual) belief system by giving examples of men who are far more qualified on the subject than him who all believe in a higher power. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it doesn't add anything to the discussion. A discussion that I'm not sure you understand the multi-faceted focus of based on these following remarks....
Einstein was a Spinozan pantheist.
He also described himself as an agnostic
He wasn't talking about your god.
Einstein was the guy who said he was "spiritual but not religious" before it was cool.
The point still stands just as well. He believed at in multiple religious beliefs that from an atheistic viewpoint are "nonsensical" and "illogical". It doesn't matter that he wasn't talking about "my" God. He was still talking about a higher power, which is still contradictory to Doomsday's smug beliefs and on the side of religion. Like I said before, I'm not purely arguing for Christianity, I'm arguing AGAINST atheism. Similar, but different arguments.
With all due respect, his opinion, is dumb. There were debates in philosophy about whether the universe is inherently rational and intelligible between schools of Continental rationalism and British empiricist thought. Though there were probably some weird religious Hermetic and Platonic bugaboo before that.
Not an argument.
Aside from all that, I am both an atheist and existentialist who holds that the universe is absurd. And that this is in no way contradictory to the aims of science. I think it's fallacious to assume that the universe is inherently intelligible, so much as it is to recognize that our explanations of it are manufactured for our own animal convenience. It would not surprise me to find that this is pretty much the "default" attitude of our times.
Really don't get what the addition of this little passage is to the discussion at hand. Not only did I never claim that Christianity/Religion was contradictory to science (as a matter of fact my post points to the opposite). Plus if the universe is absurd how does that contradict the belief in a God? Honestly struggling to figured out what your point is here, some elaboration would be appreciated.
That is a horrid misrepresentation of the Big Bang. And evidence that you can be apparently a scientist and be guilty of really horrid logical fallacies.
The Big Bang is the beginning of the universe as we understand it. As in, our conventional notions of time and space started from there. It is difficult to observe the initial conditions of the Big Bang because assumptions of time and space break down.
Yes it's a theory for the beginning of the universe "as we understand it" but it doesn't contradict even the Christian creation story. It only raises the question of what causes the Big Bang which Christianity and many other religions would answer with "God". Obviously something had to of caused the Big Bang and theres nothing that invalidates that it could have been God. There are multiple ways and theories about the Big Bang and the beginning of the Universe in Christianity being one and the same. Some very glaring similarities between the two.
How that is supposed to be an act of creation, I'm not sure.
How was the theory to explain the universe's creation and act of creation? What?
How the supernatural is involved, I'm not sure.
Because something had to cause it and science has no explanation or widely accepted theory.
Since neither was ever fucking ever observed directly, saying that science proves those things is just too much.
I don't get how this is against my argument lol.
Textually, you're wrong. Since Jesus never technically retracted The Law.
And yes, some of them obviously do at their convenience.
Did nobody read Ragemage's post? Is this some kinda meme where everyone just ignores his posts in this thread that I'm not aware of? This has already been addressed.
That's your personal interpretation of it.
Nope. It's the interpretation of an over a thousand year old tradition. The form of Christianity I most like the most is Orthodoxy not one of these "multiple splinter groups" you refer to. I'm not egotistical (ok maybe a little bit
) to assume that I somehow have a better understand of God's word than the church that is older than most of the countries on the planet right now.
"The purpose of prayer is to have communion with God and to be made capable of accomplishing his will. Christians pray to enable themselves to know God and to do his commandments."
"Prayer must be brief. It must be simple and regular. It can be the totally silent inner attitude of the soul before God, the fulfillment of the words of the psalmist: ‘’Commune with your hearts... and be silent. Be still, and know that I am God.’’ Spiritual teachers warn against being too long and demanding of the Lord because prayer directed to God in faith is answered. One may get what they want but should not have. God knows best what is needed, and one should trust him in prayer, "Give what is needed, 0 Lord. Thy will be done.""
https://oca.org/orthodoxy/the-orthodox-faith/worship/the-daily-cycles-of-prayer/prayer
https://orthodoxwiki.org/Prayer (a loose source I know but it's just to reinforce the previous source)
Along with theism in general I'm also defending what I view as true Christianity (Orthodoxy and perhaps most of Catholicism). I'm not gonna break out the Book of Mormon and start defending every little protestant group that exists.
You really seem hung up on making equally blanket proclamations about Christians which are, frankly, bullshit.
Not an argument. I've backed up what I've had to say.
I think we can both agree that are probably Christians that do use that as a wish-granting incantation. But you'd probably just say that they're doing it wrong.
... because they are. What do you want me to not point this out despite your "epic" prediction that I would?
I didn't mention above, is that it's your word versus theirs.
Actual it's the word of an almost
2000 year old Church vs theirs
at your own convenience, that this part of the Bible is metaphorical, while that part is not. You're all just making up stuff as you go along.
Nope. I will say these things because almost 2000 years of Christian theologians (some who lived during the events of the New Testament themselves) have agreed upon them. I'm not just saying "ayy lmao I know the one TRUE interpretation." Do I look like Joseph Smith or Martin Luther to you? :p
Fine, if the OT is problematic, just ignore it.
As you should, just as Jesus taught us to do.
This barely has anything remotely related to to he discussion.
We've got:
The belief that Saints can perform the will of God (ok what does this disprove?)
The writings of a Greek man before Christ was even born and whose influence was in the Protestant Reformation
The beliefs of an obscure sect of Christianity
Another obscure sect of Christianity
Also:
>wikipedia
really dude?
But fine, even if we accept your *thesis, you're still basically saying that prayer does something. Doomsday is saying that it does nothing.
A: *Not
my "thesis". The 2000 year old Orthodox Church's "thesis"
B: And if Christianity (which you failed to disprove) is true, than it clearly must. Unless of course you can prove it doesn't.
Gen 33:19; 34:1–3 Judges 20?
