For anyone interested, the transcript of that debate is available at Craig vs. Harris link, which is nice. It takes maybe 30 or 40 minutes to read the 2 hour debate. He seems more respectful, civil than Dawkins or Hitchens, at least in this.
I continue to think that the new atheists use the most extreme examples as a strawman for faith. Faith is always the Taliban throwing acid in the faces of little girls who want to learn to read, not Mother Teresa caring for the sick. The Bible is always represented is some archaic Old Testament practice, instead of the loving Christ of the New Testament. The caricature they use as “faith” is something I don’t recognize, don’t believe.
Note, the short Harris clip that @Evolv put up was taken from his closing remarks in the Craig - Harris Notre Dame debate.
Pretty big difference between average joe who can’t do much and an all powerful and all good God who apparently could do things but loves the front row seat so much he doesn’t do anything. Until you die and then he sends you to be punished for all eternity if you didn’t kiss the rings enough. But hopefully South Park is wrong and it isn’t actually the Mormons
You guys can see SMH owning all comers in atheist vs religious debates on this very site. Shame he doesn’t post here anymore, he was the undisputed philosophy champ.
It’s a complete falsehood to dismiss atheism as a compelling factor in the atrocities committed. This idea that Hitchens and the other 3 horseman rolled out, that you cannot kill in the name of ‘no god’, does not mean that their core beliefs had no factor in said atrocities. As a matter of fact they were more likely compelling factors. And this is especially true when the religious were specifically singled out for destruction. Why specifically kill the religious instead of a random sampling of folks,supposing you had a target number?
Many western philosophers found it a very important thing to do, establish the existence of God as a fact. And you’d be hard pressed to beat their arguments, it’s never been done. These are not religious arguments, they don’t establish the validity of religion. Just that something like what we call ‘God’ must exist for anything else to.
And it is a willingness, a willingness you clearly are not interested in, but hey guess what? You don’t have to. No gun to your head in America. Perhaps Iran or Saudi Arabia has different thoughts on that, but here your free to be religious or not. Nobody’s going to knock down your front door and take you to jail. So you are free.
As far as your pithy (and deliberately belittling) analysis of religion and theology save it. It’s also not like I haven’t heard the same venom spewed many, many times before. Ironically, atheists always tend to say the same thing, almost as if they got it out of a sacred text.I have not insulted you, nor your beliefs, no need to mock what you think religion is or it’s adherents. There are plenty of on-line free resources on Theology, Christian apologetics, and Philosophy where if you have a question about what we think, you can look it up for free and get a correct answer. The Bible, Catholic Catechism, Arminianism, Calvinism, etc. references all exist for free. You may even find that not all of it is crazy. But you have to put in the work, it’s not going to jump into your head like a grand revelation, a spiritual rebirth. Faith, like anything else, you get out what you put in.
And for those of us who have had profound experiences, no amount of mocking or scientism is going to convince us out of our experiences. You may not find them compelling, but we do. Until you had one, don’t knock it.
You are using South Park as a reference of fact? Is the depth at which you have studied the issue? Whether or not the show makes a point now and then, it is still satire and comedy, not proponents of fact.
We all know the creators of south park are fervent and hostile atheists.
You’re walking back some rather strong statements from the paragraph I just quoted. How can the core beliefs of atheism be a compelling factor in genocide if you can’t articulate what these so-called “core beliefs” are?
I don’t think religion is bullshit. I think it can be pretty silly at times, destructive at other times, and good at other times.
I’m just struggling to get my head around how “core beliefs” of atheism can exist, let alone drive me to genocidal actions, when the only thing being an atheist means is that I lack belief. What are the core beliefs of lacking belief?
The issue is skepticism vs. faith and dogma. Atheism is a result of expelling dogma from your life. Atheism can also result from communist dogma or other crap, but skepticism is not going to lead to genocide.
As I have pointed out before, if the existence of a God-equivalent had been irrefutably demonstrated as you claim, that fact would permeate every educational system on the planet. Every child would learn, at a very young age, that ‘God-equivalent’ was real. The fact that this is not the case makes clear that your claim is overstated.
And again, as I have pointed out before, if God’s existence was an irrefutable fact, it would render faith irrelevant.
Skepticism is a dogma and no one is dogma free. Unless all the knowledge in the world you have gained you have gained first hand, you take lot’s of information on faith. We have to trust that some people are not lying and are giving us accurate information or we cannot build on their knowledge.
And I never said that atheism leads to bad behavior or all atheists are murders or evil. I take quite the opposite stance actually. But that’s choice, atheism condemns nor condones anything meaning anything can be good or bad depending on how you feel about it. So it is an enabler. Atheism washes away sin by denying it’s existence.
No, that is incorrect. Establishing the existence of “God” does nothing to under stand God only that he exists. Feel free to peruse the multiple Cosmological Arguments, Ontological Arguments, and Teleological Arguments for starters. Try and refute them. People have been at it for centuries, usually painting themselves into corners. Even Hume, who I consider perhaps the smartest guy to ever live outside Leibniz, couldn’t do it.
Just because something can be proven in an argument, does not mean that people will accept the results. Even in science it took 50 years after discovering Dark Matter before scientists actually accepted the conclusion. Never underestimate the power of ego to trump a fact, no matter how stubborn those facts may be.
There’s a big difference between accepting the existence of a theoretical construct (eg, dark matter) and simply recognizing the truth of a logical argument. Per you, God’s existence has been proven by the latter. If you are correct, there is, quite literally, no possibility for a counter-argument of any sort.
Per you, the arguments proving God-equivalent’s existence have been around for centuries. It strains credulity well past the breaking point to posit that academicians are still holding in abeyance these self-evident, irrefutable truths.
Finally, while Hume and Leibniz were brilliant, neither was as smart as Kierkegaard.
You had the chance to prove God in an argument and you couldn’t do it. Your arguments were refuted over and over again easily by SMH23. That much is easily obvious and available for people to look at. But you were right when you said some people won’t accept the results. No matter how many times he out argued you.
And the South Park clip was not a fact it was an amusing video highlighting that those who believe
in a higher power certainly hope they aren’t betting on the wrong horse. Which doesn’t really matter as nothing will happen
He shot down all of the arguments presented on this forum FOR God. The burden of proof is on believers is it not? If I don’t think something is real how can I prove it?
Although we have beat up that topic before on this forum!
No, the thread was specifically about the cosmological argument that pat referenced above. Pat put his logic in premises 1, 2, 3, and therefore conclusion 4. Pat could not defend premise 1 (I think), which is the primary focus of the argument. The debate went on for hundreds of posts, where smh corned pat into stating something is either true or false, and when admitted that it is true, the argument fell apart.
Honestly, after reading that exchange it was very clear who was over their head in saying there is logical proof god exists. It did not get into the issue of what God exists even if the logic is true. Smh did acknowledge that the cosmological argument is a strong one, but it is not logically provable because the premise that the universe is caused is a primary assumption, not dealing with the fact that it might not be caused, or uncaused. The argument did also not deal with what caused the first causer. The thread was my first exposure to the arguments so I might be butchering the summary here, so anyone else can feel free to chime in.
Wikipedia (I know, terrible source) has a decent summary of the argument.
That’s not religion-specific criteria. If I said “There’s an invisible lizard going back and forth between our Universe and an orthogonal, parallel Universe”, can you prove to me there isn’t? It’s always up to the person presenting an argument to prove it is, not others to prove it isn’t.
]“Since the Universe could, under different circumstances, conceivably not exist (contingency)”
And this navel gazing of refusing to acknowledge what can be seen, heard, smelt, tasted, touched, verified, experienced, and plainly accepted by every person that ever existed can be brought into question by the statement above, is foolishness to a degree that defies any logic or analytical skill.
