We would have to agree that the outcomes for people / society are important to us, before we label things and good or evil. Hopefully, we can agree that we want society to be happy in general, and for the people of society to generally survive and live normal life spans.
Generally, if you are a human that doesn’t want those things that the rest of society wants, the rest of society will reject you. When that happens you don’t get to spread your negative genes. Over time, we seem to fall into line on morality being generally what is good for the people of a society. Eating your neighbor’s children is seen as bad for society, so the people who have done that were on average kicked out and didn’t breed.
Okay, well then the burden of proof has been fulfilled. We have good arguments we can pick apart. Again, they exist and they can be discussed. So the proofs exist, burden has been fulfilled. For God, not fairies.
Well the premises are pretty solid to the point where they cannot be dismissed. If you can realistically dismiss the premises the argument was never true in the first place. It requires a very intense, tactical approach, like Hume’s. You cannot care about the fall out because the casualty list will be huge. Disproving the cosmological arguments false will also falsify math and science, because both depend on causation, different “types” of causation, but still causation.
For this to continue, we’d actually have to get into the weeds of an argument, rather than deal in the abstract.
We can go back and forth for ever saying, “no it doesn’t”, “yes it does”. Eventually we will have to deal with it.
Personally, I think the best tool in the atheist tool chest is, what is called “The problem of evil/ suffering.” That is a super difficult topic for theists. Not impossible, but difficult.
Do you want Him to? Your personal cost will be huge. People will unfriend you, for one. You’ll really find out who your real friends are if they stick with you… It could cost you, well everything in one sense or another. It’s a painful unendurable cost for many. The misery factor is off the chain. It would be the same in the opposite direction, I am not minimizing that. So, do you really want to know if God exists?
Be careful what you wish for…
Oh, this is sticky. Nature is often a cruel bitch to her subjects. Yes, some animals do seem to have what we would consider human traits, many others do not and seem intent on self destruction.
None of this is surprising to me, the fact of the matter is most living things share similar DNA. We are like 70% identical to a banana. It serves to reason that things with largely similar DNA will exhibit similar traits.
Do you really want to jump down the rabbit hole of ‘Relative Morality’? It’s an awfully rough road…
And @Sloth beat me to the “Problem of evil” question… drat!
Which then also comes down to just how much of a net truly faithless people are going to cast in caring about the outcomes of others beyond themselves and maybe their grandchildren once they truly believe they have zero moral obligation to anyone at all and that we, an accidental clump of molecules in what might be an illusionary universe in the first place, all just die eventually anyways to share the exact same non-existence.
This is just an assertion. The premises are still unsubstantiated. We can’t conclude a creator based on the Kalam. Does this make sense to you? In a deductive argument, the premises need to be true for conclusion to be true. In the case of the Kalam, we don’t know if everything that has a beginning has a cause. We also don’t know if the universe had a beginning or a cause. If we assume nothing existed before the universe, how do we know anything about that state? Maybe things can come from nothing? We have never observed nothing, so we just don’t know.
They sure can be. If they aren’t shown to be true they are worthless.
Science would change based on new information like it does frequently. Science isn’t disproved when a theory is shown to be wrong.
I am aware of this. At the same time, the theist arguments are all currently flawed, so just pointing that out seems easier.
IMO, it happens the other way more. Losing faith is threating to many of those with it IMO.
I spent 22 years of my life pursuing a relationship with God. I was genuine. I fasted and prayed, studied my Bible. The relationship was one sided.
I think you are getting hung up on the arguments showing it is possible that a creator exists, vs a creator exists. The arguments allow the possibility. I am betting in every other aspect of your life, that you don’t believe in things just because they are possible? I am betting you dismiss them until there is proof. Why the difference with God?
Ok. Was going somewhere with it, but getting the “done this too many times before” disinterest settling in. Not that you personally are a waste of my time. Not at all. But I have ptsd-lite setting in from past debates of this nature.
That’s the problem isn’t it? You have to prove they are worthless. Again we would have to get into the weeds with the actual arguments. Then you will see…
I will leave you with the question, “Why does anything exist, rather than nothing?”
I want an answer to that, but not today. If you are willing, I’d like you to ponder on it doing what ever you normally do to ponder on stuff and then get back to me. If you don’t want to, just say so and that’s cool with me.
We’re not talking about a scientific theory here. We’re talking about the very foundation of science itself. If causation is disproved all science is bunk, all of it. There may still be observational truths, but we wouldn’t be able to determine any relationships between things. It would all be hearsay and correlational at very best, all the time without exception. Science couldn’t move on because it wouldn’t exist and never have really existed except in our heads as misguided and false concepts.
That is how profound and foundational cosmology is, it’s not just the foundation for the argument for the existence of God.
I am not going to haggle about this. This is where I would usually say, “fine prove this argument false”… I don’t really feel like doing that. I may go a certain distance, but it’s a lot of work for me.
I covered for that contingency…
I am not ‘hung up’ on the arguments as you might think. Remember, you asked, even after I said I really didn’t want to go there and did anyway because you wanted to.
And yes, despite being an brainwashed, idiot Christian, I skew toward skepticism which is a curse to me. Which the study of philosophy, was the ultimate blessing for me, because I was introduced to rational, solid arguments. It took me down a rabbit hole for sure. One I went down gladly. This is the difference with God.
I have spent a lot of time, years dealing with this stuff. I used to love it so much, I would troll atheist forums looking for a fight. Then I realized how much time it took away from me and it wasn’t worth it. It’s not like people changed their minds even when they lost and admitted it.
In other words, if you think the arguments are inherently weak, I would surmise you haven’t spent much time with them. I would encourage you to spend more time with them and really study them. It gets to the heart of life’s “big questions”, where ever you end up from the study of them. You’ll at least be vastly more informed at a foundational level, at the very least.
People spend lifetimes defending or attempting to debunk these arguments. If they were inherently weak, I doubt there would be such commitment.
I am fine to end it here though. @Sloth 's got good discussion questions, I am happy to deal with those or matters of scripture or anything else, in a non-adversarial fashion.
I’ll ponder it some, but my real thought on the matter is “I don’t know”. I don’t think I can be more honest than that. I am okay with that answer for now, but if someday we do know, I am open to what the answer is.
All leave you with this thought. Causation is something that we understand in our present universe. You believe that there was a time or state of nothing from what I understand, right? Is it possible that causation was not a necessity in the state of nothing? That events just happen? We don’t know. We haven’t observed this state, we can’t. If we could, then maybe science would have an explanation.
I am okay leaving this here for now. I’ll ponder on your points. I am glad we did have a debate in which respect was present. These topics are easy to get upset about, and that didn’t occur.
Lol your ass was completely handed to you on this forum numerous times that can be linked in seconds. Get out of here with this “unless you’ve had formal training.”
The whole concept is absolutely ludicrous. A God who is all loving creates people and if they don’t meet the right requirements he sends them to a place to be tortured for all eternity.
God can’t be all knowing all powerful and all loving and also send people to hell for not believing in him. Basing your life off a really old book which has been changed numerous times for centuries and people argue about its contradictions and meanings. I mean it’s essentially the definition of lunacy.
But it has some things going for it. It helps many people scam others. Probably helps some people be better and some worse. And gives people the idea that they will see loved ones again which is much better than the logical conclusion of fairy land not being real.
A perfect god creates imperfect people. How can a perfect god create imperfection? The imperfection must be by design, and not our fault, so why should we be punished for that?
Maybe bury the hatchet? What do you guys say? Some grudges on the forum. We needn’t hate each other guys. Pat? H_factor? Zecarlo? Things get passionate, but dagnabbit. Healing the fissures in this nation/world could start right here with us!
Nobody can prove irrefutably, without any assailable premises, that God exists. For that matter nobody can prove that other people have minds (not brains), or consciousness, to the same level.
That, however, is too narrow a target and misses the boat.
The proper question is not “can you PROVE without any assailable premises that God exists?”. The question is “is it rational to believe in God?”
That can be done. A rational belief does not have to be one that is perfectly provable (which is good, because nothing is PERFECTLY provable, as pointed out above). It can perfectly rational to hold beliefs that may ultimately end in error.
That is true. But it also does not require faith to say that contemplating the question of God’s existence may be the most important question with the largest consequences. Thus, I believe it is a worthwhile question.
I disagree, at least in terms of how you write here. There is no point to having a belief that is false. The only point to a belief is if it is true, or approaches the truth best. Otherwise it’s a waste of time. This doesn’t have to require a person to be right about that belief, but if that’s not the goal then why bother?
For you it may be. But if it keeps someone from becoming a serial killer, I’m OK with it.
That’s not a question most religious people want to think about. Which brings up the question: is it rational to believe in a particular god? Because I see people shifting between proving the existence of something godlike and a particular god. It’s one thing to say you believe in a super being that is beyond comprehension and explanation, and an another to say you know what that being thinks (which is what religions does).