The universe being really big still doesn’t deal with the fundamental questions of existence. And there are people who have done the math. Where the probability of the observable universe existing in the state it exists in exceed the number of potential particles in the universe.
I wasn’t real big on Intelligent design theory until I saw the math.
I’ve done this. I still have yet to find anything that says there is proof there is a God. You stick to the claim that an athiest cannot disprove specific theories, but that is very different than having proof.
As for Anthony flew, 5-minute googling and this was the summary of the book you mentioned:
“If you read the book itself, you will find some rather crass creationist arguments that any half decent philosopher would have seen through, so yes indeed, clearly it reeks of bovine waste and is not his work at all.
What should set alarm bells clanging in your head is that he does not give any rebuttals for the arguments he had for being an atheist, but instead simply leans upon a design argument, one that misrepresents much of what we actually know. Appendix A is supposedly a discussion of whether “God” has communicated anything to humankind, but is instead just an attack on Richard Dawkins, and also demolishes a few straw men.
Appendix B is billed as a “dialogue” between Flew and biblical scholar about the Resurrection, in which Flew supposedly asks just three one line questions and the rest (about 20 pages) is religious drivel. For example, Q: Do we have a proof that Jesus was real? A: Evidence is so vast that it is not worth mentioning … and so no actual evidence is cited at all, you are supposed to just “believe”.
Oh, and we also supposedly have an endorsement of Christianity by Flew, but there is nothing at all in the book to justify such a stance – clearly this book is simply PR, or to be a bit more blunt, it’s a con job.
[…] It may in fact be true that Flew did become a deist, but he never ever made the leap to theist, and even that deist step is perhaps explained by him being essentially love-bombed by some Christians in his old age and steered in that direction.[63]”
If that is the best evidence you have, anyone who does research on the topic will come to very different conclusions than you.
So someone didn’t like the book? Big deal… $20 bucks says its some atheist with a chip on their shoulder. A review isn’t the book.
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Have you? What have you looked at?
And you won’t ever find any. You can’t prove god exists any more than you can prove she doesn’t.
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Don’t we have a proof of God thread for anyone interested in playing semantic games with @pat?
I speak only for myself, but I’d rather this thread not go down that endless rabbit hole…
@libanbolt When I was being raised Roman Catholic I would get taken to mass once per week on Sundays. I was also sent to indoctrination classes on Wednesdays. Special holidays often meant I would be taken to an additional mass. Ash Wednesday, for instance.
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Seriously? We went through an entire thread discussing your proof that wasn’t actually proof
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Of course I can. If proven, the existence of a deity would be the singlemost important fact known to humankind. It would be trumpeted from every rooftop; it would color every decision made by govts the world over. The fact that none of this has come to pass means it (= said proof) does not exist.
I do not doubt that the existence of God has been proven to this man’s satisfaction (or to yours). Of course, such is not the same thing as saying God’s existence has been proven, ‘full stop.’
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This is an important distinction.
I have faith in something so as to not have no faith or faith in nothing. Some require a much higher burden of proof, and others wouldn’t believe in a god or gods if one manifested in front of them and revealed the secrets to the universe right before their very eyes.
This is also why I don’t participate in theist/atheist debates.
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Christian. Personal experience and revelation. Oh, Catholic, specifically.
What have you looked at?
Yes, somebody went out their way to bash me personally for something that happened in 2014, which was a discussion about PSR. PSR is not the argument for the existence of God, it’s part of Leibniz claim for proof of causation.
If you don’t understand that difference, then I will have a hard time believing you actually “looked” much at anything. It was very specific…
Your sociological expectation of how man would\ should act in accordance with such an information transfer is not evidence of shit.
You expecting it to be the biggest news in the history of news an absolutely everyone would be gobsmacked and praising it off the roof tops is just a misapplication of your understanding of human behavior.
Quite frankly people did proclaim off rooftops and mountains bigger news than this… That not only God absolutely exists but also gives a crap about us. They even did miracles and all that stuff.
Rather than being gobsmacked at this amazing news and subsequent proofs, people were so excited that the murdered most of these folks.
The reality is trumpeting theism is more likely a death sentence then a celebration that a question was finally answered.
Your categorical error is that you think people would be excited… Well most of the time, it pisses them off and people want to squash the messenger. That’s the actual history and not the imagined reaction that you think should happen. The fact you would have assumed you would have heard of it is not proof of shit.
Like anything, if you want to know, you have to look and learn it. It’s academic.
The is the old, ‘is, is not ought’ conundrum. Because something ‘is’ the cause, doesn’t mean that it ‘ought’ to result in anything in particular.
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This is simple then. Prove it wrong. Prove God does not exist.
Atheism is an unfalsifiable, position. Which, in logic is already a fallacious claim. You cannot make an argument for what isn’t. Therefore, you can only try to debunk the arguments that do exist. They are out there, prove them wrong. Find their error and you will have debunked an argument.
But that doesn’t prove atheism. Atheism cannot be proven, theism can be. It’s simply a much better logical position.
There isn’t much joy in being hated for a position. But that is the burden of it.
Ah 2018. Where believing in a higher power with only logical arguments that she might exist while devoid of any proof in some form is the better logical position.
What a time to be alive!
What you just posted about atheism applies to belief in God.
No, that isn’t what happened at all. We spend 100+ posts discussing what your arguments were, and it came down to one simple point:
Which is nonsense. If you are making the claim that God exists, you have evidence and proof to make that claim.
With respect to @Jewbacca’s comment I’m going to drop it, no point in re-hashing this same points.
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Besides being a theist, I also believe evil acts exist.
OK, it’s academic then. Find me, say, 10 living academic philosophers–legit guys/gals ensconced at prestigious, secular institutions–who agree that the existence of God has been proven, and I will concede the point. If you’re right (that it has in fact been proven), this should be easy.
One cannot prove a negative. Further (and as pointed out above), you are the one making the assertion (‘God has been proven to exist’); as such, you do not get to make your argument by saying ‘Prove me wrong.’
But of course, you know all of this already. Sophomoric nonsense such as this only damages your credibility as an honest discussant.
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Why does the theism aspect always end up being the most passionately debated in a topic about religion (which needn’t be theistic)? Why not the existence of moral evils and goods? If I were to state that rape is evil, as if it were fact, would the reality/non-existence of rape’s evil be subjected to such intense debate? Or, well, the existence of evil, period? Dunno, just wondering.