Atheism to defeat religion by 2038?

dark crystal

Opticom wrote: »

So, I'm still waiting for anyone to present evidence for atheism, or a good argument for atheism

http://www.cinepremiere.com.mx/files/images/1_Memes_GroundHogDay_01_1.png

Opticom

Andrewf20 wrote: »

This seems to be the root of the problem here. You appear to have adopted a flawed view of Atheism based on your post here. No one knows for certain that God does not exist and there is no answer that proves for certain that God does not exist. Anyone who makes this claim can be dismissed. But this is not the actual definition of Atheism as it is in the dictionary. You seem to be twisting what it means.

Here we have another version of atheism, o.k., have you any evidence or a good argument for it ?

Ush1 wrote: »

Just because a sentence/question is gramatically correct, does not make it valid or logical.

What colour is happiness? What is the sound of abstraction? Why does life exist? Etc...

Have you any evidence or a good argument for atheism ?

Helix wrote: »

you're clearly mentally retarded on so may levels

i'll take the repercussions, we were all thinking it anyway

dark crystal wrote: »

http://www.cinepremiere.com.mx/files/images/1_Memes_GroundHogDay_01_1.png

And, back to the failed ad hominem argument for atheism again.

shizz

Opticom wrote: »

Here we have another version of atheism, o.k., have you any evidence or a good argument for it ?



Have you any evidence or a good argument for atheism ?





And, back to the failed ad hominem argument for atheism again.

May God have mercy on us all.

Wibbs

Opticom wrote: »

Here we have another version of atheism, o.k., have you any evidence or a good argument for it ?

I dunno, for me it's the vagueness of it all. The various gods described in religions are so small, so local, so human. I just don't buy the religious on that score. Cool and the gang if they do, but it doesn't square the circle for me. This doesn't negate the existence of a possible god behind it all, but it reduces the human explanations of one down to nothing.

Like the fella said if all our minds were wiped of gods today, tomorrow we'd come up with very different deities. If our minds were wiped of science today, we'd slowly but surely come back to the same science tomorrow. For me if a god exists it's gonna be a magnitude more cogent an entity than the musings of various Bronze/iron age farmers and traders can come up with.

philologos

Wibbs: It boggles me how you could get that the God presented in the Bible is "small", "local", or "human".

I guess, I don't buy with the skeptics on that score. Skeptics often say to me on and off boards that they wouldn't expect a God who created the universe to have an interest in us. But it is because God is so great that He is able to be creator of the universe and intimately care about all those who are in it.

I've heard that argument time and time again, but I can't help being sorely unconvinced by it.

hooradiation

philologos wrote: »

Wibbs: It boggles me how you could get that the God presented in the Bible is "small", "local", or "human".

I guess, I don't buy with the skeptics on that score. Skeptics often say to me on and off boards that they wouldn't expect a God who created the universe to have an interest in us. But it is because God is so great that He is able to be creator of the universe and intimately care about all those who are in it.

I've heard that argument time and time again, but I can't help being sorely unconvinced by it.

Is that because your personal faith hinges on it being not true?

Pushtrak

philologos wrote: »

Wibbs: It boggles me how you could get that the God presented in the Bible is "small", "local", or "human".

The size of the universe, and how much the religion has a cognitive dissonance of "made in the image of god" and how man is subservient to god, and woman to man... It is so very pedestrian. A being that we are to believe started everything off 13.7 billion years ago initiating the big bang, has caused all that has occurred to get us to this point.

A planet that has been ravaged by numerous mass extinction events. A universe that is 99.99999999% inhospitable to human life that we are to believe was fine tuned for life. Mythologies suit their time. I'd really like to think we no longer need such vestiges of the past though. I know, sadly that this isn't reality. For instance, there are people, who with no sense of irony ask why non believers don't go about doing whatever they want. As if, remove the belief, and the individual putting forward this might become savage. I think I'm being charitable when I try to think of such a person as a moron rather than a sociopath.

Kdoc1

Is God real, or is he imaginary?
Is God real, or is he imaginary? It is one of the most important questions you can ask yourself.
If God is real and if God inspired the Bible, then we should worship God as the Bible demands. We should certainly post the Ten Commandments in our courthouses and shopping centers, put "In God We Trust" on the money and pray in our schools. We should focus our society on God and his infallible Word because our everlasting souls hang in the balance.
On the other hand, if God is imaginary, then religion is a complete illusion. Christianity, Judaism and Islam are pointless. Belief in God is nothing but a silly superstition, and this superstition leads a significant portion of the population to be delusional.
But how can we decide, conclusively, whether God is real or imaginary?
Since we are intelligent human beings living in the 21st century, we should take the time to look at some data. That is what we are doing when we ask, "Why won't God heal amputees?"
If you are an intelligent human being, and if you want to understand the true nature of God, you owe it to yourself to ask, "Why won't God heal amputees?" Start your exploration here:
• Why is this question so important? >>>
• Why won't God heal Amputees? >>>
• How does prayer work? >>>
• How does religion work? >>>
• Is Jesus the Son of God? >>>
• Did God write the Bible? >>>
• What is God's plan? >>>
• Join us >>>
www.whywontgodhealamputees.com

nozzferrahhtoo

Sarky wrote: »

He's doing a terrible job. As someone who appreciates the subtle nuances of a good troll, I am quite frankly disgusted by his seemingly boundless lack of talent in that area.

I guess it depends how you measure success in a troll.

If you are looking for wit, intelligence, subtlety etc then I can see how you reach your conclusion he is no good at it. He is just repeating the same thing over and over again which is to request everyone prove an unfalsifiable negative to him.... a negative that no one here is actually claiming and "atheism" does not even mean.

If, like me, however you think trolls want one thing and one thing only... a reaction and total derail and destruction of the thread he is in.... then you reach a different conclusion. He has wound people like yourself up for quite a number of pages now, got you all responding to him again and again, in post after post, and the thread has been totally derailed and destroyed. So by that measure this troll is damn good at it.

The best thing with trolls is not to give them the reaction they want. Which as you can see when he last tried to troll me in this post here with misrepresentations, putting words in my mouth, and outright dishonesty and false arguments, I did not bite, did not reply and the troll moved on to its next target when it saw it would not get food from me.

Wibbs

philologos wrote: »

Wibbs: It boggles me how you could get that the God presented in the Bible is "small", "local", or "human".

Well for a start he's confined to a tiny part of the world, a tiny section of humanity and of his time. He's historically, astronomically, biologically and a load of other "ologies" inaccurate. The explanation that men misunderstood at the time is not an explanation. If he existed he could have just as easily "inspired" the writers and furnished them with more accurate reality. His reality is iron age man's. This is a common thread in such things. When we get to Islam the "science" of the Quran is based in Greek thought of the time(no matter how much Muslims claim it's not). God and the devil and the theology has evolved over time. Archaeological evidence shows that the Judaic god was once the head of a pantheon of local gods. You see echoes of that even in the old testament literature today. Going further back there may have been a "Mrs God" in the very early stages. The devil has changed all over the place. The evil boogieman with horns and tail ruling over a fiery hell is not in the early texts. Then we come to his all too human personality. Superhuman in the nastiness stakes more often than not. The explanation for that is "god gave life so he can do what he pleases with it" is again IMH not much of an explanation. For me that makes him an unstable bloody sadist.

I guess, I don't buy with the skeptics on that score. Skeptics often say to me on and off boards that they wouldn't expect a God who created the universe to have an interest in us. But it is because God is so great that He is able to be creator of the universe and intimately care about all those who are in it.

I have no great issue with the concept of some sort of personal god on that score. An entity that created and controlled the universe would have no problem interacting on the micro as well as the macro. Unless of course it created the universe, set it on it's course and hung back, observing. Or not. If it was created in another universe, the creators may be long dead.

Paparazzo

Sarky wrote: »

He's doing a terrible job. As someone who appreciates the subtle nuances of a good troll, I am quite frankly disgusted by his seemingly boundless lack of talent in that area.

He's not a troll, he's a spambot

Ush1

Opticom wrote: »

Have you any evidence or a good argument for atheism ?

Exactly, that's the type of thing.

Delirium

Opticom has closed his/her account, so there isn't much point addressing any comments to him/her. Not that there was much point before the account was closed.

Sykk

What a shame. I was quite enjoying this. Some of you made very eloquent points that I'll remember the next time I break conversation with someone like this (which hopefully won't be ever again).. Sure like beating your head off a wall, huh?

I was enjoying that, it was like a who would win in a fight Superman or spiderman, each putting in an argument and nobody able to backup anything.

shizz

He'll be back... they always come back.

Sarky

I kind of miss him

Pushtrak

I'm not sure how much longer this thread will survive for. Typically these threads wouldn't even get half as many posts as this one did. I wasn't expecting much from Opticom even back here but it was my final gambit to see if he'd anything interesting to say.

Yeah, he was trolling and it didn't get anywhere but while it was running its course I was hoping someone else would get involved in the discussion and get it back on to something interesting. The thread had some brilliant bits earlier. It motivated me to look in to stuff I didn't know much about and to look in to more stuff as I get the time. I'm referring to consciousness here as one stand out example.

Maybe Min will come back and Philologos will reply again. Could find the topic has somewhere to go yet.

nozzferrahhtoo

Perhaps go back and reply to some of the posts now, that you found interesting, from before the trolls arrival? It might re-rail the thread?

Check out the VS Ramachandran stuff I ended up mentioning a couple of times in the thread, such as his research on "Blind Sight". 3 or 4 hours spent watching his talks on you tube will be 3 or 4 hours you will never regret spending.

Pushtrak

I don't really have anything to start a topic on consciousness on right now, will have to look in to it more. That I certainly will do. To try and bring back some type of coherent topic though... I'll bring up a post I made in another thread. I'm not sure what date christians tend to use when they put a date on things. Is it the date for the events allegedly described? It must be, as it doesn't seem to be the date for when the earliest scrolls have been found. Is it just me or is that dishonest? Link.

Also, the Apostolic Fathers are not part of the New Testament. I ought to point that fact out.

The last link in that post, or this one points out much on the fact the earliest scrolls that are available are after a significant amount of time compared to what I see represented as their dates. I take issue with this.

On 1 February 2012, I debated Bart Ehrman at UNC Chapel Hill on whether we have the wording of the original New Testament today. This was our third such debate, and it was before a crowd of more than 1000 people. I mentioned that seven New Testament papyri had recently been discovered—six of them probably from the second century and one of them probably from the first. These fragments will be published in about a year.

These fragments now increase our holdings as follows: we have as many as eighteen New Testament manuscripts from the second century and one from the first. Altogether, more than 43% of all New Testament verses are found in these manuscripts. But the most interesting thing is the first-century fragment.

It was dated by one of the world’s leading paleographers. He said he was ‘certain’ that it was from the first century. If this is true, it would be the oldest fragment of the New Testament known to exist. Up until now, no one has discovered any first-century manuscripts of the New Testament. The oldest manuscript of the New Testament has been P52, a small fragment from John’s Gospel, dated to the first half of the second century. It was discovered in 1934.

Not only this, but the first-century fragment is from Mark’s Gospel. Before the discovery of this fragment, the oldest manuscript that had Mark in it was P45, from the early third century (c. AD 200–250). This new fragment would predate that by 100 to 150 years.

Of course it should be pointed out that this could only be used to confirm internal consistency, and not be offered as proof. You can not use the document you wish to prove by using the document. I know Philologos probably got a bit upset there. But to make my point I'll put it this way. Suppose we were alive two thousand years from now, and some Book of Mormon text that hadn't been found/used and you were to discuss with a Mormon. I'm sure you'd probably point out to such a person that their holy text isn't proof. Nor would the koran.

Philologos I'm sure you'll be eager to bring up the "its the most accurate document, will we throw away all ancient texts". Feel free to do so, but before you do, try to think why it isn't a great analogy. Oh, also worth checking this out. I know a youtube channel that has the audio book for God's Problem and Misquoting Jesus but they are unlisted. If anyone wants the link, PM me. I don't want to just post the link and have them get flagged.

Edit: Would be interesting to see how pastors would respond to this:

“One of the most amazing and perplexing features of mainstream Christianity is that seminarians who learn the historical-critical method in their Bible classes appear to forget all about it when it comes time for them to be pastors. They are taught critical approaches to Scripture, they learn about the discrepancies and contradictions, they discover all sorts of historical errors and mistakes, they come to realize that it is difficult to know whether Moses existed or what Jesus actually said and did, they find that there are other books that were at one time considered canonical but that ultimately did not become part of Scripture (for example, other Gospels and Apocalypses)

They come to recognize that a good number of the books of the Bible are pseudonymous (for example, written in the name of an apostle by someone else), that in fact we don't have the original copies of any of the biblical books but only copies made centuries later, all of which have been altered. They learn all of this, and yet when they enter church ministry they appear to put it back on the shelf. For reasons I will explore in the conclusion, pastors are, as a rule, reluctant to teach what they learned about the Bible in seminary.”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible & Why We Don't Know About Them

(Source

Oh, it seems some time will be needed to verify the significance of the 1st century fragment of Mark. http://thebiblicalworld.blogspot.ie/2012/05/yet-more-on-gospel-of-mark-fragment.html

This is all very exciting, but again, until the fragment is published and studied by a number of scholars it is hard to know what to think. The video below has an element of apologetics to it which is also concerning since it seems like the discovery is being held up as proof for the veracity of the New Testament, but I have my doubts it will do that. Only time and study will help us determine the significance of the discovery.

ScumLord

dark crystal wrote: »

Ah lads, opticom is doing a great job here altogether....he's doing the old 'If a tree falls in a forest with no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?' routine on ye all. No matter what reply he gets, it won't be satisfactory, so best leave him to it.

The problem with his argument was that he was stuck in a loop. If a scientist came out with the line "a lack of evidence isn't evidence in itself" the next words out of his mouth would probably be "we have to come at this from another angle just to be sure".

Wibbs wrote: »

I have no great issue with the concept of some sort of personal god on that score. An entity that created and controlled the universe would have no problem interacting on the micro as well as the macro.

If he was this god like creature but I've read somewhere that scientists think they know how it might be possible to create a universe, if that was something we could do it's probably likely we wouldn't be intimate with every detail of that universe at all times. God doesn't need to be that powerful, omnipresent or singular to have created a universe. Maybe.

Unless of course it created the universe, set it on it's course and hung back, observing.

That seems much more likely to me if there was a god. Why would you create something as balanced as the universe only to go messing with it because some organism on a pebble is having a bad nanosecond.

koth wrote: »

Opticom has closed his/her account, so there isn't much point addressing any comments to him/her. Not that there was much point before the account was closed.

That's a shame, I assume that means atheism won the argument. Cool.

Pushtrak

Luckily, most religionists aren't this daft:

Andrewf20

Opticom wrote: »

Here we have another version of atheism, o.k., have you any evidence or a good argument for it ?


Have you any evidence or a good argument for atheism ?

No its not another version of atheism, its an incorrect version of atheism. My dictionary here doesnt say atheism is a claim to know for certain that God does not exist.

I have already giving you reason for the dictionary definiton of atheism. Im really not clear as to why theres such confusion over this.

Pushtrak

Andrew, Opticom closed his account.

Andrewf20

Doh!

shizz

Pushtrak wrote: »

Andrew, Opticom closed his account.

Trolling even after he's gone tut tut.

The Internet Explorer

I hereby declare that atheism has defeated religion 26 years ahead of schedule. Now let us go forth and

Long Legged Mack Daddy

Sykk wrote: »

What a shame. I was quite enjoying this. Some of you made very eloquent points that I'll remember the next time I break conversation with someone like this (which hopefully won't be ever again).. Sure like beating your head off a wall, huh?

Yeah. We showed him eh? We're too clever for him by far and that is a fact substantiated by the body of empirical evidence which is all of our collective postings. Go Atheists! Go! Hey guys, lets lighten the tone and see who can figure out the following anagram "Cleric Jerk". I'll give you a clue. Only one of the words is jumbled.

Have fun!

Corkfeen

Long Legged Mack Daddy wrote: »

Yeah. We showed him eh? We're too clever for him by far and that is a fact substantiated by the body of empirical evidence which is all of our collective postings. Go Atheists! Go! Hey guys, lets lighten the tone and see who can figure out the following anagram "Cleric Jerk". I'll give you a clue. Only one of the words is jumbled.

Have fun!

Hey there Malpaisan.... Still rambling on with the same old nonsense, I see....

Sarky

Cleric... kejr? Is this an eastern European orthodox thing?