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The reason a theist can never win a debate against an atheist is quiet simple actually
in Religion
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Take your interpretation: someone presenting a new idea has to provide evidence to support it. But this "new idea" is new relative to the existing predominant ideas - which, in themselves, are not necessarily reasonable.
What was the case in the Middle Ages, when the church ran everything in Europe? The predominant idea was that the god existed - theism. If someone claimed that perhaps the god did not exist, then the church members would say, "Provide the proof that the god does not exist." Since such a proof is impossible to provide, the church would declare that someone a heretic, based exactly on burden of proof.
I define the "burden of proof" differently. I define it as the necessity to provide evidence for a non-null hypothesis. Now, what the null hypothesis must be is, to an extend, debatable - but in general, it must obey the Occam's Razor principle, that is it must be as concise as possible and to make as few assumptions as possible to explain the observations around us.
This definition is very well illustrated by the Russell's Teapot mental experiment. Suppose someone claims that there is a teapot flying around Mars. We obviously cannot verify it to either be true or false. What is the problem here? This teapot idea is absolutely unnecessary to describe the world as we know it; it does not add anything of value to our understanding of the world, it only clutters the space of hypotheses. Hence, unless the proof of such a teapot existing is provided, this hypothesis should be discarded.
It is the same with god. We can describe the observations down to incredible precision based on our advances in rigorous science. There is absolutely no benefit of including some supernatural being in our models, that work just fine without it. The null hypothesis is that such a being does not exist, hence the burden of proof is on those who claim otherwise.
The problem is, not everyone agrees that the null hypothesis is what science claims. Many people disagree with science and see it as unnecessary. They think, "If the hypothesis of god's existence explains everything (and it kind of does, when you can explain anything away with 'god did it'), then what is the point of scientific hypotheses?" As such, there is no debate to be had between such people and others, because they operate on completely different sets of assumptions.
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I disagree, what defines a theist is the existential belief in a God, a revealed, omniscient, omnipotent and omni-benevolent entity,...That belief then expresses itself through religion, remember we're talking about what defines Theism, not about hypothetical benefits of any practice... That would be a whole new debate and one that wouldn't concern atheism at all because "practices" do not deal directly with the existence or non-existence of "god"...
The belief in a God, is the only issue that atheism directly deals with... Other ideas may be contingent to this belief but Atheism can't be said to deal with those.
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It's funny how the word "atheist" itself got into our vocabulary as “atheist” is a term that we do not need, in the same way that we don’t need a word for someone who rejects astrology. We simply do not call people “non-astrologers.” All we need are words like “reason” and “evidence” and “common sense” and “BS” to put astrologers in their place, and so it should be with religion.
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Pascal's Wager is a logical fallacy. It assumes one specific outcome for the believers and one specific outcome for non-believers, leaving out the continuum of other possible outcomes.
It is possible, for example, that if the god exists, then he punishes all believers for being so easy to manipulate, while rewarding all non-believers for thinking for themselves. Or maybe the god only rewards believers of one very marginal (perhaps even non-existent in the modern world) religion, mildly punishes non-believers and severely punishes followers of other religions. Or maybe there is a group of gods, who play dice every time a human dies to determine who gets to decide the human's fate, and all the gods have different systems of values and different ideas on what should be rewarded/punished and how.
I take the Occam's Razor principle and think that since we have no evidence of anything happening after one's death, other than their brain and body decaying - then there is no reason to assume that this is not how the world actually works.
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"... no man shall be blamed for reasoning in the maintenance of his own religion." Thomas More (1478 - July 6, 1535 @ age 57) NOTE: Canonized by the Roman Catholic church 1935; Saint More?
"Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear." Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), U.S. president. Letter, 10 Aug. 1787.
"Believe nothing, No matter where you read it, Or who has said it, Not even if I have said it, Unless it agrees with your own reason And your own common sense." Buddha
"When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." Stephen Roberts
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Thomas Jefferson's quote is completely on the mark! Again, he makes the mistake of assuming that he knows what the god, if exists, is like - but it makes sense to say that a real god would not care much for arbitrary gestures and would be interested much more in who the individual is as a person.
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Well said and wouldn’t that be wonderful
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Interesting piece. A theist muddies the water by introducing a mystery (god ) to explain another mystery , the honest and intellectually valid answer to such questions is “ for now we do not know “
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Atheists make tons of claims, but when asked for proof of their claims, they run to their standard "God does not exist" excuse, no matter what the actual debate is about.
So if the debate is about say, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, the atheist always, always, runs back to God not existing.
He can curse God, find God to be immoral, declare himself more moral than God, but pin him down on one of his claims and suddenly he no longer believes in that God he was just so sure about.
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That is obviously because the question is contingent to god's existence...
If you ask a question, any question that is not contingent on a god existing or not, you could never receive an answer from an atheist.
You would receive an answer from an ordinary human being (provided you're asking one of course).
An atheist is an atheist only when put in the context of the existence or not of a god. At any other time, he is not an atheist but a plain human being. The context conceptualizes the label, out of context the label is meaningless...
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>That is obviously because the question is contingent to god's existence...
No sir. And not every religious question is. But to the moron atheist, it always is.
>If you ask a question, any question that is not contingent on a god existing or not, you could never receive an answer from an atheist.
I never receive answers from atheists anyway. No matter the question. With their illogical worldview, this is not surprising.
>You would receive an answer from an ordinary human being (provided you're asking one of course).
OK. Are you an ordinary human being?
>An atheist is an atheist only when put in the context of the existence or not of a god.
My experience has been that atheists are always atheists, regardless of context.
>At any other time, he is not an atheist but a plain human being.
Atheists are not much trusted or liked by the gen pop. Perhaps they should be plain human beings more of the time.
>The context conceptualizes the label, out of context the label is meaningless...
We theists know you have no meaning without us. Thanks for the master class Capt. Obvious.
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>Atheists make tons of claims, but when asked for proof of their claims, they run to their standard "God does not exist" excuse, no matter what the actual debate is about.
Some do some don’t so what? You’re making a very particular claim as in a supernatural entity exists which is based on nothing but blind faith, Atheism is a rejection of that claim.
Its also incredibly amusing that to you none of the other gods put forward by others exist , as Dawkins famously said we just go one god further ....but hey you’re entitled to your fantasy
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Yet another post saying nothing but "theist dumb."
You're still dodging. You're still being a douche.
Get a life.
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>....the honest and intellectually valid answer to such questions is “for now we do not know “
Really now, Mr. More moral than God. You don't know?
One then wonders on what is your arrogant hubris based?
Maybe foghorn can tell you. That's about your intellectual level.....son.
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>Really now, Mr. More moral than God. You don't know?
Science is on my side buddy , but you introduced a mystery god to explain another mystery because you’re indoctrinated and superstitious and yes I’m more moral than god and you
>One then wonders on what is your arrogant hubris based?
I base it on my brilliant intellect and superior morality to the Christian gods
>Maybe foghorn can tell you. That's about your intellectual level.....son.
Foghorn is a .....cartoon ...he’s not real like your god .....you cannot hold forth on “intellect “ as it’s something you’re unqualified to give an assessment on .......why are you always so angry
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