The existence of God and the efficacy of prayer

[MikeG]

......people who suffer from sin as all others....

If there is one single phrase in the entire pantheon of christian pontification which shows the sheer stupidity of the religion, it is this one. The idea that all humans are sinners, and should spend their lives repenting of it and begging forgiveness should be enough to prevent any thinking person ever having anything to do with the religion. It is purely a way of turning people in servile victims, desperately seeking their way out of endless punishment for the the sins of some non-existent people thousands of years ago.

 

[blue triangle]

Just because lots of people have unprovable and frequently silly beliefs is a perfectly good reason to consider them gullible/having difficulties even if they are otherwise perfectly nice. Moreso if they are not.

Not beliefs: experiences.

 

[Belz...]

I've noticed that when atheists run out of steam they often just make the same kind of baseless assertions they accuse theists of making.

You are making a claim.

That's because you don't understand burden of proof.

There's no meaning unless you can show that there is.

You're claiming there is no meaning to life, no purpose, no God, no afterlife, no mind other than an epiphenomenon of brain functioning, no psi, no NDEs, no miracles, no inspiration, etc, etc.

Yes.

I hesitate to call it them positive claims, because they are so bleak

And there we have it: you don't believe these things because they are true. You believe them because it's more comforting that way. You'll forgive the rest of us for believing in things that are tangible regardless of whether they are comfortable to us.

but they are, because they relate to a worldview, a philosophy

No. They pertain to evidence.

which is a positive claim and therefore has as much of a burden of proof on it as any other claim.

You still don't understand burden of proof.

They reduce man to a machine and life to a meaningless accident.

And?

It reeks of nihilism and despair.

Only if you think you need an objective meaning to find meaning. I don't.

Interestingly, people who have done exorcisms say that demons espouse the same nihilistic philosophy.

More interestingly, demons don't exist.

 

[blue triangle]

If there is one single phrase in the entire pantheon of christian pontification which shows the sheer stupidity of the religion, it is this one. The idea that all humans are sinners, and should spend their lives repenting of it and begging forgiveness should be enough to prevent any thinking person ever having anything to do with the religion. It is purely a way of turning people in servile victims, desperately seeking their way out of endless punishment for the the sins of some non-existent people thousands of years ago.

This is either the usual straw manning we've come to expect or blind ignorance. Sin is nothing more than missing the mark. What Christians say is that without God directing our lives we are always missing the mark, which is why we also say that man is born into sin.

 

[Delvo]

You Christians sure are always full of claims about how wrong all other Christians but yourselves are. How can you possibly not see how identical this makes you ALL look?

"Spock, you have to shoot both of us; it's the only way to be sure the Enterprise is safe!"

 

[blue triangle]

That's because you don't understand burden of proof.

You don't understand that the burden of proof falls equally on atheists.

What is really being debated is two worldviews, that of a top-down created universe, or a bottom-up, popped-out-of-nothing one. Each side has an argument to make and shoulders equal burden of proof.

 

[Belz...]

You don't understand that the burden of proof falls equally on atheists.

No, that's again you not understanding the burden.

By your logic, if I claim to have seen a Terminator yesterday and you say I'm full of it, you're as much responsible for proving me wrong as me proving my claim right. You're saying that every time someone comes up with a crazy theory, everyone should be falling over themselves trying to prove it wrong when there's nothing to indicate that it has any value to begin with.

That's not how science works. The positive claim (i.e. for the existence of something) must be the one that's proven right. Otherwise you waste most of your time chasing after ghosts (literal and figurative).

So no, atheists don't have the burden of proof. The positive claim for a meaning to life is yours, nor ours.

 

[Lothian]

This is either the usual straw manning we've come to expect or blind ignorance. Sin is nothing more than missing the mark. What Christians say is that without God directing our lives we are always missing the mark, which is why we also say that man is born into sin.

You appear to be saying that if a Christian and an Atheist do identical things the Atheist is sinning as God is not directing him while the Christian is not.

Is that correct?

My understanding is that Original sin was created when a talking snake persuaded a lady made out of a rib to eat a magic apple.

Is this correct?

God (Jesus) then died to as a sacrifice to God (God) to save God (God/Jesus/holy ghost) murdering everyone on earth once again thus removing original sin.

Is this correct?

While killing* himself (as Jesus) allowed God to forgive original sin and mean't he didn't need to kill everyone else, God still gets to satisfy his killing-lust by burning everyone who doesn't believe that God, through killing* himself, not only gave a free pass for original sins but all subsequent ones as well.

Is this correct?




*Killing is perhaps the wrong word for what an omniscient did to himself, knowing that a couple of days later he would be up, walking around and chatting up prostitutes.

 

[MikeG]

......Each side has an argument to make and shoulders equal burden of proof.

Ignoring the silly "popped out of nothing" thing (your god magicked it all out of nothing, apparently, so we can safely call that one quits), the whole essence of science is in finding out what actually happened, and in so far as has been possible so far, this is exactly what they have done with regard to the origins of the universe. The evidence is there. What science doesn't do is go looking in a books of myths for its answers, and in stark contrast to religion, is more than happy to shoulder the burden of proving its claims. Just don't ask science to prove the absence of something for which there is no evidence.

 

[blue triangle]

It's inside, but it's outside. Good to know. Clear as mud on a shattered windscreen. Where do you stand on purpose now? Well, here; and there; and over there.

What exactly are you having difficulty with here? I'm saying that we all have a connection to God inside us. Simple. I'm also saying that God is external to us. Not so simple, but hardly obfuscation. That's simply how it is, how we experience it. It's hardly without precedent either. Look at string theory in physics, where we have higher dimensions curled into little hyperspheres, 4D geometry in mathematics, holograms, where every part contains an image of the whole. These ideas are standard fare. Are you going to accuse their proponents of obfuscation?

 

[blue triangle]

No, that's again you not understanding the burden.

By your logic, if I claim to have seen a Terminator yesterday and you say I'm full of it, you're as much responsible for proving me wrong as me proving my claim right. You're saying that every time someone comes up with a crazy theory, everyone should be falling over themselves trying to prove it wrong when there's nothing to indicate that it has any value to begin with.

That's not how science works. The positive claim (i.e. for the existence of something) must be the one that's proven right. Otherwise you waste most of your time chasing after ghosts (literal and figurative).

So no, atheists don't have the burden of proof. The positive claim for a meaning to life is yours, nor ours.

Logically, there is no reason why life should either be meaningful or meaningless, therefore to claim either is to shoulder the burden of proof.

However, you're hampered before you start if you want to claim that life is meaningless. The statement 'life has no meaning' is absurd (as well as overambitious), because you have to understand what meaning is to claim something has no meaning. Life includes everything for the one living it, including the thought processes that led him to that conclusion.

 

[Belz...]

Logically, there is no reason why life should either be meaningful or meaningless

Now this is getting ridiculous: if there's no reason for either, then the lack of meaning is the default position. Otherwise, what's your default?

therefore to claim either is to shoulder the burden of proof.

I've already explained positive vs negative claims to you. You can choose to ignore it but you'll look like a fool for doing so.

The statement 'life has no meaning' is absurd (as well as overambitious),

No objective meaning. Please keep up.

because you have to understand what meaning is to claim something has no meaning.

How is that relevant? You have to understand what homeopathy is to claim it doesn't work, and yet it doesn't work.

Life includes everything for the one living it, including the thought processes that led him to that conclusion.

Irrelevant. You're simply having trouble with basic logic, here.

 

[Lothian]

Logically, there is no reason why life should either be meaningful or meaningless, therefore to claim either is to shoulder the burden of proof.

However, you're hampered before you start if you want to claim that life is meaningless. The statement 'life has no meaning' is absurd (as well as overambitious), because you have to understand what meaning is to claim something has no meaning.

It is not absurd if you understand the everyday meaning of meaning. What is your meaning of meaning?

 

[Delvo]

Imagine for a moment purpose driven from within. Not by some external patriarch fingering a blueprint.

I'm saying that we all have a connection to God inside us. Simple. I'm also saying that God is external to us. Not so simple, but hardly obfuscation. That's simply how it is, how we experience it. It's hardly without precedent either. Look at string theory in physics, where we have higher dimensions curled into little hyperspheres, 4D geometry in mathematics, holograms, where every part contains an image of the whole. These ideas are standard fare. Are you going to accuse their proponents of obfuscation?

Aside from the fact that you misrepresent the nature of those scientific ideas, the difference is that scientists use them to try to explain observations, and you used your inside-outside dance to obfuscate. You knew perfectly well that the original point was that "meaning" did not need to be from the sky fairy because people can create our own "meaning". But you don't have a response for that, so you latched onto an incidental word choice as an excuse to try to pull the conversation away from the actual subject... again.

 

[Delvo]

Logically, there is no reason why life should either be meaningful or meaningless

Of course there is. Anything that's not an observed fact of the world should not be postulated without evidence. Things that are postulated with no evidence for them are always to be presumed unreal until proven otherwise.

I don't believe that you can seriously have this much difficulty understanding something so basic as "Don't make up stuff". This has to be another of your dishonest acts to try to run away from things. If it's not observed or supported by evidence, it's just made-up. For anything else but the sky fairy and her corollaries, you'd say the same yourself: as soon as someone claimed to you that something exists for which you had no evidence, you'd ask for the evidence, and, if there was none, you'd figure they made it up and the thing doesn't exist. You're asking us to accept a premise of logic that you don't even accept yourself, because, if you really did, you'd apply it equally to everything else, not just your specially exempt sky fairy.

The statement 'life has no meaning' is absurd (as well as overambitious), because you have to understand what meaning is to claim something has no meaning.

You're the one who said that about life without your sky fairy, though.

 

[Belz...]

Of course there is. Anything that's not an observed fact of the world should not be postulated without evidence. Things that are postulated with no evidence for them are always to be presumed unreal until proven otherwise.

Blue's argument seems to be based on the same sort of thinking that Jabba employs in the Shroud of Turin thread; namely that both truth values of a claim are equally probable and thus one must be proven right.

This fundamentally misunderstands the core philosophy of science -- the only method, I'd add, that has given us any sort of functional knowledge about objective reality.

 

[Donn]

What exactly are you having difficulty with here? I'm saying that we all have a connection to God inside us. Simple. I'm also saying that God is external to us.

I thought that's what you said. It's also the difficulty.

Not so simple, but hardly obfuscation.

The obfuscation is how you pollute purpose. In simplicity, it's internally driven, by the human in question, not some other agency.

I say "other" because if I venture "external" I risk another round of your topological twisting.

That's simply how it is, how we experience it. It's hardly without precedent either. Look at string theory in physics, where we have higher dimensions curled into little hyperspheres, 4D geometry in mathematics, holograms, where every part contains an image of the whole. These ideas are standard fare. Are you going to accuse their proponents of obfuscation?

Sure: Obscurantist stringists! A fie upon your curlicues.

 

[Belz...]

I thought that's what you said. It's also the difficulty.



The obfuscation is how you pollute purpose. In simplicity, it's internally driven, by the human in question, not some other agency.

I say "other" because if I venture "external" I risk another round of your topological twisting.



Sure: Obscurantist stringists! A fie upon your curlicues.

Admit it: you're a Scrabble player.

 

[MikeG]

.....I'm saying that we all have a connection to God inside us......

Most of us know that as our conscience, and even the religious will understand the distinction between that and some supernatural deity.

 

[Donn]

Admit it: you're a Scrabble player.

I can about manage a crossword with a pencil; 2b, at most.