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So, yuppers; I have all the well-documented and established proof I need that no God is Required nor Evident. He's but an ancient superstitious fable, necessary once upon a time to explain the inexplicable (at least to terrified goatherds of the day.) But I like to think that we've moved on from that level of education and knowledge. At least some of us have.
Enjoy your life.
No God is required-to create the Universe. Interesting.
I also have heard that sexual intercourse is not required for a woman to get pregnant. Yet here we are. Been done 1000s of times thru the miracle of modern science. So your point is weak. "Not required" doesn't prove much.
Answering this, I think back to several threads on the nature of morality, because it's such a foundational issue. Often the response was morality is situational, a socially developed mechanism. Though carrying an "objective", it's basically subjective.
This problem is, how is subjectivity proven? You understand the philosophical quandary here. It's not to say certain people have no real morals--that's a ludicrous claim for anyone to make. It's to say there's no sound logic to the explanation of morality's source. To call morality fundamentally subjective is, in fact, to embrace irrationality--and open to the same critique: that individual (or societal) witnessing is not proof of anything.
I find in these conversations that anti-theists are rarely willing to acknowledge this quandary, so a conversation can really go nowhere. Monologues, of course, go on and on. To make this a fuller question, you have to answer one. Explain fully how your standard of evidence is valid to the task of discovering what's objectively true.
No God is required-to create the Universe. Interesting.
I also have heard that sexual intercourse is not required for a woman to get pregnant. Yet here we are. Been done 1000s of times thru the miracle of modern science. So your point is weak. "Not required" doesn't prove much.
Tall stories aside, isn't it the argument that what is done in a laboratory is no evidence for what happens in nature? (if you accept that it is, that's you virtually accepting Abiogenesis)
But if no god is required to create the universe, by which of course we mean that god is not necessary to explain the existence of the universe, then I'd have said that proves quite a lot. For example that the other gap for God - First cause - has gone 'pop'. If God can vanish into nothing, surely a universe can appear from nothing.
It's been well-demonstrated here in many threads and posts that there are some very straightforward and simple logical philosophical or technical questions atheists have asked of Christians and Muslims, which they quite simply WILL NOT EVER ANSWER. Evasion or ad hominems is all we get back in such cases. Or silence .
Why is that? What comes over you when you are logically cornered?
I once asked a devout evangelical Christian right here on C-D about 2 years ago, what he would do if he was faced with absoluteproof that there was no Christian God as he desired there to be. His answer, finally, was:
"I would still believe in Him. I cannot do anything else."
So. There you have it. Very telling to me. Makes spending time debating with such folk sort of pointless, wouldn't you agree? Like talking to a wall.
But perhaps.... just perhaps.... some more intellectually honest, good and eloquent Christians can explain it better, and face up to a few honest respectful questions. Yes? No?
I happened to notice your post here after posting on a similar topic.
intentionally or not, you used a very accurate word: cornered-- and that's considerably different than "honest respectful questions."
"honest respectful questions" do not include putting people on the defensive.
there's a huge difference between 'tell me what you think' and 'tell me what you think so I can tell you why you're wrong.'
(and for the record, I'm definitely not a 'devout evangelical Christian')
No God is required-to create the Universe. Interesting.
I also have heard that sexual intercourse is not required for a woman to get pregnant. Yet here we are. Been done 1000s of times thru the miracle of modern science. So your point is weak. "Not required" doesn't prove much.
Again you conflate the incomparable. This is not even apples and oranges; it's more like apples and lawn mowers. Oh, and BTW, (and it may just be because I'm a post-grad mammalogist that I know this and you do not; I often assume the public has at least some basic knowledge, but I'm also often disappointed... so here goes...)
you DON'T need intercourse for a woman to get pregnant.
(Thx, science, for showing us how it all worked. Back in the heady days when religion was king, they thought a tiny little "homunculus" was somehow injected into the woman ,and she became "fragrant". Good thinking! Good observation & investigative skills, Church!)
Again, there is neither a NECESSITY (look the word up, Mickiel!) for a supernatural God, or a Godly REQUIREMENT, since we've now observed (and understand) the formation of new stars, the destruction of old, worn-out ones, the aggragation of cosmic gasses under the known laws of gravity, and the predicability of Newtonian and astrological physics that, !!O. M. G.!! fully explain the movements and interactions of the cosmos. And what we don't YET understand, we're working on at a furious pace.
BTW, NO NECESSITY means that, absent your wooden God-icon, it all happened anyhow. And to make an even stronger point, we know it happened long before, as in billions of years before... the J-C God story was invented (to convert the masses from poly-theism to mono-theism; easier for the state to control!).
So again, No God Required. NGR. NGR!! Let's all chant it together shall we?
This also applies to God's presence in general. There's no mandatory underlying theistic meaning to life, no "Why was I put here? What is my purpose?" sort of questions to be answered. Nope; if, in fact, we just abiogenesis'd our predecessors into being, and then evolved into "us", then there is obviously no special purpose for us here, just as ther's no special purpose for a baboon or a snail. Not to forget: since there is no God, then of course, He couldn't intend for us to do or feel or be anything in particular.
It's the dizzying height of human arrogance and conceit to assume some sort of superiority role, of some sort of overlaying rationale and directive for us here on Earth to take control in God's name (which is, in fact, the main reason for the world's wars and infighting.).
So sorry. We just happened along and will be successful enough (for now) to maybe hang around for a few thousand generations before sumthin' gits us. Which I guarantee, it will. Bacterial evolution, a nasty 10 mile wide asteroid, the sun going BOOM, a nasty religious war.
Just you wait, Mickiel! Oh, and trust us scientists! (have I ever lied to you after all?) *We's got the straight skinny, you betcha!
'Cause then... when we're gone, we'll be..... GONE.
Well looky-see KC. The dude missed our questions again!
He's a fraud...and not even a very good one.
So I am a fraud?
Now I've lost interest in spending the time required to dig thru 100s of threads. Why is it that certain atheists find it necessary to insult believers?
Again you conflate the incomparable. This is not even apples and oranges; it's more like apples and lawn mowers. Oh, and BTW, (and it may just be because I'm a post-grad mammalogist that I know this and you do not; I often assume the public has at least some basic knowledge, but I'm also often disappointed... so here goes...)
you DON'T need intercourse for a woman to get pregnant.
(Thx, science, for showing us how it all worked. Back in the heady days when religion was king, they thought a tiny little "homunculus" was somehow injected into the woman ,and she became "fragrant". Good thinking! Good observation & investigative skills, Church!)
Again, there is neither a NECESSITY (look the word up, Mickiel!) for a supernatural God, or a Godly REQUIREMENT, since we've now observed (and understand) the formation of new stars, the destruction of old, worn-out ones, the aggragation of cosmic gasses under the known laws of gravity, and the predicability of Newtonian and astrological physics that, !!O. M. G.!! fully explain the movements and interactions of the cosmos. And what we don't YET understand, we're working on at a furious pace.
BTW, NO NECESSITY means that, absent your wooden God-icon, it all happened anyhow. And to make an even stronger point, we know it happened long before, as in billions of years before... the J-C God story was invented (to convert the masses from poly-theism to mono-theism; easier for the state to control!).
So again, No God Required. NGR. NGR!! Let's all chant it together shall we?
This also applies to God's presence in general. There's no mandatory underlying theistic meaning to life, no "Why was I put here? What is my purpose?" sort of questions to be answered. Nope; if, in fact, we just abiogenesis'd our predecessors into being, and then evolved into "us", then there is obviously no special purpose for us here, just as ther's no special purpose for a baboon or a snail. Not to forget: since there is no God, then of course, He couldn't intend for us to do or feel or be anything in particular.
It's the dizzying height of human arrogance and conceit to assume some sort of superiority role, of some sort of overlaying rationale and directive for us here on Earth to take control in God's name (which is, in fact, the main reason for the world's wars and infighting.).
So sorry. We just happened along and will be successful enough (for now) to maybe hang around for a few thousand generations before sumthin' gits us. Which I guarantee, it will. Bacterial evolution, a nasty 10 mile wide asteroid, the sun going BOOM, a nasty religious war.
Just you wait, Mickiel! Oh, and trust us scientists! (have I ever lied to you after all?) *We's got the straight skinny, you betcha!
'Cause then... when we're gone, we'll be..... GONE.
Condescend much?
You a University Prof? I remember several with the same tenor during my 20s.
It seems unlikely that you could ever completely change another person's mind on this subject unless that person was already leaning toward your position anyway. And I'd say that goes both ways. I can't imagine anything a Christian could say that would suddenly make the idea of the Judeo-Christian God more believable to me. I was once a Christian, so not only have I heard all the arguments, but I've probably used a lot of them myself! And I didn't become an atheist because I argued with someone on the subject on the internet. I became an atheist on my own, before I even considered the fact that there may be forums on the subject online. Therefore, I wouldn't expect a religious person to turn atheist by arguing with others online. I'm sure it's possible, it just doesn't seem likely. I'm convinced most religious people will only de-convert if they have some desire to examine their faith from more than one angle. Read about it, read about other religions, read about mythology, science, philosophy, etc and decide whether or not your religion can still, honestly, be believable to you. I'm sure many could do that and come out of it stronger in their faith than ever before. But I couldn't. My faith simply did not stand up to that scrutiny. But the point is, while the ultimate decision may not be a true "choice", most people will only change their belief system so drastically if they choose to begin the questioning process.
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Ngr! Ngr!! Ngr!!!!!
