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That is an intellectual cop out, and merely playing games with words. If you have faith something (anything) exists, then you have made a claim that thing exists. If you aren't making that claim, there would be nothing in which to place your faith.
Having made a claim, the burden is on you as the claimant to support it. The burden is not on others to disprove your claim.
If the above does not hold for you, then I am free to come up with anything I can dream up, and expect it to stand without challenge. For example, "I believe my belly button lint controls the world's weather patterns." I would hope you feel free to challenge that belief, and to not accept it if I can't present any evidence to support my claim. If not, then I will feel free to convince others to believe the same thing, receive tax benefits from the government to support our Belly Button Lint Club (BBLC) meetings, and lobby to have my unsubtantiated theory taught in schools. Eventually, I would like holidays devoted to my belly button.
Does that sound far-fetched? It shouldn't.... that is the logical consequence of accepting claims in the absence of evidence.
So you have never exercised faith (not necessarily religious based) in your life?
So you have never exercised faith (not necessarily religious based) in your life?
I don't think I ever have. I have gone with the evidence and calculated the odds. I see no value in believing a thing is true just because I want it to be.
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Originally Posted by GoCardinals
People say they have FAITH that God exist. There is no “claim” in it.
Saying a god exists on Faith is a Faith -claim.
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It’s actually YOU who claims that God does not exist - now bring your evidence!
Not accepting a God -claim is not making a claim. And the evidence is that there is no really valid evidence that a god exists. If you think there is - bring it. That you have to try to reverse the burden of proof shows that you know that you don't have any.
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Originally Posted by OzzyRules
There must be something to your belly button claim since there are billions of people in the world who share your belief.
Not.
Do you get how ridiculous those kind of atheist arguments are now? Yet I hear them all the time in this forum.
The argument is based on a claim that has no valid supporting evidence, not on how many people believe it.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 12-13-2018 at 01:25 AM..
It is not about pretending. It is about priming our state of mind. When we support the Santa myth, we set up a state of mind in children that enables the experience of wonder and stimulates their imaginations.
The thing is - and one of the main reasons I have never done the santa thing with my children at all (who are now 4 and 8) - one can stimulate the wonder and imagination of children every bit as much without ever having to employ a lie or a conspiracy or a deception in order to do it. I do it all the time. And I guarantee you my children have every bit as much as - if not more - wonder and imagination in their lives as any other.
One clear difference however is that the wonder and imagination I have instilled in them can not be taken away from them and may even continue into adulthood.
Can this be said of those children who will learn in a year or two or three that Santa is not real and they were lied to?
I do not know! But the number of people who invariably _every time_ stand up in Q+A sessions with speakers like Neil DeGrasse Tyson asking him how they can instill wonder and curiosity back i nto their children who have lost it - certainly suggests what the answer here is.
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
If you see no value in allowing your children to have those experiences (which are only possible for a short while) then be the Grinch realist and deprive your children to feed your ego.
Oh by all means regale me with what experiences are only possible for a short while exactly and tell me what I have deprived my children of. Tell all us parents these things from your non-parent perspective. Because I genuinely can not find or name a single thing my children have been denied - or a single experience they are currently having that they can only have for "a short while".
And tell me how feeding my "ego" has anything to do with it - since you appear to know that all my choices in this regard were not made with clear agendas - good data - and with nothing but the best interests of my childrens happiness, well being, and development in mind.
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
God gave us Dominion.
Let me guess - you have no evidence for such a god - and no evidence any god did any particular action. You are just talking in the tone of facts when in fact you are espousing from your personal imagination.
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
Those who do not believe are deprived of that advantage
Except I am not seeing a single "advantage" listed in the sentences before this one at all. At best I am seeing the usual religious move of "create the disease and the cure at the same time". Specifically what real world advantages does a believer have that is denied to me exactly? I am not seeing a single one and rather expect you will dodge or ignore the question.
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
I spent the first 30+ years of my life without belief in God and there was nothing I could do to alter that. That is why my experience was such a life-changing one because my unbelief vanished completely never to return.
And yet you have not described any experience ever that I myself have not have and continue to have pretty readily when I want. And my lack of belief in a god has not been challenged one iota by any of those experiences.
Which suggests that at best you are making a correlation-causation error with your religious transformation. Assuming you ever actually have meditated and ever actually did have these experiences - neither of which is an assumption I have ever found cause in your posts to make - then they appear at best to have been correlated in time with your conversion to, specifically, Christianity and not at all the causal reason as you pretend/assume.
The simple fact that many many people have those experiences and go religious - and many many people have those experiences and do not - simply demands we acknowledge there has to be another element in play that you yourself are not acknowledging.
People say they have FAITH that God exist. There is no “claim” in it.
"some" people might be saying that. But "some" people also do make the claim too. Notice how in my post I said "Some people" whereas you just say "people" as if this is the definite standard. Maybe you should stop talking in absolutes so readily.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GoCardinals
It’s actually YOU who claims that God does not exist - now bring your evidence!
Perhaps we can start that conversation by you quoting and citing me directly making that claim? No dodging or obfuscating or running away if you please. Quote me _directly_ saying it or retract your lie.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GoCardinals
So you have never exercised faith (not necessarily religious based) in your life?
To my knowledge I have never exercised or had "faith" in the way the religious mean it. But I have had many people call things I do in my life "faith" that are not what I would call "faith" at all. For example I once had a religious believer on this very forum try to make his "faith" in a god analogous to my "faith" that when I get on a bus the driver will get me to my destination safely.
I however think there is a massive and deep difference between things like "faith" and things like "trust" and "evidence based reasoning" and "educated judgement calls". And what I am exercising when I board a bus is a combination of 2 3 and 4, and nothing at all of 1.
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Originally Posted by OzzyRules
Neither. I'm saying you can't compare a faith shared by billions, with something like the belly button claim which means nothing. Yet atheists make these kind of meaningless statements all the time ad nauseum.
The problem is that you are the only one employing a fallacy here not them. Specifically the argumentum ad populum fallacy. You - not they - are acting like the more people that believe a claim the more credible that claim becomes.
So the "meaningless statements" are yours here, not theirs. Yours not theirs is an identifiable and nameable fallacy.
1- I have gone with the evidence and
2 - calculated the odds.
I see no vakue in beleiving a thing is true just because I want it to be.
Two contradicting statements.
If you have actually seen the evidence then you should not care about calculating the odds anymore.Why should you?
Seeing the evidence should ideally mean 100% guaranteed outcome to a future event.
Before you get on an airplane, you check the flight historical data. Is that an evidence that the flight will arrive safely at its destination with 100% guarantee?
You get into the bed and plan something for tomorrow because you woke up every morning for the last 75 years. Is that an evidence that you will wake up tomorrow morning?
No, in both cases.
But you still get on an airplane and you still plan for tomorrow WITHOUT the evidence that the plane will not crash and also, you will wake up next morning - both incidents backed by 100% guarantee. No!
When it comes to many incidents that are supposed to happen in the future - we primarily play the game of probability. Evidence is either subjective or in some cases it becomes irrelative.and does not provide a guarantee. And we end up using faith based on calculating the odds.
If you say, I have never used faith (non religious based) in your day to day life then you must NOT have ever used the word “hope” in your life either.
You probablyt be living in denial if you say I have never said “I hope so” to anyone or to myself in all my life.
So if someone says the lint in my belly button controls the national weather then its NOT an event that we are supposed to get to know after our deaths - you can simply ignore and move on with your life instead of demanding evidence because you already the probability is an atom distance close to zero.
But if someone says that he has faith that God exists THEN the answer to know the truth, lies in our afterlife (if there is one).
Evidence becomes irrelative - and we get into playing the game of odds.
Do you now see how “evidence” doesn’t work as it doesn’t provide a guaranteed outcome in incidents that are supposed to happen, (if ever), in our afterlife?
“Lint in my belly button controls the weather” is a ridiculous example to compare with the saying “I have faith that God exists and we may probably know the truth in the afterlife”
What does science suggest, when did the first man walked on earth? 100,000 years ago? 3 million years ago?
Whatever it is, 3 million years ago or 100,000 years ago, - about it.,, it’s been a VERY LONG TIME now,,,,
If there was in fact an EVIDENCE that God exists then the entire humanity would probably be compromised of believers only.
And if there was an EVIDENCE that God does NOT exist then probably all 7 Billion of us would be Atheists by now.
Common sense, no?
Kinda funny and ironic that Atheists keep harping about evidence, and believers keep trying to get them one. While none of the part has any.
"some" people might be saying that. But "some" people also do make the claim too. Notice how in my post I said "Some people" whereas you just say "people" as if this is the definite standard. Maybe you should stop talking in absolutes so readily.
OK, “some people”,
Makes you happy now,?
Quote:
Perhaps we can start that conversation by you quoting and citing me directly making that claim? No dodging or obfuscating or running away if you please. Quote me _directly_ saying it or retract your lie.
I think you are the one dodging here.
On one hand you tend to say that you believe in things based on evidence.
So if you are an Atheists then you believe that God does not exist - so you should have an evidence to backup your belief, no?
And we would like to see that evidence. Is that an unfair demand?
Now, if you are an Atheist without an evidence that God does not exist (which is probably the cass) then you are using faith based belief in Atheism.
However, if you say you don’t know whether God exists ? Then you are not an Atheist.
You are an agnostic. And I don’t have a problem with either.
Quote:
To my knowledge I have never exercised or had "faith" in the way the religious mean it. But I have had many people call things I do in my life "faith" that are not what I would call "faith" at all. For example I once had a religious believer on this very forum try to make his "faith" in a god analogous to my "faith" that when I get on a bus the driver will get me to my destination safely.
.
So these are semantics. They may call it faith - you may call it hope and/or probability.
You hope that the driver will take you to your destination. You dont really have an evidence that provides a 100% guarantee - you don’t even know that you may die due to a natural cause before you supposedly arrive “safely”’ at your destination. All you have is hope and probability but no evidence. - And it’s ironic that you use and exercise “hope” without knowing or having an evidence that there is such a thing exists that’s called “hope”
Now, if you say, I never use “hope” as I don’t believe in “hope” - then you are what? Obviously “Hopeless”.
You can’t have it both ways.
Well it seems I predicted your post in mine above. How nice. Prophecy some would call it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GoCardinals
Two contradicting statements.
If you have actually seen the evidence then you should not care about calculating the odds anymore.Why should you?
Seeing the evidence should ideally mean 100% guaranteed outcome to a future event.
Absolute nonsense from you there. Seeing evidence is not 100% guarantee of anything. For example I know the statistics on bus crashes and injuries. That is the evidence related to the safety of travelling by bus. Having seen that evidence there is no 100% guarantee of anything at all. Rather it becomes a judgement call and if I choose to take the bus to work I do so under a judgement call that there is a 0.001% chance I might die or be injured in that journey.
Where you have come into the idea that evidence makes anything 100% I do not know. It is not a concept I have seen anywhere outside your post. It certainly does not exist in science for example where we do not consider anything to be 100% true or proven or definite.
As I said in my previous post - there is a weird move by some theists to try and equate "faith" with an evidence based judgement call of probability. I see no reason to treat them as the same thing or even all that similar.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GoCardinals
If you say, I have never used faith (non religious based) in your day to day life then you must NOT have ever used the word “hope” in your life either.
Given they are two different words with two different meanings and two different intentions I see no reason why the lack of use of one would be indicative of the lack of use of the other.
Certainly though "hope" and "faith" are massively different things too and you appear to once again be trying to defend "faith" based on equating it to things that are massively different to it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GoCardinals
OK, “some people”, Makes you happy now,?
Nothing to do with my mood at all. One is inaccurate nonsense and the other is not. I am interested in correcting your errors and hyperbole nothing else. My mood is irrelevant.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GoCardinals
I think you are the one dodging here.
Nope it is still you. And as predicted you can not and did not quote me saying what you outright and openly claimed I have said. So not only are you the only one dodging - I 100% accurately predicted your dodge before you even did it. More prophecy! I am getting good at this.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GoCardinals
On one hand you tend to say that you believe in things based on evidence. So if you are an Atheists then you believe that God does not exist - so you should have an evidence to backup your belief, no?
Again if you want to quote me ever espousing that belief - then I will defend it. If instead you want to put _your_ words in my mouth and demand I defend them - you are 100% on your own with your lies. I am genuinely interested in hearing what you believe and telling you what I believe. I have zero interest however in sitting here and having you tell me what I believe. That is not useful, productive, or in any way honest from you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GoCardinals
So these are semantics. They may call it faith - you may call it hope and/or probability.
Exactly. They "may" call it many things. I am not interested in what they "may" call it. You "may" call a spade a teddy bear. I am interested in it being a spade. So sure you can call hope and probability "faith" if you want to be wrong. That is your right. But wrong you will be. All you are doing then is trying to pretend people have faith - by calling things they have "faith". I have money in my pocket right now. Sure why not call my money "faith" and then say "So there, you have faith".
The semantic games therefore are yours not mine.
Here in the real world where words have actual meanings however there is a massive different between "Faith" and "hope" and "trust" and "judgement calls". And my doing 2, 3 and 4 does not in any way mean I am doing 1.
Well it seems I predicted your post in mine above. How nice. Prophecy some would call it.
Absolute nonsense from you there. Seeing evidence is not 100% guarantee of anything. For example I know the statistics on bus crashes and injuries. That is the evidence related to the safety of travelling by bus. Having seen that evidence there is no 100% guarantee of anything at all. Rather it becomes a judgement call and if I choose to take the bus to work I do so under a judgement call that there is a 0.001% chance I might die or be injured in that journey.
Where you have come into the idea that evidence makes anything 100% I do not know. It is not a concept I have seen anywhere outside your post. It certainly does not exist in science for example where we do not consider anything to be 100% true or proven or definite.
As I said in my previous post - there is a weird move by some theists to try and equate "faith" with an evidence based judgement call of probability. I see no reason to treat them as the same thing or even all that similar.
Given they are two different words with two different meanings and two different intentions I see no reason why the lack of use of one would be indicative of the lack of use of the other.
Certainly though "hope" and "faith" are massively different things too and you appear to once again be trying to defend "faith" based on equating it to things that are massively different to it.
Nothing to do with my mood at all. One is inaccurate nonsense and the other is not. I am interested in correcting your errors and hyperbole nothing else. My mood is irrelevant.
Nope it is still you. And as predicted you can not and did not quote me saying what you outright and openly claimed I have said. So not only are you the only one dodging - I 100% accurately predicted your dodge before you even did it. More prophecy! I am getting good at this.
Again if you want to quote me ever espousing that belief - then I will defend it. If instead you want to put _your_ words in my mouth and demand I defend them - you are 100% on your own with your lies. I am genuinely interested in hearing what you believe and telling you what I believe. I have zero interest however in sitting here and having you tell me what I believe. That is not useful, productive, or in any way honest from you.
Exactly. They "may" call it many things. I am not interested in what they "may" call it. You "may" call a spade a teddy bear. I am interested in it being a spade. So sure you can call hope and probability "faith" if you want to be wrong. That is your right. But wrong you will be. All you are doing then is trying to pretend people have faith - by calling things they have "faith". I have money in my pocket right now. Sure why not call my money "faith" and then say "So there, you have faith".
The semantic games therefore are yours not mine.
Here in the real world where words have actual meanings however there is a massive different between "Faith" and "hope" and "trust" and "judgement calls". And my doing 2, 3 and 4 does not in any way mean I am doing 1.
There is so much hypocrisy and fake angry tone in your response that it’s laughable.
If evidence that God exists will not provide you with a 100% guarantee that God does exist then what’s the point demanding one?
So far as the dodge game goes, you are still not only dodging but I also see a sense of guilt in your statements.
I openly say that I am a believer.
Is there a guilt or shyness that stops you from telling us what are you and what are your believes in the idea of God while you keep having a go at faith based belief in God and thump your chest to believe in things only based on evidence.
There is so much hypocrisy and fake angry tone in your response that it’s laughable.
None of which you have pointed to or specifically identified so it appears you are just flinging labels that you hope will stick for no reason. If there is something wrong in my post then discuss it specifically. Merely saying there is and then running off with no clarification is a cowardly dodge of the lowest order.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GoCardinals
If evidence that God exists will not provide you with a 100% guarantee that God does exist then what’s the point demanding one?
Because I do not work with 100% the same way you appear to. I never demand 100%. Never have never will. Another person on this forum used to speak instead of a "Credibility continuum" where every evidence for a claim pushes the claim up that continuum.
So the reason I ask for evidence for a god is to see if we can move that claim off the "zero" position on that continuum. Not to 100% at all - only you are talking in absolutes here not me.
You have a very all or nothing, 1-0, black and white, view of belief, evidence, credibility and reasoning that none of the people you are arguing with appear to operate under. As such you are judging their responses under a standard that no one but you appears to be employing.
I am not looking for 100% evidence of a god at this time - I am looking for _any_ arguments that even begin to suggest there might be one. But no matter how low I place that bar - you invariably continue to come up with nothing but excuses, deflections, and the insertion of words in my mouth I never said and you refuse to retract when called on that dishonesty.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GoCardinals
So far as the dodge game goes, you are still not only dodging but I also see a sense of guilt in your statements.
You see what you want to see - but the simple fact is 100% of the dodging going on here is yours not mine. Right down to refusing to cite me making the claim you blatantly, demonstably and quite clearly claimed I have made. Because you and I both know you lied and I never made it - and your alleged theism has not made you the kind of person who is open and honest enough to make a mature retraction when asked.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GoCardinals
I openly say that I am a believer.
And I openly say I see no reason at this time to believe the thing you do. More than that I have never said despite your claims.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GoCardinals
Is there a guilt or shyness that stops you from telling us what are you and what are your believes
I tell people on many posts on many threads all the time. You just ignore it because it does not fit the things you want to pretend I think and believe. It seems that being "open" in your mind consists solely of me stepping into the box you have created for me. And any refusal to do that you basically spin dishonestly as if I am somehow being reticent.
I am not about to play that game. Now should I.
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