Why Ricky Gervais is an atheist

[Mummelmann]

mrstickball said:

pezus said:

mrstickball said:
What about those that say they've seen proof?

The ultimate problem with religion vs. atheism is empiricism. If you believe that everything must be empirical, then by all means, its impossible to prove gods or a God exists.

But if you don't believe that everything is ultimately empirical, it gives you the case for the possibility of the supernatural which is, by definition the antithesis of empiricism since you cannot validate it through scientific means.

If people like Gervais would one day look into the possibility of an irrational, non-empirical entity that defies the scientific method, you may be surprised. Those that hold to the Christian faith do not do so entirely out of pure blindness. There are people that have seen things - supernatural things - that are far and away from explanation or rationalization, but are certain they happen. Are any of these Christians nuts? Absolutely. Are all of them nuts? No. I know what I've seen and experienced in my life, and some of it defies logic and empiricism, but it still happened. That is why I will hold to what I believe irregardless of what Gervais and others believe. I won't reserve vitriol for them, I will respect what they want to believe in their own minds.

What did you see that defies logic?

Instantaneous healing of medically-verifiable broken bones, precognition, physical/visual phenomena, other types of healings, ect. I'd have to think a bit to come up with an exhaustive list of things I've personally seen.

If I expanded the list to family who wouldn't BS, that list to expand significantly to include things like the ability to spontaneously write in ancient languages with perfect prose, spontaneously talk in other languages unknown to speaker, shapeshifting,  demonic possessions (far beyond possible psycological diagnosis), prophecy, and so on.

Over the years, if you're in the right circles, you hear and see a lot, and I mean a lot of things inside or outside of specific kinds of churches. I try to throw out the things that are likely to happen naturally (e.g. "God saved me from a wreck because I clipped an extra coupon before I got into the car").

Then you have all the instances of people that have documented, at least among their family, impossible things to happen naturally such as the case of Todd Burpo. I am not saying his claim is absolutely real, but if it indeed is - and only his family knows - then even the first half of his story is far beyond the realm of what science or empiricism can explain.

Family and loved ones agreeing that miracles have taken place? This is nothing new anywhere in the world. Sadly, human eyewitness accounts aren't worth very much and are even taking a backseat in courts of law today since they are often faulty, obscured, biased or all of the above.

I'm not discrediting anyone's experiences with what could be percieved as extraordinary or even supernatural but anything that a small or large group or individual with a religious or otherwise similar conviction tells me or anyone else about miracles and happenings to support their faith isn't worth a whole lot. Perhaps even nothing. They're just words that anyone can say. "Why would people lie or convince themselves that this happened if it didn't?" The answer to that is obvious.

When I grew up and we started school at around age seven, the church gave us a book with bible stories in it. I liked the book, it had nice drawings and some of the stories were pretty exciting. But, even then, I understood that they were just stories and not recited, actual history.

To each his own I suppose but there is no chance of anyone swaying the other side into their belief (or lack thereof), which is fine by me. I don't need the world to be atheistic, not even one bit, I just need people to understand that fantastic claims will always be dubious at best, especially when absolutely none of them can be proven (take the James Randi test for one example).