By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - General - Do you believe in God? Why/Why not?

 

Do you believe in any god?

Yes 63 36.21%
 
No 111 63.79%
 
Total:174
Torillian said:
WolfpackN64 said:

This does not disprove anything at all. It's one thing to meet and disregard religious claims, it's something else to actually bring your own proof to the table. What people don't understand about proof of burden is that 1. It works both in a positive as in a negative sense & 2. Unless you're a sceptic, empirical proof isn't the only form of proof, for if that was the case, our own science wouldn't even be able to operate correctly.

What form of non-empirical proof is necessary for science to operate correctly?

Two main disciplines: mathematics and logic, operate completely on epistemological, not empirical grounds. Without these two, we wouldn't be able to categorise and systemathise (let alone solve many aspects of) science.



Around the Network
WolfpackN64 said:
Peh said:

Yes, this is going in circles, because I already told you what I think of those. So I take it, that you got none. I don't know why I should bother with revelation. I don't consider the Bible to be a word of God simply because of the contradiction to historical evidence. I.e. Exodus, Massacre of the Innocents... or even the Epic of Gilgamesh. For the latter, I know what the position of apologists is, so we don't have to argue about that. 

"The skeptics and empiricists discard revelation very easily, but if they then claim that God does not exist, the burden of proof is on them."

I already said that you are correct regarding this. Yet, from the information I can collect is that you accept claims without evidence simply because you like the sound of it. At least, that is what I see from you reasoning. 

Note that I said historical revelations are important to. It's not like people stopped having revelations after the biblical period (in fact, there are nearly too many to count).

If that is important, then you should be a Mormon by now or whatever comes around the corner. So, why don't you follow Joseph Smith? 



Intel Core i7 8700K | 32 GB DDR 4 PC 3200 | ROG STRIX Z370-F Gaming | RTX 3090 FE| Crappy Monitor| HTC Vive Pro :3

Peh said:
WolfpackN64 said:

Note that I said historical revelations are important to. It's not like people stopped having revelations after the biblical period (in fact, there are nearly too many to count).

If that is important, then you should be a Mormon by now or whatever comes around the corner. So, why don't you follow Joseph Smith? 

You're lumping belief in revelation together with naivité. The Catholic Church doesn't just accept any testimony of a revelation for fact. There are in fact criteria that need to be met, just like in empericism for one to be accepted.

In my case, I don't accept Joseph Smith's revelations just like I don't accept Muhammed as a prophet. Of course, that doesn't mean that Mormons and Muslims can't hold their believes.



WolfpackN64 said:
JWeinCom said:

We haven't established any sort of probability. As we have agreed the cosmological argument is deductive.  It is either true or false.  If we can't confirm or deny the argument, we can't make any claim about it's probability.   We can say it's not impossible, but that's about it.

As for revelation, if I believe in revelation, then that puts me in an awkward spot.  Because if I accept revelation from Christians, I'd also have to accept Muslim revelation.  Hindu revelation, Satanist revelation, and really any kind of weird personal claim anybody makes.  So unless there is a particularly good reason to accept Christian revelation, which I've never been provided with, I can't take revelation as evidence.

As for your repeated insistence that atheists have a burden of proof, no.  If they want to claim that god definitely doesn't exist, then yes, but that's not what I've seen people in this thread say.  You're trying to strawman them because the antitheist position is much easier to attack.

It is basically impossible to prove a negative.  To repeat an example I gave earlier, if I said I had a unicorn in my apartment right now, you would be completely unable to disprove it.  But I'm guessing you wouldn't believe me.  You would not believe me unless I could offer some kind of proof.  And that's what we're doing. 

It's not impossible to prove a negative. In the situation of a unicorn in your appartment however, I can only rely on abduction. Seeing as how improbable that is, I will not take it for truth.

Cool.  So the god you're proposing seems really improbable to me, so I will not take it for truth. 



JWeinCom said:
WolfpackN64 said:

It's not impossible to prove a negative. In the situation of a unicorn in your appartment however, I can only rely on abduction. Seeing as how improbable that is, I will not take it for truth.

Cool.  So the god you're proposing seems really improbable to me, so I will not take it for truth. 

If it's improbable to your empirial standards, by all means, you're free to believe or not believe what suits you (within you local laws and within rational reason of course :) ).



Around the Network
WolfpackN64 said:
Peh said:

If that is important, then you should be a Mormon by now or whatever comes around the corner. So, why don't you follow Joseph Smith? 

You're lumping belief in revelation together with naivité. The Catholic Church doesn't just accept any testimony of a revelation for fact. There are in fact criteria that need to be met, just like in empericism for one to be accepted.

In my case, I don't accept Joseph Smith's revelations just like I don't accept Muhammed as a prophet. Of course, that doesn't mean that Mormons and Muslims can't hold their believes.

You mean this? 

https://de.scribd.com/document/90613528/Criteria-for-Recognizing-True-or-False-Private-Revelations

I know where this conversation is going and I am already bored by the next answer that you could write. 

So, because I simply don't care what the church thinks of revelations, as much as you do the same for all the other religions out there, I will end the conversation here. The church doesn't have the monopoly on the decision of what is true or not. It's pointless to argue about it as well as it is pointless to argue wether Joseph Smith read from some golden plates or not. It all ends in special pleading. I just don't want to go the path only to confirm it. 



Intel Core i7 8700K | 32 GB DDR 4 PC 3200 | ROG STRIX Z370-F Gaming | RTX 3090 FE| Crappy Monitor| HTC Vive Pro :3

Peh said:
WolfpackN64 said:

You're lumping belief in revelation together with naivité. The Catholic Church doesn't just accept any testimony of a revelation for fact. There are in fact criteria that need to be met, just like in empericism for one to be accepted.

In my case, I don't accept Joseph Smith's revelations just like I don't accept Muhammed as a prophet. Of course, that doesn't mean that Mormons and Muslims can't hold their believes.

You mean this? 

https://de.scribd.com/document/90613528/Criteria-for-Recognizing-True-or-False-Private-Revelations

I know where this conversation is going and I am already bored by the next answer that you could write. 

So, because I simply don't care what the church thinks of revelations, as much as you do the same for all the other religions out there, I will end the conversation here. The church doesn't have the monopoly on the decision of what is true or not. It's pointless to argue about it as well as it is pointless to argue wether Joseph Smith read from some golden plates or not. It all ends in special pleading. I just don't want to go the path only to confirm it. 

If it's all pointless to you then I will end this pointless conversation as well.



Nope! Not in the slightest.

My father in law is a priest though so he's tried for a long time but he's given up by now hehe

If it helps people in any way, I say let them believe in whatever they want to believe. No harm in that.



The most useless thread ever going nowhere, how surprising.



WolfpackN64 said:

Just because sceptics throw away any rational argument and revelations because it's not empirical to them does not mean they are right. on the contrary.

Being rational is to throw away baseless assertions which cannot be tested via the scientific method even after being given thousands of years to try. (That's religion in-case you aren't aware.)

WolfpackN64 said:

If they are so sure there is no God, the burden is just as much on them as it is on us, as we have provided many an argument as they have failed to empirically disprove  anything.

No. That's not how it works. That is not logical.
Religion made the assertion that God exists, the onus falls upon them to prove it, Atheists aren't obligated to disprove it.
You are trying to use circular logic (A typical Theistic trap) which is a logical fallacy.

Otherwise I can assert the claim that I ride a Kangaroo to work every day... And if you don't have Evidence to the contrary, then it must be true, right?

However... The Theory of Evolution and the Big Bang Theory has shown that as science continues to progress, that theistic perspectives will continue to wane.

EntilZha said:

One side believes that life was created by a God.

The other side believes that life created itself out of basic elements.

Neither side has any proof, but both sides have "faith" that they are correct.

False.
The Theory of Evolution has given us a fantastic perspective on how life has continued to progress on this planet.
But if we go farther back... Abiogensis is the leading theory on how life came to be on this planet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis

If we go even farther back, the Big Bang theory describes how this Universe came to be. - Which also has supporting evidence, namely the Cosmic Microwave Background or CMB.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background

All religion has to support their God hypothesis is a book written by man, which holds many claims that come into conflict with scientific evidence.
So one perspective relies on "faith". - The other has evidence or is gathering more evidence and is happy to say "I don't know" if they don't have evidence.

WolfpackN64 said:

What people don't understand about proof of burden is that 1. It works both in a positive as in a negative sense & 2. Unless you're a sceptic, empirical proof isn't the only form of proof, for if that was the case, our own science wouldn't even be able to operate correctly.

False.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(law)

WolfpackN64 said:

The skeptics and empiricists discard revelation very easily, but if they then claim that God does not exist, the burden of proof is on them.

Correct. But only if they make such a claim.
I am not making that claim, I am claiming that the burden of proof hasn't been met by Theists after thousands of years (So they have had plenty of bloody opportunity!) and thus can and will discard their theistic claims as utter rubbish.

HintHRO said:
The most useless thread ever going nowhere, how surprising.

Hows about adding something that is actually constructive? ;)

Last edited by Pemalite - on 02 September 2018


www.youtube.com/@Pemalite