Group items tagged

Why should I believe this?

Where is your evidence?

What is your argument?

such questions are always in order.

The Socratic philosopher embodies the critical spirit, and that is one way he or she corrupts the youth: by teaching them to think for themselves.

By demanding that we justify our claims, it forces us to become self-conscious about our own framework of beliefs and values in the act of subjecting these to criticism.

these change over time

some piece of knowledge that the people of the time couldn't possibly have known but that is now known to be true

still explicable as the result of purely human forces

Did God intend to communicate his message clearly but failed to do so?

if that religion's history reflects that fact

I'll be happy to believe in God if he tells me to in person, as long as he does it in such a way that I could be sure that it was not a hallucination

interesting theological problems

self-fulfilling

a dramatic, statistically significant increase in recovery rate

True inerrancy

Almost every religion claims their scripture is perfect, but none that I know of have actually met this exacting standard

almost every religion that has ever had the power to do so has persecuted those who believed differently, and I do not think it likely that a morally good deity would allow his chosen faith's good name to be smeared by evil and fallible humans

for no apparent reason

tended to explode in flames

even minor but objectively verifiable miracles would do

the temporal lobes, especially the left lobe, are somehow involved in religious experience

this could still be the result of human influence

detailed, specific and unambiguous

result could be repeated and confirmed

multiple reliable witnesses

I invite all theists to respond by preparing a list of things that they would accept as proof that atheism is true.

glowing auras of h*** light

Why doesn't this happen any more today?

proposed those ideas long ago

a double-blind study

verified by independent evidence

indisputable proof

circumstantial, not conclusive, evidence

a h*** text entirely without error or self-contradiction

extra-biblical evidence

to protect them from harm

independent of any claim

possible to disprove

there must be independent verification that the piece of knowledge was written in texts that existed well before it was actually discovered by science

something so counter-intuitive that the odds against guessing at it correctly would be staggering

the lone success among a thousand failures

something surprising, unlikely or unique

“There exist instances of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse" (Rowe, 1979, p. 336).

travel to every planet in the universe individually

religious hallucinations associated with epilepsy

In order to leap the chasm from deism to theism; from deism to Christianity - you need to establish that Yahweh was not merely the natural evolution of Canaanite polytheism, and more importantly, rationalize how an all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good God, is compatible with pointless animal suffering.

case histories with hallucinations of a religious nature

Family religion was focused on the god of the settlement

there is a profound chasm between (1) deism and (2) theism

The Christian God does not exist.

The Bible is not the Word of God.

The Bible is not 100% factually accurate.

This god was the patron of the leading family and, by extension, of the local clan and the settlement

the magnetic configurations, not the subjects’ exotic beliefs or suggestibility, were responsible for the experimental facilitation of sensing a presence

Convergence involved the coalescence of various deities and/or some of their features into the figure of Yahweh

The Cosmological argument, the Kalām cosmological argument, the Teleological or Design argument, and the Ontological argument - merely take you to the deists' side of the chasm.

Features belonging to deities such as El, Asherah, and Baal were absorbed into the Yahwistic religion of Israel.

religion was predominantly a matter of the family

speaks in tongues (glossolalia)

Jesus was not God.

Allegiance to the clan god was concomitant with membership of the clan

God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind.

Ecclesiastes 9:5 – "For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even the memory of them is forgotten."

Religious experience can be replicated using magnetic fields

at least one of the gospel authors is making content up

At least one of the gospels is incorrect

seizures can also be “focal”; that is, they can remain confined largely to a single small part of the brain

even if both phrases were said together, he could only die immediately after one of them

80% of normal people will feel a sensed presence within the room if you stimulate a person’s temporal lobes with magnetic fields

at least one gospel is making content up

they cannot both be true

if they happen to be in the limbic system, then the most striking symptoms are emotional.

God changed his mind

put to death men and women, children and infants

there do exist instances of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse” (Rowe, 1979, p. 337).

well-supported by the evidence

at present the best explanation of all the facts

if Christianity were really true, there would be no dispute as to what the Gospel is.

There would only be our free and informed choice to accept or reject it.

We would not face any choice to believe on insufficient and ambiguous evidence, but would know the facts, and face only the choice whether to love and accept the God that does exist.

It's a simple fact of direct observation that if I had the means and the power, and could not be harmed for my efforts, I would immediately alleviate all needless suffering in the universe.

That's what any loving person would do.

A Christian can rightly claim he is unable to predict exactly what things his God would choose to do. But the Christian hypothesis still entails that God would do something.

it is enough to note that we do not observe God doing good deeds, therefore there is no God who can or wants to do good deeds

a loving being by definition acts like a loving being

The only possible exception here is when a loving person is incapable of acting as he desires--either lacking the ability or facing too great a risk to himself or others--but this exception never applies to a God, who is all-powerful and immune to all harm.

Even the most limited and constrained person there is can at least do something that expresses their loving nature.

Failing to act in a loving way would be unbearable for a loving being.

From having the desire and the means to act in a loving way, it follows necessarily that God would so act. But he doesn't.

Christians have no evidence any of these excuses are actually true.

the Christian theory is either empirically false, or self-contradictory and therefore logically false.

it does not matter what plans God may have, he still could not restrain himself from doing good any more than we can, because that is what it means to be good

He would be moved by his goodness to act, to do what's right, just as we are.

anything God would refrain from doing can be no different than what any other good people refrain from.

Christianity quite clearly makes very extraordinary claims: that there is a disembodied, universally present being with magical powers; that this superbeing actually conjured and fabricated the present universe from nothing; that we have souls that survive the death of our bodies (or that our bodies will be rebuilt in the distant future by this invisible superbeing); and that this being possessed the body of Jesus two thousand years ago, who then performed supernatural deeds before miraculously rising from the grave to chat with his friends, and then flew up into outer space.

The same moral rules that are supposed to apply to us must apply to every good person--and that necessarily includes the Christian God.

if it is good for me to alleviate suffering, it is good for God to do so

When we have every means safely at our disposal, we can only tolerate sitting back to let others do good when others are actually doing good.

A man who calls himself a friend but who never speaks plainly to you and is never around when you need him is no friend at all.

first we come up with a hypothesis that explains everything we have so far observed

then we deduce what else would have to be observed, and what could never be observed, if that hypothesis really were true

then we go and look to see if our predictions are fulfilled in practice

every element of a theory has to be in evidence

every element of the theory must be proved with evidence that is independent from the evidence being explained

every required element

independently confirmed

empirical evidence

The underlying premise must still be proven.

We must have evidence

before we can believe any theory that requires this particular claim to be true

I would have to prove them, too.

If I added further premises

I cannot credibly assert these things if I cannot prove them from real and reliable evidence.

an actual theory capable of testing and therefore of warranted belief

the evidence required for that kind of claim is far greater than for any other.

Every time we accept a claim on very little evidence in everyday life, it is usually because we already have a mountain of evidence for one or more of the general propositions that support it.

And every time we are skeptical, it is usually because we lack that same kind of evidence for the general propositions that would support the claim. And to replace that missing evidence is a considerable challenge.

extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

God would not make excuses, for nothing could ever thwart his doing what is morally right.

We have never observed any evidence for any "disembodied being" or any person who was present "everywhere."

We have never observed anyone who had magical powers, or any evidence that such powers even exist in principle

We have no good evidence that we have souls or that anyone can or will resurrect our bodies.

I do not mean these things are not logically possible.

What I mean is that we have no evidence they are physically possible, much less real

Even if we could prove a single genuine miracle had ever really happened, we still would not have evidence that God caused that miracle

To confirm God as their cause would require yet more evidence, of which (again) we have none.

since there is no way to tell whether your feeling is correct and theirs is wrong, it is just as likely that theirs is correct and yours is wrong

A theory like "nature just exists" is by itself no less likely than "a god just exists."

a beginning of space-time at a dimensionless point called a singularity is actually physically impossible

we can no longer prove the universe had a beginning

logically, even if the universe had a beginning, this does not entail or even imply that an intelligent being preceded it

If God can exist before the existence of time or space, so could the nature of the universe

the appearance of time and space may have simply been an inevitable outcome of the nature of things

"intelligent design" is not the only logically possible explanation for the organization of the universe, and so we would need empirical evidence for it

needed copious amounts of evidence before justifying a belief

the mere possibility is not enough--we need actual evidence that an intelligent engineer was the cause

we don't have anything to judge his character by

some argue "God gave us life" as evidence he is good, but that presupposes God is our creator, and so is generally a circular argument

a mindless natural process can also give us life, and even an evil or ambivalent God could have sufficient reason to give us life

the harsh kind of life we were given agrees more with those possibilities than with the designs of a good God

presumes

Until each one of those propositions is confirmed by independent evidence, there is no way to use this "theory" as if it were "evidence"

the same deed could have been performed just as readily for different motives

insufficient support to justify believing it

even if it is true, we still don't have enough evidence to know it is true

We can only believe what we have evidence enough to prove.

Would you believe me? Certainly not. You would ask me to prove it.

So I would give you all the evidence I have.

No one trusts documents that come decades after the fact by unknown authors

Every reasonable person expects and requires extensive corroboration by contemporary documents and confirmed eyewitness accounts

we've found some cases of forgery and editing in each of their stories by parties unknown, and we aren't sure we've caught it all

the only way life could arise by accident is if the universe tried countless times and only very rarely succeeded

Lo and behold, we observe that is exactly what happened: the universe has been mixing chemicals for over twelve billion years in over a billion-trillion star systems

The fact that we observe exactly what the theory of accidental origin requires and predicts is evidence that our theory is correct.

until the Christian can prove these additional theories are true, from independent evidence, there is no reason to believe them

The evidence that all present life evolved by a process of natural selection is strong and extensive.

scientific consensus on this is vast and certain

billions of years of meandering change over time

vast time involved

meandering progress of change

needless imperfections in our construction

The possibility is not enough. You have to prove it. That has yet to happen.

Finely Tuning a Killer Cosmos

the better the support, the more justified the claim is

you are being asked to show good reasons why your claim should be taken seriously

by making a claim, you have essentially taken on an intellectual and a moral obligation to offer some support for it

you must already have reasons for belief that you consider good; they, then, should be the first ideas you offer as support

to say that a claim has been "proven" implies that it has been demonstrated as true to such a degree that dissent and disagreement are no longer reasonable

"proof" is treated as being a very high standard to meet

No one, however, can reasonably object to being asked to support their claims. If they think their claim is rational, reasonable, or justified, then they must think they have rational or reasonable support for their claim which justifies believing it.

Being expected to support one's claim is a standard which applies to everyone who makes an empirical claim.

good grounds for belief

good support for belief

asking for proof of a god is reasonable and justified if and when a theist suggests or even states outright that they have such proof

words that merely imply that they have proof — words like "definite" or "undeniable."

who or what determines which actions are moral and which are not? 

I do not trust any human being, no matter how smart they are, including myself, to prescribe to me what is moral and what is not

how and why morality can be universal

where it comes from

Is your trust in science based on faith or based on science?

observed and interpreted the evidence yourself and drew your own conclusions

Is absence of proof the proof of absence?

What does the atheist position offer people?  How has it improved your life?  Why will it improve others’ lives?

When you attempt to use logic to conclude facts about religion, are you starting at the conclusion (God is not real), or are you starting at true premises? 

If you are starting at true premises, then what are they?  And how are they true? 

If all Christians believed that the Bible was entirely allegorical, what would you argue in support of your position?

Why is it important to you that everyone is an atheist?

Do you believe in extra-terrestrials?

I don’t want to hear about how religious people are more “moral” when their god slaughters all the first born male children of egypt.

Where does language, art, music, and religion come from?

if a new piece of evidence arises

The human brain. All our mental capacity for reason and creativity come from it.

damaged brain, damaged mind

Destroyed brain, destroyed mind.

there is no original sin

as a society I do think we need less god and less religion

I was a religious person when I was younger and I believed it

I would still be an atheist.

Keep it to yourself and away from the government and small children.

YOUR god is supposed to be EVERYWHERE

concern for human interests, values, and dignity is of the utmost importance

philosophy

belief

an individualistic and critical spirit

a shift of emphasis from religious to secular concerns

any philosophy concerned to emphasize human welfare and dignity

either optimistic about the powers of human reason, or at least insistent that we have no alternative but to use it as best we can

a rediscovery of the unity of human beings and nature

a renewed celebration of the pleasures of life

philosophy or ethical system that centres on the concept of the dignity, freedom, and value of human beings

a democratic and ethical lifestance

value knowledge based on reason and hard evidence

this is the only life

adding to the greater good of humanity

using human efforts to meet human needs

recognizes human beings as a part of nature

supporters of the principle of separation of church and state

individual freedom

represents a consensus of what all or almost all Humanists believe

universal human dignity

we owe it to ourselves and others to make it the best life possible for ourselves and all

values-be they religious, ethical, social, or political-have their source in human experience and culture

an uncreated universe that obeys natural laws

service to others is a major focus of Humanism

stands for the building of a more humane society

people's fulfillment by personal effort

knowledge can be obtained through rational thought and experimentation

advocates the extension of participatory democracy

derives the goals of life from human need

accept democracy

the preciousness and dignity of the individual person is a central humanist value

an approach to life based on reason and our common humanity, recognizing that moral values are properly founded on human nature and experience

a philosophy, world view, or lifestance

a rational philosophy informed by science, inspired by art, and motivated by compassion

a philosophy

Since most believe that an afterlife is non-existent, they regard life here on earth to be particularly precious

ethics based on human and other natural values in a spirit of reason and free inquiry through human capabilities

nature is all that exists or is real

many people realize that they are already humanists and just did not know

Although religious texts can teach good lessons, they also advocate fear, intolerance, hate and ignorance.

highly motivated to alleviating pain and misery around the world

Secular Humanism a non-religiously based philosophy

supports the maximization of individual liberty and opportunity consonant with social and planetary responsibility

Humanists view this natural world as wondrous and precious, and as offering limitless opportunities for exploration, fascination, creativity, companionship, and joy

All quotes from religious texts were checked by scripture scholars to ensure accuracy, context and proper translation. 

value freedom of inquiry, expression and action

have a history of combating bigotry, hatred, discrimination, intolerance and censorship

truth could be discovered by human effort

moral values derive their source from human experience

humanists enjoy the open-endedness of a quest and the freedom of discovery

a philosophy centered upon the needs and interests of people

marriage should be a perfect partnership

love coupled with empathy, democracy, and a commitment to selfless service

secular humanist values are consistent with mainstream America

fundamentalist religion has no right to claim the moral high ground

Humanism is the idea that you can be good without a belief in God.

When people view the Bible as the word of a just and omniscient God, and attempt to have society's laws and social practices reflect biblical teachings, serious error and harm will occur if the Bible was actually written by fallible humans who lived in an unenlightened era.

In most communities, an opposing view is rarely, if ever, heard

It would instead perpetuate the ideas of an ignorant and superstitious past - and prevent humanity from rising to a higher level.

written solely by humans

it contains numerous contradictions

The Bible is an unreliable authority

The massive and incessant promotion of the Bible significantly influences the beliefs of millions

Humanists also reject the Bible because it approves of outrageous cruelty and injustice.

because so many people have been told the Bible is the "Good Book," biblical teachings shape the attitudes of millions

the book has many false statements and is not infallible

the Bible teaches that God repeatedly violated this moral precept by harming innocent people

Instances of cruel and unjust behavior by the biblical God are seen in the most basic Christian doctrines.

hundreds of contradictions mean there are at least hundreds of incorrect statements in the Bible

because the writers of the Bible lived in an unenlightened era, the book contains many errors and harmful teachings

Each contradiction is an instance where at least one of the verses is wrong.

nobody thinks this sufficiently likely to be taken into account