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generalgrog wrote:

Goliath wrote:

generalgrog wrote:The fact that a simple question like "Why don't you believe in XXX" will not be answered is quite telling.GG

Assuming that XXX is any sort of god, I don't believe in them because I have yet to see first hand evidence that any exist.

People used to believe that the earth was flat, because there was no first hand evidence that it was spherical.

GG

Yes, but there is a difference between believing in X because there is no evidence for Y, and not believing in Y because there is no evidence for Y.

Slarg232 wrote:1) Wikipedia don't count.

Want me to list the 7 references that passage quotes? Or are you happy to read them yourself?

Or you want to go and do your own research into the issue so you can get some first hand evidence?

2) Doesn't mean that there wasn't a time where people thought the Earth was flat, just that it wasn't during the Middle Ages, if that is in fact true.

Sure, apparently there are records of people thinking that the Earth was a sphere from the 6th century BC... I'd give you are reference, but it is used in a wiki article

generalgrog wrote:
I love how you say this as though it were fact. It's just another one of your fallacious arguments.

Lets see.... there was a story about mithras that had similarities to the story of Jesus.....soooo.. ipso facto....the Jesus story was made up..Yayyy now I don't have to believe in Jesus.

Why didn't you choose the story of Horus like bill Maher did in his movie religulous? It's just as fallacious.

God I love it when people not only butcher the term "fallacy" but commit to fallacious arguments while accusing others of doing the same.

Grog, as a rule, you should avoid using the words "logic", "fallacy", and "science" because you have an extensive history of failing to understand all of them. And, honestly, it has only ever taken away from any point you were attempting to make.

In this particular case you're accusing Mannahnin of making a fallacious argument without any basis, largely because you yourself are proceeding on the basis of a strawman (Mannahnin didn't claim that the story of Jesus being taken from the Mithras was a reason not to believe in Jesus.), and further that any given person would need to believe in Jesus by default (follows from an argument from ignorance).

generalgrog wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:...and how the myth stories about the origin of Jesus are mostly taken from Mithras.

I love how you say this as though it were fact. It's just another one of your fallacious arguments.

You can feel free to contest it, just as you are free to present evidence to the contrary if you don't believe in any other factual claim I make. For example, if I say "The Catholic Church has a history of adopting and incorporating some local religious customs and deities as an aid to converting the locals," and I point to Bridh/St. Brigid as an example, or the Christmas tree/Yule tree as another, you can simply contradict me or you can try to produce an argument with contrary evidence.

generalgrog wrote:Lets see.... there was a story about mithras that had similarities to the story of Jesus.....soooo.. ipso facto....the Jesus story was made up..Yayyy now I don't have to believe in Jesus.

This is a failure of reasoning and of reading comprehension on your part. I'm not making the same argument Mahar does. I know it's a thread about atheism but if you've paid any attention in the past you know I'm not an atheist. Most of the myth of Jesus' birth and the signs that attended it are extremely similar to or identical to those of Mithras, which was around immediately before Christianity, and in the same region of the world. These are matters of clear historical record, and occam's razor leads us to believe it unlikely that two (or three; if Mithras was based on Horus) deities had the same origin, rather than one being based on the earlier.

Now, just because it appears that some early Christians stole parts of the story of Mithras to add glory to their own deity, that doesn't mean Jesus isn't worthwhile to follow or even that he wasn't divine. Just because some of his later followers decided to "gild the lily" of his story by adding more decoration doesn't mean that his story wasn't meaningful without that stuff added to it. From the evidence of the Jefferson Bible, it appears that Jefferson didn't think of Jesus as divine but believed that Jesus' moral teachings were wonderful and worthy of following. He opined that it was obvious that much had been added to the gospels after the fact.

Jefferson, in a letter to John Adams 1813 wrote:In extracting the pure principles which he taught, we should have to strip off the artificial vestments in which they have been muffled by priests, who have travestied them into various forms, as instruments of riches and power to themselves. We must dismiss the Platonists and Plotinists, the Stagyrites and Gamalielites, the Eclectics, the Gnostics and Scholastics, their essences and emanations, their logos and demiurges, aeons and daemons, male and female, with a long train of … or, shall I say at once, of nonsense. We must reduce our volume to the simple evangelists, select, even from them, the very words only of Jesus, paring off the amphibologisms into which they have been led, by forgetting often, or not understanding, what had fallen from him, by giving their own misconceptions as his dicta, and expressing unintelligibly for others what they had not understood themselves. There will be found remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man. I have performed this operation for my own use, by cutting verse by verse out of the printed book, and arranging the matter which is evidently his, and which is as easily distinguishable as diamonds in a dunghill. The result is an octavo of forty-six pages, of pure and unsophisticated doctrines.[

generalgrog wrote:Why didn't you choose the story of Horus like bill Maher did in his movie religulous? It's just as fallacious.

The word you're looking for is "false". Fallacious normally refers to a formal error in logic/argument. If that's what you meant, you should mention what fallacy you think is in play. If you think I've made an error in reasoning, to demonstrate that you've got to point out the error. Challenge one of my premises or show how they don't lead to me conclusions. What you're offering here is simple contradiction.

generalgrog wrote:Carbon-14 dating is not that reliable

You don't have the expert knowledge to proclaim that, you're just regurgitating some junk you ate up off of a propaganda site.

Carbon-14 is a Carbon atom (six protons, six electrons, and six neutrons in its base state) with two extra neutrons (the electrons have mass, but they're quite negligible compared to a proton or neutron). The extra Neutrons turn the carbon's nucleus in to a radioactive isotope. Carbon-14 is quite rare, 1 part per trillion being quite common (trillion, as in, a million million). The decay itself is a method called beta decay, which is to say, it changes from Carbon-14 to Nitrogen-14-- without going in to too much detail, one of the excess neutrons becomes a proton, and this process takes 5,730 ± 40 years (that is, ~5,690-5770 years) for any given amount of carbon-14 to decay to half of its value. This value has been proven time and again to be quite precise, and there is no evidence to claim otherwise.

Carbon-14 dating machines need to be properly calibrated, however, because the amount of C14 has not been constant over the years (cosmic rays and variations in Earth's magnetosphere have an effect on it for example). Therefor they use a combination of other dating methods in concert with radiocarbon dating, in order to properly calibrate the radiocarbon dating machines. When properly calibrated, a carbon-14 dating is quite accurate, being able to accurately predict the age of, for example, wood from a royal Egyptian boat which was made in 1850 BC. Over the course of the 26,000 years in which radiocarbon dating is used, the total measurement error is plus or minus 163 years.

generalgrog wrote:
This.

Carbon-14 dating is not that reliable, in that you can date freshly dead animals to over 1,000's of years old. Also it isn't fully understood how a "flood event" may have changed the environment.

Again assumptions of uniformatarianism must be relied on to fully accept radiocarbon and or radiometric dating.

Really? This argument again?

If you don't accept radiometric dating as valid evidence, then you effectively cannot accept any attempt at creation "science" because you are abrogating your ability to prove that Earth is only 6,000 years old.

Beyond that, carbon dating isn't a simple matter of assuming a constant rate of decay. The process of calibration tests against the strata in which a subject is found, which is dated by other methods in order to normalize for carbon content in the atmosphere. The whole idea that you can date an animal corpse as being thousands of years old is based in the failure of uneducated people to understand the distinction between raw BP years, and calibrated years.

Oh, and while it is an assumption to presume a constant rate of radioactive decay, there is no evidence, at all, to suggest it varies but a mountain of evidence to suggest that it doesn't.

generalgrog wrote:The fact that a simple question like "Why don't you believe in XXX" will not be answered is quite telling.

Athiests avoid this question because they know that it gets to the heart of the their belief system, and they do not want to admit that they use faith. They like to think themselves superior to people of faith because athiests are in denial themselves about the quantity of faith they have in Science and philosophy.

Again... athiesm does not exist in a vacuum.

Your entire argument is predicated on the assumption that atheism is a belief system. Its fine to argue from a presumed position if that presumption is supported in the course of the argument, but the initial question "Why don't you believe in God?", in this context, automatically places belief, and the absence of belief, on equal footing; which is incorrect. You are begging the question.

You do not need a reason to not believe in something. You need a reason to believe in something, at least if the belief is rational. I need no reason to not believe in God, or not believe that any evidence offered is evidence that God exists. You need a reason to believe in God, and you need a reason to believe that any evidence offered is evidence that God exists. The same is true if "God" is replaced with "cat".

Relapse wrote:It could be relative. I know a Mexican or two who have nicknames the translate as "white" refering to their light skin, yet the average Europeon/Anglo would look at them as dark skinned.

Europeans sailed to this 'New World' hundreds of years ago and, as humans often do, engaged in sexual intercourse with some of the indigenous people. Others colonizers did not engage in such activity, but lived here all the rest of their life, and their family line still exists so you end up with people who are now native to Central and Southern America that are Caucasian. The people today also use 'white' in a different racial/cultural context than they would have in the past. Find an incident from pre-European colonization that used it in the same context and you may be on to something.

dogma wrote:The same is true if "God" is replaced with "cat".

Wait.

Wait.

Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait.

Are... are you telling me...

That these two... AREN'T already the same?

dogma wrote:

generalgrog wrote:
I love how you say this as though it were fact. It's just another one of your fallacious arguments.

Lets see.... there was a story about mithras that had similarities to the story of Jesus.....soooo.. ipso facto....the Jesus story was made up..Yayyy now I don't have to believe in Jesus.

Why didn't you choose the story of Horus like bill Maher did in his movie religulous? It's just as fallacious.

God I love it when people not only butcher the term "fallacy" but commit to fallacious arguments while accusing others of doing the same.

Grog, as a rule, you should avoid using the words "logic", "fallacy", and "science" because you have an extensive history of failing to understand all of them. And, honestly, it has only ever taken away from any point you were attempting to make.

In this particular case you're accusing Mannahnin of making a fallacious argument without any basis, largely because you yourself are proceeding on the basis of a strawman (Mannahnin didn't claim that the story of Jesus being taken from the Mithras was a reason not to believe in Jesus.), and further that any given person would need to believe in Jesus by default (follows from an argument from ignorance).

I was thinking that the particular fallacy was the one of causal reasoning or possibly post hoc.

example:
"the bread has gone bad and has mold on it"
"the bread produced the mold which caused the bread to go bad"

"Jesus story is based on mithras"
"How do you know that"
"because there are similarities between mithras and Jesus"

Isn't it fallacious to claim that the Jesus story is fabricated from mithras because there are similarities(some of these "similarities" are way out there) between the stories?

GG

generalgrog wrote:

dogma wrote:

generalgrog wrote:
I love how you say this as though it were fact. It's just another one of your fallacious arguments.

Lets see.... there was a story about mithras that had similarities to the story of Jesus.....soooo.. ipso facto....the Jesus story was made up..Yayyy now I don't have to believe in Jesus.

Why didn't you choose the story of Horus like bill Maher did in his movie religulous? It's just as fallacious.

God I love it when people not only butcher the term "fallacy" but commit to fallacious arguments while accusing others of doing the same.

Grog, as a rule, you should avoid using the words "logic", "fallacy", and "science" because you have an extensive history of failing to understand all of them. And, honestly, it has only ever taken away from any point you were attempting to make.

In this particular case you're accusing Mannahnin of making a fallacious argument without any basis, largely because you yourself are proceeding on the basis of a strawman (Mannahnin didn't claim that the story of Jesus being taken from the Mithras was a reason not to believe in Jesus.), and further that any given person would need to believe in Jesus by default (follows from an argument from ignorance).

I was thinking that the particular fallacy was the one of causal reasoning or possibly post hoc.

example:
"the bread has gone bad and has mold on it"
"the bread produced the mold which caused the bread to go bad"

"Jesus story is based on mithras"
"How do you know that"
"because there are similarities between mithras and Jesus"

Isn't it fallacious to claim that the Jesus story is fabricated from mithras because there are similarities(some of these "similarities" are way out there) between the stories?

GG

not fallacious at all,

from:
http://www.pocm.info/index.html

"You already know Christmas trees and Easter eggs were originally Pagan, and you probably know the seasonal timing of the two holidays is Pagan too. Mildly interesting. Not what you'll find here. What you'll discover at POCM is that ancient cultures around the Mediterranean shared standard ideas about Gods and their powers and place in the universe—and that Christianity simply adopted those ideas and applied them to Jesus. Ancient people knew godmen did miracles. The first Christians thought Jesus was a godman, so they told stories about Jesus doing miracles. They even had Him doing the same miracles as the other godmen."

generalgrog wrote:(some of these "similarities" are way out there) between the stories?

As "way out there" as a magical person coming back from the dead after being born of a virgin and doing all sorts of cool things like catering parties with magical wine and food, walking on water etc?

sirlynchmob wrote:
... The first Christians thought Jesus was a godman, so they told stories about Jesus doing miracles. They even had Him doing the same miracles as the other godmen."

again it seems fallacious to me...

"cultures made up stories about "godmen"
"Jesus was considered a Godman"
'therefore people made up stories about Jesus"

I.E. the fallacious argument to me is that because X happened here that automatically means the same thing that happened to X happened to Y.

GG

generalgrog wrote:again it seems fallacious to me...

You don't understand what the term "fallacious" means or represents anyway, so how would you know what it feels like?

I think waht you really mean is "I don't agree".

A fallacy is an error in reasoning that renders an argument logically invalid, but you aren't thinking in purely logical terms to begin with. And, I should note, that just because an argument itself is logically invalid, that does NOT mean that its conclusions are untrue.

I could say that All animals are cats, and all dogs are animals, therefor all dogs are cats and that would be logically valid and not fallacious. I could also say that if someone has the flu, they cough a lot; ergo John, who is coughing a lot, has the flu. While he does actually have the flu, the argument itself is logically fallacious and invalid, despite the conclusions being true.

SilverMK2 wrote:

generalgrog wrote:(some of these "similarities" are way out there) between the stories?

As "way out there" as a magical person coming back from the dead after being born of a virgin and doing all sorts of cool things like catering parties with magical wine and food, walking on water etc?

More like comparing the virgin birth of Jesus in a stable to mithras being born from solid rock in a cave. Or comparing the 12 disciples to the 12 signs of the zodiak...yeah those are way out there. A very similar thing that Bill Maher tried to do with the Horus myth.

GG

Melissia wrote:

dogma wrote:The same is true if "God" is replaced with "cat".

Wait.

Wait.

Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait.

Are... are you telling me...

That these two... AREN'T already the same?

Well cats definitely qualify as a supreme being, the Egyptians thought of them as gods. ergo cats are gods.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

generalgrog wrote:

SilverMK2 wrote:

generalgrog wrote:(some of these "similarities" are way out there) between the stories?

As "way out there" as a magical person coming back from the dead after being born of a virgin and doing all sorts of cool things like catering parties with magical wine and food, walking on water etc?

More like comparing the virgin birth of Jesus in a stable to mithras being born from solid rock in a cave. Or comparing the 12 disciples to the 12 signs of the zodiak...yeah those are way out there. A very similar thing that Bill Maher tried to do with the Horus myth.

GG

So are you saying that jesus was a totally unique god? that his followers borrowed nothing from the local area?

Jesus is not a carbon copy of any one other god, he was a collection of a variety of gods and what people thought of when they thought of gods. With a few new bits thrown in to make him seem like the new thing.

Ahtman wrote:

Relapse wrote:It could be relative. I know a Mexican or two who have nicknames the translate as "white" refering to their light skin, yet the average Europeon/Anglo would look at them as dark skinned.

Europeans sailed to this 'New World' hundreds of years ago and, as humans often do, engaged in sexual intercourse with some of the indigenous people. Others colonizers did not engage in such activity, but lived here all the rest of their life, and their family line still exists so you end up with people who are now native to Central and Southern America that are Caucasian. The people today also use 'white' in a different racial/cultural context than they would have in the past. Find an incident from pre-European colonization that used it in the same context and you may be on to something.

This could be interesting to study further. Then again, when Christ was first ressurected, his closest followers did not at first recognize him until he spoke to them.
I do think I will look into some of the early languages to see what I can find since it is a thought provoking comment you made.
In the end, though it comes down to personal faith more than anything. The scriptures are full of examples of people that had seen some amazing things, yet denied them.
It could be argued that the things they saw were blown out of proportion, but my own beliefs and experiences tell me otherwise.

sirlynchmob wrote:

Jesus is not a carbon copy of any one other god, he was a collection of a variety of gods and what people thought of when they thought of gods. With a few new bits thrown in to make him seem like the new thing.

Again this is the same mistake manny is making. You are making this grand statement based on your opinion and not proven fact.

I'm waiting for dogma to help with clarification on which logical fallacy is being made here.

GG

generalgrog wrote:
I was thinking that the particular fallacy was the one of causal reasoning or possibly post hoc.

Well, its definitely not post hoc because the argument being made isn't causal. In essence, the presence of similar tales isn't being claimed to have caused the telling of Jesus' story.

You could make the case for cum hoc (correlation is not causation), but its difficult in this instance because the similarities are so plentiful. You would have a stronger argument if Mann was claiming that the story of Jesus was wholly fabricated, but it seems he's simply stating that much of his story was likely embellished by others because there are clear parallels between it, and the messianic tales told by people of other faiths. And again, its not a causal argument.

You also have to remember that informal fallacies aren't like formal fallacies. Formal fallacies can be proven using formal logic (word math), informal fallacies aren't so cut and dry. They turn on reasonable standards of evidence. If they didn't, all arguments would be intrinsically fallacious.

generalgrog wrote:
Isn't it fallacious to claim that the Jesus story is fabricated from mithras because there are similarities(some of these "similarities" are way out there) between the stories?

Possibly, at least if you're implying that it was created whole cloth.

However, if all you're doing is claimed that it was influenced by other stories, then you're on more solid ground.

Then again, when Christ was first ressurected, his closest followers did not at first recognize him until he spoke to them.

Some folks have posited that if a man's closest followers and friends cannot recognize their close friend and companion, it might not be the same person.

Jefferson believed Jesus was the greatest moral teacher in history and worthy of basing one's morality and ethics upon, but dismissed the claims of Jesus being the son of god or performing miracles as "nonsense", added by later adherents, and that Jesus actual teachings and insights are as "easily distinguishable as diamonds in a dunghill. "

dogma wrote:

generalgrog wrote:
This.

Carbon-14 dating is not that reliable, in that you can date freshly dead animals to over 1,000's of years old. Also it isn't fully understood how a "flood event" may have changed the environment.

Again assumptions of uniformatarianism must be relied on to fully accept radiocarbon and or radiometric dating.

Really? This argument again?

If you don't accept radiometric dating as valid evidence, then you effectively cannot accept any attempt at creation "science" because you are abrogating your ability to prove that Earth is only 6,000 years old.

Beyond that, carbon dating isn't a simple matter of assuming a constant rate of decay. The process of calibration tests against the strata in which a subject is found, which is dated by other methods in order to normalize for carbon content in the atmosphere. The whole idea that you can date an animal corpse as being thousands of years old is based in the failure of uneducated people to understand the distinction between raw BP years, and calibrated years.

Oh, and while it is an assumption to presume a constant rate of radioactive decay, there is no evidence, at all, to suggest it varies but a mountain of evidence to suggest that it doesn't.

generalgrog wrote:The fact that a simple question like "Why don't you believe in XXX" will not be answered is quite telling.

Athiests avoid this question because they know that it gets to the heart of the their belief system, and they do not want to admit that they use faith. They like to think themselves superior to people of faith because athiests are in denial themselves about the quantity of faith they have in Science and philosophy.

Again... athiesm does not exist in a vacuum.

Your entire argument is predicated on the assumption that atheism is a belief system. Its fine to argue from a presumed position if that presumption is supported in the course of the argument, but the initial question "Why don't you believe in God?", in this context, automatically places belief, and the absence of belief, on equal footing; which is incorrect. You are begging the question.

You do not need a reason to not believe in something. You need a reason to believe in something, at least if the belief is rational. I need no reason to not believe in God, or not believe that any evidence offered is evidence that God exists. You need a reason to believe in God, and you need a reason to believe that any evidence offered is evidence that God exists. The same is true if "God" is replaced with "cat".

maybe the question is the wrong one then. What I was trying to get at was. "What has influenced a person to not believe in a god or God". Some people have answered honestly in that they do not believe in a god or God because said god or God has no evidence(in their eyes) of existing..

This is what I was trying to get sirlynch to admit to but he didn't play fair...the point I was trying to make is that just because a god or God has no scientific evidence does not mean this god or God does not exist. I can't see gravity but I see the effects, I can't see magnetism but I can see the effects.

I used the example of the flat earth, which of course people missed the point. It was a veiwpoint by much of western society that the earth was flat. If someone had said... you know the earth is really spherical. The sirlynches of the day could just say...I choose not to believe in a sphere because you haven't proven to me that it is spherical. All you have to do is look at the horizon and see the edge of the earth! So in this persons mind they are right when they are really wrong.

athiesm does not exist in a vacuum, there are ideas, dogmas, and faith involved, which lead people to take that position.

GG

Mannahnin wrote:
Some folks have posited that if a man's closest followers and friends cannot recognize their close friend and companion, it might not be the same person.

Jefferson believed Jesus was the greatest moral teacher in history and worthy of basing one's morality and ethics upon, but dismissed the claims of Jesus being the son of god or performing miracles as "nonsense", added by later adherents, and that Jesus actual teachings and insights are as "easily distinguishable as diamonds in a dunghill. "

Yeah, I've basically come to the conclusion that either the story of the Resurrection is fabricated (it doesn't really bear on Jesus' moral teachings), or evidence that other people claimed to be Jesus, or were believed to be Jesus.

Well, I'm pretty sure the latter two happened anyway, its really just a matter of whether or not it impacted the Bible.

Mannahnin wrote:

Then again, when Christ was first ressurected, his closest followers did not at first recognize him until he spoke to them.

Some folks have posited that if a man's closest followers and friends cannot recognize their close friend and companion, it might not be the same person.

Jefferson believed Jesus was the greatest moral teacher in history and worthy of basing one's morality and ethics upon, but dismissed the claims of Jesus being the son of god or performing miracles as "nonsense", added by later adherents, and that Jesus actual teachings and insights are as "easily distinguishable as diamonds in a dunghill. "

I can understand the logic of that position. On the other hand it is stated we will be resurrected in a perfect form. This may be supposed that our bodies are going to be a very much improved version of ourselves.
The best analogy I can think of in this context is the gangly kid in high school that turns into Joe Stud or a total hottie. People seeing them for the first time after their transformation sometimes don't recognize them until they start talking to them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Other people just change their hairstlye or fashion and can pass unrecognized.

A philosophical question on that tangent: If one is created in one's "perfect form", would that mean the idealized versions of ourselves, or perfectly healthy bodies?

The two are distinctly different, especially, for example, for transexual or intersexual people.

generalgrog wrote:
maybe the question is the wrong one then. What I was trying to get at was. "What has influenced a person to not believe in a god or God". Some people have answered honestly in that they do not believe in a god or God because said god or God has no evidence(in their eyes) of existing..

This is what I was trying to get sirlynch to admit to but he didn't play fair...the point I was trying to make is that just because a god or God has no scientific evidence does not mean this god or God does not exist. I can't see gravity but I see the effects, I can't see magnetism but I can see the effects.

Well, we can actually see magnetism via photons, and can hypothetically see gravitation, but that's beside the point.

What you're getting at is problematic because we get into a debate about the nature of evidence. Some people see a puppy and consider that puppy, and their emotional response to it, to be evidence of God. Others see the same thing and see it as evidence of a puppy, and evidence of emotions. Basically you're running face first into Occam's razor. Honestly though, that's fine if you're taking God's existence on faith, the problems arise when you start trying to equate your faith with the beliefs of people using the Razor.

And the religious aren't the only people that run into this. Neo-Platonists that still cling to Forms have the same problem, so do Kantians with an affinity for the categorical imperative. And really any philosopher that isn't a fairly strict positivist.

You are right though, the absence of evidence isn't the evidence of absence, but that doesn't really capture the notion that I think you were initially arguing for, which is that atheism is a religion or belief system.

generalgrog wrote:
I used the example of the flat earth, which of course people missed the point. It was a veiwpoint by much of western society that the earth was flat. If someone had said... you know the earth is really spherical. The sirlynches of the day could just say...I choose not to believe in a sphere because you haven't proven to me that it is spherical. All you have to do is look at the horizon and see the edge of the earth! So in this persons mind they are right when they are really wrong.

The problem you run into here is that the idea that the Earth was flat wasn't widespread in the educated class. Basically, the people who couldn't think abstractly, beyond their experience, thought the world was flat. Everyone else was educated, and knew the horizon wasn't the edge of the Earth because the spices you were using in your food probably came from India and China.

generalgrog wrote:
athiesm does not exist in a vacuum, there are ideas, dogmas, and faith involved, which lead people to take that position.

Ideas, sure. Dogma and faith, no. And even then the ideas involved are basically the fundamental tenets of rational thought, most prominently the idea that things must be proven to exist in order to be treated as existing.

Melissia wrote:A philosophical question on that tangent: If one is created in one's "perfect form", would that mean the idealized versions of ourselves, or perfectly healthy bodies?

The two are distinctly different, especially, for example, for transexual or intersexual people.

The best answer I can give to that is the form God means us to have as his sons and daughters.

generalgrog wrote:

dogma wrote:

generalgrog wrote:
This.

Carbon-14 dating is not that reliable, in that you can date freshly dead animals to over 1,000's of years old. Also it isn't fully understood how a "flood event" may have changed the environment.

Again assumptions of uniformatarianism must be relied on to fully accept radiocarbon and or radiometric dating.

Really? This argument again?

If you don't accept radiometric dating as valid evidence, then you effectively cannot accept any attempt at creation "science" because you are abrogating your ability to prove that Earth is only 6,000 years old.

Beyond that, carbon dating isn't a simple matter of assuming a constant rate of decay. The process of calibration tests against the strata in which a subject is found, which is dated by other methods in order to normalize for carbon content in the atmosphere. The whole idea that you can date an animal corpse as being thousands of years old is based in the failure of uneducated people to understand the distinction between raw BP years, and calibrated years.

Oh, and while it is an assumption to presume a constant rate of radioactive decay, there is no evidence, at all, to suggest it varies but a mountain of evidence to suggest that it doesn't.

generalgrog wrote:The fact that a simple question like "Why don't you believe in XXX" will not be answered is quite telling.

Athiests avoid this question because they know that it gets to the heart of the their belief system, and they do not want to admit that they use faith. They like to think themselves superior to people of faith because athiests are in denial themselves about the quantity of faith they have in Science and philosophy.

Again... athiesm does not exist in a vacuum.

Your entire argument is predicated on the assumption that atheism is a belief system. Its fine to argue from a presumed position if that presumption is supported in the course of the argument, but the initial question "Why don't you believe in God?", in this context, automatically places belief, and the absence of belief, on equal footing; which is incorrect. You are begging the question.

You do not need a reason to not believe in something. You need a reason to believe in something, at least if the belief is rational. I need no reason to not believe in God, or not believe that any evidence offered is evidence that God exists. You need a reason to believe in God, and you need a reason to believe that any evidence offered is evidence that God exists. The same is true if "God" is replaced with "cat".

maybe the question is the wrong one then. What I was trying to get at was. "What has influenced a person to not believe in a god or God". Some people have answered honestly in that they do not believe in a god or God because said god or God has no evidence(in their eyes) of existing..

This is what I was trying to get sirlynch to admit to but he didn't play fair...the point I was trying to make is that just because a god or God has no scientific evidence does not mean this god or God does not exist. I can't see gravity but I see the effects, I can't see magnetism but I can see the effects.

I used the example of the flat earth, which of course people missed the point. It was a veiwpoint by much of western society that the earth was flat. If someone had said... you know the earth is really spherical. The sirlynches of the day could just say...I choose not to believe in a sphere because you haven't proven to me that it is spherical. All you have to do is look at the horizon and see the edge of the earth! So in this persons mind they are right when they are really wrong.

athiesm does not exist in a vacuum, there are ideas, dogmas, and faith involved, which lead people to take that position.

GG

I answered all those questions, you are just incapable of reading my whole posts, or are just ignoring my points. You consistently tell me what I believe, then when I and others correct you, you still say the same nonsense. now here you are lying again about what I have been saying, and bearing false witness against me. tsk tsk, some christian you are and when you're so sure you're being watched by a god.

I accept theories that have testable, provable, useful, and predictable results, you're god has none of these. Nor have you offered any evidence for which god you believe in, or made any case for believing in him. Natural laws can explain the universe, how life formed on our planet, and how life evolved to what it is today. So what need is there for some unnatural god? your god exists outside of nature, he is therefore unnatural. So please show me how yours is the right god, and not any of the others I listed. You just hope you have the right one, how could you ever be sure based on the long list of gods.

You are just worshiping another in a long line of pagan gods. and funny you mention the flat earth as quite a few of your fellow christians still believe the earth is still flat based on the bible. I like this quote of yours "So in this persons mind they are right when they are really wrong." Are you projecting here?

for the last time what I do believe, leads me to reject all unnatural claims, and any claims that can not be proven. ergo I do not accept any notion of god. not the other way around. I see no more reason to worship any god you claim is real over the list of others you also reject. or do you believe in all those other gods?

if you want to believe in any god, that's up to you, go ahead and teach it to your kids. Just don't be pushing your unfounded beliefs into public schools, passing your dogma off as secular laws, and don't be telling me what I believe.

Melissia wrote:A philosophical question on that tangent: If one is created in one's "perfect form", would that mean the idealized versions of ourselves, or perfectly healthy bodies?

The two are distinctly different, especially, for example, for transexual or intersexual people.

Its a hand wave that amounts to a statement of "Whatever you are, you are." but with some pretty language attached.

Too bad these discussions always turn into confrontational "You believe/don't believe in this, so I'm going to ridicule you for it because this is the Internet" situations. From what I've observed, neither parties here(in some cases, anyway) seem to be representing their camps very well(mostly on the non-deist side).

R-S, who is ridiculing whom? Are you planning to contribute to the thread, or just make negative characterizations of the participants?

Mannahnin wrote:R-S, who is ridiculing whom? Are you planning to contribute to the thread, or just make negative characterizations of the participants?

What prompted the post was sirlynchmob's most recent comment.