Atheism is false

[Tiassa]

Do not presume to know better than God

This whole theistic vice is more ridiculous than Anselm.

In the meantime, theists ought to realize what they're about with this silly quest to prove the existence of God:

"The Babel fish," said The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy quietly, "is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy not from its carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.

"Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindboggingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.

"The argument goes something like this: 'I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, 'for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'

"'But,' says Man, 'The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'

"'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanished in a puff of logic.

"'Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

"Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys, but that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his best-selling book Well That About Wraps It Up For God.

"Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation."

(Adams)

In proving the existence of God, you will destroy faith. Which is fine with me, but if God wanted to be known, God would be known.

Do not presume to know better than God. Because if you're right and God exists, pretty much every mythology suggests that God is displeased by humans presuming to know better than It.

Especially the one in the Bible. Eden and the Tower of Babel come to mind. There was the time God repented of Saul's kingship; apparently Saul thought he knew better than God. I'm pretty sure there are more examples.

Really, seriously, you're embarrassing yourselves with this quest.
____________________

Notes:

Adams, Douglas. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. See http://flag.blackened.net/dinsdale/dna/book1.html

See Also:

St. Anselm. Proslogium. See http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/anselm-proslogium.html

 

[lightgigantic]

This whole theistic vice is more ridiculous than Anselm.

In the meantime, theists ought to realize what they're about with this silly quest to prove the existence of God:



In proving the existence of God, you will destroy faith. Which is fine with me, but if God wanted to be known, God would be known.

actually proving the existence of god installs one with the necessary faith to apply oneself to god's instructions ... which is all about how god is known

 

[PsychoticEpisode]

actually proving the existence of god installs one with the necessary faith to apply oneself to god's instructions ... which is all about how god is known

You won't need faith if God is proven. Unless your talking about the act of proving? Then God's instructions are meaningless. If god remains unproven then you really know nothing about Him.

You sure you're not one of the kids speaking in the Jesus Camp video?

 

[lightgigantic]

You won't need faith if God is proven. Unless your talking about the act of proving? Then God's instructions are meaningless. If god remains unproven then you really know nothing about Him.

You sure you're not one of the kids speaking in the Jesus Camp video?

I am talking about the act of proving - and it holds for all grades of acquired knowledge- eg :generally a person knows something about atoms before they get down to the nitty gritty of verifying them

 

[kaneda]

First of all: what is the point of calling yourselves "atheists", like you have a personal revenge or something with the notion of theism...

there are a lot of people who don't believe in ghosts but I don't see them calling themselves "Aghostists"... and I also don't see "Agoblinists" or "Amickey-mouseists"... so why do you specifically associate yourselves with the denial of deities ?! It's not an idea you know…it's just a rejection of one idea…

The definition of atheism is:

The denial of the existence of a god or gods (positive atheism).
or the lack of belief in the existence of a god or gods (negative atheism)

The negative atheists are agnostics, but they don't know that... so anybody who believes in negative atheism should stop calling themselves atheists; you are agnostics and not atheists!

Atheism (positive atheism), is a very feeble creed and it is identical to theism in that they both use rationalism (mere reason) to assure positive facts! I've never seen any material or logical evidence that denies the existence of A god. Those are unattainable, and it's irrational to believe that you can prove the non-existence of something that doesn't exist! How would you ever do that!

I know that it's easy to proof that the Christian or Islamic Gods don't exist, but this is not a proof against the existence of ANY god, which what the definition of atheism states…

So it's clear how the definition of atheism is corrupt, and the designation of it is pointless… it should really be abolished from describing irreligious people…

I don't like the word agnostic either, because it is too doesn't have any sense; it means that I don't know! Well, I prefer to associate myself with something that I know or something that I don't deny instead!

[ad hominem deleted]

The definition of a christian/muslim is someone who denies all the thousands of other gods that have existed and only believes in the one god. Atheists just believe in one less god that christians or muslims.

 

[kaneda]

actually proving the existence of god installs one with the necessary faith to apply oneself to god's instructions ... which is all about how god is known

Anyone who thinks they can prove god is either deluded or certifiable. In many thousands of years, none of the hundreds of religions has ever managed to prove a god exists.

Why do you think religions are called FAITHS? You take everything on faith as in NO-FACTS. :shrug:

 

[lightgigantic]

Anyone who thinks they can prove god is either deluded or certifiable. In many thousands of years, none of the hundreds of religions has ever managed to prove a god exists.

never encountered a normative/prescriptive description in scripture?

Why do you think religions are called FAITHS? You take everything on faith as in NO-FACTS. :shrug:

ditto above

 

[kaneda]

lightgigantic. Scripture is empty words, not backed up by history, science or common-sense.

 

[lightgigantic]

lightgigantic. Scripture is empty words, not backed up by history, science or common-sense.

for persons who lie outside normative/prescriptive descriptions, yes, certainly

 

[SkinWalker]

Kaneda, I think you'll find that "normative" and "prescriptive" are LG's new post-modernist buzz words.

I think he means rules for living, though, I've yet to see where he actually defines what he means -though he may have since I rarely read what LG has to say to begin with. I just cannot stand the intellectual dishonesty of post-modernist mumbo-jumbo, so I only get about one or two lines into his posts.

If LG does mean something akin to "rules for living" with his post-modernist terminology, then one is left to wonder why he doesn't consider that religious mythology isn't simply informed by the taboos and norms of the culture that wrote them. Indeed, most of the "rules for living" outlined in religious mythology have little bearing on modern society and are woefully out-dated -most were established when the wheelbarrow was considered emerging technology.

 

[spidergoat]

lightgigantic. Scripture is empty words, not backed up by history, science or common-sense.

I would not go that far. There are always deeper non-literal meanings for those who seek it.

 

[SkinWalker]

I can agree with that.

 

[davewhite04]

Not to confuse the issue even more, but I believe that Jesus described a kind of negative atheism, and his concept of God was more like Gnosticism, Pantheism, or Taoism than modern Christianity.

On what grounds do you believe that Jesus' concept of God was more like Gnosticism, Pantheism, or Taoism than modern Christianity?

 

[spidergoat]

Well, the way he talked about God seemed to be as a metaphor. He said the kingdom of heaven was all around us, as if a kind of enlightenment would be required to realize his message. He did not concentrate on the modern Christian message of worshipping a personified creator. His creator was more like Hinduism, all around us, a metaphor for the self-organizing nature of existence.

 

[Cris]

Hani,

I believe that there is not a ball in the box.

I do not believe that there is a ball in the box.

This is not a good analogy to the definitions for atheist. In the second statement there is no justification unless there is some other preceding qualification for why the box could not contain a ball. In this case it is equaly credible for the box to either contain a ball or not. This is not the case with theist claims where credibility is the key issue.

There is a key distinction between belief and disbelief that many do not see and why so many are confused by the atheist positions.

One is a conviction that something is true and the other is a doubt. Disbelief in a proposition is not the same as belief that the proposition is false. I.e. disbelief is not equal to a belief of falsity.

Disbelief is effectively stating that one does not find the proposal convincing, it does not attempt to assert that the proposal is false, and is more like saying "I really don't know that what you are saying is true or not but it seems unlikely and doesn't seem credible."

 

[lightgigantic]

Kaneda, I think you'll find that "normative" and "prescriptive" are LG's new post-modernist buzz words.

I think he means rules for living, though, I've yet to see where he actually defines what he means -though he may have since I rarely read what LG has to say to begin with. I just cannot stand the intellectual dishonesty of post-modernist mumbo-jumbo, so I only get about one or two lines into his posts.

If LG does mean something akin to "rules for living" with his post-modernist terminology, then one is left to wonder why he doesn't consider that religious mythology isn't simply informed by the taboos and norms of the culture that wrote them. Indeed, most of the "rules for living" outlined in religious mythology have little bearing on modern society and are woefully out-dated -most were established when the wheelbarrow was considered emerging technology.

actually you illustrate a good reason why choosing to opt for "normative/prescriptive" descriptions is better than "rules for living"

the later is simply offers you an opportunity to press forward with cultural issues of technology rather than states of being

For instance its not clear how the presence/absence of wheelbarrows impacts a persons susceptibility to lust/wrath/envy/etc

:shrug:

 

[iceaura]

actually proving the existence of god installs one with the necessary faith to apply oneself to god's instructions ... which is all about how god is known

If failure to prove the existence of God meant that one lacked the faith to apply oneself to one's chosen religion's instructions, we'd be missing a lot of the trouble in this world.

 

[lightgigantic]

If failure to prove the existence of God meant that one lacked the faith to apply oneself to one's chosen religion's instructions, we'd be missing a lot of the trouble in this world.

actually I would agree with that

religion without philosophy is almost as useless as philosophy without a sense of the absolute

 

[Enterprise-D]

Kaneda, I think you'll find that "normative" and "prescriptive" are LG's new post-modernist buzz words.

Like back in the day when "epistemology" was the word-du jour Or later on with the asinine catch-phrase "dull matter".