To prove God not existing, atheists conflate God with invisible unicorns.
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Landau Roof
Registered Senior Member
Jeez! I'm already lost. Hows about you familiarize yourself with the formatting system of this forum. I don't feel like managing s well as I can. I don;t know what 'conflate' means. Is that something you do to two tires at the same time? And your question:
'Conflate' isn't a word that I know. I can't understand your urgency in saying 'right away', and why must these unicor
I think we may be on the same side, but you the way you just fling out nonsense, I can't really tell.
'Conflate' isn't a word that I know. I can't understand your urgency in saying 'right away', and why must these unicor
Landau Roof
Registered Senior Member
Sorry. Bad typing. I meant to say, "why must these unicorns be invisible?"
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This seems like a very strange claim, given that the history of religion is that those attempting to defend the existence of their deity make their deity into something like an invisible unicorn. Time after time, as more sophisticated philosophy and scientific discoveries poke holes in their claims, believers make their deity more and more removed from having definite properties.
Sure, but if someone asks you about a specific property of your deity, you will essentially remove that property, just like the invisible unicorn.
God, that's one of those words that everyone thinks everyone else knows what it means... yet no two people seem to define it the same way. So, you could start by defining the word.
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
Maybe some atheists do that. (Not all atheists are the brightest bulbs.)
But what atheists are typically doing with the 'invisible unicorns' analogy is responding to a bad theistic argument that says in effect:
Inability to prove that God doesn't exist means that it's reasonable to think that he does. (Certainly as reasonable as the atheist belief that he doesn't.)
The 'invisible unicorn' example, along with 'Russell's teapot' and other variants, are part of the counter-argument that there are no end of things, some of them quite ridiculous, whose existence we can't actually disprove. It certainly isn't reasonable to believe in the existence of all of those things.
Which in turn suggests that stronger epistemic justification is necessary. We need credible and positive reasons to believe in the existence of things. Noting that the existence of something can't be disproven is insufficient reason to believe in its reality.
Who needs credible and positive reasons to believe in the existence of things?
It is extremely rare that any atheist tries to prove gods do not exist. Usually, that is all in the imagination of or fabricated by the fanaticly faithful in order to pretend to prove gods do exist.
Most people need the approval of the consensus, before they can believe in things. If you had credible and positive reasons for anything, but the consensus herd was not aware, the herd will not believe not let you believe. Very few people wish to stand alone, outside the fence, where the herd does not graze, maintaining credible and positive reasons against the grain of the herd.
The atheist herd has its own barbed wired pen, beyond which they cannot roam, less the barrier hurt their hide and render their leather less valuable.
Christian doctrine says God is within you, not outside you. This is why those who look outside themselves for God, as a manifestation, will not find what they seek. This hint of being inside, means the experience of God will be generated internally; personal experience. These positive and credible data consistent with long standing traditions, is outside the bared wired fence of science, since this internal data does not follow the scientific method.
For example, if you had a dream, there is no way to prove the details that you witnessed in your dream. There are no tools to record, nor can this dream be reproduced by yourself or others, in the exact way. You may have witnessed positive and credible evidence of that dream, but it is outside method of science, where the herd grazes.
A more complex and life changing witness of God can still be positive and credible in the first person as a unique data set, but will not play in the third person for science so it can be reproduced. Dreams is the beginning outside the barbed wired fence where unique data is transmitted between people by faith not science.
Jesus also said this evil and adulterous generation looks for a sign, which is external data. But no sign will be given. The manifestations will occur within hearts and souls; neural matrix.
I think what you mean is this:
Prove that the nose on your face has nothing to with invisibility, other than it channels pneuma (air) not pneuma (Stoic "breath of life" conflated with Mesopotamian "breath of the gods" conflated with proto-Christian Mithraic "breath of fire" conflated with "fiery tongues" of the Pentecost conflated with "breath of Yahweh" conflated with the Christian Theos) which presumably is what you mean by "God".
But of course this has nothing to do with a nose which evolved from nares in fish.
But it goes to show how absurd it is to treat myth, legend and fable as factual narrative.
But more to the point: every conception of God is an artifact of fantasy.
Therefore God cannot possibly exist.
Landau Roof
Registered Senior Member
Talk about hijacking a thread to pursue your own agenda! How many 'conflations' was that? I count the one where you presume to know what the OP meant. Why connect noses with invisibility? If noses have nothing to do with invisibility, as you say later, why even bring them up?
There's a blanket statement if ever there was one. You decided that all by yourself, have you? And now you want to pass off your generalization as authoritative scientific thought?
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
You have a point; people do believe in things for bad reasons and for no reason at all.
I was thinking more along the lines of what constitutes sound and rational justification for believing in something.
Arguing that inability to disprove the existence of something means that believing in it is just as reasonable as not believing in it is a bad argument in my opinion. That's because there's a potentially limitless number of things that we can't disprove, some of them quite absurd (invisible unicorns, Russell's teapot, the flying spaghetti monster...) and it certainly isn't reasonable to believe in all of them.
Something more seems to be necessary. A case has to actually be made for the existence of whatever it is.
This thread hijacked itself by taking religious apologetics to heights of absurdity rarely seem, even here.
Posting rebuttal can only be construed as hijacking if it demolishes the OP. But I'll take that free shot. Thanks.
Ask a Christian. But hold their feet to the fire. Demand a full accounting of every syncretic influence that conflated ideas from the beginning of history. Otherwise you'll probably not understand me at all..
He said God. In plain English, that's assumed to be Theos until stated otherwise. That's the heritage of England. Blame it on their Roman conquerers. It's not my fault they caved in to Roman acculturation after they got their asses kicked. I'm just listing the facts relevant to the nutty OP, construed in plain English, until some convincing counter rebuttal comes along, which is unlikely.
Exactly.
Blame that on the OP. My post rebuts it. And yes, air is invisible whereas the rest of the pneuma as I discussed is entirely a fabrication of superstition, myth, legend and fable. At least in its original Stoic form it was reasonably plausible, to divide matter from, say, kinetic energy. Almost true physics.
In fact if you look at how and when physics split from metaphysics it almost looks like the Hellenized world didn't get that memo.
Hence the English God is -- what did Obama call himself ... a mongrel?
So the name of the English God is in Greek but not part of Greek culture (just the metaphor of Jesus as Socrates) and it alleges to arise in Judea but no Hebrew attests to it.
When we get around to deciding what it actually is, all of this has to be factored in. I'm not sure I see the relevance of invisible unicorns. I could live with, say, God the Invisible Cockerdoodle, understanding that it represents about a dozen ancient cultures all mashing their fantasies and lore together.
Those are my ideas. If you don't like them, I have more.
As an exercise you might try to prove that God exists anywhere other than in the imagination of superstitious minds. I might even dole that out as a penance if I could be Supreme Confessor of the Universe for a day.
In as much as neither can be proven, it seems an adequate analogy.
I prefer Russell's Teapot, as at least that has an immediate heritage behind it.
If you don't like the analogy, I suggest you show how the two are distinct in the aspect that is giving rise to it.
But it looks like the OP was a hit and run post... :/
Will he/she ever come back and join the "discussion" they started?
That's just a lie. You're getting sad.
Are you speaking to me? I don't understand.
First I couldn't figure out why you were heckling me. Then I noticed a prompt to "show ignored content". Then PhysBang's quote of wellwisher appeared. Aha. So the new site software spares us the indignity of seeing their drivel when quoted by another member.
Thanks for leading me to that discovery.
It also led me to it. I don't use Ignore so I didn't know either. When I tried Ignore, much as I'd like to not see some posts, it seemed to make the discussion unclear. Seems to me the quote thing does too. Maybe you can let me know. I guess otherwise Ignore is working well for you?
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