Atheist vs Theist

Discussion in 'Debates & Contests' started by DennisTate, Mar 22, 2017.

  1. usfan

    usfan Banned

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    Universal morality fits better in thr 'God' model, than the 'no God' one.

    Why would human beings, from all over the globe, throughout history, share a common sense of natural law?

    If you posit 'Goddidit!', it fits. If you say 'nuthindidit!', why is this universal morality there?

    Combine that with all the other factors, and atheism becomes just another indoctrinated religious belief.

     
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  2. yasureoktoo

    yasureoktoo Banned

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    No, atheism is a term that would not even exist, if people didn't invent Gods.
    There is no indoctrination,
    There are no beliefs.
    They simply don't believe you, when you speak of a magic man in the clouds.
     
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  3. usfan

    usfan Banned

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    That's more like it!

    Who needs a dumb rational debate, anyway? Christians vs Atheists flame wars, THAT is what everyone wants! ..not the boring blatherings from philosophers! ;)

    :rock_slayer:
     
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  4. Derideo_Te

    Derideo_Te Well-Known Member

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    As our scientific knowledge base grows the space left for the "god of the gaps" shrinks.

    The GROWTH of scientific knowledge is happening on a DAILY BASIS all around the world.

    Since there is ZERO growth when it comes to imaginary theist deities they are now on a path heading towards becoming an endangered species.

    Worth noting that something on the order of 99.9% of all deities have already gone EXTINCT.

    Being incapable of ADAPTING to the CHANGING COGNITIVE ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS that new scientific knowledge is bringing about it is little wonder that the only remaining deity is following the same extinction path as all of the preceding deities.
     
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  5. Bluesguy

    Bluesguy Well-Known Member Donor

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    It is a perfectly reasonable question to ask.

    What morals do you believe that as a Christian you hold that I as an atheist do not share? How about a reasonable answer?
     
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  6. Bluesguy

    Bluesguy Well-Known Member Donor

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    Because it is of great benefit in a civil society and it is not so common as we have some very different beliefs than say Iran or NK or Nazi Germany.
     
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  7. Bluesguy

    Bluesguy Well-Known Member Donor

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    I have given you rational and logical and reasoned and civil debate and you run away from it.
     
  8. yasureoktoo

    yasureoktoo Banned

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    I have to strongly disagree.
    Some religions are good, some are pure evil.
    What will send you to heaven in one, can send you to hell in another.

    There is no "Universal morality" in religion.
     
  9. edna kawabata

    edna kawabata Well-Known Member

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    There is a universal "morality". It is social behavior that allows/enables the species to prosper. Immoral or amoral behavior hinders or prevents the species from prospering.

    Gods help humans to prosper by increasing social bonding, policing aberrant behavior and codifying mores. That is why we still have gods. It is built in.
     
  10. yasureoktoo

    yasureoktoo Banned

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    some Gods do, others are pure evil.
     
  11. edna kawabata

    edna kawabata Well-Known Member

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    Then the humans following it do not "prosper" and eventually their line dies. Evolution continue....
     
  12. yasureoktoo

    yasureoktoo Banned

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    Humans have been around for a long time, some prospered some didn't.
    That hardly an evaluation.

    Islam prospers from the robbing of others, and it will take a nuclear war to stop it.
     
  13. edna kawabata

    edna kawabata Well-Known Member

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    Weird. All Moslims need nuked?
     
  14. yasureoktoo

    yasureoktoo Banned

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    Muslims are the by product.

    Islam is the problem
     
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  15. DarkDaimon

    DarkDaimon Well-Known Member

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    I think I'll jump in here. So I'm the defense attorney in a murder case and instead of of claiming my client didn't do it, I want to show that the murder victim doesn't exist. This would actually kind of a false equivalence if there was a body and relatives of the victim, but's that's not what theism offers, does it? A closer analogy is if the prosecution DIDN'T have a body and no one remembers ever seeing the victim. Then it would be totally on the prosecution to prove not only that this person existed, but that a murder even took place. If the prosecution had the same amount of evidence that the theists have for the existence of God, it would never even have gone to court.

    Also, have you ever heard of Russel's teapot? Look it up, it is an interesting view on disproving the unprovable.
     
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  16. xwsmithx

    xwsmithx Well-Known Member

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    You're trying to shift the burden of evidence once again, this time by flipping my example. Once again, if you wish to show that God does not exist, it's not enough to say there's no evidence, you must demonstrate that God does not exist. As I wrote, believers have plenty of what they call evidence. That their evidence doesn't convince you is irrelevant to their belief. If you wish to convince them, you must show contrary evidence. Of which you have none. It's as if you were the defense attorney in a criminal case folding your arms and saying, "There's no evidence." If that's your case, you lose.

    Here's a good explication of why both sides have a burden of proof in the God/no God debate:

    https://strangenotions.com/who-has-the-burden-of-proof-when-discussing-god/
     
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  17. xwsmithx

    xwsmithx Well-Known Member

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    I am a former believer, now atheist, who still believes in the social value of Christianity, so I will be arguing against both sides in this post.

    Psychopaths don't have this. Is that evidence that God does not exist?

    Actually, morality varies considerably from place to place and over time. Cannibalism, child sacrifice, pedophilia, homosexuality, and public nudity have all been justified and condemned in the name of religion. About the only immorality that was never condemned by any religion is one we have stamped out in the name of Christianity, namely slavery. Is that evidence that God does not exist?

    But for most of human history, the gods were dark, malevolent beings who dealt death at a whim, who caused earthquakes and floods, killing the innocent without regard. The spiritual dimension originated with the urge to explain natural phenomena, to explain death. To a large extent, the remnants of Christianity today are still the urge to explain death, to explain what happens after death. The creation of a single, all-powerful, and benevolent deity first occurred with the Jews about 6,000 years ago, while humanity has been around for something like 300,000-500,000 years.

    Cultural programming. Chinese people raised in Confucianism don't cry out to Confucius for assistance when they are in mortal peril, much less God.

    A true conception of the vastness of the universe would impress upon your mind that you are smaller than a microbe in the ocean compared to the size of the universe, and yet you expect the creator of this reality to take a personal interest in your life. Now that's far-fetched.

    Various studies have shown that exactly this happens when you tell them God does not exist and/or that free will is an illusion. Without a fear of the consequences, or without a belief that people are in control of their consequences, people act much less morally than otherwise.

    Can be, yes, necessarily are, no. But I have a follow up question for you: on what basis do you determine what is moral and ethical if there is no supreme lawgiver (and therefore no supreme law) by which to judge? Isn't it the case that if God does not exist, there are no moral and ethical absolutes? There are only local opinions on what is or is not moral, and no one can say for certain that Christians are right and Muslims are wrong or vice versa. Is that not so? How can you condemn slavery, pedophilia, and the repression of women in Muslim society if you have no greater claim to morality than your own opinion?

    Without knowing what your moral beliefs are, it's impossible to answer this question, but just going by your atheism, I'm guessing that condemnation of homosexuality would be a good possibility. Condemnation of abortion is another.

    Ummm, the Bible? He made an appearance 2000 years ago and multiple people testified to that fact. That is a documented and recorded visit by God to our planet. He made multiple proofs of his divinity for all to see.

    Awww, I like my boring blatherings.

    You seem to be unaware of the reality on the ground. While Christianity is in retreat, a much darker, more repressive, and uncompromising theology is on the march. Islam is growing by leaps and bounds and threatens freedom and science everywhere it exists. God, Christianity, Western Civilization, and white people may be endangered species, but the god of Islam is alive and well and spreading rapidly.
     
  18. Derideo_Te

    Derideo_Te Well-Known Member

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    You are making the erroneous assumption that I was only referring to a single religion. I referred to the single deity worshiped by 3 different religions. When that deity is gone that accounts for more than half of all humanity.
     
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  19. xwsmithx

    xwsmithx Well-Known Member

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    Allah is not the same god as the God of the Jews and Christians. But regardless, Allah isn't disappearing.

    "Muslims will grow more than twice as fast as the overall world population between 2015 and 2060 and, in the second half of this century, will likely surpass Christians as the world’s largest religious group.

    While the world’s population is projected to grow 32% in the coming decades, the number of Muslims is expected to increase by 70% – from 1.8 billion in 2015 to nearly 3 billion in 2060. In 2015, Muslims made up 24.1% of the global population. Forty-five years later, they are expected to make up more than three-in-ten of the world’s people (31.1%).

    The main reasons for Islam’s growth ultimately involve simple demographics. To begin with, Muslims have more children than members of the seven other major religious groups analyzed in the study. Muslim women have an average of 2.9 children, significantly above the next-highest group (Christians at 2.6) and the average of all non-Muslims (2.2). In all major regions where there is a sizable Muslim population, Muslim fertility exceeds non-Muslim fertility.

    The growth of the Muslim population also is helped by the fact that Muslims have the youngest median age (24 in 2015) of all major religious groups, more than seven years younger than the median age of non-Muslims (32)."
    http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...e-the-worlds-fastest-growing-religious-group/
     
    Last edited: Nov 6, 2018
  20. Derideo_Te

    Derideo_Te Well-Known Member

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    Islam is not anti-science!

    “Seeking knowledge is compulsory on every Muslim.”

    “wisdom is the lost property of the believer.”

    “whoever follows a path seeking knowledge, Allah will make his path to paradise easy.”
     
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  21. Bluesguy

    Bluesguy Well-Known Member Donor

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    We do so as a civil society and yes morality and ethics vary regionally and historically. Slavery was once moral and ethical.
     
  22. DarkDaimon

    DarkDaimon Well-Known Member

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    I am talking scientific evidence, not hearsay, God in the gap fallacies, and ancient books of dubious origins. If theist were to try and prove that God exists in a court of law, they would fail. In fact, I don't think you understand how courts of law work. If I was a defense attorney, I would not even have to say "There's no evidence" as being the defense, it would be up to the prosecution to provide the evidence. But I digress.

    The reason the burden of proof falls on the theist is that when we are born, we have no concept of a god. The concept of a god is taught to us. For most of us, it is taught at such an early age that we don't even realize that we were born without it. However, if someone was never taught the concept of a god, why would they have to disprove something that they were never even exposed to?

    I have never tried to convince any theist there is no God. I have merely asked for proof that their god exists when they have tried to tell me I am going to burn forever for not believing in their god, when they try to force their god on me through our laws, or try to force their god into science.

    Finally, don't expect me to take an article about the burden of proof seriously if it is from a theistic website, as I will immediately believe there is bias.
     
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  23. xwsmithx

    xwsmithx Well-Known Member

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    You obviously know less than nothing about Islam. Everything Mohammed said is considered to be "gospel" truth, and Mohammed said the earth was flat and the sun sets in a mud puddle. Denying this makes you an infidel worthy of death.

    From a long list of depressing statistics on the Muslim world and higher education, there's this: "No major invention or discovery has emerged from the Muslim world for well over seven centuries now.
    . . .
    No Muslim leader has publicly called for separating science from religion."
    https://wikiislam.net/wiki/Muslim_Statistics_-_Science


    So you admit that there's zero reason to value your morality over that of the Muslims, the Aztecs, or the Canaanites in the absence of the Christian God.

    Your argument is specious because when you are born, you have no concept of anything. You wouldn't know what a chair is unless someone taught it to you. As for scientific evidence, your (and others') claim is that God only exists in the gaps of scientific knowledge. If you could prove God scientifically, he would cease to be an independent actor with a will and become just a predictable part of nature. The only way to prove God's existence is with things that are unexplainable, and if it's unexplainable, then it's unprovable, too. If you could duplicate the experiment, it would become predictable and explainable. You're asking for the existence of a logical impossibility, like a round square or an index of all indices that do not include themselves. A scientifically provable God is not within the realm of possibility.

    I was a lawyer, I know very well how courts work. The theists have presented a case for the existence of God but you present no case for the nonexistence of God, so again, you lose. This is very simple stuff, I don't know why you don't get it.

    I suggest you read something before deciding there is bias, or else you're just showing your bias. I know Vox articles are going to be far left trash, but I still read them just to see if they have any good points to make. I don't let my bias determine what I read.
     
  24. Bluesguy

    Bluesguy Well-Known Member Donor

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    Not at all. Are you admitting that were it not for some alleged supernatural being threatening you you'd be out raping and murdering people?
     
    Last edited: Nov 6, 2018
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  25. DarkDaimon

    DarkDaimon Well-Known Member

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    So let's take this theoretical child and never show them or tell him/her about a chair until the child is about 5 years old and then tell them that there is a piece of furniture called a chair. Now at that point, the child can decide to believe or not in chairs. But if you couldn't supply any evidence that chairs exist, would the burden of proof fall on the child?

    Just because something is unexplainable, does not mean that it is the work of a god, it just means that we just can't explain it yet. This is called the argument from ignorance fallacy and saying that I should except what is a logically impossibility as possible is... well, illogical.

    I'm getting this feeling that much that you say is not always, completely, factual.

    Oh well, I'm not here to win anything, I'm just educating.
     
    Last edited: Nov 7, 2018
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