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Atheism/Existence of God Debates (Part 2)

Benny_Cake

Part one is here.

All debate/discussion regarding the existence of God should take place in this thread. Enjoy!

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Defender OF Faith

RikuoAmero wrote: »

Why else would you be here, if not to try and convince me of your faith?

Again more assumptions calming that any person who argues for a Creator is trying to convince you of his/her "Faith", not in my case anyway I am here to apply and test my logic & rational against those around to see which of us actually makes more sense & if atheism is really a choice based on rational and logic, this appears to be the only thread open on this debate which happens to be on a Christian forum.

RikuoAmero

Defender OF Faith wrote: »

Again more assumptions calming that any person who argues for a Creator is trying to convince you of his/her "Faith", I am here apply and test my logic & rational against those around to see which of us actually makes more sense.

You're a muslim. You believe only in a specific "flavor" of creator, and that this flavor is correct and true; that all other flavors are incorrect. When you argue in favour of a creator, you're inevitably going to try and argue in favour of your own, which automatically equals arguing in favour of your faith.

BMMachine

Defender OF Faith wrote: »

Again more assumptions calming that any person who argues for a Creator is trying to convince you of his/her "Faith", not in my case anyway I am here to apply and test my logic & rational against those around to see which of us actually makes more sense & if atheism is really a choice based on rational and logic, this appears to be the only thread open on this debate which happens to be on a Christian forum.

but what evidence do you have other than faith?

oh sorry, I forgot the "well you can't prove there is no God" line. I also can't prove that God isn't John Travolta.

Defender OF Faith

RikuoAmero wrote: »

You're a muslim. You believe only in a specific "flavor" of creator, and that this flavor is correct and true; that all other flavors are incorrect. When you argue in favour of a creator, you're inevitably going to try and argue in favour of your own, which automatically equals arguing in favour of your faith.

Am arguing using my faith not arguing for my faith..

marienbad

Defender OF Faith wrote: »

Again more assumptions calming that any person who argues for a Creator is trying to convince you of his/her "Faith", not in my case anyway I am here to apply and test my logic & rational against those around to see which of us actually makes more sense & if atheism is really a choice based on rational and logic, this appears to be the only thread open on this debate which happens to be on a Christian forum.

Might I ask what reasoning did you use in selecting the faith you did ?

RikuoAmero

Defender OF Faith wrote: »

Am arguing using my faith not arguing for my faith..

Howabout we just drop this for today and this evening I get back to answering your naturalistic questions?

Defender OF Faith

marienbad wrote: »

Might I ask what reasoning did you use in selecting the faith you did ?

Clearly not the topic of the thread nor is it wise of me to answer in such a forum without establishing the proper platform.

marienbad

Defender OF Faith wrote: »

Clearly not the topic of the thread nor is it wise of me to answer in such a forum..

Surely you are incorrect , it is central to the line the discussion has taken !

RikuoAmero

Defender OF Faith wrote: »

Clearly not the topic of the thread nor is it wise of me to answer in such a forum..

I can argue that it would be - you would have used some sort of reasoning to come to the conclusion that the muslim flavor of god is what exists and is correct over that of any other.

Defender OF Faith

marienbad wrote: »

Surely you are incorrect , it is central to the line the discussion has taken !

RikuoAmero wrote: »

I can argue that it would be - you would have used some sort of reasoning to come to the conclusion that the Muslim flavour of god is what exists and is correct over that of any other.

I understand where you could be coming from but the thread is titled "Atheism/Existence of God Debates" if I wish to discuss such a matter I will need to open a thread titled "The concept of God in Islam & Christianity" which brings us to the area of comparative religion and examination of the bible for the trinity, divinity of Jesus(pbuh),church teaching and doctrines then looking at God in the Qur'an/Hadith/ & prophet hood of Muhammed(pbuh) ex.... I am not very knowledge in the area of Comparative religion to take on this task or start such a thread, but I can tell you that it has nothing to do with this small clip you posted..

MrPudding

Defender OF Faith wrote: »

I understand where you could be coming from but the thread is titled "Atheism/Existence of God Debates" if I wish to discuss such a matter I will need to open a thread titled "The concept of God in Islam & Christianity" which brings us to the area of comparative religion and examination of the bible for the trinity, divinity of Jesus(pbuh),church teaching and doctrines then looking at God in the Qur'an/Hadith/ & prophet hood of Muhammed(pbuh) ex.... I am not very knowledge in the area of Comparative religion to take on this task or start such a thread, but I can tell you that it has nothing to do with this small clip you posted..

The thread is about the existence of god. Why you choose your particular belief could be very relevant to the discussion. Clearly you experienced something that convinced you of the existence of one of the may thousand of gods you could have chosen from. Not only that, but it seem likely, forgive me if I am wrong, that you believed in a different god/religion and then switched. Statistically, this is exceedingly rare and would imply something fairly serious in order for the change to be made. Again, this could be highly relevant to the debate.

If you think it merits a separate thread then please start one. Clearly you would not be able to start it in the Islamic forum, as any discussion which seem to question the veracity of your religion is not allowed there. Might I suggest the A&A forum where such a discussion might actually be possible.

MrP

ScumLord

Defender OF Faith wrote: »

From this example we can see that both men survived; one based on true belief and one based on false believe, hence both true belief and false belief can both lead to survival & if this is the case, if we look at this from a natural selection perspective there is no reason for the cognitive faculty to develop to lead to a sound and valid reasoning in other words true belief.

This is a misrepresentation of the facts though. Do it ten thousand times and see what happens. One experiment in isolation tells you zero. You need to do it thousands of times to get a valid statistical result.

Defender OF Faith wrote: »

You just claimed that you cannot do science, if your reason is unreliable for all you know 1+1 might = 5 and the whole laws of mathematics,physics and logic are unreliable as well, being the product of our unreliable reasoning..

You don't have to know the ins and out of science to know it works. We're surrounded by the evidence of it working. The computer you're using now wouldn't work if science wasn't mostly true (I say mostly because it's an ever adapting theory). The clothes you're wearing wouldn't have been so cheap. The food you're eating wouldn't have been grown and it wouldn't have flown halfway around the world to get to your plate.

Defender OF Faith

ScumLord wrote: »

This is a misrepresentation of the facts though. Do it ten thousand times and see what happens. One experiment in isolation tells you zero. You need to do it thousands of times to get a valid statistical result.

The conclusion remains that False belief can lead to survival just like true belief.

ScumLord wrote: »

You don't have to know the ins and out of science to know it works. We're surrounded by the evidence of it working. The computer you're using now wouldn't work if science wasn't mostly true (I say mostly because it's an ever adapting theory). The clothes you're wearing wouldn't have been so cheap. The food you're eating wouldn't have been grown and it wouldn't have flown halfway around the world to get to your plate.

Your deviating from my argument and that's based in Naturalism as to whether our cognitive faculties or reliable or not

Defender OF Faith

MrPudding wrote: »

The thread is about the existence of god. Why you choose your particular belief could be very relevant to the discussion. Clearly you experienced something that convinced you of the existence of one of the may thousand of gods you could have chosen from.
Not only that, but it seem likely, forgive me if I am wrong, that you believed in a different god/religion and then switched. Statistically, this is exceedingly rare and would imply something fairly serious in order for the change to be made. Again, this could be highly relevant to the debate.

If you think it merits a separate thread then please start one. Clearly you would not be able to start it in the Islamic forum, as any discussion which seem to question the veracity of your religion is not allowed there. Might I suggest the A&A forum where such a discussion might actually be possible.

Irrelevant to the thread really, once we accept the existence of a Creator we can discuss the logic behind him being a single Creator & that the concept of a "Thousands Gods" as being illogical and irrational.

From here on and for the sake of argument I will adopt a theistic position & you can ignore my faith.

[Deleted User]

Is that not patently circular? We must accept the existence of something in order to discuss the logic behind it's existence?

Let's abstract away the deity, can this be applied fairly elsewhere?

Defender OF Faith

Deleted User wrote: »

Is that not patently circular? We must accept the existence of something in order to discuss the logic behind it's existence?

Let's abstract away the deity, can this be applied fairly elsewhere?

No am not asking you to accept the "Existence" but rather accept that the best explanation for my argument is the presence of this "Existence". Once this is done we can move forward to prove this "Existence" but first I need to show the irrational and illogical side of atheism to make my argument for a Creator stronger.

I discussed this issue in my post so allow me to copy/paste:

"To remind you that in case you say "why should we accept this explanation since we don’t have an explanation for God?", however this will be overlooking the fact that the best explanation does not require an explanation.

In other words you cannot or should not reject God as an inference to the best explanation for consciousness on the basis that you may not have an explanation for God. The first thing that needs to be addressed is does God explain our advanced reasoning and cognitive faculty adequately? I believe he does, once you accept this then we can ask further questions.

Here’s an analogy to put things into perspective, imagine if there is a group of archaeologists digging on the moon; they find pieces of pottery, arrow heads, pieces of parchment and so on. Looking at these findings they conclude or infer that there must have been a civilization here. Now along comes Dr. Daniel Dennett and says “How dare you infer such a thing?! Who put this civilization here?! Unless we know who put this civilization here we cannot conclude that there was a civilization!”

This illustrates the point, you cannot reject the best explanation based on the fact that you may not have an explanation for that explanation because otherwise you may never have an explanation."

[Deleted User]

Can you understand that I might see the term god in the above post as a concise version of "the explanation for things we don't yet know" or "magical ignorance go-away-er"?

i.e the god of the gaps fallacy.

(Admittedly, I'm agnostic and not at all certain of the statement "there is no God" and so don't reject the possibility, just question the plausibility of a deity).

Defender OF Faith

Deleted User wrote: »

Can you understand that I might see the term god in the above post as a concise version of "the explanation for things we don't yet know" or "magical ignorance go-away-er"?

i.e the god of the gaps fallacy.

(Admittedly, I'm agnostic and not at all certain of the statement "there is no God" and so don't reject the possibility, just question the plausibility of a deity).

Your deviating from my argument as it was build from the perspective of Naturalism and natural selection and has little to do with what you mentioned.

marienbad

Defender OF Faith wrote: »

Your deviating from my argument as it was build from the perspective of Naturalism and natural selection and has little to do with what you mentioned.

Sorry but surely you don't get to set the parameters of the discussion ! How you made the choice to arrive at your beliefs is central to any meaningful conversation .

You can't say I arrived at point x and say from here on in but not before I want ye to demonstrate how logically God does not exist or whatever ! How you made that first leap is subject to the same rules as after is it not ?

MrPudding

It's like antisceptic just converted to islam.

MrP

ScumLord

Defender OF Faith wrote: »

The conclusion remains that False belief can lead to survival just like true belief.

Yes, if you do the experiment once there is a chance you might survive and a chance you might die. It tells you nothing essentially. That's why you run it thousands of times. There are a lot of human behaviours that you could call false beliefs. The benefit of humans believing something that isn't true is that it often keeps them away from danger. If you believe a water supply is cursed but in fact it's actually polluted the false belief has the same effect.

Your deviating from my argument and that's based in Naturalism as to whether our cognitive faculties or reliable or not

Human cognitive abilities aren't reliable, that's why we need the scientific method. Scientists are always trying to remove human bias from experiments.

Defender OF Faith

ScumLord wrote: »

Human cognitive abilities aren't reliable, that's why we need the scientific method. Scientists are always trying to remove human bias from experiments.

The scientific method depends on our cognitive abilities in the process of deduction imperialism and observation all of which depends on our reasoning and fair use of senses, if our cognitive abilities are unreliable we cannot trust any conclusion we come up with and all the laws and principles of physics,mathematics and science cannot be trusted since the source that generated them is unreliable.

[Deleted User]

Defender OF Faith wrote: »

Your deviating from my argument as it was build from the perspective of Naturalism and natural selection and has little to do with what you mentioned.

I'm a little confused to be honest.

I found your previous argument circular and so questioned if it was a case of special pleading.

Defender OF Faith wrote:

...once we accept the existence of a Creator we can discuss the logic behind him being a single Creator & that the concept of a "Thousands Gods" as being illogical and irrational.

Why must this happen first? How did you get to that stage? That looks like a "Therefore" without any argument preceding it to me.

Harika

Defender OF Faith wrote: »

The scientific method depends on our cognitive abilities in the process of deduction imperialism and observation all of which depends on our reasoning and fair use of senses, if our cognitive abilities are unreliable we cannot trust any conclusion we come up with and all the laws and principles of physics,mathematics and science cannot be trusted since the source that generated them is unreliable.

This depends on the source. A source that is inside of our brains is unreliable as there always will be different interpretations. While when we can use mathematics, physics and science to describe what happened, those information can be verified again and again and again.
Bill Nye, had a fantastic thought experiment here. Imagine all religion and all science is suddenly gone and forgotten, so we humans need to "re-invent" all this. What will be be the most likely outcome? Will we again find out that "if A implies B then not-B implies not-A", 1+1=2 and "E=mc2"? Those are true everywhere, here, in Australia, Mars, Andromeda and elsewhere.
So how does this look up for religion? We know of 5000 gods, that have been worshipped by humans, which of those will re-appear in this scenario? Will we see another split of the world in several big and smaller religions? Most likely, which ones it will be, we cannot predict.

Defender OF Faith

marienbad wrote: »

Sorry but surely you don't get to set the parameters of the discussion ! How you made the choice to arrive at your beliefs is central to any meaningful conversation.

You can't say I arrived at point x and say from here on in but not before I want ye to demonstrate how logically God does not exist or whatever ! How you made that first leap is subject to the same rules as after is it not ?

We will just continue going in circles if I answer questions not specifically related to my argument, please respond to my argument first before we move into any other discussion

Defender OF Faith

Deleted User wrote: »

I'm a little confused to be honest.

I found your previous argument circular and so questioned if it was a case of special pleading.

Why must this happen first? How did you get to that stage? That looks like a "Therefore" without any argument preceding it to me.

It has nothing to do with my argument unless you accept that the best explanation to account for our cognitive facility and reasoning is through a Creator, otherwise read my argument and prove me wrong.

marienbad

Defender OF Faith wrote: »

We will just continue going in circles if I answer questions not specifically related to my argument, please respond to my argument first before we move into any other discussion

I have zero interest in your argument .I am solely concerned with the world we all live in.

Defender OF Faith

Harika wrote: »

This depends on the source. A source that is inside of our brains is unreliable as there always will be different interpretations. While when we can use mathematics, physics and science to describe what happened, those information can be verified again and again and again.....

This was the only part relevant to my argument so I will respond accordingly:

"A source that's inside our brain is unreliable"
We use our "Unreliable" brain through the scientific method to arrive at the conclusion that the universe runs according to a universal set of laws and principles, In fact it was our "Unreliable" brain that produced these laws of mathematics and physics which again cannot be trusted being the product of a an "Unreliable brain/reasoning".

Defender OF Faith

marienbad wrote: »

I have zero interest in your argument .I am solely concerned with the world we all live in.

Then why did you come to such a thread or even responded to what I presented?

ScumLord

Defender OF Faith wrote: »

The scientific method depends on our cognitive abilities in the process of deduction imperialism and observation all of which depends on our reasoning and fair use of senses, if our cognitive abilities are unreliable we cannot trust any conclusion we come up with and all the laws and principles of physics,mathematics and science cannot be trusted since the source that generated them is unreliable.

First of all I think you mean "Empirical" not "imperial". :P

You're breaking it down to it's most basic level and then misinterpreting the whole process and what it's intended to achieve.

A scientist may observe something and come up with a theory, but then he has to come up with some way of proving it. They don't just observe something then fit a theory around their assumptions. Most the time all that scientists are doing is depriving things and being left with most likely scenarios.

Scientists do thousands of tests and let the data tell them the truth of the matter. So while human cognitive abilities have routines that can produce false assumptions science allows us to develop tools that counteract those routines and biases.

Physics and maths are much easier to defend because they're completely unbiased, they're simply a most basic language for representing basic data. There's no wiggle room with the number one, it can't be misinterpreted, it is what it is. We have the Islamic faith to thank for modern mathematics, and their system has been proved effective by being put into use in factories all over the world. If numbers were not exactly true we wouldn't be living in the world we live in.

But it's very odd to use the argument that the human mind is flawed so we shouldn't trust anything it comes up with against science, when science is quite clearly dedicated to removing human bias from experiments and religion demands you believe what some guy said. I don't think there's any religion that can say this text is directly written by god. Every holy book is a second hand account and we're just supposed to believe that the guys writing it knew what they were talking about.