Gods don't exist.

Talk about anything
User avatar
Cuadrix
Posts: 236
Joined: 07 May 2017, 08:26

Re: Gods don't exist.

04 Jun 2019, 17:50

I have also observed that you are looking things from the inner perspective (from behind the religious goggles), while I'm looking at what's actually happening on the surface.
An Ad hominem fallacy. Please refrain from using these types of "arguments", they are personal attacks and quite ofensive (much more so than the "generalizations" i was accused of).
An ad hominem, yes kinda. Personal attack? Offensive? Doesn't matter. What I said is true regardless of how offensive it might sound.
See, my overall goal here isn't to prove or disprove anyone's personal beliefs. My only goal when discussing with religious people is making them question their own way of thinking.
Atheism is not a neutral perspective. It is a fixed position: something that if hold onto as a belief, will subject you to a lot of premises. And if you do value the perspective from someone that has "switched sides" before, i will let you know that for about 3 years in my life i have defined myself as an atheist. Therefore i have seen the world from the perspective of an atheist and really, that is exactly why i think atheism is basically a sheer negation of almost everything around us (our reality and the way it presents itself to us) in a huge effort to support the preconceived view that everything is of a "purely mechanical" nature. Mathemathics, albeit clearly present in the workings of our universe, is by itself "inert" in the sense that it cannot produce our reality alone. Therefore, it is NOT alone.
Yes. Atheism is not a neutral perspective because it's not a perspective. It's only a word describing the lack of belief in deities. Since when was a lack of anything called a perspective?
But I guess you meant to say something like;"atheists perspective is not a neutral perspective". Still irrelevant.
There are people with various perspectives, whether the person is an atheist or a theist, some people's perspectives being more neutral than the others.
That being said; Atheists are generally more neutral than the theist counterpart. Why? Because ultimately the only thing hindering most of us atheists from believing in any of your religious peoples claims is; evidence. Anything goes, as long as it's actual evidence and not feelings, preaching and pseudo "evidence" that there are already countless of, like the below;
There were 12 apostles. All of them claimed to have witnessed Jesus performing many miracles, and they were with him basically the entire time during his ministry on earth (and for 40 days after he rose from the dead). That being said, all 12 apostles died in horrific ways exactly because of their faiths and all of them maintained to the very end that the teachings of Jesus were indeed true. If they were lieing, wouldn't at least one of them have admited to it before the prospect of death for their faiths?
And no, theists are definitely not more neutral when it comes to topics like this. Why again? Because all theists side with their own religious beliefs.
Every single deeply religious person looks at the world from behind the religious goggles, or should I simply say; Their own beliefs influence how they see and think of everything. (Yes, they are synonyms in this context). You could say the same about atheists, but again, most atheists are not atheists because they started believing in science, but because they questioned their own beliefs and found logical inconsistencies in their own beliefs, therefore they are not fully comparable in this context.

The only ones getting to call their perspective truly neutral when it comes to the topic of religion, are people who don't affiliate with them, or; people who don't view the world from behind their own beliefs. Yes, out of the two, atheists fit into this category far better, though there definitely are those who stray far from it.

You are talking about the genesis of religion as being purely the result of indoctrination, but this is not the case really. There are actually two ways through which people may come to believe in something: one is by having personal experiences and the other is by believing that the experiences others around us have reported may indeed be true........
That is true for some religious people, such as those who convert themselves. Converts are insignificant though, because their numbers are less than one percentile.
Also, what you are arguing in this context is; how majority of the religious people KEEP believing in their beliefs, not how they actually became religious.
It is an obvious fact, which I have already pointed out many times, that indoctrination is the cause of this. Maybe I should simplify myself?;
- Muslims are muslims because they were born in muslim society. Hindus are hindus because they were born in hindu society. Christians are christians because they were born in christian society.
- Indoctrination is the reason they become religious in these societies.
- Their experiences are what's keeping all of them in their current beliefs.
Denying this simple yet true observation is just pure ignorance in my opinion.

Whatever you say to the above, I'm just done with it. I ain't gonna be pointing out the obvious again, so let's instead talk about your beliefs:
How do you explain all the imperfections in your bible? Reasonably and with what you believe is your gods message, in mind?

Before you answer, I suggest to open up your mind even further by watching this video from Matt Dillahunty;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl2QVE_AA1A
Don't just skim through it. Watch and understand it, then present your argument.
User avatar
Gio
Posts: 1247
Joined: 30 Sep 2013, 10:54
Location: Brazil

Re: Gods don't exist.

04 Jun 2019, 20:51

Cuadrix wrote:
04 Jun 2019, 17:50
An ad hominem, yes kinda. Personal attack? Offensive? Doesn't matter. What I said is true regardless of how offensive it might sound.
See, my overall goal here isn't to prove or disprove anyone's personal beliefs. My only goal when discussing with religious people is making them question their own way of thinking.

:arrow: Questioning settled ways of thinking can be a good thing. I approve that idea and i think that it should apply to both sides. But being offensive is not a good way of doing this. A solid debate should rest on reasonable argumentation (hence why fallacies are a bad practice). A rhetorical approach that ignores this is prone to cause a lot of unnecessary heat.

Yes. Atheism is not a neutral perspective because it's not a perspective. It's only a word describing the lack of belief in deities. Since when was a lack of anything called a perspective?
But I guess you meant to say something like;"atheists perspective is not a neutral perspective". Still irrelevant.
There are people with various perspectives, whether the person is an atheist or a theist, some people's perspectives being more neutral than the others.
That being said; Atheists are generally more neutral than the theist counterpart. Why? Because ultimately the only thing hindering most of us atheists from believing in any of your religious peoples claims is; evidence. Anything goes, as long as it's actual evidence and not feelings, preaching and pseudo "evidence" that there are already countless of, like the below;
There were 12 apostles. All of them claimed to have witnessed Jesus performing many miracles, and they were with him basically the entire time during his ministry on earth (and for 40 days after he rose from the dead). That being said, all 12 apostles died in horrific ways exactly because of their faiths and all of them maintained to the very end that the teachings of Jesus were indeed true. If they were lieing, wouldn't at least one of them have admited to it before the prospect of death for their faiths?

:arrow: Measuring the avaiable evidences is a good exercise and it is something all reasonable men should learn to do. But then again, everyone measures avaiable evidences using their own metrics. Thus, some may conclude that the evidence is not enougth, while others may conclude that it is much more than enougth. Dawkins the atheist claimed a "900-foot talking jesus" was not enougth evidence for his own sake. That does tell you something about how skeptical a person can be, and which metrics they are probably applying to the available evidences. But is it even reasonable to be that skeptical? Or rather to use such a kind of distorted metrics? A simple exercise of thought should tell us that available evidences for any given phenomenom are not dependant on anyones personal tastes for convincing, hence why some people still believe to this day that the man never made it to the moon (or that elvis is alive, or that the earth is flat and so on).

The only ones getting to call their perspective truly neutral when it comes to the topic of religion, are people who don't affiliate with them, or; people who don't view the world from behind their own beliefs. Yes, out of the two, atheists fit into this category far better, though there definitely are those who stray far from it.

:arrow: Did you just claim that i meant to say something like;"atheists perspective is not a neutral perspective". and that this is irrelevant and then just actually proceeded to make a claim about atheists being a better fit for the "truly neutral perspective"?

I can definetly see you are considering your own arguments to hold much more weight than mine regardless of their content. Is that your "atheist neutrality" in effect? :lol:

Maybe you should check again the basis for your views on "neutrality of perspectives": According to at least one source, only 11% of the worlds population identifies as atheist. That means your "neutral" perspective is excluding 89% of the worlds population (very neutral indeed). It also means that according to your own metrics, all these 6.8 Billion people are nothing more than "non-neutral indoctrinated people that never bothered to question their beliefs".

I can only conclude that you must be thinking you are truly one of a kind; a blessed mind that shines the light of reason into this world of hopeless idiots. Makes me think of Kira, the personality embodied by Light Yagami in Death Note. Quite an extremist and yet claiming to be "neutral" :lol:

That is true for some religious people, such as those who convert themselves. Converts are insignificant though, because their numbers are less than one percentile.Also, what you are arguing in this context is; how majority of the religious people KEEP believing in their beliefs, not how they actually became religious.
It is an obvious fact, which I have already pointed out many times, that indoctrination is the cause of this. Maybe I should simplify myself?;
- Muslims are muslims because they were born in muslim society. Hindus are hindus because they were born in hindu society. Christians are christians because they were born in christian society.
- Indoctrination is the reason they become religious in these societies.
- Their experiences are what's keeping all of them in their current beliefs.

:arrow: All right. But where did you got this "less than one percentile" information from? Did you come up with it by using your superior neutrality? I found at least one source stating a very different scenario and presenting the sources to back their claims. And it says that your numbers and the idea that "people will simply follow the beliefs of their families" don't hold that well.

Also, christianity obviously had very small numbers in the beginnings of it, so even if we consider the rate of conversions to have declined a lot in the last century, it was clearly much more than 1% for at least a part of the last ~2000 years. Conversions are obviously not insignificant.

Denying this simple yet true observation is just pure ignorance in my opinion.

Yes, aand a lack of neutrality. aaand the product of indoctrination. AAAAND a lack of mathematical knowledge! (obvious irony).

Oh, and by the way, did you liked the change in tone in the last arguments? I based it on your ideas here:

An ad hominem, yes kinda. Personal attack? Offensive? Doesn't matter. What I said is true regardless of how offensive it might sound.

Prove me wrong and avoid the heat now. Cheers! :beer:

Whatever you say to the above, I'm just done with it. I ain't gonna be pointing out the obvious again, so let's instead talk about your beliefs:
How do you explain all the imperfections in your bible? Reasonably and with what you believe is your gods message, in mind?

:arrow: Interesting question. The answer is: I don't. I may have some ideas about particular subjects, but i certainly am not "all-knowing of all the truth". Regarding the idea of explaining the whole of the bible, you should know that lots of people have invested their whole lives to try and explain the whole of the bible, and the way i see it, they have not finished that task yet. In fact, that is not even a task i even think a man can perfectly finish: there are many questions simply not covered by the bible itself and some of them were even been brought by the text itself as if challenging the reader. Besides, we are all humans and we have limits in our capacity of interpretation. That all being said, i am also not necessarily in line with the most extremist versions of the sola scriptura doctrine (which is the view that you seem to have guessed to be present in my mind).

In reality, i think a book (or books), or even a whole collection of them with thousands of pages, cannot fully explain the essence of a being, let alone a being that would fit the idea of a god. Besides, you should also know (if you have been a theist and a christian) that bible scholars usually divide the books of the bible according to a distinction in the nature of their content. In the old testament, in example, some books are considered historical books, while others are considered poethical books, and others are perhaps considered books of "the law". In the new testament also, we have many epistles, which are somewhat like letters writen by the apostles. If this were not enougth, you should also know that Hermeneutics is a very broad subject, whose implications are felt not only in biblical scripture but also even in the study of the mundane law.

A single article in a mundane law can quickly shift it's meaning depending on whether you are considering more important to think of it as "how the author intended the text to mean" OR "how the text should be interpreted considering the views of current society" OR "how the text should be interpreted considering the views of the society in the time the article was written" OR EVEN "how the text should be interpreted according to the most faithful interpretation of the views of the constitution or the will of the founding fathers".

But why are you interested in my religious views and beliefs? Did you really thought i would be able to answer all your questions? Did you thought i would hold to know everything? Maybe you forgot what i said about the idea of pondering about deep theological concepts in a search for spiritual evolution.
User avatar
Cuadrix
Posts: 236
Joined: 07 May 2017, 08:26

Re: Gods don't exist.

04 Jun 2019, 23:29

No. The number of converts IS insignificant compared to how the rest of the worlds population becomes religious.
The answer is: I don't. I may have some ideas about particular subjects, but i certainly am not "all-knowing of all the truth". Regarding the idea of explaining the whole of the bible, you should know that lots of people have invested their whole lives to try and explain the whole of the bible, and the way i see it, they have not finished that task yet. In fact, that is not even a task i even think a man can perfectly finish: there are many questions simply not covered by the bible itself and some of them were even been brought by the text itself as if challenging the reader. Besides, we are all humans and we have limits in our capacity of interpretation. That all being said, i am also not necessarily in line with the most extremist versions of the sola scriptura doctrine (which is the view that you seem to have guessed to be present in my mind).
The bible, quran, hindu scripts, none of them can EVER be correctly interpreted. The passage of time, the evolution of language and the simple lack of the very first manuscripts/oral babbles has made it impossible. Whichever bible you read now, will always have mistakes looked past upon everyone reading it. So much for your perfect and omnipotent god.

Since there are so many denominations of christianity itself, and so many small details that christians disagree with each other upon, let me ask you in reference to what I said above;
Do you believe your god is perfect and omnipotent?
But why are you interested in my religious views and beliefs? Did you really thought i would be able to answer all your questions? Did you thought i would hold to know everything? Maybe you forgot what i said about the idea of pondering about deep theological concepts in a search for spiritual evolution
Yes I though you would be able to answer all my questions. You are so sure of your beliefs that you must have an actual convincing reason to believe what you believe, besides this sorry reasoning;
There were 12 apostles. All of them claimed to have witnessed Jesus performing many miracles, and they were with him basically the entire time during his ministry on earth (and for 40 days after he rose from the dead). That being said, all 12 apostles died in horrific ways exactly because of their faiths and all of them maintained to the very end that the teachings of Jesus were indeed true. If they were lieing, wouldn't at least one of them have admited to it before the prospect of death for their faiths?
User avatar
Gio
Posts: 1247
Joined: 30 Sep 2013, 10:54
Location: Brazil

Re: Gods don't exist.

05 Jun 2019, 10:32

Cuadrix wrote:
04 Jun 2019, 23:29
No. The number of converts IS insignificant compared to how the rest of the worlds population becomes religious.

You are deeply stuck into this idea of "social indoctrination of religions in newborns". Yet you are not providing any sources to your numbers or even stating your arguments clearly enougth to be discussed with data and other sources. Do you think that yours is a good way of presenting debatable arguments?

But let's recheck your ideas for a moment. Correct me if i am wrong, but i assume we were both born in the western world right? No matter if not: In such countries (most of them at least), freedom of religion (including the freedom to declare yourself atheist) is a firmly defended right. And in these countries, most of the population is curiously religious. But you are still claiming that the "social indoctrination of religion" is still present and that it is a major factor. What have you to say then about the communist countries of the east? Haven't they firmly persecuted religions for most of the last century? Don't some of them do it even as of today? In these countries, the state basically orders you to be an atheist, as any expression of religion is severely punished. A huge number of people in this world are being highly "indoctrinated" into atheism! And yet, here you are calling the religious freedom of the west "religious indoctrination".

Did you know that the Soviet Union (1922 - 1991) persecuted all forms of religion, to the point of doing public campaigns of atheism, killing and jailing many priests of the orthodox church, greatly reducing the number of churches through force and doing even wrose to other religious groups? And guess what, do you know how many people identify as christian in Russia today (Less than 30 years after it's fall)? over 71% of the population in the country! Thats right: almost a century of atheism indoctrination has basically resulted in nothing more than an absurd growth of religion in the country!

So i really don't know why you still maintain that absurd thesis about religion being caused by indoctrination. It seems to me that evidence says otherwise whenever we are not talking about a country that is already highly religious to the point were further growth becomes impacted by people that are really exceptions to the rule. Be honest: Don't you think that this idea of "religious indoctrination being the only explanation" is somehow dependant on the validity of this exclusive form of "superior neutrality" you say that you have (and that according to youself, only a small portion of the worlds population, whose majority curiously belong to your atheist side, shares)? :think:

The bible, quran, hindu scripts, none of them can EVER be correctly interpreted. The passage of time, the evolution of language and the simple lack of the very first manuscripts/oral babbles has made it impossible.

That is basically what i just said. Even a single article in a mundade law can have multiple interpretations, let alone a book (or collect of books) that size. We are not all-knowing, but then again, we don't have to be. We just know enougth and that's all we need, because unlike some atheists, we are not blindly skeptical.

Whichever bible you read now, will always have mistakes looked past upon everyone reading it. So much for your perfect and omnipotent god.

It's interesting how you just take it for granted that any characteristic of the author should necessarily be transmited to his work. If you make a typo, does it means you are a typo? Besides, the bible has been writen by men. Are these men supposed to be perfect aswell? It seems to me that your ideas of a "theist" are that of an extremist rather than that of reasonable men. I can clearly see a lot of prejudice in your words, and it strikes me as highly bizarre the fact that you call it "neutrality".

Do you believe your god is perfect and omnipotent?

Hummm, sounds like a very nice opportunity for yet another phylosofical debate full of paradoxes and the like!
All right, let me bite right into your bait:
Omnipotent: yes.

Let's debate! :beer:

That being said, let's not deviate from the main question of the topic ok? (whether a god or rather "any god" exists). Please phrase your arguments accordingly.

Yes I though you would be able to answer all my questions. You are so sure of your beliefs that you must have an actual convincing reason to believe what you believe

Oh i have one. Quite a lot of them actually. Theism reasons have convinced 89% of the worlds population and they have transformed 71% of an atheist coutry into theists. But then again, you don't really think that i have a "900-foot tall talking jesus" just right here in my pocket and ready to change the views of someone that is blindly skeptical, do you?

As i have mentioned before: the whole of a persons life ammounts to his/her current beliefs. No single debate should possibly be the only cause for someone to change their deepest beliefs and adopt a completely different worldview. But then again, the arguments do get exposed in the table. This is a benefit of the debate. If done accordingly and with people that can correctly express their ideas without incuring in fallacies and other argumentation abuses, it can really share some new insights for intellectual pondering. (Hence why i think that avoiding the the up-to-date arguments is bad for the debate: We could go even further than this.).

And finally:

besides this sorry reasoning

What a great finale! A marvelous way of debunking an argument!: just go ahead and call it a sorry reasoning. No argumentation whatsoever. Superior neutrality for the win!
Cheers! :beer:
User avatar
joedf
Posts: 8940
Joined: 29 Sep 2013, 17:08
Location: Canada
Contact:

Re: Gods don't exist.

05 Jun 2019, 14:06

Okay, not sure what's going on... but I am locking this topic. If you disagree or want to appeal, pm me. :?
Image Image Image Image Image
Windows 10 x64 Professional, Intel i5-8500, NVIDIA GTX 1060 6GB, 2x16GB Kingston FURY Beast - DDR4 3200 MHz | [About Me] | [About the AHK Foundation] | [Courses on AutoHotkey]
[ASPDM - StdLib Distribution] | [Qonsole - Quake-like console emulator] | [LibCon - Autohotkey Console Library]

Return to “Off-topic Discussion”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 54 guests