Atheism (2)

[KCfromNC]

Atheists have a lack of belief in God due to the lack of evidence for God.

Or any other variety of reasons. The reasoning (or lack thereof) isn't important, just the lack of belief in gods.

 

[KCfromNC]

so there is no POSITIVE evidence for athiesm then!!!

because it's a lack of belief,

due to a lack of evidence,

so it's just negatives, no positive anything.

Yep, you finally get it (except for my caveat that atheism doesn't have to be based on a lack of evidence). A lack of belief is just that. Individual atheists can believe anything else they want. No matter what else a person believes, if they don't have the belief "god exists" then they are an atheist. Attempting to pin anything else on atheism is a cheap rhetorical trick typically used to create some evil atheist conspiracy of like-mined people conspiring against innocent believers which simply doesn't exist.

 

[Dave Ellis]

then athiesm is NOT a belief

That's what we've been telling you for days....

 

[Dave Ellis]

no thanx

So you don't want to answer a question about justifying your own beliefs?

That's rather counter-productive to the debate... and quite cowardly. If you're not willing to back up what you say, we will have to unilaterally declare your argument as invalid due to lack of evidence.

 

[Dave Ellis]

you BELIEVE in no evidence for God right?

No, you asked this exact same question a couple pages ago. Do you require glasses?

I don't believe one way or the other regarding there being evidence for God. What matters is that we are not aware of any evidence for God.

Since we are not aware of any evidence, then belief in him is unjustified until some kind of evidence is shown.

It doesn't matter if evidence actually exists. Until we see it, we can't comment, or base any kind of opinion on it

 

[Dave Ellis]

so there is no POSITIVE evidence for athiesm then!!!

because it's a lack of belief,

due to a lack of evidence,

so it's just negatives, no positive anything.

You're starting to catch on....

 

[Dave Ellis]

Not in this thread. Atheism is a lack of belief and agnosticism is a specific set of beliefs about [the possibility of] knowledge about god(s).

Actually yeah, that discussion was part of this thread. It may have been before the thread split though.

 

[Elioenai26]

Dear Mr. Ellis,

This has been somewhat of an "official" (if the word is appropriate) thread on atheism and therefore I address you here.

After having had the privilege of dialoguing with many atheists over the past several years in my endeavor to better understand how they think and believe, I must say that out of all of them, you have been the most consistent in adhereing to what I feel atheism really stands for. I say this because I have spent a great deal of time researching pioneers in the atheistic community and their writings and how they envisioned the logical ramifications of their views would be manifested in the world. In your responses to several probing questions, you have consistently maintained a view similar to those who saw atheism for what it really was and didn't try to deny the existence of the foreboding shadow that is cast upon life by it's ominous frame. The name Friedrich Nietzsche immediately comes to mind, among others.

You have been a great help to me in understanding atheism more completely. This shall help me immensely in affirming and bolstering my apologetic work that shall be undertaken for the Kingdom of God.

Thank you once again.

 

[Dave Ellis]

Dear Mr. Ellis,

This has been somewhat of an "official" (if the word is appropriate) thread on atheism and therefore I address you here.

After having had the privilege of dialoguing with many atheists over the past several years in my endeavor to better understand how they think and believe, I must say that out of all of them, you have been the most consistent in adhereing to what I feel atheism really stands for. I say this because I have spent a great deal of time researching pioneers in the atheistic community and their writings and how they envisioned the logical ramifications of their views would be manifested in the world. In your responses to several probing questions, you have consistently maintained a view similar to those who saw atheism for what it really was and didn't try to deny the existence of the foreboding shadow that is cast upon life by it's ominous frame. The name Friedrich Nietzsche immediately comes to mind, among others.

You have been a great help to me in understanding atheism more completely. This shall help me immensely in affirming and bolstering my apologetic work that shall be undertaken for the Kingdom of God.

Thank you once again.

Thanks for the kind words. As we stated earlier, part of the reason we are on here is to better explain who we are and what we believe.

My apologies as well if at times my answers got slightly offensive. There were a few occasions where we had to answer the same thing multiple times, which can get frustrating. However, if you wound up understanding the answer we were giving in the end, it was well worth it.

We were successful in explaining ourselves, and you were successful in understanding what we were trying to say. That's a win-win for everyone.


Out of curiosity, what sort of apologetic work are you planning on doing? Seeing as it must relate to this thread, or Atheism in general... I am interesting in hearing what your views are on the topic. It may in turn enlighten me to something I have not yet thought of or considered.

 

[Gadarene]

Dear Mr. Ellis,

This has been somewhat of an "official" (if the word is appropriate) thread on atheism and therefore I address you here.

After having had the privilege of dialoguing with many atheists over the past several years in my endeavor to better understand how they think and believe, I must say that out of all of them, you have been the most consistent in adhereing to what I feel atheism really stands for. I say this because I have spent a great deal of time researching pioneers in the atheistic community and their writings and how they envisioned the logical ramifications of their views would be manifested in the world. In your responses to several probing questions, you have consistently maintained a view similar to those who saw atheism for what it really was and didn't try to deny the existence of the foreboding shadow that is cast upon life by it's ominous frame. The name Friedrich Nietzsche immediately comes to mind, among others.

You have been a great help to me in understanding atheism more completely. This shall help me immensely in affirming and bolstering my apologetic work that shall be undertaken for the Kingdom of God.

Thank you once again.

Thanks for the kind words. As we stated earlier, part of the reason we are on here is to better explain who we are and what we believe.

My apologies as well if at times my answers got slightly offensive. There were a few occasions where we had to answer the same thing multiple times, which can get frustrating. However, if you wound up understanding the answer we were giving in the end, it was well worth it.

We were successful in explaining ourselves, and you were successful in understanding what we were trying to say. That's a win-win for everyone.


Out of curiosity, what sort of apologetic work are you planning on doing? Seeing as it must relate to this thread, or Atheism in general... I am interesting in hearing what your views are on the topic. It may in turn enlighten me to something I have not yet thought of or considered.

Not to butt in, but how exactly were DE's answers reflective of atheism's "foreboding shadow"?

I only ask seeing as Elioenai has frequently misrepresented atheism during his time on this board and I would hate for that to continue.

 

[Dave Ellis]

Not to butt in, but how exactly were DE's answers reflective of atheism's "foreboding shadow"?

I only ask seeing as Elioenai has frequently misrepresented atheism during his time on this board and I would hate for that to continue.

I took the foreboding shadow bit as a Christian's interpretation of it. Skepticism and by extension Atheism certainly is a threat to Christianity, so that would make it foreboding to them.

Obviously there's nothing foreboding about non-belief, especially to a non-believer. However, if he sees our point, and understands the validity to it... then he must recognise the major threat it poses to religion in general.

 

[createdtoworship]

You're starting to catch on....

so you agree there is no positive evidence for athiesm.

when there is positive evidence for thiesm.

 

[Gadarene]

so you agree there is no positive evidence for athiesm.

when there is positive evidence for thiesm.

And it is....what?

 

[Dave Ellis]

so you agree there is no positive evidence for athiesm.

when there is positive evidence for thiesm.

We've been asking for dozens of pages now for someone to provide us with positive evidence for the Existence of God.

So far we've received evasions instead of answers.

If you're willing to provide the positive evidence for Theism, we are more than happy to look at, and discuss it.

So, what is this evidence you have?

 

[createdtoworship]

We've been asking for dozens of pages now for someone to provide us with positive evidence for the Existence of God.

So far we've received evasions instead of answers.

If you're willing to provide the positive evidence for Theism, we are more than happy to look at, and discuss it.

So, what is this evidence you have?

trying to change the subject with
no evidence for athiesm, means you agree right?

athiesm has NO POSITIVE EVIDENCE,

POINT NOTED.

 

[Going Merry]

Usually what people consider as evidence varies.
I consider there to be tons of evidence for God.
Others consider that evidence not evidence at all.

So maybe you guys should go in that direction to come to a conclusion

 

[Dave Ellis]

trying to change the subject with
no evidence for athiesm, means you agree right?

athiesm has NO POSITIVE EVIDENCE,

POINT NOTED.

Two points:

1) We never asserted any kind of claim, therefore Atheism requires no evidence. If that is in dispute, please show us the claim that we have made, that we require evidence for.

You are correct, there is no positive evidence for Atheism... the concept is nonsensical. That's never been in dispute by myself, or anyone on here.... I fail to see what you're so enthralled about, frankly, I'm ecstatic you might be on the verge of finally understanding what we've been trying to tell you for days.

2) Again, you evaded the responsibility for providing evidence to back the claims that you have asserted.

 

[createdtoworship]

Usually what people consider as evidence varies.
I consider there to be tons of evidence for God.
Others consider that evidence not evidence at all.

So maybe you guys should go in that direction to come to a conclusion

okay, lets start with a quote:

Agent causation is something that happens in the universe:

I suggest that agent to be an intelligent being....


Here is greg koukl to bring us up to speed on agent causation:

"If you look at the words on the printed page there in front of you…and you say, "Well, what caused those words to originate?" if we only talk about the chemistry and physics of the ink on the paper, we're missing an important aspect of the cause that produced those words….

We want to open people's minds to the whole of reality. The activity of mind acting on nature is part of reality, and the narrow definition of science that says that it's only a scientific explanation if you refer to a materialistic, or naturalistic, or physical cause, is missing an important aspect of reality. And intelligent design is saying mind is real, minds have causal powers, and we can detect the activity of mind….

We're simply inferring the cause that is known from our experience to produce the effect in question, rather than causes that are not known from our experience to produce the effect in question.

agent causation (the signature)

Now that same mentality can be applied to a lot of scientific examples. For example, we have this thing called a seismograph, right? It's a little needle on a piece of paper that gets drawn across this needle that wobbles back and forth according to the vibrations of the earth and it makes a little squiggle, right? And by looking at this squiggle you can determine the force of an earthquake or what kind of seismic activity is going on. These are blind natural forces being recorded by this stylus on a seismograph.

What would happen, though, if you were looking at the etchings of the stylus on the seismograph and you saw these wobbly, side-to-side movements with an unbroken line of ink, and you saw someone's signature written in there and then it continued on with these wobbles. What would you conclude? Would you conclude that this was some really wacky earthquake? Of course not. You would see the unmistakable signs of agent causation and you would rightly conclude that someone got in there and made a conscious, intelligent choice to move the stylus and make the form of a signature. In other words, you don't explain that even on a scientific instrument by naturalistic causes. You explain it by agent causation.


agent causation (the oreo)


Now to give you an illustration about how the game is fixed by the courts and by the educational system and by the scientific community, I have suggested what I have called the Oreo Experiment. You go to your chemistry teacher and ask if he is able to look at a solution and describe, based on his scientific testing, what is in the solution and how the solution, the precipitate, came to be. The precipitate is the heavy stuff that falls out, precipitates in the solution. In a beaker, for example. It seems that someone who is well-versed in the area of chemistry and well-versed in the area of physics can look and measure and test and describe what happened in a simple kind of thing.

Your chemist teacher takes the challenge and you say, "Okay, I'm going to put out a beaker full of stuff. There you see it, and now I'm covering it. Tomorrow we'll uncover it and you'll see something that has precipitated. Then it is your job to figure out how that happened." Sure. Fair enough. I know science. I know the laws of chemistry. We'll do it.

However, just before the chemist comes into the room the next morning to begin his experiments to look and observe the precipitate and begin to measure it to solve the problem, you lift the cover on the beaker and drop in an Oreo cookie. He walks in, you remove the cover to the beaker, and there is this discolored solution, but clearly visible is this rapidly decaying Oreo cookie. Very obvious. You can still see the word "Oreo" on it. And you say, "Okay, now using the laws of physics and chemistry, explain to me how that Oreo cookie got there." And he says, "Wait a minute, it's obvious that someone put it there because Oreo cookies don't just manufacture themselves out of nowhere in the middle of a beaker. You are playing a trick on me. Someone dropped it in there." And then you say, "Foul. You've broken the rules. You've inferred an outside agent here. You're not being scientific. It's your job to be a scientist. This is a chemistry lab. Let's stick with science. You are obliged to come up with some kind of explanation limited to the laws of chemistry and physics and time plus chance to explain how that Oreo cookie got there in the last twelve hours." Now, he would be hard pressed to do so. Why? Because it was put there. You know it was. The evidence indicates it was. There was an agent that caused that, but the rules have restricted him from concluding what it obvious in the circumstances."

 

[Dave Ellis]

Usually what people consider as evidence varies.
I consider there to be tons of evidence for God.
Others consider that evidence not evidence at all.

So maybe you guys should go in that direction to come to a conclusion

Evidence: that which tends to prove or disprove something; ground for belief; proof.

(from dictionary.com)

Assertions do not prove or disprove anything, therefore they are not evidence. Evidence is what you use to prove an assertion.

If I say I bought a car, that is an assertion. The evidence is the car, the receipt, proof of ownership in my name, and financing documentation. This can be confirmed by checking bank records that confirms I made a payment to the dealership, and by checking with the government that proof of ownership was transferred from the dealership to me. You could continue to check further and further back to confirm it's not some elaborate conspiracy to make it look like I bought a car when I didn't, but for the sake of brevity, we'll leave it at that.

That's an example of having tons of mutually supporting evidence. There is no doubt I bought the car, instead of the alternatives which could be stealing or leasing the car instead (or lying about having the car in the first place).

If you say God exists, that's an assertion. The overall evidence is something that would confirm that, while excluding all other possible alternatives. There is no such evidence available.

 

[Going Merry]

What people consider evidence varies.
I don't see how you can there is no such evidence available honestly