Does God exist?

[Jeremy E Walker]

No biggie. Compared to your other errors and your disingenious debating tactics, it´s just a minor issue.

Ehh you say tomato, I say tomahto...

You say certain tactics are disingenious, I say the same tactics are not disingenious.

Both opinions are equally valid if we each determine what is what.

But you have betrayed yourself. You prefer people treat you a certain way and when they fail to do so, you seek to label them as disingenious as if doing so will cause them to feel ashamed or guilty or convicted that they have failed to do something they know they should have done.

Odd coming from you....

 

[quatona]

Ehh you say tomato, I say tomahto...

You say certain tactics are disingenious, I say the same tactics are not disingenious.

Well, you are the one who has to live with your character.

Both opinions are equally valid if we each determine what is what.

What does "valid" even mean, in conjunction with "opinion"?

But you have betrayed yourself. You prefer people treat you a certain way and when they fail to do so, you seek to label them as disingenious as if doing so will cause them to feel ashamed or guilty or convicted that they have failed to do something they know they should have done.

No, I have just informed you about my opinion. I just have informed what I won´t tolerate. What you do with this infomation is entirely up to you.
If you feel that e.g. lying for Jesus is morally ok, you have no reason to feel ashamed or guilty for doing it. Don´t let anybody shame you or instill guilt feelings in you.
Everything else is merely a projection from your position as a moral objectivist.
You were the one who asked for forgiveness, after all.
I am the one who feels he isn´t in the position to forgive you for whatever you consider your shortcomings or wrongdoings.

Odd coming from you....

What´s odd about me having an opinion/preferences? What makes you assume I don´t have opinions/preferences? What´s odd about me acting upon my opinion/preferences?
Have you been making assumptions again?

 

[Jeremy E Walker]

Well, you are the one who has to live with your character.


What does "valid" even mean, in conjunction with "opinion"?


No, I have just informed you about my opinion. I just have informed what I won´t tolerate. What you do with this infomation is entirely up to you.
If you feel that e.g. lying for Jesus is morally ok, you have no reason to feel ashamed or guilty for doing it. Don´t let anybody shame you or instill guilt feelings in you.
Everything else is merely a projection from your position as a moral objectivist.
You were the one who asked for forgiveness, after all.
I am the one who feels he isn´t in the position to forgive you for whatever you consider your shortcomings or wrongdoings.


What´s odd about me having an opinion/preferences? What makes you assume I don´t have opinions/preferences? What´s odd about me acting upon my opinion/preferences?
Have you been making assumptions again?

I am going to speak as you speak for a moment and simply say I thank you for sharing your opinion with me.

You see how easy that was?

Anyone who is in your position can do and say the things you do.

That is easy. I lived the way you do for many years. It was easy. It was not hard at all. Do as I please, believe what I please, come and go as I please, pretend I am the be all and end all and the only one around whom the world revolves.

It is easy to be self-centered and egotistical. Nothing hard in that. To stand aloof from the world and pretend it is all an illusion.

It is people like you that remind me of how I was and how God wrought in me something that someone like you could never do on your own. Even if you desired to be displaced from the center of the universe (or should I say, your universe), you would have no way of doing so.

You cannot be what I am. The desire must be present first and even if the desire is present, one cannot change their nature in and of themselves.

But you do not envy me at all. In fact you may feel sorry for me and I understand, for when I was like you I felt sorry for all them that did not worship themselves as I did.

But your posts reek of pride. It oozes out of much of what you write on here. You are so prideful that in your pride you attempt to mask it so as to not be too evident. Vanity rules you but it is also your weakness. You cannot tolerate being called out or exposed. You let it be known when you are slighted, but only off-handedly.

I predict that you will respond to this post by addressing a point here and there as if to portray yourself as someone who is slightly amused but at best really disinterested in what I have written, when, in reality you will be greatly perplexed that someone could so clearly call you out on who and what you are.

Your time spent on this forum is more of an amusement to you than anything, much like many other things in your life. You are a pleasure seeking, entertainment loving person. Driven by your pleasure seeking, you have come to view the world in such a way as to afford you justification for living exactly the way you want to.

But be warned, a day will come soon when you will die. In that day, you will realize that you indeed are the determiner of your own fate.

 

[bhsmte]

Well, you are the one who has to live with your character.


What does "valid" even mean, in conjunction with "opinion"?


No, I have just informed you about my opinion. I just have informed what I won´t tolerate. What you do with this infomation is entirely up to you.
If you feel that e.g. lying for Jesus is morally ok, you have no reason to feel ashamed or guilty for doing it. Don´t let anybody shame you or instill guilt feelings in you.
Everything else is merely a projection from your position as a moral objectivist.
You were the one who asked for forgiveness, after all.
I am the one who feels he isn´t in the position to forgive you for whatever you consider your shortcomings or wrongdoings.


What´s odd about me having an opinion/preferences? What makes you assume I don´t have opinions/preferences? What´s odd about me acting upon my opinion/preferences?
Have you been making assumptions again?

Is it just me, or does Jeremy and theycallmedavid sound like clones of each other?

Preach, preach, preach about their self defined righteous position and do so with the same exact tone.

 

[Jeremy E Walker]

Is it just me, or does Jeremy and theycallmedavid sound like clones of each other?

Preach, preach, preach about their self defined righteous position and do so with the same exact tone.

people hate being called out on their sins.

it is an affront to their pride and ego. I speak from experience.

I can ask you certain questions and your answers to said questions will demonstrate why you are really an atheist.

but people like you and quatona would rather claim that there is no such thing as sin, that right and wrong are just figments of our imagination, or nothing more than opinions.

but your pride will not allow you to be consistent. for when your pride is affronted you react, like a brute beast that is guided by instinct.

 

[bhsmte]

people hate being called out on their sins.

it is an affront to their pride and ego. I speak from experience.

I can ask you certain questions and your answers to said questions will demonstrate why you are really an atheist.

but people like you and quatona would rather claim that there is no such thing as sin, that right and wrong are just figments of our imagination, or nothing more than opinions.

but your pride will not allow you to be consistent. for when your pride is affronted you react, like a brute beast that is guided by instinct.

Keep thinking you can judge others, I know that is vitally important to you.

Keep assuming what you wish as well, need to fit everything according to what you have manufactured with your assumptions.

 

[Jeremy E Walker]

Keep thinking you can judge others, I know that is vitally important to you.

Keep assuming what you wish as well, need to fit everything according to what you have manufactured with your assumptions.

it is vitally important to you that you not be judged.

why?

because it would only be confirmation of what you already know to be true.

if you really believed there was no God to judge you, you would not spend so much time trying to convince yourself that there was no God to judge you.

You are like the person that pretends to be paralyzed to receive some sympathy or benefit. But when someone touches you in the spot where you are supposed to be numb and unfeeling with something that makes your nerves react, you betray yourself and display that you are not really paralyzed after all. It is a sham, a charade.

So if you want to portray yourself as someone who is honest and in search of truth, why not be truthful? Why not admit that even if you had evidence that God revealed Himself in Christ that you would not desire to worship Him as God but would rather continue to worship yourself?

 

[bhsmte]

it is vitally important to you that you not be judged.

why?

because it would only be confirmation of what you already know to be true.

if you really believed there was no God to judge you, you would not spend so much time trying to convince yourself that there was no God to judge you.

You are like the person that pretends to be paralyzed to receive some sympathy or benefit. But when someone touches you in the spot where you are supposed to be numb and unfeeling with something that makes your nerves react, you betray yourself and display that you are not really paralyzed after all. It is a sham, a charade.

So if you want to portray yourself as someone who is honest and in search of truth, why not be truthful? Why not admit that even if you had evidence that God revealed Himself in Christ that you would not desire to worship Him as God but would rather continue to worship yourself?

Keep assuming. Make sure everything you manufacture fits well into your self righteous position.

And lastly, have fun with it.

 

[BL2KTN]

The hubris Jeremy shows is mind-boggling. If his objective is to repulse others farther away from his religion, he has mastered the skill.

 

[PsychoSarah]

a creature is labeled as a human being if it possesses certain properties.

a cat is not a human being because a cat lacks certain properties that human being possesses.

thus, what a human being is is a matter of whether or not a creature possesses certain properties. a matter of possessing or not possessing certain properties.

people may disagree on what the necessary properties are i.e. the issue of abortion. one may think a human being is a creature that has been born. another may think a creature is a human being at the point of conception.

both those for and against abortion BOTH agree that murder is wrong. They just disagree on what constitutes a "human being".

there are moral implications that stem from these issues to be sure, but the real questions is:

Who determines what is and is not a human being?

Again, it tends to be individual humans or societies as a whole. But the point is the lack of consistency, no two people have the exact same moral outlook, even if they claim to get their morality from an objective source, they will interpret that source differently thus their morality will be subjective.

 

[Jeremy E Walker]

The hubris Jeremy shows is mind-boggling. If his objective is to repulse others farther away from his religion, he has mastered the skill.

Those who desire to not believe in Christ do not need my nor any other person's help.

It is very easy to come up with reasons why one should not live a certain way or believe in something if their desire is not to live a certain way or believe in something.

Ultimately, unbelief is a matter of the will, not the intellect.

“People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.”


― Blaise Pascal, De l'art de persuader

 

[PsychoSarah]

Those who desire to not believe in Christ do not need my nor any other person's help.

It is very easy to come up with reasons why one should not live a certain way or believe in something if their desire is not to live a certain way or believe in something.

Ultimately, unbelief is a matter of the will, not the intellect.

“People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.”


― Blaise Pascal, De l'art de persuader

Good luck with the fact that I hate being atheist and have tried for years to be a believer. No success, I guess people don't always believe as they want.

 

[DogmaHunter]

it follows logically from premise 1,

"1. Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause."

No, it does not.

Arbitrarily defining god in such a way that it can be used in such silly argumentation is not "logical" nore is it "valid".

 

[DogmaHunter]

Dr. Craig states:

Dr Craig is an intellectually dishonest person who does not impress me. In fact, on average he makes me facepalm more then anyone. That being said, let's continue.

A. If atheism is true, the universe has no explanation of its existence.

So now you're telling me what I think, believe, whatever?

No, the universe has an explanation for its existence - just like everything else does.

This is precisely what the atheist says in response to premise 1. The universe just exists inexplicably.

I don't know a single "atheist" who says such a thing.

So you can’t affirm (A) and deny (B).

You can't build a logical argument by engaging in strawmen either.

Besides that, premise 2 is very plausible in its own right.

It's not. It can't be. Unless you don't mind assumed conclusions, off course and arbitrary definitions, off course.

For think of what the universe is: all of space-time reality, including all matter and energy. It follows that if the universe has a cause of its existence

There's very good reason to assume that the two bolded parts are contradictory.

Causality requires the existence of a time dimension to take place, because causes happen before effects. Causality is a phenomena that requires a space-time continuum to exist. It's very possible that causality completely breaks down at T = 0 (along with the rest of physics, btw).

, that cause must be a non-physical, immaterial being beyond space and time.

Or a multi-verse or any of the gazillion other possibilities one can imagine - none of which would comply to your arbitrary definition of a god.

Now there are only two sorts of thing that could fit that description: either an abstract object like a number or else an unembodied mind.

Aren't we the WLC fan? You repeat his nonsense word for word. Eventhough people like Lawrence Krauss have shown multiple times over how such empty statements are just that: empty.

 

[DogmaHunter]

people hate being called out on their sins.

...or... People hate judgemental a**hats just like you, who pretend to hold the whole truth and nothing but the truth along with the moral high-ground simply because he happens to buy into a bronze-age religion.

The arrogance you exihibit here is truelly mindblowing.

I can ask you certain questions and your answers to said questions will demonstrate why you are really an atheist.

The only question that can demonstrate why I am an atheist is "why don't you believe in god(s)?" to which the answer is "because I don't see a reason to believe that...."

And you know that because you aren't a muslim, hindu, etc for the exact same reason. I don't think you would appreciate it if we would say that you aren't a hindu because "you want to eat cows", right?

People have worldviews for all kinds of reason. To pretend that you KNOW why certain people aren't buying into the bronze-age religion you happen to buy into, is unbelievably arrogant.

but people like you and quatona would rather claim that there is no such thing as sin, that right and wrong are just figments of our imagination, or nothing more than opinions.

Someone who doesn't buy into your religion will - off course - not buy into the specifics of your religion either. "Sin" is one of those specifics.
Not accepting what your bronze-age book defines as being "sin" doesn't mean that we don't accept any kind of morality or consider nothing to be "bad" or "wrong".

That's again just you with your arrogant judgemental strawmen.

but your pride will not allow you to be consistent. for when your pride is affronted you react, like a brute beast that is guided by instinct.

You don't know anything about any of us dude. All you know is our opinions on the limited subjects being talked about here. And you aren't even able to put that into proper context. You already feel the need to misrepresent the few things being talked about here.

It's ridiculous, arrogant and judgemental.

 

[DogmaHunter]

it is vitally important to you that you not be judged.

why?

because it would only be confirmation of what you already know to be true.

No. Atheists don't "secretly" believe in gods. No matter how many times you repeat it.

if you really believed there was no God to judge you, you would not spend so much time trying to convince yourself that there was no God to judge you.

He's not complaining about being judged by the god that he doesn't believe in... He's complaining about YOU judging him. He's calling YOU a judgemental person. You understand the difference between calling YOU "x" and calling your god "x", right?

You are like the person that pretends to be paralyzed to receive some sympathy or benefit. But when someone touches you in the spot where you are supposed to be numb and unfeeling with something that makes your nerves react, you betray yourself and display that you are not really paralyzed after all. It is a sham, a charade.

If you are not going to listen to what people REALLY say, perhaps you should just keep quite.

So if you want to portray yourself as someone who is honest and in search of truth, why not be truthful?

Says the judgemental, strawmanning WLC copy-cat.

Why not admit that even if you had evidence that God revealed Himself in Christ that you would not desire to worship Him as God but would rather continue to worship yourself?

Why not actually respond to what people really SAY instead of you *assume* they believe?

Do you really think you are scoring points here by misrepresenting what people say, by strawmanning, by being judgemental, by exhibiting unprecedented levels of arrogance, by claiming the moral high-ground based on a bronze-age book?

 

[DogmaHunter]

Those who desire to not believe in Christ do not need my nor any other person's help.

Belief is not a matter of desire. At least, it isn't for people who care about their beliefs being correct and / or justified.

It is very easy to come up with reasons why one should not live a certain way or believe in something if their desire is not to live a certain way or believe in something.

I disagree. I can not knowingly believe things that do not convince me or that I know to be wrong.

Ultimately, unbelief is a matter of the will, not the intellect.

Ok, Ray Comfort's sidekick...
This is completely ridiculous... OFF COURSE (un)belief is a matter of the intellect!!!!

I don't "choose" what to believe. I believe whatever convinces me and disbelief whatever doesn't. Belief for me is not a "choice". It is a compulsion based on evidence, rational reasoning, trust and valid argumentation. I don't hold beliefs because I want to or because they make me feel good. I hold beliefs (tentatively) when they convince me.

“People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.”

― Blaise Pascal, De l'art de persuader

Using the same statement, I could just as well say that you believe in god, simply because you want a god to exist. Not because there actually is a god. But rather simply because you want one to exist. I could then go further and add to that claims like you want a god to exist because you can't handle your own mortality and you simply kid yourself with the help of your bronze-age religion that you'll gain eternal life.

Your road of arrogance, strawmen and being judgemental is a two-way street you know.... two can play that silly game.

 

[quatona]

Hey Elioenai,
your psychic skills are even more lacking than your logic and analytical skills.
Don´t quit your day job.

I am going to speak as you speak for a moment and simply say I thank you for sharing your opinion with me.

You see how easy that was?

Anyone who is in your position can do and say the things you do.

That is easy. I lived the way you do for many years. It was easy. It was not hard at all. Do as I please, believe what I please, come and go as I please, pretend I am the be all and end all and the only one around whom the world revolves.

It is easy to be self-centered and egotistical. Nothing hard in that. To stand aloof from the world and pretend it is all an illusion.

It is people like you that remind me of how I was and how God wrought in me something that someone like you could never do on your own. Even if you desired to be displaced from the center of the universe (or should I say, your universe), you would have no way of doing so.

You cannot be what I am. The desire must be present first and even if the desire is present, one cannot change their nature in and of themselves.

But you do not envy me at all. In fact you may feel sorry for me and I understand, for when I was like you I felt sorry for all them that did not worship themselves as I did.

But your posts reek of pride. It oozes out of much of what you write on here. You are so prideful that in your pride you attempt to mask it so as to not be too evident. Vanity rules you but it is also your weakness. You cannot tolerate being called out or exposed. You let it be known when you are slighted, but only off-handedly.

I predict that you will respond to this post by addressing a point here and there as if to portray yourself as someone who is slightly amused but at best really disinterested in what I have written, when, in reality you will be greatly perplexed that someone could so clearly call you out on who and what you are.

Your time spent on this forum is more of an amusement to you than anything, much like many other things in your life. You are a pleasure seeking, entertainment loving person. Driven by your pleasure seeking, you have come to view the world in such a way as to afford you justification for living exactly the way you want to.

But be warned, a day will come soon when you will die. In that day, you will realize that you indeed are the determiner of your own fate.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Premise 2 would need to be evidenced or supported.

It must be shown to be more plausibly true than its negation.

Why think that premise two of our argument is more plausibly true than its negation or pixies?

Dr. Craig states:

What’s really awkward for the atheist at this point is that premise 2 is logically equivalent to the typical atheist response to the contingency argument. Two statements are logically equivalent if it is impossible for one to be true and the other one false. They stand or fall together. So what does the atheist almost always say in response to the argument from contingency? The atheist typically asserts the following:

A. If atheism is true, the universe has no explanation of its existence.

This is precisely what the atheist says in response to premise 1. The universe just exists inexplicably. But this is logically equivalent to saying:

B. If the universe has an explanation of its existence, then atheism is not true.

That's incorrect. Atheists typically assert that if theism is not warranted then the universe has no proven theistic explanation for its existence. Since when does the rejection of a theistic explanation count as rejection of any and all explanations? Daniel Chaney addresses this in a bit more detail on his YouTube channel.

But (B) is virtually synonymous with premise 2! So by saying in response to premise 1 that, given atheism, the universe has no explanation, the atheist is implicitly admitting premise 2, that if the universe does have an explanation, then God exists.

B depends on A, and since A is inaccurate B no longer lends support to premise 2.

Besides that, premise 2 is very plausible in its own right. For think of what the universe is: all of space-time reality, including all matter and energy. It follows that if the universe has a cause of its existence, that cause must be a non-physical, immaterial being beyond space and time.

How does that follow? Could you provide an explanation, instead of parroting WLC?

 

[Archaeopteryx]

the aforementioned categories were supplied to set bounds on what your opponent can claim as his position. he is either a cognitivist or a non-cognitivist, a moral realist or moral anti-realist.

when asking your opponent what category he falls into regarding the two aforementioned categories, it better enables you to determine what his views are and thus how to engage them.

I agree with Darwin, and I believe that every atheist who desires to live consistently must agree with him too.

in a Godless world, there is nothing that obligates me to choose a certain set of morals over any other, other than my own personal desires because I have seen no convincing arguments from the naturalist camp regarding the ontology of objective moral values and duties.

You keep dodging my question: how does theism solve this? You are assuming that you hold a superior position in this regard, but you have not shown that to be the case.