The difficulty of talking to Atheist

[Loudmouth]

Good for you. If only that was what we were talking about....

It is what I am talking about.

Just look around you--and see it, if you're willing.

Show it, if you can, or can you not see it?

If something is real, don't you believe it?

If you can show that God is real, I will believe in God's existence.

 

[Eight Foot Manchild]

* I am not obliged to prove that I know the presence of God to you in your arbitrary court of law.

You are always welcome to make as many naked assertions as you please. I'm happy to leave you to your imagination.

However, if you actually want to be taken seriously, you do, in fact, need to own up to your burden of proof.

I shouldn't have to explain this to a (presumably) adult male human.

* But you compel me to ask, by what technique of logic do you claim to know that I do not know-God?

Once again, the burden of proof is yours.

Your claims to 'knowledge' are utterly indistinguishable from imagination. Until such time as you can demonstrate them - without using either logic or science, since you've categorically written them off - they can and will be dismissed out of hand.

 

[Colter]

I can demonstrate, with evidence, that the person I love actually exists. That's the difference.



Evidence, please.



That is only evidence for a belief. We are asking for evidence that God is real.

You dodged the point, I wasn't talking about the person you love, I was talking about love itself. God is love. One knows love without needing to prove or define.

 

[True Scotsman]

You dodged the point, I wasn't talking about the person you love, I was talking about love itself. God is love. One knows love without needing to prove or define.

So God is not an all powerful consciousness who created everything by an act of conscious will but instead is a human emotion?

 

[Eight Foot Manchild]

Without understanding what light is (which we can see), we can't understand Xrays and microwaves.

Yes we can. You can be blind, deaf, mute and paralyzed and still understand mathematical models.

This is because science has a workable epistemological framework, with proven methodologies and a history of producing tangible, critically robust results.

Theology, meanwhile, has no epistemology whatsoever, with a history of producing absolutely nothing except more theologians.

What I'm trying to point out is that a blind man who has never seen before will not be able to relate to sight.

Maybe you should actually talk to a blind person about this instead of resorting to tortured, vacuous non-analogies.

 

[Colter]

You are always welcome to make as many naked assertions as you please. I'm happy to leave you to your imagination.

However, if you actually want to be taken seriously, you do, in fact, need to own up to your burden of proof.

I shouldn't have to explain this to a (presumably) adult male human.



Once again, the burden of proof is yours.

Your claims to 'knowledge' are utterly indistinguishable from imagination. Until such time as you can demonstrate them - without using either logic or science, since you've categorically written them off - they can and will be dismissed out of hand.

They arnt dismissed out of hand by fellow believers, God is logical and distinguishable to us. If you want to find God yourself you will need to find him for yourself.

 

[True Scotsman]

You dodged the point, I wasn't talking about the person you love, I was talking about love itself. God is love. One knows love without needing to prove or define.

Also "love" is a stolen concept since you claim that existence doesn't exist and neither does consciousness.

 

[Eight Foot Manchild]

God is love.

I have a word for love already. It's called 'love'. So thanks, but no thanks.

 

[True Scotsman]

They arnt dismissed out of hand by fellow believers, God is logical and distinguishable to us. If you want to find God yourself you will need to find him for yourself.

Logic is a stolen concept without the axioms which you deny, existence, consciousness, identity and the primacy of existence. I'm not going to let you have your cake and eat it too.

 

[Loudmouth]

You dodged the point, I wasn't talking about the person you love,

I am talking about the entity you claim loves you. Where is the evidence that this entity exists?

God is love.

I would tend to agree that God is nothing more than a human emotion.

One knows love without needing to prove or define.

If someone claimed that love created the universe, then I would need evidence for such a claim.

 

[Loudmouth]

They arnt dismissed out of hand by fellow believers, God is logical and distinguishable to us.

Then you should be able to show how the premises logically lead to the conclusion. Where is that argument? Where is the evidence?

 

[Eight Foot Manchild]

They arnt dismissed out of hand by fellow believers, God is logical and distinguishable to us.

Conceptions of 'god' are immensely varied, and contradict each other. This is exactly what I would expect to see if your 'god' was purely imaginary, because everyone's mind is different.

So again, by what means is your 'knowledge of god' distinguishable from imagination?

Remember not to steal from logic or science when you provide your answer.

 

[Eight Foot Manchild]

Then you should be able to show how the premises logically lead to the conclusion. Where is that argument? Where is the evidence?

I wouldn't allow him that much. He has categorically written off logic as a means of demonstrating his assertions. He's bereaved himself of the privilege of using it.

 

[Gene2memE]

"The magical and mythological parentage of natural religion does not invalidate the reality and truth of the later revelational religions and the consummate saving gospel of the religion of Jesus. Jesus’ life and teachings finally divested religion of the superstitions of magic, the illusions of mythology, and the bondage of traditional dogmatism. But this early magic and mythology very effectively prepared the way for later and superior religion by assuming the existence and reality of supermaterial values and beings.

Although religious experience is a purely spiritual subjective phenomenon, such an experience embraces a positive and living faith attitude toward the highest realms of universe objective reality. The ideal of religious philosophy is such a faith-trust as would lead man unqualifiedly to depend upon the absolute love of the infinite Father of the universe of universes. Such a genuine religious experience far transcends the philosophic objectification of idealistic desire; it actually takes salvation for granted and concerns itself only with learning and doing the will of the Father in Paradise. The earmarks of such a religion are: faith in a supreme Deity, hope of eternal survival, and love, especially of one’s fellows.

When theology masters religion, religion dies; it becomes a doctrine instead of a life. The mission of theology is merely to facilitate the self-consciousness of personal spiritual experience. Theology constitutes the religious effort to define, clarify, expound, and justify the experiential claims of religion, which, in the last analysis, can be validated only by living faith. In the higher philosophy of the universe, wisdom, like reason, becomes allied to faith. Reason, wisdom, and faith are man’s highest human attainments. Reason introduces man to the world of facts, to things; wisdom introduces him to a world of truth, to relationships; faith initiates him into a world of divinity, spiritual experience.

Faith most willingly carries reason along as far as reason can go and then goes on with wisdom to the full philosophic limit; and then it dares to launch out upon the limitless and never-ending universe journey in the sole company of TRUTH.

Science (knowledge) is founded on the inherent (adjutant spirit) assumption that reason is valid, that the universe can be comprehended. Philosophy (co-ordinate comprehension) is founded on the inherent (spirit of wisdom) assumption that wisdom is valid, that the material universe can be co-ordinated with the spiritual. Religion (the truth of personal spiritual experience) is founded on the inherent (Thought Adjuster) assumption that faith is valid, that God can be known and attained <-----the Urantia Book 1955."​

What a load.

I've read some good woo in my time, but this ranks right up there.

Deepak Chopra should be taking notes.

 

[Colter]

What are truth and proof? What is there to be true or to prove if consciousness and existence don't exist as you said they don't when denying the axioms?

Do you now recant your objection to the axioms?

Recant? Frankly, I never bought into Rands claims from the beginning. Existence is effect, not cause. Your benign philosophy is centered in the primacy of an effect and the consciousness of existence in the effect. It's confusing to contemplate just how to even answer such a distorted observation of reality.

 

[True Scotsman]

Recant? Frankly, I never bought into Rands claims from the beginning. Existence is effect, not cause. Your benign philosophy is centered in the primacy of an effect and the consciousness of existence in the effect. It's confusing to contemplate just how to even answer such a distorted observation of reality.

Existence is a stolen concept since you deny the axiom of existence. What is so confusing about saying that existence exists, consciousness is awareness of what exists and wishing doesn't make things so? Why is that a distorted view of reality? That is confusing to you? Those concepts are self evident to children. When you so hastily called the Objectivist axioms "false constructs" you denied that existence exists which is all that the axiom is, an affirmation of what is self evident. Now you contradict yourself and say that "existence is effect" after denying that existence exists. Does that make sense to you?

 

[Colter]

Then you should be able to show how the premises logically lead to the conclusion. Where is that argument? Where is the evidence?

That's the difficulty of talking to Atheist, we don't have a premise that logically leads to a conclusion that will satisfy you. That's not the path that man takes to God, its not something that we worked out in a mathematical equation that is testable. "Human things must be known in order to be loved, but divine things must be loved in order to be known." UB 1955

"God is so all real and absolute that no material sign of proof or no demonstration of so-called miracle may be offered in testimony of his reality. Always will we know him because we trust him, and our belief in him is wholly based on our personal participation in the divine manifestations of his infinite reality."​

 

[Loudmouth]

That's the difficulty of talking to Atheist, we don't have a premise that logically leads to a conclusion that will satisfy you. That's not the path that man takes to God, its not something that we worked out in a mathematical equation that is testable. "Human things must be known in order to be loved, but divine things must be loved in order to be known."

If you have to believe in something before it can be evidenced, then it isn't a rational position. It's like a prosecutor asking the jury to find the defendant guilty before he can present evidence of guilt.

"God is so all real and absolute that no material sign of proof or no demonstration of so-called miracle may be offered in testimony of his reality. Always will we know him because we trust him, and our belief in him is wholly based on our personal participation in the divine manifestations of his infinite reality."​

The same can be said for any deity and for fictitious entities.

 

[JGG]

Reverse psychology. You never answered my question.

And you never answered mine. If you recall, earlier I asked about Psalms, after you eagerly quoted that "fools are atheists" or "atheists are fools" line from Ps. 14:1. Do you agree with all of the passages from Psalms including the entirety of 14:1? Specifically: That atheists are corrupt, that atheists doeth no good, that atheists have done abominable iniquity, and that atheists are hated by God.

I eagerly await your answer.

 

[Colter]

Existence is a stolen concept since you deny the axiom of existence. What is so confusing about saying that existence exists, consciousness is awareness of what exists and wishing doesn't make things so? Why is that a distorted view of reality? That is confusing to you? Those concepts are self evident to children. When you so hastily called the Objectivist axioms "false constructs" you denied that existence exists which is all that the axiom is, an affirmation of what is self evident. Now you contradict yourself and say that "existence is effect" after denying that existence exists. Does that make sense to you?

Maybe I dismiss the "existence exist" like the majority of philosophers do. To say existence exist doesn't explain anything.


*There exists a great cosmic gulf between matter and thought, and this gulf is immeasurably greater between material mind and spiritual love. Consciousness, much less self-consciousness, cannot be explained by any theory of mechanistic electronic association or materialistic energy phenomena.

*The realms of the finite exist by virtue of the eternal purpose of God. Finite creatures, high and low, may propound theories, and have done so, as to the necessity of the finite in the cosmic economy, but in the last analysis it exists because God so willed. The universe cannot be explained, neither can a finite creature offer a rational reason for his own individual existence without appealing to the prior acts and pre-existent volition of ancestral beings, Creators or procreators." UB

To say existence exists doesn't even address origin's, a time before time. You seem to be saying that you just exist, are conscious and the sum total of all that is primacy.