Welcome to Smashboards, the world's largest Super Smash Brothers community! Over 250,000 Smash Bros. fans from around the world have come to discuss these great games in over 19 million posts!
You are currently viewing our boards as a visitor. Click here to sign up right now and start on your path in the Smash community!
Is this a joke?
So just out of the blue you feel like it'll be nonsense? Impossible?
I know it's nonsense because I was fed the same kind of crap in my childhood and all throughout high school. I know exactly what he's talking about, and I also know it's false. I've seen all the garbage tactics creationists try to employ. They're outright lies that any competent person with a high school level education in physics and biology could see through.
That's interesting, however, I hope you realize that yours is about a Homo Erectus fossil discovery. My link was specifically for Homo Sapiens.
I liked this bit. You cannot possibly disprove the existence of God with either science...
Atheism, by definition, is the absolute lack of religion. Religion is placing faith into something or having a large group of people believe something with a set of moral values. I already have said, I do not believe that there is no god. To say so would be just silly and closed-minded. No, you have to be open to the possibilities. Atheists who do not deny the (possible)existence of a god are just as religious as your cat is. The christian god is heavily contradicted by himself and the laws of nature in the Bible, and therefore, there is a very high probability that He does not exist.
Yes, but there are less atheistic zealots than religious ones. WAY less. This is actually very expected, though, as atheists tend to be more open to other religious ideas than religious people.
Faith:
This doesn't really help your argument, unless you're still trying to call atheism a religion. If someone is atheist with no-proof beliefs, then he's not really atheist, but slightly religious; although he would still be classified as an atheist for not siding with a religion.. Simple as that. If the atheist in question doesn't know what they believe, then they're agnostic atheist.
Yes you can, or at least you can disprove any sort of ability of a god to directly enact upon reality. Sure, there might be a god, but in order to conform to the evidence and proof that's building, he's a god that just sits where ever gods sit, with no direct or tangible influence upon the universe, let alone directly intervening in human affairs. However, why bother worshiping or even caring that much about a god like that? Might as well continue on as if he isn't there anyway.
Burden of proof is exclusively upon the religious for several reasons. First off, all the evidence and proof that we do have points to there being no god. In order to void all that evidence, the religious must come up with some evidence of their own, and pretty significant evidence too. Also, if you're in the position of claiming something does exist, it is you that has to provide proof of its existence. You cannot reasonably ask someone of direct evidence of its nonexistence because by the very fact of it not existing, there will be no tangible evidence to find to invalidate it's existence.
Yes, it is true, there can be some atheists who can be particularly aggressive and outspoken against religion, or even any utterance of it. But don't think they do it out of some blind sense of duty or, somehow, "faith", unlike their religious counterparts. There's some very good arguments to be made that religion is probably one of the worst influences on humanity, and is at the heart of some of the worst and most violent political hotspots of our time.
Once again, you're mistaking confidence in evidence and proof for "faith". That is not the case. And, just to preempt anyone, I am not saying that our evidence and proofs are perfect, they are undoubtedly imperfect or lacking in some respects. But, unlike faith or religion, they are constantly tested and retested to ensure their accurateness and truth value, and are discarded if they fail to.
Oops, you said the "Universe" was made in seven days.
Again this works for us too. If humans have some sort of psychological need to create a God (as I said before, the need was created by God so that we would at least consider him when he showed himself to the world), and only one religion is true, then the true God will ensure that the religion that follows him the closest will survive until judgment day. This argument also would work for Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, etc., but they all have their individual fallacies in my own opinion and that is why I am a Christian.
Don't "omg" arguments. Perhaps you would agree if I broadened the word "religion" to "philosophy"? Atheism is not a negation to everyone else's beliefs. It's merely a counter-position for the reasons I stated earlier, which you did not even attempt to refute.
Gj Hive, I second this. Back to what reaver said:
You're entire argument is based on the point that Atheists have "evidence" and we do not. The only thing Atheism is truly effective at is attacking Christian's perceived lack of evidence. List the evidence please. Evolution? Galileo, perhaps? There is no link between those things and the nonexistence of God. Evolution and God are not mutually exclusive. Evolution can exist in an intelligent design. Easy. Actually, I find it unlikely that monkeys banging on a type-writer for billions of years will compose millions of masterpieces (or that random mutations will create a huge amount of successful species that are all different, and all require at least one advantageous mutation to differentiate from other species) without some sort of miracle.
This ties into your entire post. If atheists don't have evidence, your arguments are null. And yes, you do have faith. What do you have faith in? You have have faith that your "evidence" can disprove the existence of God, while nonbelievers of Atheism don't see the link.
Wait... you have a sense of duty to your belief system? So you do want to "convert".
Oh, this is called Agnostic.
What about the other seven days, though? I suppose life and light were specific to separate "days" than everything else? That would mean light was created first, then the earth, then stars, then water and vegetation, then animals. It claims that the earth was started with water on its surface. Unless you want to go further and interpret the Bible's very loose definitions with "Oh, the water was a metaphor for lava" I've got an interesting hypothesis, though. The universe is about 15 Billion years, and the Earth was created late after creation. However, a non-linear time frame argument is tough to beat, as there's no logical way to disprove it.
This is why we don't understand quantum physics, because it's so difficult to interpret. Also, does God have to be the Christian god? What if it's another god, on a far off civilization?
That's surprisingly twisted logic. Humans like power, right. They want to also be happy, right? And divine. What better way to do this than invent a god?
The need to use toilet paper when using the restroom was created by God too, I assume?
That's right, because we refuted the religion-atheism argument, and....
But God's book is doing a pretty darn good job of defying God's nature.
We don't have faith that it can disprove God. It has gone against most of the bible, which is God's word.
Ahh, but only if you don't choose a side. Agnostics aren't sure if they want to be religious or atheistic. Atheists have chosen and sided with no religion. That means it is atheism.
I don't think it is as simple to say God shouldn't have created existence with the possibility of sin. That concept is a bit beyond us. What I can say is that the perfect pair he created chose on their own to do bad. The were perfect meaning they were always inclined to do right and never inclined to do wrong. It's when they purposely went against doing what was right that sin because a consequence of their being. When you make claims like the above it's always good to know the big picture. Immediately after their sin God established a means to get things back the way he originally intended in a prophecy in Genesis 3:15. This is the first prophecy in the bible and establishes the theme of the bible. That is God's Kingdom, and what it will do to correct sin etc. So yes he is able to undo the corruption you just don't understand the way that he is going about doing it. God has far more wisdom than any of us and while our solution might be to immediately fix everything as soon as it went wrong with the first two, God saw a reason to let things continue that way, but creating a way in the future to correct things. (whenever that may be) And this prophecy as been unfolding ever since throughout the bible and even up to our time until its grand culmination when things will be corrected.
You can get moral. None-religious people can learn to be ethical. It's not hard. Look, ethics is basically minimizing damage and maximizing benefits. We know that murdering would cause a lot of damage without much benefits. That goes for all people, instead of simply Jews as the Bible states. We also know that Stealing is bad as the damage could be jail and the benefits are usually small.
Hitler wasn't using atheism as an excuse. He was using theism and economics. Theism like, Jewish people made us have this crappy economy, let's kill them off so their stupid "race" stops making us suffer.
Your qualm is with Fundamentalism then, the thing about Fundimentalism is it isn't isolated to just religious beliefs. Atheist Fundamentals are just as scary and crazy as Christian Fundamentals.
No, you cannot just claim that by the mere possibility that a god exists, he therefore is automatically omnipotent. Where is the actual evidence or proof that if there was a god, he is omnipotent? You cannot just claim things to make it convenient for yourself to explain away the improbability of a god existing in the first place.
There is hardly any evidence that a god created the world at all. In fact, rather, the Earth was formed by purely natural processes, about which you can read a brief summary here.
The issue with what you're arguing is that just because human's have always invented gods or religious like rituals does not mean at all that it's true. People were naturally inclined to believe the Earth was flat for a long time until evidence and mathematics proved otherwise. The initial belief and, due to our perspective of the world, inclination to it does not make it at all anymore true. Also, if humans are so "imperfect" with our understanding, why would the belief in a god be given a free pass as to being true and perfectly understandable?
Atheism is not just effective against Christianity's lack of evidence for their god, but every other religion, just to let you know. However, it's such a case by case thing, as every religion asserts different things about their god (or gods), that all atheists can do is wait for someone to make a claim, see whether the evidence supports it or not, and then either support that position if it does align with the evidence or critique it and shut it down if it does not. And, since, it just happens, that we are mostly Americans, and most Americans are Christian, it would be natural for theological debates to mostly revolve around Christianity and its assertions. And, please, don't bandy about phrases like "perceived lack of evidence" for your position when you haven't done one iota to present a single piece of evidence for your side. Granted, it will be difficult, if not impossible to, since there really isn't any.
I don't have "faith" in evidence because it is what it is. Take gravity, it doesn't take "faith" to believe it's there and will continuously affect objects. To see a rock and see that it contains silicon does not take "faith". These are impartial, objective observations of the world that happens and occurs regardless of how much I want it to happen or not, or how much I want to believe in it or not. The proof is self-evident. If my enthusiasm for the evidence wanes, it does not at all affect how true it still is, unlike religious faith. It is merely a by product of these observations and proofs that it invalidates the claims of the religious that a god exists. That is why I am an atheist. I follow the evidence and proof, which, as a by product result, makes me an atheist. If the evidence was such that it provided proof for a god, I would as ardently argue for his/her/it's existence as hard as I am now arguing against it. That's something you would never hear a religious person say, as they would never consider the other side or the possibility that they are wrong, especially since they try so hard to be as amorphous as possible with their definition of god, as to always leave some slight possibility that he does exist. It amazes me in how uninterested they are in being accurate or truthful about something as rather to always ensuring, even in the slightest terms, they could plausibly be right.
And he did say this to his adjutant, General Gerhard Engel.
He also said this in Mein Kampf.
However, he also said things like this.
So, as to what Hitler himself believed about religion, I have no idea. The most possible thing apparent, though, is that he cynically used religion to manipulate not only the people of Germany, but also the world at large, most famously the Catholic Church. Pope Pius XII refused to stand against the Nazis, and the Archbishop of Munich, Cardinal Michael Faulhaber said this after Hitler escaped an assassination attempt in Munich in November 1939.
Yeah, seems like the religious people did a great job at stopping the immoral horror and evil that Hitler committed.
Regardless of Hitler's personal belief in religion, it is clear that religion only exacerbated and helped Hitler's plan rather than hinder it or bring any sort of morality to it. Rather, it brought a sense of righteousness to his beliefs. This only goes to show that maybe a lot of the evil Hitler had done might've been lessened, or not even had been at all, if it were not for religion.
Normally, yes, I would agree with you that it's a bad thing to generalize and scapegoat a group of people for the actions of a few, but the issue is that what enables a suicide bomber to blow himself up, believing all the while it is a good thing, is what the whole of religion panders to. It's the fact that you can believe in something irregardless of what the proof or evidence actually says about how true it is. Religion is a form of the immature process of believing something to be true because you want it to be true, but not actually caring how true it is.
when a homophobe commits violence...
or someone decides to bomb someone else in an act of "holy war"...
or some weird ritual claims the life of someone...
people like to generalize these things as being the fault of religion in general (or lack of)...
no one focuses on the action itself....
when these things happen its often easy to scapegoat groups of ppl...
but why are these things really wrong???
Don't you think that maybe at the heart of it what really matters is that violence is committed against another being or that someone's life is being taken regardless of what religion or belief system they have?
I think its these actions that ppl should be addressing rather than religion as a whole ^^
trust me lol, there are really f--- dumb ppl on both sides ^^ but these are not indicative of either theism or atheism at their hearts... :D
Yeah its hypocritical. I bash all three Old Testament based religions.
Its fine to bash Islam but what you have to remember is Islam went away from its roots a long time ago that were based on science, which is why there was the Islamic Golden Age. However, an important official said a few hundred years later that Islam had got too advanced and so he essentially made it the fundamentalist group you see now.
Lol@nihilism. it's basically anarchy right? Yeah, anarchy is a whole big paradox lol. Okay, to me, it's not about believing in Empathy or going more toward nihilism. Empathy won't cease to exist because we're atheists; empathy is part of human nature. Nihilism won't exist either because the whole point is to not have a government or go against a government. Of course, if you don't have a government, you don't have a government to go against. Anyways, blah, nihilism/anarchy=one big paradox.
Um, Minimizing damage isn't bad. =/
But bad actions are punished. I mean, unless you don't consider being secluded or cast out from a society punishment. I mean, even if it isn't because of jail, people doing bad things will be looked down upon as they endanger our society, which humans thrive to keep. Again, this brings it back to human nature which strives for companionship and society helps us do that.
Murdering is bad because it's a waste of energy. It's inefficient. You can get all the resources/meats and stuff from a dead human as you can from say, a cow. Why would you want to kill someone who can fight back for meat when you can just kill an animal sitting right there? Also, you put more energy into raising a human being than a cow, well, at least that's what I assume. So, by killing a human being, your wasting more energy than killing a cow for the same means of survival. It's not ethical to simply waste energy like that.
Um, a little hard to understand this part. Can you clarify please?
If you say you follow the evidence then you might be interested in looking more into physics. For starters take thermodynamics. The first law shows that basically you can't create something from nothing. If you believe in the big bang (i actually for the most part believe that the big bang was a quite possible explanation for the birth of the universe, I however don't think it came about on it's own) The process of how the big bang happened is cake compared to trying to explain where the initial singularity came from. It didn't create itself and obviously wasn't always in existence. Your argument is against faith, but it would take faith for you to believe that it came about by itself because it is impossible to prove. No particle accelerator can prove how the initial singularity came about, just what happened the first few moments after it exploded and began to expand. Second law is of entropy. Scientists are amazed with how organized the universe is and yet everything has a tendency to disorder. If you leave a car by itself it will break down, same with a building, and all other matter here on earth. Yet the universe remains amazingly organized and self sustaining.
This is a fine example of someone who can't even see past their own bull****.
