What will it take to convert you from atheism?

Page 4 of 6 [ 88 posts ] Go to page Previous 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Next

Previous topic | Next topic

Sand
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 15 Sep 2007
Age: 98
Gender: Male
Posts: 11,484
Location: Finland

24 May 2011, 9:56 pm

leejosepho wrote:

Sand wrote:

Modern technology has clearly demonstrated that godly power cannot be demonstrated without the obvious suspicion that merely superior technology is involved. Any insane genius with a basic insight into superiority technology could perform what the gullible might assume is a miracle and declare himself as God. It just doesn't work anymore.

Oh where, oh just where was such a mere man while I was yet dying of chronic alcoholism?! :roll:

That you should equate the cure of alcoholism with the ability to create universes merely demonstrates how grotesquely the human mind can develop.

leejosepho
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 14 Sep 2009
Gender: Male
Posts: 9,011
Location: 200 miles south of Little Rock

24 May 2011, 10:44 pm

Sand wrote:

leejosepho wrote:

Sand wrote:

Oh where, oh just where was such a mere man while I was yet dying of chronic alcoholism?! :roll:

That you should equate the cure of alcoholism with the ability to create universes ...

What?!

I had only been wondering where your "insane genius" might have been while I was yet dying!

_________________
I began looking for someone like me when I was five ...
My search ended at 59 ... right here on WrongPlanet.
==================================

Sand
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 15 Sep 2007
Age: 98
Gender: Male
Posts: 11,484
Location: Finland

24 May 2011, 11:59 pm

leejosepho wrote:

Sand wrote:

leejosepho wrote:

Sand wrote:

Oh where, oh just where was such a mere man while I was yet dying of chronic alcoholism?! :roll:

That you should equate the cure of alcoholism with the ability to create universes ...

What?!

I had only been wondering where your "insane genius" might have been while I was yet dying!

I am not trying to persuade you of anything. I am only giving my view which I am sure you find unacceptable. To base your belief in a super being on the fact that you had a change of capability to deal with alcoholism strikes me as a very useful delusion.

DentArthurDent
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 26 Jul 2008
Age: 59
Gender: Male
Posts: 3,884
Location: Victoria, Australia

25 May 2011, 1:49 am

leejosepho wrote:

Oh where, oh just where was such a mere man while I was yet dying of chronic alcoholism?! :roll:

Come of it Lee, that you managed to rid yourself of alcoholism is marvelous and all power to you, I once gave up heroin so I know what it is like to take such powerful drugs head on. However your ability to abstain from alcohol says far more about you as a person than it does about the existence of God.

Belief in something has absolutely nothing to so with fact, it is well known that the brain is very capable of delusional and hallucinatory activity. You have demonstrated nothing to suggest that yours has behaved any different and certainly nothing points to an intervention on your behalf by a supernatural being, if anything such a belief is evidence of a continued delusion.

_________________
"I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance anyday"
Douglas Adams

"Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand" Karl Marx

LKL
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 21 Jul 2007
Age: 48
Gender: Female
Posts: 7,402

25 May 2011, 2:12 am

leejosepho wrote:

LKL wrote:

what would it take to convert me?
1) evidence that prayer has some beneficial effect ...

"And Yahuah said, 'I have indeed seen the oppression of My people who are in Mitsrayim (Egypt),
and I have heard their cry because of their slave-drivers, for I know their sorrows.
And I have come down to deliver them from the hand of the Mitsrites, and
to bring them up from that land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey,
to the place of the Kena'anites and the H'ittites and the Amorites and the Perizzites and the H'iwwites and the Yeb'usites.'"
(Exodus 3:7-8)

citing a bible whose evidence that it is divine is that it claims to be divine, is not evidence of the efficacy of that divinity.

Quote:

LKL wrote:

2) evidence that adherents of one religion are more fortunate than socioeconomically, geographically similar adherents of a different religion, independent of conflating factors like beneficial habits.

Who was, is and will ever be the source of those "beneficial habits" you seem to so readily disqualify?!

claiming that your particular god is the source of everything good, is not evidence of the existence of that god.

Quote:

LKL wrote:

3) evidence that people who commit atrocities in the name of god are statistically more likely to be quickly removed from the gene pool or otherwise neutralized through 'acts of god.'

Why do you demand/expect/assume "quickly" there?

It wouldn't have to be terribly quickly - just statistically more quickly than those who commit atrocities without appealing to god(s).

ValentineWiggin
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 15 May 2011
Age: 36
Gender: Female
Posts: 4,907
Location: Beneath my cat's paw

25 May 2011, 4:55 am

leejosepho wrote:

Sand wrote:

Oh where, oh just where was such a mere man while I was yet dying of chronic alcoholism?! :roll:

You know damned-well that you're not allowed to claim that BS anymore:

[img][800:287]http://i234.photobucket.com/albums/ee261/liberallady1/proofofgod.jpg[/img]

NarcissusSavage
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 2 Sep 2009
Age: 42
Gender: Male
Posts: 675

25 May 2011, 5:32 am

YippySkippy wrote:

Lack of proof that something exists does not mean it doesn't exist.

There are probably billions of planets out there that we can't prove exist (at least not yet).
That doesn't mean we should deny even the possibility that the universe continues beyond what we can currently detect.

I'm not saying a god or gods exists. I'm just saying it's egotistical to think human science has anywhere near all the answers at this point.

But it would be silly to start naming all of the unknown planets and discussing which ones are where, and fighting about which ones are better than the others. Creating whole moral and ethical codes based on these unkown planets phases, cycles, and orbits. Teaching children about the glory of unknown planet mbsvdiksfhbvipusb ipusb nuoagglnoawbgj who loves you. etc.

_________________
I am Ignostic.
Go ahead and define god, with universal acceptance of said definition.
I'll wait.

NarcissusSavage
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 2 Sep 2009
Age: 42
Gender: Male
Posts: 675

25 May 2011, 5:54 am

leejosepho wrote:

Sand wrote:

leejosepho wrote:

Sand wrote:

Oh where, oh just where was such a mere man while I was yet dying of chronic alcoholism?! :roll:

That you should equate the cure of alcoholism with the ability to create universes ...

What?!

I had only been wondering where your "insane genius" might have been while I was yet dying!

Where was your god while you were suffering?

It strikes me as odd. You think that god saved you. Yet, you suffered and you acted and you fixed your problem. You were "dying", and where was this god entity of yours? I wonder.

_________________
I am Ignostic.
Go ahead and define god, with universal acceptance of said definition.
I'll wait.

01001011
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 3 Mar 2010
Age: 43
Gender: Male
Posts: 991

25 May 2011, 6:53 am

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

01001011 wrote:

Nope. I don't believe the word god has any sensible meaning.

Forget about evidence.

I think that approach is outright ridiculous. I mean, this is not to be too harsh, but if we took you sensibly do you believe that ANY term has sensible meanings? I mean, there is no rigorous definition for what a dog is, should regard dogs as non-existent? This isn't to say it is reasonable to regard God as existent and non-contradictory, just.... I am skeptical towards your language-based skepticism.

I can point to things that are called dogs. I can do so because I know how a dog should interact with my senses.

For objects beyond common sense like electrons, we can use mathematics and verifiable and falsifiable theories.

None of these can be said for god. So exactly what a theist is believing? I don't claim god does not exist because the sentence is meaningless.

peterd
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 25 Dec 2006
Age: 72
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,351

25 May 2011, 7:26 am

I was happily theist for many decades until occam's razor intervened, concidentally the year before the autism diagnosis reared its ugly head.

All it would take to reimplement the strategy would be some tiny fragment of evidence that there might actually be a god of some sort or another whose good will could make a noticeable difference to individual personal outcomes. Unfortunately, the decade that's passed since that shift hasn't thrown off any such fragments.

DentArthurDent
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 26 Jul 2008
Age: 59
Gender: Male
Posts: 3,884
Location: Victoria, Australia

25 May 2011, 7:26 am

NarcissusSavage wrote:

leejosepho wrote:

What?!

I had only been wondering where your "insane genius" might have been while I was yet dying!

Well Richard Dawkins succinctly sums it up "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."

God was always there he just wanted Lee to suffer before he 'saved' him. Why? who knows, god according to most religious people is a complete and utter bastard, who has the occasional pang of guilt and then acts with some contrition.

God to me is but a construct to explain the contradictions of life.

Basically Lee, in my opinion you should stand tall, saying proudly that you conquered what is probably the hardest addiction, and that you did it of your own free will. God had nothing to do with it.

It never ceases to annoy me when people who claim god saved them never question why an interventionist god would have put them into the position in the first place. The most recent example being the Chilean miners, who upon being rescued by plain old human ingenuity, science and hard work, praised god for their survival before acknowledging those who had actually rescued them. Surely if they believed in god it would have been far more appropriate for the miners to have hugged their rescuers, and then turned to the sky giving god the finger.

leejosepho
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 14 Sep 2009
Gender: Male
Posts: 9,011
Location: 200 miles south of Little Rock

25 May 2011, 9:15 am

DentArthurDent wrote:

leejosepho wrote:

Oh where, oh just where was such a mere man while I was yet dying of chronic alcoholism?! :roll:

Come of it Lee, that you managed to rid yourself of alcoholism is marvelous and all power to you ...

Do you truly always miss my continually saying the big "I" did not do that for little ol' me?! :roll:

Now yes, people do keep trying to tell me I actually did do that (or that it somehow just naturally took place within my brain/mind and I just do not happen to seem to realize the simple reality of said same), but then such ideas just do not ever hold even a single drop of water in my case.

DentArthurDent wrote:

I once gave up heroin ...

Kudos to you, and I do say that respectfully.

DentArthurDent wrote:

Belief in something has absolutely nothing to do with fact ...

Have I ever said otherwise?

DentArthurDent wrote:

... it is well known that the brain is very capable of delusional and hallucinatory activity.

Yes, I know, and I ultimately had to find true recovery to finally get free of that.

DentArthurDent wrote:

You have demonstrated nothing to suggest that yours has behaved any different and certainly nothing points to an intervention on your behalf by a supernatural being ...

I have repeatedly presented precisely that, but yes, I do understand most/many/all things I say there will nevertheless always be rejected by some.

DentArthurDent wrote:

... if anything such a belief is evidence of a continued delusion.

Just show me precisely how I recovered in any other way and I will quite gently and lovingly kiss your sweet li'l' ass -- the one out in the barn, I mean -- in complete agreement!!

Nice to see you back here posting, Dent!

_________________
I began looking for someone like me when I was five ...
My search ended at 59 ... right here on WrongPlanet.
==================================

MasterJedi
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 22 Oct 2010
Age: 51
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,160
Location: in an open field west of a white house