It's May 22nd

[DarknessXoXLight]

Re: It's May 22nd

penis

Dude, can I follow this religion?!

[Reincarnate]

Re: It's May 22nd

The problem is that some people don't agree that the burden of proof rests with the person making the claim. Almost every single goddamned argument I've been in goes like this:

"You claim God exists -- the burden of proof is on you to show me that I should believe in your God."

"No, the burden of proof is on YOU -- you can't DISPROVE that God DOESN'T exist."

"You can't disprove a negative. I'd also have to disprove every other possible religion/belief that could ever exist. I could believe in magical flying teapots or tooth fairies or spaghetti monsters or magic peanut butter aliens with plasma balls for hands -- they're all equally likely and all without any shred of evidence. When there's no evidence for something, on what basis can I possibly say something is false? How can I disprove leprechauns if I search every inch of the universe and find nothing? You can always move the goalposts and invoke an explanation that is logically outside of my scope no matter what is done. How can I disprove a God outside of science... with science?"

"But that's right! You can't say something's false even if there's no evidence! You can't disprove it! So it could be true!"

"Just because we can't say it's false doesn't mean we have any good reason to believe in it! Why don't you believe in the peanut butter aliens or the tooth fairy or the flying spaghetti monster? They're all without evidence too and yet you don't believe in those. You also don't believe in Zeus or Apollo or Thor or Poseison or Anubis or any other God -- so why do you pick one arbitrarily evidence-devoid belief over the rest?"

"Because it's true for me and you can't disprove it."

"*facepalm*"

aka basically this http://d2o7bfz2il9cb7.cloudfront.net...f997ad7c15cd3b

It becomes a horrifically stupid argument. Atheism is just a rejection of theism. The "support" for atheism is really just science. Time and time again we see that we can explain everything as a result of functions of our natural world. Some of the bigger questions about existence itself can be addressed with quantum mechanics and quantum cosmology, but ultimately no answer will satisfy everyone.

The biggest question of all, IMO, is "Why is there something rather than nothing?" We tend to have trouble thinking of a universe that could come about naturally from nothing, but the problem is that invoking God doesn't really get us any closer because it doesn't address what "just did God" then. Saying "God was always there" doesn't satisfy that initial burning curiosity to begin with. If God could always exist, why not the universe?

Even if time were cyclical -- we've got the same problem. Why does the cycle exist to begin with? At some point we have to accept that nature is not going to fit in with our intuition -- especially an intuition that has demonstrably evolved in a particular environment to operate in a particular way. The quantum world is especially crazy and doesn't make much sense at first, especially when it comes to time. At some level we have to be OK with the notion that the very essence of existence itself may be self-defined. That is to say, existence exists and couldn't exist any other way. Nonexistence doesn't exist. Even if this is somehow wrong at some deep, fundamental level, we also have to accept that some things may be beyond our grasp. We may never know the answer to "What, if anything, caused the Big Bang?" We may not be satisfied with the implications of a spacetime singularity or a quantum fluctuation. But that doesn't mean we suddenly go off the deep end and invoke some completely crazy claim as true just because science can't answer something yet. You don't know the answer any better than anyone else.

My point is that at the end of the day, evidence wins. Religion-nuts like these Doomsday folk just keep moving the goalposts, and that's all they can do. I don't even find those guys particularly annoying -- just amusing. The religious types that bother me are the ones impeding education and forcing religious ideology through their actions and words at the political/economic/governmental level.

[-zeroSKILL-]

Re: It's May 22nd

You forgot academic level bix. The religious people affecting our nations/worlds policies and trying to force their religious crap into our schools are the ones that piss me off the most.

I'm not gonna lie, I can't stand religion in any form. I have to accept the fact that other people, for whatever reason, can believe in some omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being and I can be around these people all the way up until the point where they start mentioning anything religious.

My intolerance is something that was gained over time, and hasn't always been present. But as Reincarnate stated above, discussing religion with anyone is about as good as talking to a wall. No meaningful (meaningful here is meant to mean "informational") conversation will ever come from these types of discussions.

Scientists/atheists will always wait for the proof that will never come, and religious people will continue to believe in something that can't be disproven. One glorious spiritual uplifting thing in life you can never take away from them. The one thing in life that will always and forever be there, and something stable for them to latch onto. Whatever the reason they believe, it's impossible to take it away from them and therefore it's safe to believe in.

I wish I had a time machine to go back in time and murder every single person throughout history that ever thought it would be a cool idea to worship some deity.

[-zeroSKILL-]

Re: It's May 22nd

Enjoy your downthumb and talk to the hand.

ChesterDalton writes...
at 9:40:09pm on 5/25/11
Actually in return I get satisfaction knowing I down thumbed a satan worshipper today.

And this religious nutjob has now attributed the lack of belief in God with worshipping Satan. gg.

If I don't believe in God, Heaven, or Hell I'm pretty sure I'm not gonna believe in Satan either. Let alone worship him.

[rushyrulz]

Re: It's May 22nd

Spoiler Alert
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNf-P_5u_Hw&t=33

[Patricoo]

Re: It's May 22nd

Let me just pull out two points, because I don't want to get into certain discussions. This isn't the place be one of those forums where you take blocks of quotes and cut out parts. I don't want to do that.

Atheism is just a rejection of theism.

I said this a few posts back. Its not "just." To say "just" means that the concept of all theism, as it has been and will become of every incarnation, can be easily dismissed with a wave of the hand. It isn't 'no big deal' to reject theism. It is and was a grounding foundation of all human society. I'm not going to address any of the argument. Don't just act like your argument is 'blatantly obvious.'

Religion-nuts like these Doomsday folk just keep moving the goalposts, and that's all they can do.

Science consistently "moves the goal posts." Philosophy consistently "moves the goal posts." Politics consistently "moves the goal posts." Rather then calling out someone for staying in their ways, we should be encouraging them to open up more discussion on the texts and applying them to what we know today. Whenever the people take an idea and stubbornly refuse to change or adapt it causes bad things. For instance, consider the guy who, in my loaded choice of words, 'abused science' and is convincing hoards of people that vaccines cause autism in face of all countering research.

First, don't blame the people for the concept. Then, don't act like theism is so easily waved off. Is that really so hard for me to ask?

I wish I had a time machine to go back in time and murder every single person throughout history that ever thought it would be a cool idea to worship some deity.

Good Christian value.

[Reincarnate]

Re: It's May 22nd

I am not sure if it's seriously worth replying to that level of stupidity. Maybe I'll put it to a vote.

[~kitty~]

Re: It's May 22nd

Science consistently "moves the goal posts." Philosophy consistently "moves the goal posts." Politics consistently "moves the goal posts." Rather then calling out someone for staying in their ways, we should be encouraging them to open up more discussion on the texts and applying them to what we know today. Whenever the people take an idea and stubbornly refuse to change or adapt it causes bad things. For instance, consider the guy who, in my loaded choice of words, 'abused science' and is convincing hoards of people that vaccines cause autism in face of all countering research.

You're missing the point here. Reincarnate didn't say anything about science being excluded from "moving goal posts." However, the real argument was that the "Doomsday folk" can only move the goal posts, because there's no basis for determining these dates except for symbolic numbers that don't really mean anything in reality.

[Patricoo]

Re: It's May 22nd

I am not sure if it's seriously worth replying to that level of stupidity. Maybe I'll put it to a vote.

Wut? Me?

You're missing the point here. Reincarnate didn't say anything about science being excluded from "moving goal posts." However, the real argument was that the "Doomsday folk" can only move the goal posts, because there's no basis for determining these dates except for symbolic numbers that don't really mean anything in reality.

Thats not my... wtf guys.

[MrGiggles]

Re: It's May 22nd

Science consistently "moves the goal posts."

I've spent like ten minutes staring at this sentence trying to think of a good way to explain exactly how far off the point you are and why but I just can't do it. I just don't possess the communication skills.

edit: apparently neither does anyone else

[Reincarnate]

Re: It's May 22nd

Ah what the hell

atheism = a + theism = non-theism. As in, a lack of belief in theism. That's literally what it means. That's all it means.

Science doesn't "move the goalposts." You seem to be unaware of what that term means. Moving the goalposts means that once you provide evidence for a claim, you redefine the claim such that you require more/different evidence. It's called "moving the goalposts" because it's basically like scoring a goal and then moving the goalposts in order to say that your score was actually no good to begin with.

Science doesn't do this.

[Reincarnate]

Re: It's May 22nd

Just wanted to finalize this by saying you're a complete retard

[~kitty~]

Re: It's May 22nd

Ah what the hell

atheism = a + theism = non-theism. As in, a lack of belief in theism. That's literally what it means. That's all it means.

Science doesn't "move the goalposts." You seem to be unaware of what that term means. Moving the goalposts means that once you provide evidence for a claim, you redefine the claim such that you require more/different evidence. It's called "moving the goalposts" because it's basically like scoring a goal and then moving the goalposts in order to say that your score was actually no good to begin with.

Science doesn't do this.

I interpreted it as a "miscalculation" in science, which "moving the goalposts" is not just "moving" them, but an error. Which was kind of what I was trying to imply or something?

EDIT: Now thinking about it more, I feel like his argument doesn't relate to this topic.

[Reincarnate]

Re: It's May 22nd

Science doesn't move the goalposts in the sense that if you provide contradictory evidence for/against something, the science itself changes. In other words, science embraces change through evidence. Moving the goalposts is the exact opposite of this -- imposing more and more conditions even once the hypothesis has already been addressed. You hold your claim constant and warp the evidence around it or demand more.

In this case, the guy (forgot his name) is moving the goalposts by saying "Ok well NEXT time will REALLY be Doomsday!" This is literally all he can do each time he is shown to be false. You can't prove the Doomsday guys wrong until the day actually rolls by, but even when it does and nothing happens, people will make up additional reasons to hold their general hypothesis as true despite the contradictory evidence.

[Netjet!]

Re: It's May 22nd

Hey, hey... I'm all for arguments about this sort of thing, but take it to CT. This isn't the place for it.