I should have been more specific, I mean in most of these ‘religious/athiest’ threads I see around the internet. I can find about 20 spaghetti monster mentions in any given one; along with all the requisite PROVE GOD DOESNT exists, but I rarely see anyone tackle it from that^ angle.
I just tackled that nonsensical false argument.
Proof is an existential matter, an empirical thing.
To assert that asking for proof of the inexistence of an alleged thing is equivocal to asking for proof of the existence of said alleged thing, only looks plausible in the simplest logical formula.
Fallacies abound, however, like uggos and STDs in Soviet’s bedroom.
Liam Neeson is a Greek God, therefore all other religions are false
Anthony Hopkins is a Norse God, therefore all other religions are false.
No dolan, I don’t think you can.
Ralph Fiennes is both a Greek god and Voldemort.
Therefore emo is true.
Unless you can break this down for me I’ve gotta admit I’m a bit lost. What I said was simply out of all the various arguments I see in most threads of this nature, surprisingly few seem to approach it from an anthropological/historical perspective. This is much more of an observational remark than an argument, it’s an assertion at its most controversial.
I’m not bashing you at all, though as a caveat it irks me too when the words culture and anthropology are joined together, as there’s many other branches other than C.Anthro.
Do go into further detail if you’re up to it as I haven’t been able to make it to this “Anthropology of Religion” book I"ve been wanting to read yet so admittedly my historical background there is scarce
A Christian could throw Morgan Freeman into this argument and I think we’d all lose.
[media=youtube]Jm3d65nCQ6w[/media]
Well he could if he saw Trayvon haggling a store owner to lower the price.
That’s not disproving santa claus.
There are only things that can be disproven in a mathematical sense. Statements such as “All swans are white” can be disproven by finding a swan that is black. That’s because you have found one example that falsifies the statement. However, you can’t prove the non existence of X. You can come up with many examples of how X has not been found, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. There is still the possibility, no matter how remote, that X will eventually be found. Its kind of like all the believers who believe they are living in the end times and that jesus will return any second… and are wrong every single time. There is still a non zero probability the rapture will happen. So it cannot be disproven, just dismissed. Not the same thing.
Saying that experts don’t believe in Santa Claus doesn’t disprove him. That’s just an argument from authority. There’s a .0000001% chance they are wrong. And if you cannot show with 100% certainty that something does not exist, you have not disproven it. Besides, the experts didn’t have the personal revelation of santa claus that I had. He visited me when I was a kid and gave me toys. Other children have had similar divine revelations of him, so he is definitely real. As I said before, he is an advanced alien with super technology that allows him to exist outside of time and space.
Also its funny you are bringing up experts, because not a single scientist thinks earth is 8000 years old and that the universe was created in 7 days, or that there was a global flood, or that we descended from adam and eve. that kind of throws water on the whole bible being the divine inspired word of god. if you argue that those are just metaphors, well that means you admit that part of the bible is a mythology, and now you have to ask yourself, which part is mythology and which part is real?
Then what is it then? Because academics/valuable sources are one of the elements scholars use to reject or approve a myth/legend as historical fact. Is Santa Claus regarded at all by any body, by any historical writings, or even a sense of belief by any historical academician, scientist, scholar, historian, or basic grade school teacher? None. There is no academic anything in concerns of this guy in red from the northpole who rides reindeers and goes down chimneys therefore it is disapproved by everybody to be real.
It’s good that you brought up Math here because i will now use that as a point for my argument, thank you but first… as i said to you, please go check out some of Richard Dawkins’ debates just to see how invalid and just out of the butt guesses your arguments are. Learn and read how social science regards things as myth and actual truth, academics and social impact is what gives the talk weight. The only reason why you say you can’t disapprove anything is because you can’t disapprove the existence of God which is a favorite subject for your kind. And much more the academics are more against the “no-god” faith which is why you think “you can’t disapprove anything”.
But if you think i’m wrong and still want to hug around the BS about academics being incapable of disapproving someone/thing from existing, then read the story of Albert Einstein and how he developed the theory of relativity. Einstein made the theory for the sole purpose of eliminating “the God of the Gaps” answer but as he made the theory and did all these mathematical equations, he hated the answer he got because not only did the answer show that the universe had a beginning and that external energy was needed to be transferred to make it all happen and work, but it lead him to believe that there is a god, just not a personal one. You see how academics is needed for the approval/disapproval of certain things? Please refer back to your math argument because it’s also been placed in the test.
Academics can not disapprove philosophical beliefs because that is all on personal prerogatives, semantics if you will.
It’s not an argument from authority.LOL It’s just basically the absence of academics that they know for sure it’s a legend. Why do you think that nobody after the age of 5 stops believing Santa Clause? Because there is nothing available about him. There is no historical source nor a historical impact, there is a historical source of St Nich and from him we all know that’s how the Santa myth started (academics told us so, you see) therefore it is classified as a full myth.You tried to give an example by making a bullshit story about you as a kid… it’s a bullshit-never happened in this world story and the argument lacks common sense as well because it is a statement likely given by a 3-5 year old is there a need to explain that in this post? lol
It’s funny that you brought this 8000 years old and 7 days too, it just shows fishjie that you are an amateur atheist who is really ignorant about religion, theology, history, science and everything else being talked about. All you are doing is just poking around the shit you’ve read from random atheist sites in a nice e0thug tone. No christian for the last hundreds of years believes that the world is 8000 years old nor 7 days nor does any Bible studying Christian think the bible means 8,000 years and 7 days. How can any body with a shred of intelligence even use that argument against the bible, seeing that the book that contains the 8,000 number is written hundreds of years ago so i find it funny how stupid atheists like you apply that statement on todays time. Next as i’ve been saying about the need of Academics, we’ve all learned the 8,000 years given in the bible was talking about the land not the entire world because from school we learn that ancient writings have the word Earth translated as land because during the time of BC, the land was called the earth way before people decided to name this planet earth. We’ve also read the bible to see how long 1 day is to God so i think you should just rest up trying to pretend that you’ve actually read the bible when you just use the “7day” argument that shows you are liar and the fact that you thought the bible claimed that planet earth is 8,000 years shows you are also ignorant. Continue pretending if you wish but by now Fish, i hope you will refrain from lying that you’ve read the entire bible.
Last the global flood is actually academically supported, read again on how Social Science talks about myths. The main reason why historians believe that there was a flood is because every part of the globe (from the North-South America’s, South East asia…) has a global flood tale dating at the same time. The fact that there was a shared time of a social impact and writings gives historians a reason to give credit to a historical global flood.
As for your last paragraph, we study the subject known as literature to find out what is to be taken as a real account in the bible. As we all know, the OT is about 90% metaphorical. The OT’s books are each written by different times, influenced by various different cultures and much more different points of view, different messages that were to be emphasized, and writing techniques. Since there was no TV or pictures during the time, people wrote artistically to help enhance and give more “color” to the scene and message. Due to the academics, we see that stories such a Job, Isaiah, Tobit, Ezekiel… were only proverbs, books made by different authors who were trying to give out a lesson about God and their point of view on how to deal with life. But ya, atheists like you are the only ones who actually push for these stories to be intentionally word for word true.
Lol what? I’m sorry to disappoint you but there are plenty of Christians that still believe this and that also believe in intelligent design.
LOL, there isn’t any Christian who think the world is 8,000 years old, maybe some young teens… who are also uneducated enough to not take in consideration that the certain book dates back way into BC. The knowledge of proper translation or ancient vocabulary isn’t even needed, atheists can just at least make a “smarter” error by saying the world was 8k during so-so BC instead of thinking that a BC book’s time indication should be accurate to our own present time eh?
It’s 2012, there is this book dating 20ish years ago and my age in that book says i’m 8 years old. That book is at error! You see the logic?
All christians believe in ID and since when did 8,000/7days factor in as part of the beliefs in the ID theory?
The universe is not infinite because time and dimension can be measured therefore it had a beginning, where neither time nor dimension existed.
Whatever created the universe was something that just doesn’t comply with known science as it operated outside of time and dimension.
I choose to believe that it was an omnipotent force.
It’s as good an explanation as any that we have right now.
I’m not sure about that. Specifically the part where you said time and dimension needing to have a beginning to be measured. Measurement is something that humans understand that no other creature does on the level we do. It’s just a mental tool that we happen to have after the fact.
Numbers go to infinity right? Negative numbers also go infinity. That’s two infinities right off the bat.
When you do algebra you use both to get either positive or negative answers. If you can come to the conclusion of having a positive number by multiplying two negatives, or a negative by multiplying a negative and a positive than you in effect have two more infinities. There are at least four mathematical infinities because there are at least four ways, or paths, to come to the correct answer.
Measurement in itself is infinite on multiple levels, most of which scientists and mathematicians. haven’t even discovered yet.
Lastly, all of those infinities are a sub-set of one infinite system, maybe that system could be considered god, I don’t know.
If the universe were finite could there possibly by a use for the number zero? It’s a placeholder number. Space (rather lack of physical dimension) is zero and all the other numbers are the manifestations that occupy that space. The negative numbers would occupy theoretical negative space, which would be other dimensions or parallel universes that we haven’t pierced through yet.
Some people think antimatter is from another dimension or parallel universe, but the people in this link don’t mention that IIRC.
**"**Among the largest mysteries in current understanding of physics is the absence of antimatter in the universe. Antimatter is the mirror image of everyday matter and is understood, according to particle physics, to have identical properties except for charge, which is opposite. Thus, while electrons have a negative charge, anti-electrons, commonly called positrons, have a positive charge, while all the other identifiers of the particles, such as mass, are the same.
Contact between a particle of matter and a particle of antimatter results in both particles being annihilated, with the combined mass converted into energy.
It should be noted that while physicists use the terms “matter” and “antimatter” for these mirror-image particles, both types of particles are matter in the philosophical sense of materialism, existing independently of our perception of them.
The mystery of antimatter revolves around the assumption that in the moments after the Big Bang, matter and anti-matter existed in equal parts. Had this state continued, the particles then in existence would have annihilated with each other, leaving nothing but light to fill the universe. However, an unknown phenomenon caused a slight imbalance in the balance of matter and antimatter, causing the universe to be dominated by matter, with antimatter existing only for moments before being annihilated. The cause of the imbalance at the beginning of the universe is what the researchers at ALPHA are investigating.
Antimatter was first hypothesized by Paul Dirac, in a paper published in 1928[2] Dirac’s paper was a successful attempt to combine quantum mechanics and special relativity to more fully describe experiments that had occurred in the preceding decades that had left tantalizing hints about physical realities far outside the classical understanding of nature.
Dirac drew attention to a seeming mathematical anomaly that allowed for both positive and negative energy values for elementary particles. Since energy measures the quantity of matter’s motion, the concept of negative energy posed serious conceptual problems.
With assistance from Robert Oppenheimer, Dirac resolved the notion of negative energies. In a 1931 paper[3], he suggested that an electron with negative energy is better described as one with positive energy but with a positive charge. Dirac also noted that if an “anti-electron” came into contact with an election, both would be annihilated. A year later, these predictions were confirmed by observations performed by Carl Anderson.
The effort to study antimatter focuses on one of most studied systems in quantum mechanics, the hydrogen atom. Comprised of a single proton and electron, hydrogen is also an extremely simple system, one whose properties are well known. The study of anti-hydrogen revolves around investigating whether the properties, outside of charge, are the same as those of hydrogen. The experimenters hope to find some subtle difference between hydrogen and anti-hydrogen that would help explain the imbalance after the Big Bang."
I’m going off on a tangent, I know. But it’s fun. 
Space is not zero because it has measurable attributes, such as volume, and events can occur in space, such as the motion of the planets/space dust/light/whatever through it’s volume and therefore space exists in these dimensions.
Non-existence is literally nothing. There is nothing to describe or measure, be it time or space. If there is no time, then events cannot occur, including the big bang. If there is no volume, then there is no place for the events to occur.
The universe can be observed to be finite because we can measure the passage of time. If the universe has ‘always’ existed, i.e. has existed for an infinite amount of time, then there would be an infinite amount of time preceding current events. That means the universe would never had reached this point (or any other point).
Why? (This isn’t an argumentative tactic. I am genuinely interested.) If the possibilities are infinite and the choice is completely arbitrary, what is the practical reasoning behind your selection?
Because nothing is so all encompassing, you would need something equally all encompassing on the opposite end of the spectrum to create anything from nothing.
In mathematics, anything multiplied by zero is zero, except infinity.
It’s just logical to me.