GOD IS DEAD

I don't know how many followers of the religion of the ancient Greeks there are here on EvC, but i do know that out of the few replies from devoted theists in this thread, none have said that harmony is more important than God. Obviously they don't agree with you. And even if there were different opinions among creationists, that's fine with me. What is not fine is you coming here stating "value is subjective" and hijacking my thread with a pointless and endless debate, when none of the theists seem to follow what you consider objective. They just don't follow science and objectiveness, there is no way you can change that even if you continue this argument till the admins close it down. You just can't expect that a devoted theist will swallow this statement"What God thinks is not important"Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.

The point is that might does not make right. Just becasue someone is stronger than you does not mean his values and ideals are better than yours. He may be able to force you to accept them, but that still doesn't make them "better."The "winner" is irrelevant. "Power" is irrelevant.During the Holocaust, many non-Jews were sent to the camps for a variety of reasons, including nonsupport of the Party and religious reasons. The German government was obviously stronger than all of those sent to the camps, and their strength didn't make their value of racial purity more right.To further the example, many of those sent to the camps for non-racial reasons were given a choice - renounce your beliefs/opposition/whatever, conform to the desires of the State, and you can go free. Many Jehovah's Witnesses held their ideals higher than their own lives and chose to remain rather than renounce their faith. Many other people (JWs or otherwise) readily valued human life above ideals like God and renounced their faith.Many Nazis and collaborators likely valued their own lives above everythign else and participated knowingly in the Nazi system of oppression and genocide for fear of personal reprisals, regardless of religious convictions.The "strength" of the Nazi government was irrelevant. The fact that they were more powerful than the Jews, or the Jehovah's Witnesses, or anyone else in the camps didn't have any relavence to whether the Nazi value system was better than the value systems of those they massacred.In fact, Jehovah's Witnesses provide another insight into your analasys of human values. JW doctrine forbids the use of blood transfusions or other blood-based medical treatments, even at the cost of their own lives.Some JWs value God higher than everything else, and have given their lives for their convictions. Many have even allowed their own children to die rather than receive a simply lifesaving blood transfusion (we can dscuss how horrific and deplorable that is in a different thread).Other JWs value their children or their own lives above the teachings of their religion, and do accept and allow blood transfusions.Clearly, even within a single Christian sect there are differences in opinion regarding whether God is valued "higher" or "lower" than other ideals.So once again, it is observable factual that value systems are inherantly subjective, and are based not upon the dictates of Agobot, Wikipedia, or even religious leaders, but are instead based on personal opinions. Arguing that God is inherantly valued "higher" than anything else by all theists is demonstrably false.

Exactly the same can be said of any other god. Historical, contemporary other culture or "made up". Logic? What logic? You are claiming knowledge that you cannot logically have.You are declaring that you can differentiate in terms of truthfulness between delusion that is being interpreted as revelation and revelation that is being interpreted as possible delusion. In the absence of objective evidence no such differentiation is logically possible.What if the IPU does exist? What if the IPU is a mischievous god who reveals himself only to those who are most cynical at the very point that they are demonstrating their cynicism regarding all forms of godliness by arguing with theists? A god with a sense of humour sitting there wetting himself at the idea that his revelation at the right moment supports the denial of his actual existence. A god with an ironic sense of mischief? There is just no getting around the fact that the Christian faith is full of delusion promoting proclamations - "Blessed are those who believe but do not see" etc. etc. - which are loaded with spin to support faith based false positive arguments regarding the existence of God. 1. None of the differences you describe objectively support the veracity of your god's existence beyond that of any other god. They are differences for the sake of difference alone with no relevance or even significance to the relative veracity of any one god existing over any other.
2. You have to assume that your God is more than vacuously true for this point to have any relevance. You have provided no viable basis on which to make this assumption. Your entire argument, although dressed up in philosophical clothing, simply amounts to the declaration that the non-existence of God cannot be proven or demonstrated. As has been discussed the same can be said of any historical god, any Hindu god and frankly any "made up" god. In terms of objective evidence they are all equally unfounded.You have then gone on to suggest that your god should be given some sort of special dispensation whereby the default position should be to assume his existence. Why every single historical god or contemporary Hindu god (for example) is also not deserving of this special dispensation is something that you have failed to even begin to address.
You have given reasons as to why you consider it the case that your god should be considered in a more positive light than "made up" gods. However these reasons have been found wanting.1) Meaning: It is true that the IPU, FSM or Zig Zog have little or no meaning to people's lives. However this was also true of the Christian God at the time of Apollo. Historically every god must at some point be a "made up" god that has no relevance or meaning to peoples lives. Every "made up" god has the potential to be the "New God on the Block" at some point in the future. And every established god was at one point a "made up" god.2) Vacuous ness: You apparently "know" that the IPU is "made up" with 100% certainty. How can you know this? It is impossible to differentiate delusion interpreted as revelation from actual revelation. Likewise it is impossible to differentiate revelation interpreted as potential delusion from potential delusion interpreted correctly. If a god really did reveal himself to me and I choose to interpret this as me inventing gods how can you possibly know that the god in question does not actually exist? You cannot. No more than I can "know" that you are deluded regarding your God.3) Equivalence: Apollo, Thor, Zig Zog, IPU etc. etc. etc All have differences with your God. They all have differences with each other. However none of the differences you have stated have any bearing at all on the objective likelihood of the veracity of their respective existence. The fundamentally key way in which they are all however equivalent is in the fact that it is ultimately and equally impossible to disprove the existence of any one of them. In the only way that matters in relation to this debate they are all very much equivalent.CONCLUSION
There is no reason to give your god any special dispensation from positive objective evidence based conclusions. Thus your God is equally as unlikely as any other. Historical gods, contemporary gods from other cultures or even "made up" gods. All are equally unevidenced. All are equally untenable.The cult of Zig Zog lives on

My final commentNobody knows if God exists.Most gods are unbelievable by simple examination. Nobody on earth believes in the IPU, or Zigzog. It is utter stupidity to compare a golden calf with a supernatural creator. That alone proves my logic, when I talk about equivalence, as nobody would take that seriously, as it is known that it is just fashioned by men.That gods are made-up is self-evident, this doesn't mean we can conclude they are 1. All made-up, 2. Equivalent.To state that all gods are equally unprovable is correct, but just not that important to the truth. To state that they are all made up untill proven, is logical positivism.Under logical positivism, the earth was never round untill it was discovered that it was round.My friend, it is only arrogance and ignorance to state that God doesn't exist untill he is proven. The earth was ofcourse still round even if it was believed flat. Likewise, God will exist, even if you can't prove he does.The facts of creation are enough to consider an intelligence because of the extraordinary design and information in creatures and cells. (Even scientific evolutionists have admitted design, and the belief that evolution done it). Abiogenesis is a a completely raligious naturalist belief with no proof whatsoever, and laughable compared with a God, that would explain information and an organism having more properties than the sum of it's make-up.The designer of this universe is still likely to exists, whoever he is, even if you remove all historical gods, because there can still be a final cause for this universe, and no amount of atheist protest will remove it.

So your standard of comparison is personal credulity. Wow. Way to go. Not by itself, no. But if you can't produce an objective difference between Zig-Zog and the Christian God, then they are clearly equivalent.For example, the Muslim God, the Hindu gods, and teh Christian God all seem to have similar popularity, and all have existed for a long time with supporting religious texts.What's the objective difference? I mean, aside fromt he specific doctrines, what differenciates Allah from Yahweh from Krishna or Kali? You claim the Christian deity is the "true" one, but what's the objective difference? That the Bible is "different" from the others? Irrelevant - the nature of a religious text proves nothing on its own. So far as the Bible is concerned, there's nothing differenciating it from any other collection of works of fiction or ancient mythology.If we cannot tell objectively that the Yahweh exists any more than we can tell that Kali or Allah exist, then the evidence for their existence is equivalent. But to say they are all likely made up is simple sense, for the same reason I'll say that Zig-Zog is likely made up until his existence is supported by evidence. I can't prove Zig-Zog or Yahweh or Allah or Kali do not exist, because I cannot prove a negative. Neither do I claim that they positively do not exist. I simply claim that they are not likely to exist, or at least that they are no more likely to exist than any other entity whose existence is supported by no objective evidence. The fact that fairies, goblins, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, Zig-Zog, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and the Invisible Pink Unicorn all fall under the "unsupported by evidence" category along with Thor, Zeus, Odin, Isis, Ra, Jupiter, Quetzalcoatl, and yes, Yahweh, Allah, and Kali is reason enough for me to say that none likely exist.The burden of proof, after all, is on the one making the assertion that an entity does exist. The default position is tentative disbelief, unless you readily accept the existence of all entities that can be imagined from any religion or child's imagination until someone disproves their existence by proving a negative. Well, there was no reason to believe the Earth was round until evidence was discovered that it is, in fact, round. One can hardly fault ancients who didn't have the technology or mathematical skills to either travel around the Earth or measure the visible curvature and extrapolate from there.That's why the default position is tentative disbelief. It doesn't make sense to simply believe any and every idea put forth. But it does make sense to change your position in favor o new evidence.When you have that new evidence of the existence of a deity, please, do share. How silly. Nobody claims that God does not exist until proven. There is simply no reason to believe god exists until his existence is supported by evidence. It's certainly true that he either exists or does not, and our belief is independant of that fact. But there is no reason to believe he does exist if you cannot provide even a small amount of objective evidence to convince anyone. Once again you re-state your standard test: personal credulity. If you personally find an idea credulous, it must be true. If you find an idea to be simply outrageous and respond with incredulity, the idea must be false.Scientific models are accurate or inaccurate independantly of your personal credulity just as God exists or does not exist independantly of our belief in his existence. When those models carry a preponderance of objective evidence with experimentally confirmed predictions, it is your personal credulity which requires correction, not the scientific model. Can != likely.

Not personal credulity. Facts.You have to REMOVE the miracles from before my eyes. Need I list them? They are endless. It is self-evident that a designer answers to a final cause.Science has nothing to do with it. Nice try, but science doesn't support your atheism. Infact, science has shown that organisms have more properties than the sum of their parts, because of information. Information is only relevant to intelligence. The systems in organisms and cells alone are enough to point to a designer. There is nothing stopping this except incredulity.Your argument from incredulity is fallacious!As for Yahweh and Allah, didn't you read properly? time for a change of glasses. I said that even removing historical gods doesn't remove the possibility of a Creator BECAUSE of the evidence.Your problem is that you don't actually know what evidence is, which is why you say there is no evidence for God. Evidence is what makes theories viable, through the affirmation of the modus ponen. The falsification is the tollens.This means that even the most farcical theories of science, that were once accepted as true, had evidence, despite now being accepted as false.But a designer? I am not even inferring one, there is plenty of evidence under the law od modus ponen.IF there is a designer, THEN X would follow.I could state, literally, a hundred things which do follow. This doesn't prove God because science is tentative.So the only reason to state there is no evidence for God, is incredulity, because there is even evidence for false theories.What does dried blood on a mattress mean? Many theories are viable, yet the most prominent theory will be the one without any falsification.God is in the facts.If there was no God, I would expect proof of life being naturally created by now.There is none.You guys need to actually re-read your textbooks before even being qualified to lick mikey's shoes. This great irrefutable man-of-Yahweh has confounded you utterly.I could point to a thousand viable things that follow if God exists. None of them would pass your test because you have incredulity for anything "God".You erroneous and spriteful baba! Get thee down from thou atheist heights, lest mikey confound thee with irrefutable tongues of truth.(No, seriously guys, I can't post anymore, this could go on forever. We are at war spiritually, there is no agreement between darkness and light. I must say goodbye, feel free to angrily retort.)

What miracles?

I don't see how it is possible to hold to this! If I am to suppose my own evaluation of x potentially suspect then adding the evaluations of others, which are potentially suspect too, can't be said to increase the probablity that x is true.All that 10 people concurring in conclusion about x says, is that 10 people view x in the same way as each other. No statement is made about truth-ness.- When stating truth to be self-evident I pointed out that this would occur when a person was primed for it.In his book on smoking, Allen Carr mentions that the only people who can't be freed from smoking by his method are the young-to-smoking. Although as much in the smoking trap as anyone else, they have far less reason to appreciate the fact that they are trapped. They have the illusion of invincibility of youth, good health, death a far-into-the-future concept, no hacking cough or stained fingers. The anti-social aspect of smoking - which weighs down on the older addict - actually suits a young persons book.All in all, smoking youth are not primed to appreciate the self-evident truth about smoking.Not so the old-timer. The carefree days are long since past and he is now under no illusion about his smoking. His life consists of constant dark shadows in the back and at times forefront of his mind: the horrible diseases that threaten to go off like hand grenades at any time. Then there's the sheer slavery to the weed: having to "go to the toilet" during meetings so he can nip out for a smoke. Heading out a midnight to a 24 hour shop because he's run low. Then there's the agony of trying to quit by application of willpower - the days dragging out with the mind constantly turning to his "little friend". Only to finally cave in when the craving becomes too much, knowing that it will be years until the courage can be assembled to make another, probably failed, attempt at quitting.Thus primed, most who walk into an Allen Carr clinic or read his book will emerge a few hours later happy, laughing ex-smokers. No willpower, no patches, no problem: the truth has set them free. He claims a 90% success rate or so. I've been there and can confirm that the only one of my party who seemed to struggle and doubt was the one who wasn't paying attention to what was being said.It's a bit like that with God. Gods goal is to convince the world of sin righteousness and judgement. He uses truth in the attempt. But if you're not primed, if you're not completely convinced that "something bad" has gotten a grip of you and that you're completely entrapped by it then the truth will not be self-evident and you will not be freed by it.Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

Let's have a look see at how grounded in rationality your opinion is. A man can be jealous of his regiments honour. A man can be jealous of his families safety. Neither are green eyed monster variety jealousies. Neither could be considered evil by most folk. That's the context of Gods jealousy. Jealous that his 'bride' Israel would be led astray by evil. Innocent? No one's innocent. "For all have sinned an fallen short of the glory of God". Death is merely removal from this realm. It doesn't mean your destruction (necessarily). You seem to forget that God will remove everyone from this realm at some point in their lives. In that he is democratic. He didn't do anything to Job, satan did. All God did is remove his 'protection'. Seeing as God is not obliged to anyone to provide protection.. He's given me eternal life. But it's not because of this alone that I worship. It's because he's fantastic. Me having eternal life just puts me in a position to appreciate that.Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

You said that last time..... Nobody knows if Thor, Zeus, Apollo, Vishnu, IPU or Zig Zog exists. Not to mention a literally infinite amount of other possible such entities. They are all equally unevidenced. They are all equally unlikely. I would say ALL gods are unbelievable by simple examination. Logic? All you have demonstrated is personal incredulity. Not logic.
You can no more know that Apollo, Thor, the IPU or Zig Zog are "just fashioned by men" than you can do God.
The fact that you think the existence of God is "logical" whilst at the same time insisting that all other potential creators/deities are "illogical" despite the objective evidence for all of them being equally non-existent suggests that what you mean by "logical" is nothing more than a euphemism for 'personally believable to you'. A Hindu would disagree with your "logic". An ancient Greek would disagree with your "logic". A Zig Zoggian would disagree with your logic.Your "logic" is nothing more than personal incredulity with pseudo-philosophical knobs on.That which is personally believable to you is not the same as being logical. That of which you are personally incredulous is not, by definition alone, illogical. You need to make that distinction. 1. There is no more reason to think any one god is any more or less made up than any other god. This too is self evident if you do not start from the baseless position of assuming that you are somehow privy to knowledge of the "one true God"
2. As already explained they are all utterly equivalent in the only way that matters in terms of this debate. They are all equally unevidenced. The existence or otherwise of each and every one is equally unprovable. What non-equivalences are you claiming make any difference to this indisputable fact? I have never said that I know that they are all made up. I have said that they are all equally unlikely.
To claim that your God and your God alone exists whilst denying the possible existence of all other gods is a prime example illogical theism. And so will Thor and Apollo and Vishnu and Zeus and Odin and IPU and Zig Zog and .... and .... and ... ad infinitumWHY SHOULD YOUR GOD GET SPECIAL DISPENSATION FROM EVIDENCE BASED CONCLUSIONS WHILST DENYING ALL OTHER GODS THIS SAME PRIVELIGE?This baseless assumption is the very height of arrogance and ignorance. Present your evidence in the appropriate forum and we will discuss it there. You arguments will be shown to be inadequate of that I have no doubt. You are quite right that atheist protest will remove nothing. Evidence based investigation however almost certainly will.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

What are you talking about? Of course this increases the probability that x is true.If you're on a cliff with 100 other people, and you see a hot air balloon, and no one else does... how likely do you think that the hot air balloon is actually there?Now, lets say all the other people on the cliff also see the hot air balloon... now how likely is it that the hot air balloon is actually there?Neither case is 100% truth, neither case is 100% false. However, when only you are seeing the balloon, clearly the chances that you are mistaken are extremely high. And when everyone else agrees with you, clearly the chances that the balloon is really there are extremely high. This is not a difficult concept, really.Anything else is simply sophistric nonsense. Yes, I understand very clearly.
In the same way cults prime their victims to take their "self-evident" truths.
In the same way people unknowingly fooled by illusions or delusions or fantasy worlds are primed for it as well.There's zero difference. I already agree with you that there's nothing stopping such "self-evident" claims from actually being true. However, there's nothing verifying them either. Therefore, we are forced to recognize that they have the exact same chance of being true as illusions, delusions, and fantasy worlds. And, it's up to the individual to decide how much they want to risk on such things that cannot be shown to be any more trustworthy than illusions, delusions, or fantasy worlds. It may very well be true, but it's a risk that certainly exists, and should be heavily considered by anyone placing importance on such "self evident" claims.

Other than invoking convention, could you explain how precisely? If I can't trust my own observation then on what basis do I trust the next persons or the next? What puts any individual one of them in a better position than me to observe more truthfully than me? There is nothing that achieves this in fact; each of theirs is a single observation as probable as mine in terms of accuracy of truth observance.1 x 50/50 chance is a 50/50 chance of truth100 x 50/50 chance is 50/50 chance of truthIt's like saying tossing a fair coin 100 times and coming up heads means the 101st toss that comes up tails isn't truly tails because the first 100 were heads.Other than trusting my own observation that such an event improves probability of truth I can think of no reason to do so. But I can't trust my own observation to render truth ... apparently.Circular reasoning in evidence?later..Edited by iano, : No reason given.

My opinion is completey rational, it's religious beliefs of any type that are irrational as they are based on no evidence. I suggest you stop ignoring the evidence that calls your religion into question.I still don't understand how anyone could want to believe in such an evil god as yours. He creates people just to make them suffer, kills them for having human foibles, and makes a bet with Satan and lets him abuse poor Job. He's not a good god.You claim he gave you eternal life, but I'm afraid that's just wishful thinking, but that's to be expected from religious people. What's one more irrational belief when you have to swallow dozens of others in order to believe in your god.

Sigh! Why do religious people always seem to think morals come from religion, usually theirs exclusively? Humans are social animals, and therefore we developed/evolved social behaviors that benefit the group and the individual. The golden rule is really what most of what we call morals can be derived from. No religion or god(s) needed, we already know how to behave, it's in our genes and having being raised in a social group (ie culture).If you only listen to the one who is without sin, then you are listening to no-one. Actually, atheists are without sin, as we can't comit a sin against a god(s) we don't believe in.

If you're on a mountain, and you see an air balloon, and 100 other people on the mountain do not see the air balloon. Then it is only personal arrogance to believe the air balloon is actually there and that you are not mistaken, or somehow sick. Nothing does. That's the whole point, we're all average people and we all have the same abilities. So, if 1 of us is seeing something when 100 others are not, we have a discrepency.Either 1 person is mistaken, and the other 100 are actually correct.
Or 100 people are mistaken, and the 1 person is actually correct.Nothing but sheer arrogance would make anyone think that it's actually the other 100 people who are all somehow equally mistaken and there's only 1 person who is immune to being wrong. It's ridiculous. It's nothing like flipping a coin.A coin is not susceptable to having illusions or delusions.
A coin is not able to be mistaken, accidentally or not.People are. Of course you can't. Why would you possibly think you could? Do you think you're perfect? Are you so arrogant to think that you are the sole human being that is never, ever mistaken about anything? That somehow, even though all people's minds play tricks on them, and all people are notorious for being fooled by optical illusions or sensory overload, you think that you, alone, are impenetrable to these conditions? Do you actually think your mind and senses are so phenomenally different from everyone elses that you may as well be some sort of super-hero? It's laughably ridiculous.Coins cannot be mistaken.
People can. You can.
Having 100 other people verify your observations makes it highly likely that you are not mistaken.
If 100 other people are unable to verify your observations (or even oberve the direct opposite), it is highly likely that you are indeed mistaken.You're just not that good.
No offense, no one is, we're all people and we're all capable of making mistakes.