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Religious Belief Throwdown

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Atheism isn't a religion, so really they don't get a say.

To be inclusive we'll let Atheists in too, though.

I'll start for them:

They do have a very good church, it's called The Church of Reality. "If it's real, we believe in it".

You see, the average atheist tends to believe in things that can be proven, so it isn't really so much about belief as it is about verifiable evidence for this wacky group of radical realists. The best part of this belief system is that it allows for change in the face of new evidence.

Basically, the idea is not to believe in anything for which there is no direct evidence, and to disregard that for which there is contradictory evidence.

Simple enough.
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>They do have a very good church, it's called The Church of Reality. "If it's
>real, we believe in it".

Not quite. That would be an agnostic, who would not believe in the existence or lack of existence of God, since there is very little evidence.

To be an atheist, you have to believe there is no God. And there is as little proof for that as there is proof for there being a God.

>Basically, the idea is not to believe in anything for which there is no direct
>evidence, and to disregard that for which there is contradictory evidence.

So atheists don't believe in photons?

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Can atheists? I think they will have the same problems that fundamentalists will.



Correct, which leads to the notion that agnosticism represents the most accurate thinking.

Fact: nobody knows The Truth™, no matter how ferverently they claim so.

Agnosticism best represents the "truth" of Humanity's situation.


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Can atheists? I think they will have the same problems that fundamentalists will.



Correct, which leads to the notion that agnosticism represents the most accurate thinking.

Fact: nobody knows The Truth™, no matter how ferverently they claim so.

Agnosticism best represents the "truth" of Humanity's situation.



Only if you view an atheists 'belief' in the context of a religious world.

Before I knew what (the idea of) God was I obviously didn't believe in it. When I was told what God was, I didn't believe in it. Nothing changed about how I viewed reality, but according to your definition I suddeny became an atheist with an unprovable worldview. Wierd.

In that case people who don't think unicorns exist, or fairies, or goblins, or genies or any other bloody ridiculous story that's ever been made up are further away from the truth than people who are open to the possibility.
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>To be an atheist, you have to believe there is no God. And there is as little proof for that as there is proof for there being a God.

Here is the major fallacy. "God" is something made up. There is no need to prove it doesn't exist. That isn't how it works. If you come up with something new the burden is on you to provide evidence for it, not for everyone else to provide evidence against. You can't prove beyond any doubt that there isn't a purple unicorn living in your closet, should we believe in that as well?


>So atheists don't believe in photons?

Since the concept of photons both works experimentally and has been the foundation of many scientific advancements such as lasers and photovoltaic cells, I would wager that most atheists "believe" in them. At least until a better theory comes along that improves our understanding of reality.


Do you see the difference yet?
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Hmmm. So the dogmatic belief that your idea of the nonexistence of god is superior than others' dogmatic belief in their idea of the existewnce of god doesn't give you cause to ponder?

Christ is lord. The rest of you are wrong. Prove me wrong.
Allah akbar. The rest of you are wrong. Prove me wrong.
Yahveh is lord. The rest of you are wrong. Prove me wrong.
There is no god. The rest of you are wrong. Prove me wrong.

Seems pretty similar to me. Dogmatic.


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>Here is the major fallacy. "God" is something made up. There is no need
>to prove it doesn't exist.

So is warp drive. Yet that doesn't mean that it cannot exist or that it does not exist. Indeed, scientists have often theorized about it.

>You can't prove beyond any doubt that there isn't a purple unicorn living
>in your closet, should we believe in that as well?

Nope. But it would be foolish to believe that there are no purple unicorns, anywhere.

Now, if your attitude is "there are probably no purple unicorns anywhere, but who knows?" then your reasoning would be sound.

>Since the concept of photons both works experimentally and has been
>the foundation of many scientific advancements such as lasers and
>photovoltaic cells, I would wager that most atheists "believe" in them.

I agree. However, you said that atheists "disregard that for which there is contradictory evidence." The evidence for light being photons vs. just ordinary EM waves is highly contradictory; indeed, the particle/wave duality is one of the fundamentals of many physics course nowadays.

Yet most scientists have no problem with accepting contradictory evidence, since they believe it fits into a larger theory that, although not 100% proven, predicts behavior of light accurately.

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In that case people who don't think unicorns exist, or fairies, or goblins, or genies or any other bloody ridiculous story that's ever been made up are further away from the truth than people who are open to the possibility.



Well, if the truth is that you don't know for certain that such entities don't exist, then yea, claiming they don't isn't exactly accurate.

Let's take away the word "belief" and replace it with "assert".

What do you assert?

Assertion 1: There is no god.
Assertion 2: I don't know if there is a god.

Is assertion 2 not closest to the real "truth"?


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So is warp drive. Yet that doesn't mean that it cannot exist or that it does not exist. Indeed, scientists have often theorized about it.

Without evidence that it exists, it is meaningless to say that it "could" exist. Certainly anything can exist, but reality is about what does exist. You can theorize that it is possible for God to exist, and I will agree with you. If you state that God exists I will ask for evidence. Fair enough?


>Nope. But it would be foolish to believe that there are no purple unicorns, anywhere.

To the contrary it would be foolish to believe that they do exist without any reason. It is an intellectual cop out to say that time and space are limitless therefore all things must exist somewhere at sometime. Again it is meaningless conjecture with no bearing on reality as it is. It does not add to our knowledge of the universe.

>Now, if your attitude is "there are probably no purple unicorns anywhere, but who knows?" then your reasoning would be sound.

Sound but useless. There is no such thing as 100% certainty, but that is not a reason to introduce fantasy as something which "could" be real. That for which there is no evidence must be considered unreal.



>I agree. However, you said that atheists "disregard that for which there is contradictory evidence." The evidence for light being photons vs. just ordinary EM waves is highly contradictory; indeed, the particle/wave duality is one of the fundamentals of many physics course nowadays.

Yet most scientists have no problem with accepting contradictory evidence, since they believe it fits into a larger theory that, although not 100% proven, predicts behavior of light accurately.

I'm not completely sure what you are getting at here.

Wave/Particle duality is not something for which there is contradictory evidence and the last time I checked light was just ordinary EM waves/particles in a certain level of wavelengths which our eyes happen to capture.

It seems contradictory on the macro level, but it is perfectly normal on the quantum level.

I'll give you that we can't seem to get quantum mechanics and normal relativity to fit yet, but they don't contradict each other either, they just describe different things.

But we digress.
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Assertion 3: There is no reason for me to consider the concept of "God" at all.



Your perogative, but most people are at least curious about it and ponder the possibilities. Does that not include you?



Oh, just call me the Devil's advocate in this case.

I'm terribly interested in everything, really. I'm just filling the shoes of this point of view for the moment.
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Hmmm. So the dogmatic belief that your idea of the nonexistence of god is superior than others' dogmatic belief in their idea of the existewnce of god doesn't give you cause to ponder?

Christ is lord. The rest of you are wrong. Prove me wrong.
Allah akbar. The rest of you are wrong. Prove me wrong.
Yahveh is lord. The rest of you are wrong. Prove me wrong.
There is no god. The rest of you are wrong. Prove me wrong.

Seems pretty similar to me. Dogmatic.



That is an excellent straw man argument you have crafted.

There is no dogma is requesting that assertions be backed with evidence.
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Assertion 3: There is no reason for me to consider the concept of "God" at all.



Your perogative, but most people are at least curious about it and ponder the possibilities. Does that not include you?

The only thing I ponder, is if the universe is finite as it is currently claimed. Then what is outside of it's boundaries??

I don't believe in physicists or a god. See ? I have cajones.
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Assertion 3: There is no reason for me to consider the concept of "God" at all.



Your perogative, but most people are at least curious about it and ponder the possibilities. Does that not include you?

The only thing I ponder, is if the universe is finite as it is currently claimed. Then what is outside of it's boundaries??

I don't believe in physicists or a god. See ? I have cajones.



I'm with you on this. To me the Big Bang isn't much better than saying "God did it".

What is outside and what happened before?
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>
To be an atheist, you have to believe there is no God. And there is as little proof for that as there is proof for there being a God.



First of all, you can't prove the absence of something. If I tell you there's a tiny teapot orbiting the sun, how can you prove me wrong?

The burden is to prove god exists. Bt even so, there are logical contradictions, empirical evidence, and physical impossibilities that make the hypothesis 'God exists" more than likely false. I can;t say with 100% certainty, but I can say it with overwhelming confidence.

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