If I were to become an atheist...

If I were to become an atheist... Jan 25, 2018 0:59:02 GMT

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Post by captainbryce on Jan 25, 2018 0:59:02 GMT

Jan 25, 2018 0:00:33 GMT Arlon10 said:

Jan 24, 2018 16:11:35 GMT captainbryce said:

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1 The great thing about being an atheist is that you don’t actually have to put faith in anything.

A really annoying thing about many atheists is that they actually believe they are entitled. You are indeed entitled to your own opinions. However, and this is very important, you are not entitled to your own facts. It is your opinion that no god exists. It is only your opinion. It is not more "reasonable" than other opinions. It is not a "default" opinion or a "status quo" opinion and it is certainly not an entitled opinion, that is to say not entitled to be counted as a fact.

Well, fortunately this is a straw man argument since I never actually claimed that my opinion represented fact in the first place.

It is just your opinion and it is not even half as good as you think it is.

And THAT is only your opinion (which is why I don’t give a sh!t)

You can't leave your residence in the morning to face the world without believing in something. You can call it "science" if you like, but it still requires quite much belief on your part in several things throughout the day.

I believe in demonstrable facts! I don’t believe in things that are not demonstrated to be true. But here is the part you obviously don’t understand; belief is completely irrelevant! The facts remain facts whether you believe in them or not. There are no facts that demonstrate a god to exist. Now, you can argue that there are no facts that DISPROVE a god either, but there doesn’t have to be. One need not prove a negative, and beliefs are not formulated on negative assumptions, but rather on positive facts. Opinions about what exists should be based on evidence, not assumptions.

You might think it is an especially different sort of belief if it is in science, but it is not. Either you can do the science yourself or you are just a believer.

But I CAN do the science myself, ANYONE can. But here’s the part you are not getting, THERE IS NO SCIENCE that validates your belief. Science is not required to prove a negative! You are the one making the positive claim. Therefore YOU need science validating your claim, otherwise there is no reason to believe it is true. The supposed existence of God is not a scientifically demonstrable fact. And since there is no other reason to believe in a god, I don’t believe in one.

If you are just a believer then it is no longer "science" no matter who else can do whatever science. A terrible problem in the world today is how many things people believe science has proved that it really has not.

Such as?

The problem is blind faith in science.

I don’t have blind faith in science; I have a belief in what is demonstrably true. Telescopes work, thermometers work, combustion works! Lasers cut, radar detects, radios call, computers compute, airplanes fly, and medicine heals. Science actually works! Faith becomes irrelevant at that point because we can easily “believe” what we see. The real problem is faith in god (or any religious based dogma) which does NOT work. Beyond acting as a placebo and making people feel better about things they cannot control, faith in something that cannot be demonstrated to be existing or true is a problem. Especially when people go to war over it, and persecute others because of it!

2 Believing in religion to fill in gaps of knowledge is the opposite of “reason”.

No, claiming you exercise reason when you don't is the opposite of reason.

No it isn’t. Even IF I was doing that (which I’m not) it still would not be the “opposite of reason” as you claimed. It would just be a lie! But seeing as how your judgement is inherently flawed in this issue, you’re not really in a position to declare what is reasonable in the first place!

Admitting there are limits to reason is actually somewhat reasonable, and not the opposite at all.

You keep using the word “reason” but clearly you don’t know what it means.

Reason: “the power of the mind to think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic”.

To state something as ridiculous as what you just stated only proves that you don’t know what reason is. The only limits to reason are the person’s inability to understand or make a proper judgment using logic. Religion is unreasonable BECAUSE it is based on a LACK of understanding (of science), and making judgements in the absence of logic. Circular logic is not logic at all! The Bible is not true because God said so, and God does not exist because the Bible says so. And that’s the only reason why you believe either of those things, which makes you an unreasonable person!

Until you, yourself using your own reasoning, not someone else's, can show where in nature is an explanation then that explanation is by definition "supernatural" as far as you are concerned. You need to admit that.

One need not admit things that are not true. That would be a lie! Because that’s not what supernatural means. Accepting scientific consensus (through peer review) is not accepting the supernatural! I’ve never shot someone else in the head before. But knowing that a gunshot wound to the head will usually kill someone isn’t something I need to accept as a matter of faith. It’s something I accept because I understand the science of projectiles, the operational requirements of the human brain, and the physical limitations of the skull. And because there are numerous documented cases of people dying of gunshot wounds to the head! It would be unreasonable of me to assume a gunshot wound to the head is harmless because I’ve never actually shot a person in the head and seen the results first hand.

You need to keep facts separate from opinions.

I do. That the universe began 3.7 billion years ago is a fact. That it was created by an invisible man in the sky is an opinion! See the difference?

The boiling point of water is a fact, whether it will snow next month in Oklahoma is an opinion. Yes, science has learned much about weather and has a better idea than it did before whether it will snow next month in Oklahoma, but no, it does not have an answer to how life began, except that nothing in nature is creating life from dead matter even after rather thorough scientific examination.

Actually, ALL life is created from dead matter! When an animal in the wild dies, bacteria consume it, providing fertilizer for plants to grow, which provide food for pregnant animals to develop their offspring. I think what you meant to say is that nothing in nature is creating life from lifeless matter. But you’re wrong there too. Because non-living chemical compounds that exist in nature combine to form amino acids, which form proteins, which comprise the cellular make-up of “living” beings. We know that because all life (the scientific definition of life, not the religious definition) contains DNA which is compromised of proteins, and nothing that’s not alive contains it. The fact that we haven’t observed it happening from scratch before means nothing, because there is enough evidence in hand that it has happened at least ONCE. And if it’s happened once, then under the same conditions it’s logical to assume it’s happened many times, and will happen many more times.

Oh, and as it turns out, we’ve been able to duplicate the creation of life artificially, PROVING that life can arise naturally under certain conditions.

Scientists create artificial life

So, in so many ways...you’re just plain WRONG!