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question no. 17 for atheists

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Bethie
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02 Sep 2010, 4:49 am

Orwell wrote:
What you have committed here is known as the "etymological fallacy." Welcome to the English language, where words don't always mean what they sound like.


1. The etymological fallacy involves insisting on historical, since-revised definitions,
not on the association of denotation with phoenetics.

2. My op had not a thing to do with conflation of historical definitions with those revised,
but of actual denotations with personal misconceptions of them by people too lazy to buy a dictionary.
What you have committed here is known as the "strawman fallacy."

:D


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For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly, destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay.


Last edited by Bethie on 02 Sep 2010, 4:54 am, edited 1 time in total.

adifferentname
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02 Sep 2010, 4:52 am

Bethie wrote:
adifferentname wrote:
Atheists disbelieve the existence of deities -

atheists can therefore be said to believe that there are no gods.



Nope.

Notice the first is a lack of a positive belief, the second IS a positive belief.

You confuse general atheism with Gnostic atheism, respectively.


Incorrect. Disbelief can be either passive or active. Disbelief is defined as either reluctance or refusal to believe in something.



Bethie
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02 Sep 2010, 4:58 am

Bethie wrote:

Notice the first is a lack of a positive belief, the second IS a positive belief.




adifferentname wrote:
Incorrect. Disbelief can be either passive or active.


You call me incorrect and subsequently agree with me?

:D


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For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly, destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay.


adifferentname
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02 Sep 2010, 5:45 am

Bethie wrote:
Bethie wrote:

Notice the first is a lack of a positive belief, the second IS a positive belief.




adifferentname wrote:
Incorrect. Disbelief can be either passive or active.


You call me incorrect and subsequently agree with me?

:D


Refusal to accept something is a proactive position, not a lack of a positive belief.



Michhsta
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02 Sep 2010, 7:15 am

Keith wrote:
Prove that god exists then


Prove that he doesn't 8)


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adifferentname
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02 Sep 2010, 7:27 am

Michhsta wrote:
Keith wrote:
Prove that god exists then


Prove that he doesn't 8)


To what end? Fanatics will just find another excuse to blame their crimes on, and most theists would probably refuse to accept any proof. Look how reluctant many of them are to accept the findings of genetic studies.



ruveyn
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02 Sep 2010, 7:55 am

Michhsta wrote:
Keith wrote:
Prove that god exists then


Prove that he doesn't 8)


The burden of proof on on the one who asserts the existence of something.

The problem of evil as put forth by Epicurus already makes the existence of god or the gods problematic.


“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?”


ruveyn



Bethie
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02 Sep 2010, 8:23 am

adifferentname wrote:
Bethie wrote:
Bethie wrote:

Notice the first is a lack of a positive belief, the second IS a positive belief.




adifferentname wrote:
Incorrect. Disbelief can be either passive or active.


You call me incorrect and subsequently agree with me?

:D


Refusal to accept something is a proactive position, not a lack of a positive belief.


Atheism is hardly a conscious "refusal" to do anything. Atheists, like everyone else, believe that which seems most rational to them, and can believe no more.

Again, you're probably still conflating general Atheism with Gnostic Atheism.


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For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly, destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay.


Last edited by Bethie on 02 Sep 2010, 8:44 am, edited 5 times in total.

Bethie
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02 Sep 2010, 8:30 am

ruveyn wrote:
Michhsta wrote:
Keith wrote:
Prove that god exists then


Prove that he doesn't 8)


The burden of proof on on the one who asserts the existence of something.


ruveyn


Exactly, Ruveyn.

If I tell Ruveyn there's a giant man eating invisible frog in his local lake, and he laughs in my face,
who has made the better argument?


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For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly, destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay.


iamnotaparakeet
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02 Sep 2010, 9:21 am

danandlouie wrote:
it's the same question i would ask believers. they, of course,would say they just know. there is no proof. believers simply make my brain hurt (and that's difficult to do)!


Wrong. From Aquinas to Paley, there have been Christian philosophers addressing this very issue.

Here are the primary arguments which you guys shall belittle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_argument and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleological_argument



Sand
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02 Sep 2010, 9:29 am

iamnotaparakeet wrote:
danandlouie wrote:
it's the same question i would ask believers. they, of course,would say they just know. there is no proof. believers simply make my brain hurt (and that's difficult to do)!


Wrong. From Aquinas to Paley, there have been Christian philosophers addressing this very issue.

Here are the primary arguments which you guys shall belittle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_argument and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleological_argument


"The Guardian reports that in his new book, The Grand Design, Professor Stephen Hawking argues that the Big Bang, rather than occurring following the intervention of a divine being, was inevitable due to the law of gravity. "Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist," Hawking writes. "It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going." Hawking had previously appeared to accept the role of God in the creation of the universe. Writing in his bestseller A Brief History Of Time in 1988, Hawking wrote: "If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God.""



iamnotaparakeet
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02 Sep 2010, 9:36 am

Sand wrote:
iamnotaparakeet wrote:
danandlouie wrote:
it's the same question i would ask believers. they, of course,would say they just know. there is no proof. believers simply make my brain hurt (and that's difficult to do)!


Wrong. From Aquinas to Paley, there have been Christian philosophers addressing this very issue.

Here are the primary arguments which you guys shall belittle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_argument and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleological_argument


"The Guardian reports that in his new book, The Grand Design, Professor Stephen Hawking argues that the Big Bang, rather than occurring following the intervention of a divine being, was inevitable due to the law of gravity. "Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist," Hawking writes. "It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going." Hawking had previously appeared to accept the role of God in the creation of the universe. Writing in his bestseller A Brief History Of Time in 1988, Hawking wrote: "If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God.""
ORLY



iamnotaparakeet
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02 Sep 2010, 9:42 am

The law of gravity, which I remember as being "(G*m1*m2)/r^2" is irrelevant to this. Without the existence of matter, a substance having mass and occupying space, there is neither m1 nor m2, so you have, at most, a constant in the numerator of the equation which is being multiplied by zero.



Sand
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02 Sep 2010, 10:33 am

iamnotaparakeet wrote:
The law of gravity, which I remember as being "(G*m1*m2)/r^2" is irrelevant to this. Without the existence of matter, a substance having mass and occupying space, there is neither m1 nor m2, so you have, at most, a constant in the numerator of the equation which is being multiplied by zero.


Frankly, I'd consider myself a damned fool if I took your opinion over Stephen Hawking's.



iamnotaparakeet
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02 Sep 2010, 1:21 pm

Sand wrote:
iamnotaparakeet wrote:
The law of gravity, which I remember as being "(G*m1*m2)/r^2" is irrelevant to this. Without the existence of matter, a substance having mass and occupying space, there is neither m1 nor m2, so you have, at most, a constant in the numerator of the equation which is being multiplied by zero.


Frankly, I'd consider myself a damned fool if I took your opinion over Stephen Hawking's.


No, you'd be a damned fool if you took the folly of argumentum ad vericundium over a simple matter of mathematics.



Bethie
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02 Sep 2010, 2:31 pm

iamnotaparakeet wrote:
Sand wrote:
iamnotaparakeet wrote:
The law of gravity, which I remember as being "(G*m1*m2)/r^2" is irrelevant to this. Without the existence of matter, a substance having mass and occupying space, there is neither m1 nor m2, so you have, at most, a constant in the numerator of the equation which is being multiplied by zero.


Frankly, I'd consider myself a damned fool if I took your opinion over Stephen Hawking's.


No, you'd be a damned fool if you took the folly of argumentum ad vericundium over a simple matter of mathematics.


Adorable pic and tagline btw, Keet. :D


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For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly, destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay.