my reasons

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Actually, the problem is the absolute nature of the statement you made. You are obligated, by making a truth-claim, to justify your truth-claim. You can actually use evidences to justify your position. For example, I could justify the proposition that there are no unicorns in my bedroom by using visual evidence of no unicorns in that area. The issue is the empirical requirements for a proposition.

Actually, "there is no evidence, therefore nothing exists" is not valid. What is valid is "there is no evidence, therefore, the most justified position is that no god exists". The issue is that the phrasing doesn't work as well for that kind of claim.

Even further, I still don't entirely buy the whole matter of burden of proof you use. The reason being that the way you put it, ANY proposition requires a burden of proof, even the most basic and essential ones. The problem is that justifying every truth claim leads to a certain degree of absurdity, and honestly, it just isn't how anybody works. We don't justify every belief with foundations, but rather, we start off with knowledge, and from this base of knowledge, we grow by accepting new ideas, and even rejecting old ideas. Our foundations are not strong enough to handle the foundationalism that you promote.

Well... leejosepho actually has a point. It is not "proof", it is sufficient reason to not believe that such an entity does not exist. However, just ONE piece of evidence is sufficient to revise a position so dependent upon the lack of evidence. Even further, issues of what "evidence" is ends up being problematic, as usually evidence isn't a natural thing, but rather the evidence for a claim is contingent upon the theoretical predictions about it. This means that evidence for God could be a large number of different things, dependent upon how one conceives the entity. Now... I agree with your basic point, but don't go too far.

... and contempt prior to investigation tends to merely sustain ignorance within an indefensible position.


Ah, and so that must be how Dorothy flew back to Kansas, yes? Personally, I have never seen mere belief effect (bring about) anything at all ... and I doubt there are any actual examples of that.


Not in my case. The only thing I believed was the imminence of death if something or someone did not soon "fix" me.


I am not recovering-ing-ing-ing-ing ... I am permanently recovered.


Please let me know if you ever catch me doing that.


I only had two:

"We were in a position where life was becoming impossible, and if we had passed into the region from which there is no return through human aid, we had but two alternatives: One was to go on to the bitter end, blotting out the consciousness of our intolerable situation as best we could; and the other, to accept spiritual help." ("A.A.", the book, page 25)


That is the difference between the original A.A. and today's AA.


I had no belief I could change, and Step One was where I actually and clearly admitted I could do absolutely nothing for myself.


Not mine. As a dear friend used to say: "My alleged mind was out to get me."

*snort*

@Skafather84

I think what AngelRho is driving at here is the fact that many atheists have an obvious bias towards the evidence for God (the same is true of Theists). However, Theists do not attempt to state that the absence of evidence is the evidence of absence. Many atheists, affirm and also have done so on this forum, that even if evidence for the existence of God exists, then they would not believe it. They would much rather prefer any other argument or possibility to the alternative. The theist by contrast has faith, which, at least to them, is an objective experience of God to fall back on, the atheist, has no such recourse. The point being, this smacks of a double standard (much like redefining atheism to mean a lack of belief and then stating in the next breath that God does not exist). One cannot have it both ways, if you wish to argue that lack of faith is contingent on evidence, you much approach all such evidence dispassionately.

For example, take the often mentioned subject of coelacanth, if it were proved a coelacanth existed, on your logic, you would be required to believe. I have no reason to believe in the coelacanth prior to its discovery. However, I have no personal reason not to believe in the coelacanth now that evidence exists. Many atheists, simply do not want to believe in God, so an evidence based approach (that does not really hold in the face of the evidence for Gods existence), functions, mostly as a convenient shield.

@Master_Jedi

I like the story of Jacob wrestling with God. He ends up permanently wounded from the experience. We all wrestle with God and we all have our injuries to show for it. Every Christian has moments where we wrestle, where we cannot understand why certain things happen. Look at the Genealogy of Matthew, the first part of Matthew's Gospel, you will find the family history of Jesus. Jacob is there, God has a place for those wrestle with God in his family, no matter what the Sunday school teacher says about rebellion, Christ was still pleased to have Jacob as a part of his family.

I think you're extrapolating my claims a little farther than I intended them to go. For such claims like that of a deity, I think it's well within reason to demand proof and for the default position to be there is no direct cause for consideration of a deity. It's important for the argument that can come as a result of claims of different deities' representatives and the influence of religion on societal law over social research and study. I'm not looking to make such an argument for, say, property which is about as abstract of an idea.

My objection is that it depends on which side of the argument you're on. Are you the one who has made the assertion, or are you the one making an answer to the assertion?

If I had said, for example, that isits DO exist, then you could demand proof from me, thereby putting me in a defensive position.

However, I was not the one to make the argument that isits exist. The only assertion in this particular thread I made for the existence of isits was actually for isits that ARE known (scientifically) to exist--or at the very least hypothesized to exist, with evidence that suggest their existence. We're talking about something that exists in nature, though, not a spirit-being. When it comes to isits and whether that is what Christians or other religious people worship, all I can say is that I do not believe that they exist (in the form of deities) and, in fact, the Bible forbids the worship of isits. That's in the Decalogue, I'm sure--or if it isn't, then laws that expand on #1 of 10 clarify what is NOT to be worshiped, which would include isits. That's another problem I have with your reasoning, the false assumption that we worship isits. We do not.

Further, I was not the one to make any argument whatsoever on the existence or even non-existence of isits. If I'd attempted to "prove" existence or non-existence of isits, then I'd have accepted the burden of proof. The person who questions an argument does not shoulder the burden of proof. It is the person making the argument itself. In your case, you asserted that by no means do isits exist. The problem is you defined what isits are, and you made isits something that by its very nature isn't detectable (assuming that isits are spiritual and not natural beings--black holes are technically isits but, as far as we can tell, are not sentient beings. The ex-planet Pluto MIGHT be an isits as well, but an astronomer has the means to detect isits like Pluto and can competently argue otherwise).

So by stating outright that isits do NOT exist and by creating isits to be something that by nature are undetectable, you set yourself up for a one or two-move checkmate position. Just because someone doesn't believe the same thing you do doesn't mean you have the upper hand by default--and I got the impression this was the assumption under which you were operating. "AngelRho is a known Christian, therefore he is wrong." One tactic that lawyers often use is attempting to discredit a witness by, for example, showing that they are known to be liars. While you can make some reasonable assumptions regarding that witness's character, you can't automatically assume that their testimony is false. Rather, you want to SHOW the testimony itself is questionable as evidence. Likewise, you can't say I'm wrong just because you don't like what I have to say!

#1 is the absurdity of what you define isits to be. #2 is making a statement that carries with it the burden of proof. You could have gone about trying to prove the non-existence of isits, and I could either agree with you (Biblical evidence to the contrary) or I could refute your evidence. It would be tough, but it could probably be done.

isits - mit Wissenschaftlers proofing them yet -

Am I missing something or is it the glaringly obviously possible? In these days of strange quarks and technische nomenclature what she in not even Latin no more I cannot always be sure.

lol

I don't think I get your meaning, here. "Isits" is something that skafather unintentionally coined. I just made the acronym and started using it. But I actually like it and will use it more frequently in discussions on the matter. It means:

Invisible
Superbeing(s)
In
The
Sky

Get it?

I think I'm getting undue credit on this one. I DO use superbeing quite frequently but I normally try to avoid any directional placement of that being just because I know theists like the "god is everywhere, not just in the sky" and other such fallacious arguments focusing on the minutia rather than the grander argument.

Great - gracias. I thought that - but for all I know Maxwelf Fotheringay at the Keedysville Institute for Advanced Study just demonstrated that the Dark Matter is composed of isits, mostly the spotty triad. The field changes fast, and I find it hard to keep up even with my own field. So I ask.

Well, I think you would have to make an argument to establish that proof must be demanded. Part of this being that there have been past philosophical arguments that a deity is a basic part of human conceptions of reality, like the notion we have that the other people around us aren't automatons. Now, we can argue that these philosophical arguments don't work, but asserting "X has the burden of proof", is still a contestable position. I am actually still going to tend towards the view that we exist within a background wealth of information, and given that society is not atheist, the atheist, in contesting the common background, will have the burden of proof. This does not mean that atheists can't win, and certainly arguments from parsimony work, but "burden of proof" is only useful if someone has come up with some totally new idea.

mit FreundlichenGrüsen

I didn't know that, actually! That's good information to have, but I still like the AngelRho-skafather definition of isits. Who knew that a Christian and an atheist could ACCIDENTALLY work together to discover a new kind of hypothetical organism!

Wouldn't it be interesting if space exploration actually came across a planet of cute, furry, little isits and brought them home to Earth? I suppose they'd no longer be isits, or perhaps we'd just call them domesticated isits. The sky is merely our view of space with the Earth at its center. So an extraterrestrial planet of isits would technically be in OUR sky. If we take them out of the sky, then they're only isits in name only.

That is, of course, presupposing the existence of isits, and because of their invisible nature, their fur would have to be dyed in order to show that they exist and to reveal their whereabouts. I'm afraid the ASPCA might object, though. So whether isits really do exist will forever remain a mystery.

I must say it has been a pleasure working with skafather on the possible discovery/non-discovery of isits. I suppose the next step should be in properly documenting them. Wikipedia, perhaps?

So, according to her, God was responsible for all the good things humans ever did. I wonder if she thinks God's also responsible for all the bad thinks people do or if she thinks the only free will decisions we have to make are bad ones.

I think VALIS has a better ring to it that Isits.

Vast
Acting
Living
Information
System