Fortunately I lived through the 50's and the sixties....but my memory of the 60's and 70's is shot to hell....but then ...I think it was great!

albert Einstein stated that the irony in the universe is that it is comprehensible, we as the average humans have finite minds so we are able to grasp God in our comprehension.Not totally but he grants us like mathematics and abstract principles as per Einstein. the ability to think through logic faculties about him. In short our minds that we can reason and think are great evidence for God. Also one post here stated to give an objective reason for gods existence, well we have minds we can think but yet the mind can`t be detected.Just like i know there is a God because i exist and reason and am made in his image.

@Alain,
Your English is fine, Alain. I am not good at learning other languages.

Do read up on deChardin. Interesting guy. The Catholic Church refused to let his books be printed until after he died in the fifties, because he continually challenged basic tenets, like declaring Adam and Eve to be mythological, which really messes up their explanation of why Jesus had to die. Twenty years in China after the war must have exposed him to some Buddhism I would think.

In general terms you are quite correct about qualifying statements without evidence. I am well aware of what you mean and I do actually do what you suggest with other subjects (history, science, art) but not theology, atheism or religion.

I make bold statements like 'There is no god.' on purpose. And bear in mind I am focussing here on monotheistic fundamental theists and religions.

A little personal history to clarify.
For the best part of nearly forty years I have been engaged in a continuing, punctuated discussion/debate/argument with an exclusive, prophetic, Old Testament, christian brethren cult who converted my brother and his family. Its been an off and on again situation.
This brethren prides itself on their particular interpretation of christianity. Studying them and discussing with them, I have learned quite a lot, but they do have some strange, even contradictory views, even for christians and they insist on questionable obedience from their members, that exceeds other religions.
It's not like your usual christian group living amongst the rest of the community. They are very exclusive and demand loyalty to the point of limiting contact with outside family members, and accepting appointed close personal pairings with other members and only allowing children to marry within the brethren.

I began questioning his initial association with them, but as the whole family was drawn to the brethren under the influence of his wife, she did not appreciate my interference. Some of my most intense arguments were with her.
Over time, the discussions and arguments extended to other brethren members and for some, I believe I was deliberately set up with increasingly knowledgeable debaters. Most times I never really felt like I had even scored a point due to their persistent intransigence.
There were times I felt my brother had been instructed to avoid me. Other times he just acted like a complete stranger rather than my older affable dopey brother. Other times he just seemed lost. I understand the brethren only referred to me as 'the brother" and never by my name.
I started to relent trying to dissuade him, it served no purpose and must only have made him uncomfortable. To be honest I haven't seen much of him since my wife passed away, but my concern for him remains.
There are several support groups for people who have left this brethren or who have lost family members to it. They aren't a nice bunch at all, really.

So, in disputes with that brethren and with some theists on AR and other atheist sites, I have cultivated a personal manner of discussing theology, which includes making unqualified bold statements.

Theists are immune to debate. They are more interested in conversion and proving their faith. God exists. God colours all information and interpretations. He cannot be denied. He also listens and judges the theist's argument. God does not like to be disappointed, so the theist never concedes any issue, even despite plain evidence to the contrary. Truth is not in the balance, their soul is, yours too. Evasive tactics are employed to discredit, disarm and discount any claims against their faith and can range from any number of fallacies to objections about 'context' and 'meaning' to plain outright lies (because its OK to lie for God, if you save souls as Eusebius wrote. It's also in the bible but for the moment I can't recall the source.)

And theists have kidnapped definitions. I have been ambushed for using words like 'belief', 'faith', even 'understanding' etc. If I say 'I believe in the scientific method', I am accused of having no less a faith than a christian and my support for science is no more than a mere belief. If I offer up evidence of a scientific theory I get served with the disparagement of the word "theory" ie, "well its only a theory, its not true." Tired, old, meaningless deflecting arguments that do nothing more than waste time. If I dare to question a bible reference, I am told I have failed to appreciate the 'context' or 'revealed wisdom expressed', despite the obvious meaning, ie god killed all the innocent first born children, human and animal, in Egypt, after he had hardened Pharaoh's heart himself.

So, I do not care to argue if someone else's god is theoretically real or not. I don't care if I trample like a barbarian over the standard rules of debate or niceness by not qualifying my statements. I was once a polite debater and obeyed the rules with the brethren and that failed to keep my brother from them.

When I say 'There is no god', I invoke the English language convention that what I claim is exactly what I believe. It is my personal conviction as much as it is the conviction of a theist to claim god exists without evidence.
I expect to draw criticism from fellow atheists who insist we can not say 'god does not exist'. They quibble that we can not prove it, but as atheists the burden of proof is still not ours to bear.
I will say it here, once, I believe he does not and theists still can't prove he does.

By the way, I have testified in court, before a judge. I offered my sworn and honest evidence as an eye witness and the judge in his summing up, openly discounted my testimony, on the basis of his personal evaluation of me, though we had never before met and he could not have had any information on me. I was wearing a suit and a short haircut and was clean shaven. I worked for a reputable financial institution. He was a prominent christian and a total arsehole. My innocent friend spent time in prison.

more to come....sorry for the length...but as the Irish say 'if the road were any shorter we'd never arrive'....

Tell me if you have had enough.

ALAIN:
"Obviously this physical science does not deal with reincarnation." "WRONG" Null Hypothesis. There are no claims made by reincarnation believers that can be confirmed by science. All science says is "UNCONFIRMED." This is all science ever says about hypothesis.

If you assert there was a previous life - you must prove it. WAITING!

SHIFTING THE BURDEN OF PROOF: "Now you tell me what cards you can put on the table to prove that reincarnation does not exist therefore the free will does not exist as well."

Your stupid theory is not true by virtue of the fact that no one can prove it is not true. THAT IS NOT HOW SCIENCE WORKS. You must prove it is true before you can be taken seriously. You can not prove Blue Universe Creating Bunnies did not create the universe. (They are invisible, non-corporal, omniscient, and live beyond time and space but have powers to interact with us on a personal level.) Just like the idiocy of reincarnation, saying it does not make it so.

NDE: NDEs are facts and in these experience people often mention reincarnation and free will.
Yes, NDEs are facts and people say all sorts of stupid shit about them. So what. The shit people say is not fact. Buddhists have Buddhist experiences. Muslims have Muslim experiences. etc..... Several things take place during an NDE. 1. The brain is starved of oxygen. 2. Sleep paralysis 3. Phantom Limb Projection. All of these are well understood by science. No evidence what so ever supports the claims people make regarding reported events they experience during an NDE. NONE>

EVOLUTION REQUIRES MANY LIVES: Bullshit. Already discussed in reincarnation. Prove it.

UNIVERSAL JUSTICE: roflmao - PROVE IT. No such thing exists until you can produce evidence.

All you are doing is making inane assertions about unfalsifiable convictions and then telling people to disprove your delusions. Frankly speaking, if you believe half the crap you are saying, you are probably in need of psychological assistance.

My, my, who has been disturbing the hornet's nest?

OK well it was perhaps a little ambitious for me to answer all ten original questions Alain posed, at the beginning of a work week and with little time to spare.
Its good you AR heathens contributed and so shortened the event. As it is I whole heartedly agree with the points you all made.

But I think I might just summarise my thoughts on Alain's claims.

Alain,
have you noticed I have not asked you to provide evidence for your stated position?

Not only that but I have not even challenged you to disprove that rocks are inert. It's foolish to demand evidence of anyone to disprove something they do not have reason to believe.

Truth is a near impossible thing to pin down. Its not as tangible as we like to think and changes over time in small discrete ways. I am cynical of claims of absolute truth and constantly reconsider everything I think is true. I have long lost the habit of beleiving dogma or the word of people, even those I respect. Everyone has the opportunity to be plain wrong.

The purpose of the scientific method is not to disprove god. Its purpose is to describe what and how things happen in this material world according to consistent and repeatable experiment. Nothing more.
Its real power is the amount of information we have garnered particularly over the past three hundred years. What we have learned and achieved is nothing less than staggering and a long the way we have learned so much more of who, what and how we are and why we think and believe and imagine ourselves to be. That intellectual evolution is available for everyone who can read listen and think, not just for the individual contemplating his navel and striving to make imagings real.

Conciousness can be measured, its not a spiritual concept. Encephalography, electronically monitering and measuring and recording brain activity under different stimuli, has been in use since 1875. It has been a major tool in diagnosing and healing mental health issues.

Matter is inert, rocks and pebbles are not conscious. Uranium, an unstable element, isn't waiting to express hidden consciousness, Right now, it constantly emits radioactivity and does so in terms of half-lifes measured in thousands and hundreds of thousands of years.

Your understanding of science is pretty poor. I doubt you have read any recently published books on any scientific subject and maybe only a few scattered Google articles at best.
There simply can never be "a different type of science" and certainly not just to accomodate your quaint desire to claim consciousness as a purely spiritual quality.

Read this book at least, its not hard to understand and I guarantee it will give you a clearer understanding about mankind. Its a free book to download. If you are honestly interested in truth you will read it and if you think you already possess truth then reading it cant change your opinion, but at least it will give you an idea of what I and others here at AR understand to be the truth about life on earth.

Becoming Human

The science of Evolution has already shown who and what we are and has proven our very special and unique connection with every other living creature on earth. I did highlight that in mentioning the Hox genes, but maybe you just missed it.

Not only do I not believe in reincarnation, the Buddhist version is one I find horrendous. Judging people in this life on the basis of assumed moral behaviour in a totally imagined "previous life" is the worst example of blind justice and judgement in a religion I have ever come across.

If you die young, you are remembered as a murderer in a previous life. If you are ugly, you treated others despicably and so deserve your looks. If you are poor, its not to do with economic circumstances, you were just a greedy and dishonest crook in your last life. The Catholic Church must be insanely jealous for missing this particular method of condemning people but at least they had the good taste to only declare us all rotten to the core once, at birth, and not repeatedly before then. And then ironically you talk of Justice. Maybe someone just died young, because he/she contracted liver cancer, the poor bugger.

NDEs are just that, no-one dies. Their bodies suffer extreme stresses, and you would take their word as rational explanations for their experience? And not everyone has the same experience. Not everyone 'sees themselves from above" or senses a light from heaven or sees long dead relatives. It's an extreme medical event, not a spiritual experience. Its been noted that Muslims don't have 'religious NDEs, perhaps because they are not permitted portraits or cute little statues of Mohammed.

I covered the illusion of free will. I suppose my Stanford lecture reference was wasted.

OK, well I am done here. Believe what you want Alain but dont distort reality just to accomodate cherished views, challenge them, keep questioning and dont reject any answer just because you dont like it, keep revising.

Cheers.

And Arakish worries he is too wordy, lol.