why do you not believe in God?

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terraphon's picture
You're right...

You're right...

Once again I fall prey to the traps of theism.

Damn, damn, damn!

jzb.404's picture
Christian: Everyone is going

Christian: Everyone is going to hell except Christians.
Muslim: Everyone is going to hell except Muslims.
Atheist: Are we all going to hell then?

Randomhero1982's picture
Athiest: Thank fuck theres no

Athiest: Thank fuck theres no such thing as hell.

arakish's picture
What!? No Hell? Man, I

What!? No Hell? Man, I heard Hell was the party place. The happening place. Now you tell me it does not exist? Man, what in Hell am I supposed to do in the after-life?

rmfr

Randomhero1982's picture
Well not unless you subscribe

Well not unless you subscribe to the many worlds interpretation?

Then you have the possibility of an Earth that is populated solely by Ken Ham and his clones... that has to be pretty close?!

arakish's picture
LMAOWF

LMAOWF

"Earth that is populated solely by Ken Ham and his clones... that has to be pretty close?!"

Yeah. Cannot get much worse when it comes to defining Hell...

rmfr

Tin-Man's picture
@Random Re: "Then you have

@Random Re: "Then you have the possibility of an Earth that is populated solely by Ken Ham and his clones..."

Hmmm... That Lake of Fire is starting to look awfully tempting... *tapping lips with index finger*...

comoke1024's picture
I do not believe in god

I do not believe in god because I have seen no compelling evidence supporting any god claim. Most of the evidence I see is:

1 - My holy book says so - which began the question, why should I believe your holy book? I have not heard any good answer to this question, to date.

2 - I feel him - That's great. I don't.

3 - I had a personal experience with god - Also great. I haven't.

4 - Something can't come from nothing without a creator - 1) Why not? 2) How do you know something did come from nothing? Why is it that your god can be eternal, but the universe cannot be?

I'm sure I have heard other common arguments, but it is too late on the East Coast to delve into the Sarlacc Pit that is my memory. I think I got my point across :)

Calilasseia's picture
Ok, I'll bite on this one,

Ok, I'll bite on this one, even though the thread has now expanded to 15 pages, most of which I haven't read, partly because I want to move quickly to my own response. I'll deal with the requisite issues point by point.

[1] First of all, I dispense with "belief" altogether. Quite simply, if a postulate has evidence to support its truth-value, then belief is superfluous to requirements and irrelevant. Which in turn arises from the fact that belief, as practised by supernaturalists, consists of nothing more than uncritical acceptance of unsupported mythological assertions, and as such, is a direct violation of the proper rules of discourse, central among these being that assertions possess the status "truth value unknown" until a proper test of the requisite assertions is conducted. Which is, at bottom, the purpose of proper discourse and its associated rules - to convert an assertion into a postulate with a known truth-value. Because of this central rule of proper discourse, I discard "belief" as being a violation thereof.

[2] Second, as a corollary of [1] above, if an assertion has not been subject to proper test, then that assertion may safely be discarded. Since the rest of us have been waiting for 5,000 years for supernaturalists to provide a proper test of their assertions, only for us to be presented with manifest failure by supernaturalists in this matter, the requisite mythological assertions about fantastic magic entities may safely be discarded on this basis. For those supernaturalists who do not understand the elementary concept at work here, the mere fact that your favourite mythology presents an assertion within its pages, does not magically convert that assertion into an established fact. A source that merely presents assertions is not evidence for the veracity of those assertions, though supernaturalists routinely demonstrate that they want their mythologies to be exempt from this proper discoursive provision.

[3] When one turns to the various extant mythologies humans have fabricated over the ages, those mythologies have a habit of possessing numerous features in common. First, they present assertions about supposedly fantastic magic entities, and the existence thereof, but only ever present these assertions as blind assertions. Second, the magic entities contained within these mythologies, are frequently constructed in a manner that blatantly betrays their actual origin as fabrications of limited human imaginations. These entities are frequently depicted as resembling more familiar entities from the biosphere (or, in some cases, fanciful chimaeras thereof), and are frequently portrayed as possessing attributes and personality traits that are all too human. Classical Greek civilisation was, to its credit, up front and honest about this, and treated its mythological entities with a sophistication and sanguinity rarely seen elsewhere. The aphorism "Man created God in his image" is found to be applicable pretty much universally to human mythologies.

Worse still, the mythologies in question have a habit of presenting assertions about the observable universe and its contents, that are subsequently found through diligent scientific investigation not merely to be wrong, but in some cases to be so fatuous, that they do not rise to the level of competence required for them to be considered "wrong". Those requiring an explanation of this particular brand of dismissal, need to focus upon a particular elementary concept at work here: namely, that for a postulate to be wrong, usually implies that some intellectual effort was expended in constructing that postulate, with a view to said postulate being either a substantive answer to an outstanding question, or an explanation of a part of our surroundings. Some of the assertions contained in mythologies are too fatuous and absurd, for this requirement to be considered to hold in their case. Hence the phrase "not even wrong" being applied thereto in some quarters.

For example, if one turns to Genesis 30:37-39, there is a story contained therein, which in effect erects the assertion that wholesale genomic change can be enacted within living organisms, simply by arranging for the parents to copulate alongside various coloured sticks. This might have seemed reasonable to superstitious desert nomads with woefully inadequate knowledge of even basic biology, but in the present age, cannot be taken seriously, not least because this farcical tale was roundly refuted by the diligent experimental work of an Austrian monk. The monk in question was one Gregor Mendel, and his researches involving peaflowers laid the foundations for modern genetics. In the light of that work, and the vast subsequent body of knowledge that built upon this research, this mythological account is palsied in the extreme. This is not the only example I could choose to highlight, but serves as a particularly cretinous sample from the genre.

The same mythology also underestimated the size of the observable universe by fully nine orders of magnitude, a level of error that would be considered a joke by physicists, and displayed no indication that its authors were even aware of the scale of distances applicable to the Solar System, let alone beyond. A failure that is all the more inexcusable, given that the people who included among their number, the authors of this mythology, spent at least some time being ruled over by the Babylonians, who were among the finest empirical astronomers of ancient times, and possibly the first civilisation to adopt the correct heliocentric model of the Solar System. Yet apparently, the authors of this mythology chose not to avail themselves of the same knowledge. As a corollary, the idea that a mythology containing such glaring errors can be considered 'reliable' as a source of knowledge about the universe and its contents, is patently absurd, and as a secondary corollary, this unreliability with respect to the testable assertions contained in this mythology extends to the untested and untestable assertions. Similar observations can be made for other mythologies.

Quite simply, the authors of these mythologies, were incapable of even fantasising about vast classes of entities and phenomena, that have since been alighted upon by scientists, and placed by said scientists into usefully predictive, quantitative frameworks of genuine substantive knowledge. These authors of mythology were, for example, completely ignorant of the existence of three major continental land masses extant upon this planet, an omission that should be a serious embarrassment to adherents of those mythologies residing on those land masses today.

The idea that pre-scientific nomads scribbling unimaginative mythology, containing more plot holes than a large piece of Gorgonzola, somehow magically alighted upon the keys to the cosmos, is ridiculous and risible. Even more risible is the idea, peddled by various adherents of the requisite mythologies, that Nobel laureates in science are all somehow mistaken, because their diligent empirical findings do not conform to mythological assertion. This idea I regard as beneath deserving of a point of view.

[4] While I do not make the mistake of asserting that any god type entity does not exist (instead, I regard that assertion in the same vein as every other - namely, "truth value unknown"), I do, on the basis of the above, regard mythologically asserted candidates for the role as invalid, because they are constructed in a manner that is replete with internal contradiction, absurdity and paradox, and almost certainly constitute yet more massive underestimates of the scale of any actual entity of this sort that may or may not exist. If mythologies were so spectacularly wrong about the scale of the universe, then their little gods are almost certainly likely to be feeble imitations of any real entity of this sort that eventually provides us with reliable observational data. Indeed, if ever such an entity is found, it will almost certainly falsify all of our mythologies at a stroke, and the biggest embarrassment won't be experienced by atheists in this regard, most of whom will be quite happy to accept proper evidence for a god-type entity if and when it arrives, but by supernaturalists.

Now, as I have expended effort upon this exposition, it would be welcome if anyone contesting the above expends similar diligence. Regurgitation of apologetic fabrications will not suffice, and I will destroy such discoursive tinsel the moment anyone mistakenly presents it to me. You have been warned.

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