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Please understand Mikhael, I really care about your welfare.
But why do you search for and read such crap? As long as you do that, you are throwing gasoline on the fire and can never heal yourself.
If you truly intend to minimize your panic attacks and other maladies, stop reading that shit. A normal person conducting a normal day rarely runs across that shit.
Understand this: you can not dispel all crazy stories.
Cognostic: I feel we got off on the wrong foot. Sorry if my argument is no good. I was trying something new. :)
Again no hard feelings.
Anyway my argument is based on this website: CommonSenseAtheism.com/?p=8854 What do you all think of it?
Cool: I'm only looking at the argument. I will go over and take a look. I thought Common sense Atheism was the group doing the Street epistemology. Watching the video now.
Part One: Why new Atheists Fail. He cites Dawkins and Harris as the new atheists. (Not good examples of failures.) HERE IS THE PROBLEM -- THEY FAILED TO GIVE A GOOD INTELLECTUAL CASE FOR ATHEISM.
Atheism is not a thing. It is not a belief system. It has no dogma. This is like asking the question, "Can you prove atheism is true." NO! There is nothing to prove true? The question makes no sense. Atheism is a lack of belief in God or gods. Can you prove you do not believe in blue universe creating bunnies? Why in the hell should you have to? It's a silly idea and if you want me to believe it, you need to demonstrate your claim. Atheism is the default position. We believe claims when the evidence supports the claim,.
"Religious philosophers get to show how bad the "new atheists" arguments are. THIS GUY MISSES THE BOAT ENTIRELY. New atheists HAVE NO ARGUMENTS FOR ATHEISM.
Dawkin's six step Argument: According to this MORON If God is responsible for the human eye or some complex thing then an intelligence would have to be more complex. God is more complex and he would have to come about through a long slow process of evolution.
WHAT DAWKIN'S ACTUALLY SAYS
On pages 157-8 of his book, Dawkins summarizes what he calls "the central argument of my book." It goes as follows: NOTE: The central argument of the book. NOT THE ARGUMENT FOR ATHEISM.
"1. One of the greatest challenges to the human intellect has been to explain how the complex, improbable appearance of design in the universe arises. (I SEE NO PROBLEM WITH THIS ASSERTION.)
2. The natural temptation is to attribute the appearance of design to actual design itself. (THINGS LOOK DESIGNED THEREFORE THEY ARE DESIGNED. SOUNDS LIKE A NATURAL TEMPTATION TO ME.)
3. The temptation is a false one because the designer hypothesis immediately raises the larger problem of who designed the designer. (IF EVERYTHING "EVERYTHING" IS DESIGNED, WOULDN'T THE DESIGNER ALSO NEED TO BE DESIGNED? YES! IF YOU ASSERT "NO!": YOU ARE GUILTY OF SPECIAL PLEADING. "EVERYTHING BUT MY GOD NEEDS TO BE DESIGNED." THIS IS BULLSHIT SO DAWKIN'S POINT STILL HOLDS.)
4. The most ingenious and powerful explanation is Darwinian evolution by natural selection. (THIS IS THE BEST MODEL WE HAVE. IT DOES NOT INVOLVE MAGIC AND IT IS REPEATABLE, VERIFIABLE, EMPIRICAL, AND IT LEADS TO PREDICTIONS. DAWKIN'S IS CORRECT AGAIN.)
5. We don't have an equivalent explanation for physics. (PHYSICS? NOT SURE WHY HE GOES HERE. DAWKINS IN NOT A PHYSICIST. )
6. We should not give up the hope of a better explanation arising in physics, something as powerful as Darwinism is for biology. (THEN HE CONCLUDES, TALKING ABOUT PHYSICS. MY ASSUMPTION HERE IS THAT HE IS ALLUDING TO THE CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE. BUT JUST AS PHYSICS HAS NO ANSWER TO HOW THE UNIVERSE CAME INTO BEING, BIOLOGY HAS NO ANSWER AS TO HOW THE FIRST LIFE FORM CAME INTO BEING. )
The speaker on the video appears to completely misrepresent anything Dawkins had to say. The new atheists fail because this moron in the video builds a straw man case against them and then pretends he has ripped apart their position;. Read Dawkin's actual position above and then watch the first video again. Just this much is enough to let me know that the presenter in the video is an IDIOT!
I
WHATEVER THE FUCK this IDIOT is calling common sense atheism, ISN'T.
CommonSenseAtheism.com/?p=8854
Video #2. “Why the New Atheists Failed, and How to Defeat All Religious Arguments.”
YOU SAID YOU WERE USING AN ARGUMENT FROM THE SITE. DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT THE GUY GIVING THE LECTURE IS A THEIST. NOT AN ATHEIST. He is fallaciously and intentionally altering the Atheist position so he can knock down Atheist rebuttals to Theist Positions.
This begins on Video 1 but is presented on video 2. "There comes a time when scientists can't answer the why question." Correct, And then the scientists unlike the theists, assert, "I don't know."
"Requiring that the best explanation itself be explained would destroy science." Complete bullshit. He posits an infinite regression of explanation. That could be true unless we discovered the ultimate explanation. How would we know it was the ultimate or best possible explanation? We would test it. And it would meet or exceed out expectations. It's just that simple. When we test the God idea, it fails. This is also very simple..
God did it? This idiot asserts, "I can't just say it is not a good explanation. I have to argue it." WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG! The burden of proof is on the theist. You can sit back and do JACK SHIT NOTHING until the theist comes up with some evidence for his claim. This idiot does not understand "Burden of Proof."
What makes a good explanation? Explanatory Virtues. And completely lacking any and all explanatory virtues, theological claims can be rejected. I DO NOT NEED TO ARGUE THE OPPOSITE. (Is the explanation testable, predictable, consistent with other knowledge, simple is better, explanatory scope. (Lacking all of this, the god hypothesis need not be considered.) That which is asserted without evidence can be rejected without evidence.
"There is no way to test the God hypothesis." Depends on the god. I also assert that absence of evidence is in fact evidence of absence. If it were not, scientists would continue doing the same experiments over and over and over again while expecting different results. No evidence is evidence of that which is not there.
Now the guy begins making assumptions about god.
God is a person without a body. "IGNORANT ASSERTION. HOW DOES HE KNOW?" OUTSIDE OF TIME BLA BLA BLA BLA. HE IS STRAWMANING THE THEIST POSITION. He is merely defining god so he can argue against the god he has defined. This is a dishonest tactic from a theist and it is dishonest from an atheist as well.
THE GUY IS JUST NOT A VERY GOOD LECTURER.
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Attach Image/Video?:
Okay, The end of the second video the guy finally gets around to saying something useful. How do you defeat religious arguments in one easy step?
1. Point out the part of the argument that uses god as the best explanation.
This is incorrect. Kalam for example, asserts, 1. Everything that came into existence has a cause. WRONG The universe exists and may or may not have a cause. I can reject the first premise without ever getting to a god.
2. The universe began to exist. WRONG: You do not get to make that assumption. All we know is that the universe is here. It may be eternal, it may have a beginning. If we assume all things have a beginning you will not later be able to argue a god with no beginning. In that case if your god has no beginning, it can not exist. Demonstrate that the universe had a beginning. THIS IDIOT MAKES THE SAME ASSUMPTION THE THEISTS MAKE. WE DO NOT NEED TO GO THAT FAR INTO THE ARGUMENT.
3. Because the universe began to exist, it has a cause. WHERE IS THE GOD IN THE KALAM COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT? **** IT'S NOT THERE **** THE KALAM IS NOT AN ARGUMENT FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. YOU DO NOT NEED TO FIND THAT POINT AT WHICH GOD IS POSTULATED AT THE ULTIMATE CAUSE TO ARGUE AGAINST THE KALAM. IN FACT; IT WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE TO DO SO.
THIS GUY IS JUST WRONG WRONG WRONG ON SO MANY THINGS HE SAYS. IT'S NOT WORTH LISTENING TO.
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