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Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
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No counter arguments are needed for god claims in my experience, as they are never supported by any objective evidence, and invariable are based on known logical fallacies, and are thus by definition irrational, that said atheism is not a counterargument to theism. The second sentence is beyond facile, since you don't even attempt to define the deity in question, are seriously saying there are counter argument against arguments denying the existence of Thor and Zeus, the inference here is that you believe in all deities simultaneously then? Yes people can believe whatever they want, what's your point? Believing things that demonstrably at odds with known facts, like creationists denying species evolution for instance, is pretty stupid.
Religions don't kill, people do even when they lie to do so for a religion and there are naturally many murderers. Maybe the worst are those claiming there's no god.
@Flatland
Wait let me get this straight:
Even if someone says they killed in the name of the religion, you just consider them liars?
And the worst killers are the ones that claim there is no god? Why is that? Seriously, I am curious, how do you try to explain that?
By the way, I make zero claims that there is no god. As do most atheist here on this site. I simply reject your god claim and everyone else's until they can provide actual evidence.
What about all the killing in whatever holy book that forms the foundation of your religion/god idea?
Don't jump that horse.
I believe in a god because I never asked anyone to provide actual evidence. How about you?
@Flatland
Just trying to make sense of what you wrote, feel free to correct me and tell me why I am wrong.
I do not believe in god because no one has given me any evidence for me to consider believing in a god idea. The same reason I do not believe in Thor, Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, unicorns, etc to actually be real. Or in other words, I do not just take other peoples word for it, especially in a claim as enormous as a "god" claim.
Question for you:
Do you believe in Thor, Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, unicorns, etc?
If you don't believe in them, why not? What makes them different from your god idea?
What is it Thor, Santa claus, the tooth fairy and unicorns do?
@ Flatland
"What is it Thor, Santa claus, the tooth fairy and unicorns do?"
They reside in the imaginations of people.
@Flatland
Hmm.. you answered my question with a question. I answered your question, why won't you answer mine?
Do you really need clarification on what Thor, Santa claus, the tooth fairy and unicorns do? Before you can answer my question?
Do I need to spell it out? Do you not know about thor santa claus etc? Your writing skills indicate you have had at least some education, did no one ever explain to you the idea of at least Santa Claus? And you never bothered to find out for yourself? I find that rather unlikely.
This seems more like evasion to me.
Regardless, if you refuse to answer even one simple question after I answered your question, that does not seem like much of a fair conversation to me.
Can you demonstrate any objective evidence your deity does anything? Until you can the analogous comparison is valid, if your deity is anymore real than Thor, Santa Claus, the tooth fairy or unicorns, then demonstrate some objective evidence to support this idea, if all you have is faith then any of those could validated by the same vapid method, and you're manifestly demonstrating this anew with every post IMO.
Re: Flatlander
Hey! Everybody sing along!
(To the tune of "We Will Rock You" by Queen)
Buddy you're an un-em-ployed man
Living with your mom
Playing games
In her basement space
Food stains on your face
From snack cakes
Trolling AR at a steady pace
Hearing...
He will, he will
Troll you!
(*boom... clap-clap... boom*)
He will, he will
Troll you!
(*boom... clap-clap... boom*)
Now that song is stuck in my head.
At least it got rid of the the witcher song that's been stuck in my head....
Oh nope. Now its both.
@ Flatland
"Religions don't kill"
I must disagree vehemently.
I will choose a recent event to disprove this claim.
Do you know why the World Trade Center was destroyed? Because the US military were in Saudi Arabia, a situation the Muslim radicals believed was violating their sacred soil.
You've taken my words out of context.
The whole sentence was "religions don't kill, people do".
@ Flatland
"The whole sentence was "religions don't kill, people do"."
And that is a greasy way to pass the buck.
People are the agents of religion, they follow whatever dictates of their personal religious dogma. Those terrorists flew those airliners into the Twin Towers as a direct result of the dictates of their religion. If those religious dictates had not existed, no act of terrorism and 2,996 dead people.
Are people not motivated to kill by religion then? I think you need to read the bible and the koran, seriously. And please spare us the facile claim they have misunderstood these vile books, as the catalogue of murder conducted by the deity and condoned and encouraged by the deity portrayed in both is unequivocal.
No True Scotsman fallacy...again.
Are people not motivated to kill by religion?
Perhaps not all.
Are people not motivated to kill religious people?
Perhaps not all.
So yes then, and neither I nor David altered the context, the edits were simply for brevity and clarity, and I am happy for anyone to attest we did not misrepresent what you falsely claimed.
I ought not to dignify that dishonest straw man with a response, when it is clearly a diversion because you dishonestly claimed "religions don't kill, people do" your own words, but now admit people are motivated by religions to kill, ipso facto religions kill. Please quote where I claimed people were not motivated to kill religious people? Though of course the vast majority of these are competing religions, and again this exposes the dishonesty of your claim that "religions don't kill," when they quite clearly do, and that is in the real world, even before we tap the rich vein of endless murderous brutality in both the bible and koran.
NB I note like all theists who endlessly use known logical fallacies on here, you have simply ignored my objection to it.
I never killed anyone so far and I'm no atheist.
@Flatland
You just gave the game away.
Oh well I got a few laughs out of it.
Another dishonest straw man, as I never claimed you had. You have also ignored my objection to your use of a known logical fallacy in your argument for a third time, to make this disingenuous straw man claim, not your first. Do you think we won't recognise dishonest evasion like this, or draw the only rational inference it suggests? You claimed "religions don't kill, people do" we now know from your own admission that religion motivates people to kill, thus your claim was false, every thing else you've posted is just a dishonest evasion to avoid admitting your claim was false. Such dishonesty can only reflect badly on your beliefs.
@Flatland: Are people not motivated to kill by religion?
Look at history. From biblical times down to the present day, many millions have been killed for following the wrong religion, or for following the right religion the wrong way. I think the idea of an afterlife is very hazardous to human health. It devalues our one real life.
I think the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg said it best
"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
@ Flatland
"Maybe the worst are those claiming there's no god."
In the interests of fair play, I will have to educate you. The definition of an atheist is one who has not accepted the god claim because of not being convinced. Very few state "there is no god", while most will say "I can not accept this god claim because I have not been convinced."
Flatland, if you can offer valid evidence, I will be the first to raise my hand, and admit there is a god.
The ball is on your court, now convince me.
My faith is based on my own experiences with the physical body I own, my connection with the universe. I fear there's not much I can do to convince you. I'm unable to make this god appear to you. My trail of logic is that the origin of the universe is god, whatever it is.
@Flatland
To bad you refuse to answer even basic questions. It certainly lessens any strength of argument you have further. Why should anyone take you seriously?
Your refusal to answer questions does strengthen the argument you are just trolling, for responses, or something.
Feel free to prove me wrong.
That's not logic, in fact it sounds more like an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy to me. A god of the gaps polemic no less. We can't explain x, therefore god did it.
Nothing that contains a known logical fallacy can be asserted as rational, BY DEFINITION.
Any chance you'll address this? Theists come here and nearly always try to lay claim to logic, but don't seem for the most part to have even a cursory understanding of its principles. Some of them literally don't know what the word means.
I am minded to ask how you validate your personal experiences are evidencing a deity, since all theists across a spectrum of religions and deities, make this identical claim? If reality doesn't reflect personal experience then isn't maintaining the belief contradicted by reality the very definition of a delusion?
Do you believe those experiencing Thor are deluded? If so how do you know? And yes I have read personal accounts of theists claiming their connection with Thor is real...one wonders from a neutral perspective how one is supposed to differentiate between your competing claims? Especially given you have both been careful to avoid claims to objective evidence which would be falsifiable.
Incidentally I reject all unfalsifiable claims as they can teach us nothing, and I therefore withhold belief in those claims. So I am an atheist regardless of whether the claim can be falsified or not. It goes without saying falsifiable claims like miracles are always shown to be false when properly examined, as only once would a theist need to objectively evidence a claim for the existence of the supernatural, and it has never happened.
I see you have a clear understanding of what god exactly cannot exist. It cannot be the origin of the universe, which is what a god would be. Why is that?
@Flatland
You have to give us a clue which post you are pretending you're responding to when you post that vapid rhetoric. FYI an atheist has no concept of a deity, they're all equally hypothetical, and imaginary, only theists have an unevidenced and biased concept of one version they cling to, that they cannot demonstrate any objective evidence for.
Now, have you anything substantive to offer in response to my post, or will it be only the vapid sweeping rhetoric you've offered thus far? Tell you what I'll post it again for you, see if you ignore it yet again.
That's not logic, in fact it sounds more like an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy to me. A god of the gaps polemic no less. We can't explain x, therefore god did it.
Nothing that contains a known logical fallacy can be asserted as rational, BY DEFINITION.
Any chance you'll address this? Theists come here and nearly always try to lay claim to logic, but don't seem for the most part to have even a cursory understanding of its principles. Some of them literally don't know what the word means.
I am minded to ask how you validate your personal experiences are evidencing a deity, since all theists across a spectrum of religions and deities, make this identical claim? If reality doesn't reflect personal experience then isn't maintaining the belief contradicted by reality the very definition of a delusion?
Do you believe those experiencing Thor are deluded? If so how do you know? And yes I have read personal accounts of theists claiming their connection with Thor is real...one wonders from a neutral perspective how one is supposed to differentiate between your competing claims? Especially given you have both been careful to avoid claims to objective evidence which would be falsifiable.
Here's a clue, if the sentnece has one of these (?) at the end, it poses a question relating to some of your many unevidenced claims. FYI, there is a cut off point for vapid rhetoric and unevidenced claims, as I have learned over the years to not flog a dead theist.
@Flatland
I respect your thoughts. There is merit in your philosophy that nothing really matters. It kinda fits with my philosophy that the Universe has no conscience. The Universe cares nothing of what we as humans accomplish or that we even exist. The opposing view that I offer is that every human capable of thought is an Island. On that island (within that human's brain), there is the capacity to have thoughts that have value. But I happen to agree with you, in the grand scheme of the Universe, nothing matters. Everything in the Universe is matter, space and energy. The fact that some of that matter has come together to form a thinking human being who exists for a short time and gathers some value out of its existence doesn't seem to me to be of any great merit.
Regarding God being the initial creation of the Universe is a novel thought. But it has not much merit beyond that single thought. It doesn't translate into anything more for you or I.
In summary, it always comes back to thus: when homo sapiens have no evidence for the unknown, they fabricate a concept to fill the void. You fabricated the concept that God is the initial creation of the Universe. Others of us are not wired to make those fabrications. We simply say, it was the result of natural processes guided by the Laws of Physics.
Edited to add: My mother died a few years ago, she was 93. She spent her last 3 years in a nursing home about 3 miles from my farm. I visited her at least 4 times a week. Mother was a Christian. From an early age she called me her "doubting Thomas". I challenged her from the time I was 8 or 9 years old. Things like, mom what about the Indians, do they all go to hell because they were not aware of Jesus? She treated me with such great respect. Never got frustrated with my attacks on her faith. Right up until the last day of her life. I went to visit her that last day. She was watching birds out of her window. She said, "Ron, I want to go. I want to see Bob." Dad died a year before her at age 92. They were married when they were 22. I left her and when I got to the gate into the farm, I got a call from the nursing home. Mom was dead. I did not cry. I did not cry at her funeral. Mom, was always happy. She laughed more than anyone I ever knew. She held to her faith. It gave her tremendous comfort. I don't share her faith, but I don't have any problems with those find a way to make their existence more rewarding.
Flatland: My trail of logic is that the origin of the universe is god,
So does the origin of the universe have any opinions about how you should live? Does it promise you an eternal afterlife? Does it need you to believe in it? Did it send its son to save you?
Some reason faith is delusional. Why that is I don't know. Ignorance is inside the mind.
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