There's a teapot between Mercury and Venus and you can't prove me wrong! — Christoffer

Why would I want to?

An appeal to authority from a fundamentalist atheist.
No priestly irony here! — Trinidad

Please continue with the low-quality posts. You add nothing to the discussion and no real counterarguments. I refer you to previously written posts to produce some valid counter arguments before putting in any more time on your discussion.

Words words words. — Trinidad

I thought that was your thing... just words, no substance, logic or meaning.

Why would I want to? — counterpunch

So your counterargument is that you don't want to? The point is that burden of proof is on the one claiming something. You claim the existence of God, then the burden of proof is on you. If you don't even know Russell's teapot I understand why you are confused, but it proves my point even better. In contemporary philosophy, theism is a joke. The scrutiny required for the level of philosophy done today requires much more than theists can manage to provide.

End of the debate due to the same old shit you n 5…4…3…2…

Ah now that's interesting. I wonder how common this is. — Kenosha Kid

That's me, too. My parents would play the Christmas/Easter game long after they knew that I knew where the presents/Easter eggs really came from. I just assumed that was the same sort activity. It's not quite as simple, as at some point in my mental development I must have learned to distinguish fact from fiction. For example, I remember "praying" (say, asking God to help me pass a test, or something) before falling asleep, without believing that anyone actually listened. That was just the shape of my anxiety. A bit like knocking on wood, if you know what I mean. That behaviour fell away as I grew older, but there was never a moment when I "stopped believing". It feels more like a slow differentiation process between fact and fiction, and the distinction growing more important as I grew older. There was definitely a period where I slowly (not all at once) realised, wait, they're serious. I remember fretting about telling my parents that I don't believe. I don't remember a moment when I stopped believing. All that is just an ex-post narrative; these are early memories and unreliable. But I definitely grew into atheism through exposure to theism. Theism just didn't stick, and I had to learn to live with it not sticking: going to church and being bored, making up stuff to confess just so I have something to say, saying sappy stuff during preparation for confirmation. Oddly enough, as a teenager (definitely during confirmation preparation), I was open about being atheist, but nobody made life hard for me (even priests seemed more intrigued than anything else). I wonder if people were hoping for fake-it-unti-you-make-it? I can't ever remember having any sort of disadvantage for being an atheist (I'm Austrian, for what it's worth. Roughly 70 % Roman Catholics when I was a child, I think.)

So your counterargument is that you don't want to? The point is that burden of proof is on the one claiming something. You claim the existence of God, then the burden of proof is on you. If you don't even know Russell's teapot I understand why you are confused, but it proves my point even better. In contemporary philosophy, theism is a joke. The scrutiny required for the level of philosophy done today requires much more than theists can manage to provide. — Christoffer

I'm no stranger to flying spaghetti monsters, and the like. And I'm not a theist. Do try to keep up! I'm agnostic, questioning your atheism. You introduced 'what theists think' as a strawman; rather than taking on the more challenging task of proving your atheist knowledge claim, when really, if your position is based in a logical epistemology, you should admit you don't know! Consequently, I feel entitled to suggest that your atheism is motivated, and I wonder by what? You seem very keen to defend communism!

Interesting, thank you. You did remind me, I wasn't completely divorced from the influence of religion as a child. My school, while a state school, was very Christian, with Bible stories, daily prayers, hymns, etc. And we lived around the corner from a Mormon church. My grandfather had tried to enroll his family into it, even tried to move them to Utah (for the pusseh) before I was born. Two elders used to come to our house (I actually believed for a long time I'd killed one of them). They asked me once if I said my prayers and I said yes because we did that at school.

With hindsight I'm wondering why it was such a shock when my best friend told me he believed in God. But I think you and Pfhorrest are both a testament to the way children can absorb ritual and mythology.

I'm thinking about Evelyn Waugh's tremendous novel Brideshead Revisited. In case you haven't read it, it's anti-atheist stance is very peculiar for focussing on the comfort of religious ritual in the face of the abject stupidity of theology. Waugh (himself a liberal, intellectual Christian) wasn't denying that the content of Christianity is bunkum, but that the solace of its artefacts and gestures was negligible.

Maybe that accounts for some of the difference. For us, a tabernacle just isn't very emotive.

I can't ever remember having any sort of disadvantage for being an atheist (I'm Austrian, for what it's worth. Roughly 70 % Roman Catholics when I was a child, I think.) — Dawnstorm

In the west, anti-atheist sentiment seems to me an American thing. I dare say it would be harder to run for government here in the UK if you were openly an atheist, but you'd not lose the job if the press found it out. Weirdly the one place where Western anti-atheist is the norm has the least Christian Christians in the world.

3017 is having a very hard time of it. He is trying to avoid his responsibility to show what he had first claimed he would show, that atheism is illogical. He has no argument to back it up and is trying to shift the burden of proof. To use his own boxing analogy, rather than the knock out he promised to deliver, he is clenching.

Let be established that 180 Proof has not proved The Logic of Atheism as being coherent. (3017)

3017 thinks he can we by decree "let it be established". He really has done a very poor job of it.

But perhaps some here think that he has won or is winning.

180 calls 3017 a limp dick, finally getting some good insults. :clap:

Here's the classic ontological argument based upon the same logico-deductive reasoning:

1.By definition, God is a being than which none greater can be imagined.
2.A being that necessarily exists in reality is greater than a being that does not necessarily exist.
3.Thus, by definition, if God exists as an idea in the mind but does not necessarily exist in reality, then we can imagine something that is greater than God.
4.But we cannot imagine something that is greater than God.
5.Thus, if God exists in the mind as an idea, then God necessarily exists in reality.
6.God exists in the mind as an idea.
7.Therefore, God necessarily exists in reality. — 3017

This seems very odd reasoning because no one can even begin to imagine God. It’s like saying that someone can imagine the entire universe, but no more than the entire universe. There is more to the universe than any human being could begin to imagine.

And it would seem, notwithstanding Anselm's "proof," that the greater being always exists in the imagination. 3017's argument at most seems to be that, granting him whatever he wants and dismissing any application of reason, then he can prove whatever he wants. This is not too difficult to handle, though 3017 may never admit his errors, but the methods are not intuitively clear, and hardly to be acknowledged by one who has already rejected them. That's why there is reason for the reasonable, and straight-jackets and other restraints for the unreasonable.

Ok, looks like its done for. Short and worthless to all us spectators.

So lets take a poll, maybe a mod could make one in the OP of this thread.

Who won the debate? Sound off everyone.

My take is Amen didn’t show up to the debate. Everything he said was posturing, my guess is he was hoping to barf out enough words that he could have plenty of weeds to hide in when he inevitably evaded addressing the actual topic of debate. That's what it looked like to me.
As I predicted, condescending and disingenuous was met with short patience and dismissal. Same old shit.
I was so hoping that we could get an honest discussion from Amen but we did not. He did declare himself the winner though which was pretty funny. Im sure we will be hearing about how it wasnt fair and 180 was the one who didnt show up and how atheist should try and calm down and think rationally and blah blah blah.

Sounds like an accurate description to me.

My take is Amen didn’t show up to the debate. Everything he said was posturing, my guess is he was hoping to barf out enough words that he could have plenty of weeds to hide in when he inevitably evaded addressing the actual topic of debate. That's what it looked like to me. — DingoJones

:up:

180 is too good. :cool:

All right folks we've conceded to an even score in round 1... — 3017amen

Poor fool doesn't understand that he has been thrashed.

Everything he said was posturing, my guess is he was hoping to barf out enough words that he could have plenty of weeds to hide in when he inevitably evaded addressing the actual topic of debate. — DingoJones

I guess he only needs to fool himself.

The event staged, seats set around the TV, popcorn buttered; the fighters enter the ring and proceed to dance around each other for the whole first round, feigning and fainting with extraordinary athletic ability and vigour, but without throwing a single substantive blow at risk of being hit; the crowd not as impressed with either of them, than each of them seems by the other!

Its pretty bizzare that he could conclude “we’ve” conceded to an even score based on whats in that thread. Private messages maybe?
Originally he said he won by TKO which is even more preposterous. His last comment was vomit inducing. Just gross.

Kindly put, he is full of it. Lived down to my expectations anyhow.

Hanover is being diplomatic to the point of absurdity. 3017 demands to go first, fails to present a case, 180 points this out, and Hanover calls it a draw?

Come on.

Edit: That was a bit unfair on Hangover. He called a forfeit, which 3017 thinks is a draw.

More evidence of the brilliance of 3017's thought processes. Not a good ad for theism, I say.

If we can make this @Hanover's fault, I'd be totally up for that. :victory:

Nuh. Crucify 3017. It's what he really wants. Fun though it is to blame Hanover.

The question posed by the debate was whether 3017 had a sustainable position. Did I not see to it that that question was answered?

I think there were parameters about his role we aren’t privy to, limiting his responses.
The interesting part to me is how people like Amen cannot recognize how disingenuine they are being, blind to their dishonest engagement. What do you call that, and what do you say to them? Trying to help them see it is just seen as an attack, a mean angry atheist attack that…I don’t know I guess they feel justified acting like cunts in return?
Does Amen really think he acted fairly and in good faith in that? Its just so hard for me to believe he does yet its just as hard for me to believe someone would be so committed to trolling or-messing around.
Religion right? Straight up mind poison.

Well you gave him the rope I suppose.

You don't seem to know what the true Scotsman fallacy is. If I define atheism as having a foundation of logic and rational reasoning instead of just a lack of belief in God, that incorporates everyone with a belief that doesn't have a logical foundation for it. Hence, it includes these people. The Scotsman fallacy is if I just say "they aren't true atheists" and don't provide any foundation for that claim, which I have. — Christoffer

Goodness. You are providing your definition of atheism which includes an epistemology and it sounds like you can see that. Your definition is more of an ideal atheist: as you see it.

A no true Scotsman fallacy happens when someone hears a description of the characteristics of X and argues that 'they're are not X' (because the description doesn't suit the person's preferred understanding and argument).

I'll remind you of what you said:

Whatever these people say about themselves, they are not atheists. — Christoffer

You don't own the definition of atheism. If someone says they are an atheist and they don't believe in god, they are an atheist. Period. They may be an untheorized atheist, but so what? Atheism may have an ideal form (humanism and skepticism) but that's not what we were talking about.

About 50% of atheists I have met at freethinkers forums/events over 40 years and the like have no or little interest in logical foundations. They may be inchoate but they are still atheists. I was an atheist for 20 years before I ever examined reason and logic.

Having a debate about why so many atheists are not philosophically inclined and can't really justify their atheism might be a more rewarding line to follow.

...people like Amen cannot recognize how disingenuine they are being, blind to their dishonest engagement. What do you call that, — DingoJones

I think the term used locally is "fuckwit".

what do you say to them? — DingoJones

Nothing, were possible.

Yeah, pay that. He was given enough rope to hang himself.

Edit: Yep.

Having a debate about what so many atheists are not philosophically inclined and can't really justify their atheism might be a more rewarding line to follow. — Tom Storm

Because atheists are people and most people can’t really justify their positions.
Well stated post btw.

:up:

American Atheists definition of atheism:
Atheism is one thing: A lack of belief in gods. It is simply a rejection of the assertion that there are gods.

The only common thread that ties all atheists together is a lack of belief in gods. Some of the best debates we have ever had have been with fellow atheists. This is because atheists do not have a common belief system