I click on that and it's a bunch of stuff in German. I guess asking me to get a subscription?
Click "Einverstehen"
Readit Newsdawg- commented on Tim O'Reilly: The Internet Is Being Scapegoated in a Lot of Ways (2019) zeit.de/digital/internet/... · Posted by u/Tomte
dawg- commented on Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time axios.com/church-membersh... · Posted by u/cwwc
Your statement suggests there are infinitely many hypotheses that posit "a thing exists, but there is no evidence for it". Then you say others have failed to (properly) consider those hypotheses that you choose to believe. (Which may or not be true, but no evidence either way is evident.)
However, aren't you also saying you are not willing to (properly) consider the infinitely many alternative hypotheses to your own, much less the negation hypothesis of "NOT God"?
Which is better then? To choose to believe in one untestable hypothesis or to believe in none?
A suggestion that there are things you haven't heard of doesn't equate to infinite things. Let's say there are 10 arguments for God's existence, but the only one you are familiar with is "a thing exists, but there is no evidence for it", isn't my statement accurate?
In turn, your statement suggests that all possible ideas about religion for the past thousands of years of human history can be boiled down to a single sentence. You have assumed that everything you don't know about religion is exactly the same as the very little you do know about it. Which one of us is supposed to be close-minded again?
I am willing to consider anything and listen to what anybody has to say. As I said in my post above I went through an atheist period of my own, after all.
dawg- commented on Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time axios.com/church-membersh... · Posted by u/cwwc
> As a religious person, it is a bit frustrating that you never see atheists confronting the great theologists and religious philosophers - Origen, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Kierkegaard, or even contemporary thinkers like Alasdair McIntyre. If Christians' beliefs are really so shallow and stupid, those guys should be super easy to refute, right?
The main issue with most of these philosophical arguments is that they don't prove anything even worth refuting. Almost all of them simply attempt to prove the existence of a deistic God that does not meaningfully interact with the world (beyond creating it or sustaining it).
Deistic Gods by their vary nature don't provide any meaningful knowledge. Believing that there was a creator doesn't provide any useful information about how to help live your life or how the world works.
As a starting point I don't think there are any good arguments for why a person should believe that the bible was influenced/written by God any more than other books.
I already replied to your comment below, but this one is interesting too.
> The main issue with most of these philosophical arguments is that they don't prove anything even worth refuting. Almost all of them simply attempt to prove the existence of a deistic God that does not meaningfully interact with the world (beyond creating it or sustaining it).
I don't think any good philosopher would admit to the embarrassment of actually having "proved" something!
Jokes aside, you wouldn't consider "sustaining the world" to be a fairly meaningful ongoing interaction?
> Believing that there was a creator doesn't provide any useful information
Very pragmatic! Assume there is a God - what kind of things would he consider "useful"?
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dawg- commented on Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time axios.com/church-membersh... · Posted by u/cwwc
I think the issue is that we can't access meaningful knowledge about the existence of a God that interacts meaningfully with the world through logic alone. Why do you think the Bible is inspired/manipulated/written by God more than other books?
Well it depends on the nature of God's interaction, doesn't it? There are no big hands coming out of the sky and moving things around, I'll give you that. The theologist Paul Tillich argued that God is not a being-in-the-world, but exists outside of time and space. Given that, atheist expectations of an empirical proof of God tend to miss the mark.
On the contrary, I think that tons of other things were inspired by God. As Walt Whitman wrote, "a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars". A healthy dose of relativism is not incompatible with religious belief - see the Trappist monk Thomas Merton who famously took a pretty serious spiritual interest in both Zen Buddhism and Islam.
dawg- commented on Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time axios.com/church-membersh... · Posted by u/cwwc
No, Atheism doesn't mean that by definition a priori God doesn't exist. That would be wrong indeed, but I never encountered such arguments.
Isn't it right there in the name? a - theism?
dawg- commented on Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time axios.com/church-membersh... · Posted by u/cwwc
> the problem is actually a philosophical one.
This is what I would say too if I had no evidence for the things I was claiming exist.
> your stance is that God doesn't exist because God doesn't exist?
You said Kierkegaard et al's arguments should be easy to refute. If I come up with a clever argument for the existence of leprechauns, and no one can refute my amazing logic, do leprechauns all of a sudden magically exist? Again, there is nothing to refute. You can come up with the most magnificent argument you like for a god, but that god either exists or does not, independent of that argument, and my inability to refute any claims you've made is not evidence your god exists.
>How do you know whether or not it exists?
Is there a hidden third option I'm missing?
> Disagree completely, they all presented interesting arguments.
Replace in any of those arguments the word "unicorn" instead of "god" and they are as equally meaningful.
You don't believe that we can access meaningful knowledge about the world through logic? If not, then what the heck are you doing on a forum about computers?
dawg- commented on Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time axios.com/church-membersh... · Posted by u/cwwc
> "that you take your atheism on faith, too."
This is a nonsensical statement. Atheism is a recognition that there is zero evidence for the existence of any gods. It requires no faith.
> "Origen, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Kierkegaard, or even contemporary thinkers like Alasdair McIntyre ... should be super easy to refute, right?"
You're shifting the burden of proof; there is nothing to refute. It's not the job of atheists to disprove your assertions. Regardless of a persons' intelligence, they cannot argue their deity into existence. It either exists or it doesn't. None of the aforementioned scholars ever presented evidence for their god or demonstrated supernatural causation.
>Atheism is a recognition that there is zero evidence for the existence of any gods.
You're bemoaning a lack of empirical evidence when the problem is actually a philosophical one.
>there is nothing to refute
Correct me if I'm wrong but it seems like your stance is that God doesn't exist because God doesn't exist? Circular argument much? Atheism is a positive statement, too.
>It's not the job of atheists to disprove your assertions.
Of course it's not your "job". But I'd rather talk to someone who can actually explain why they think what they think.
> It either exists or it doesn't.
We are not omnipotent beings. We must strive to gain knowledge and understanding of the universe we live in. How do you know whether or not it exists?
>None of the aforementioned scholars ever presented evidence for their god or demonstrated supernatural causation.
Disagree completely, they all presented interesting arguments.
dawg- commented on Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time axios.com/church-membersh... · Posted by u/cwwc
Ok ignoring the appeal to tradition, how would you argue for hinduism over christianity or vice versa? Both are 2k+ years old with very different beliefs at their core. Reincarnation vs an afterlife, single vs many gods.
Nothing about having a long history and nuanced approaches over the years answers my question of necessitation.
Why ignore the main point of my comment? I directly addressed one reason why a random turtle god and an actual religion are very different.
I was talking about traditions, yes, but to write it off as simply an "appeal to tradition" falls very short
dawg- commented on Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time axios.com/church-membersh... · Posted by u/cwwc
Why not?