Atheism

But Setanta is trolling. As I have explained and it sticks out like a plaster cast on a limb.

Claiming there is no evidence for something when all sources of evidence for it are ignored, is trolling.

If one thought that 2+2=5 and all evidence that 2+2=4 was ignored you would think 2+2=5 all your life long.

Not afraid of that at all Olivier.

I will decide what to post. I don't do bait in regard to that.

You should be more concerned about attempts to discredit Christianity because some geezer called Phelps had said some bad things about homosexuals, the Stars and Stripes and the Catholic Church.

He snorts coke. I saw him tell the viewers.

Why would I care about some obscure cult and the death of its leader? A new a..hole will come in his stead anyway.

I wasn't suggesting that you should. My comments were directed to the intellectual standards demanded on this thread.

PPLPLL

The first thing is that neo is not a troll and the second thing is that the thread is not trashed.

Setanta is the real troll and he couldn't trash the thread if he tried. Which he doesn't.

They will never get their stupid asses off the thread, but we don't have to give them added exposure, by replying to them.

But you do ed. All the time.

It's a troll dream to have you aggravated enough to sound like a parrot.

If y'all consider my comment of earlier today to be trolling, then I must admit this is an exceptional thread.

I don't think you are exactly a troll, but I don't understand why you care what atheists think.

This thread is like a "graffiti wall" where kids come to spray stuff like "Jesus was a bozo", "Christianity sucks", "Long live Satan" etc, so I have to come in to clip a few ears..

PS- I'm also looking for signs that atheists have a sense of humour, but I've seen zilch in 12 years on the boards.
I suppose they've got nothing to be happy about..

Seems to me this thread is not better or worse than any other thread... Maybe my expectations are low.

Perhaps because we have more areas of agreement than you might expect.

Not that close. You don't accept evolution, you believe in some sort of Christian god - You must believe in some sort of after life, even though you acknowledge that death means being dead.

Neo isn't a bad guy, but he's obsessed with his goofy god narrative. Here, he jumps in to comment on science when it's clear that he doesn't understand scientific standards of evidence, nor the meaning of the concept of falsifiability. Karl Popper makes the concept of falsifiability the hallmark of science, and that which distinguishes it from all ideas unscientific. Neo jumps on falsifiability because he wants to suggest that people who are engaged in or interested in science are engaged in some shell game in which they are claiming that their standards of evidence are superior to what the god botherers rely upon. But it's not a game--the difference is between contentions for which there is evidence (science) and contention for which there is no evidence (theistic religion). To the extent that he's trying to insert a plea for theism into the discussion here, he's trolling.

Only if a thread titled Obamacare considered criticism of the policy to be trolling and thus discredited by the pejorative intonations of the term. There is a claim to dictatorial authority hidden in Setanta's remark. "Goofy" is of the same order of discourse as "reactionary filth" as used by the leader of North Korea to justify the summary execution of his uncle.

Setanta has on Ignore the Pragmatist and Utilitarian idea that there is scientific evidence for religious belief in the "utility maximization model" and the dominance of practical reason over theoretical reason.

He has ducked the challenge of providing a mechanism producing him sat at a keyboard in the absence of Christian beliefs. Or one to enable him to live as long as he has, live where he does and live in the style he has become accustomed to. There is no scientific evidence of those consequences resulting from atheism and Christianity never having existed.

Were Darwin's and Einstein's ideas falsifiable in their day? Are Darwin's ideas falsifiable today?

Setanta's post is posited on the notion that none of us are intelligent or reasonably well read. He is trying to take advantage of an assumed ignorance on our part for which he has neither evidence or warrant.

One thing is clear---it is that the assertion that it is clear that neo "doesn't understand scientific standards of evidence, nor the meaning of the concept of falsifiability", is not evidence that Setanta does understand those things. The assertion is merely a devious claim to do so for which no evidence is offered.

By hiding in the folds of the Mom's apron of Ignore Setanta is the one certain troll as are others who have recourse to such play-pen reflexes.

Setanta cannot provide a single shred of evidence that what Virgil described in the Aeneid would not be still going on today if Christianity had never appeared in the world.

Popper's falsifiability doctrine is logically determined by his acceptance of the Humean position on "induction" from which he claimed that it is impossible to verify, or to confirm, any scientific theory with any degree of probability. Thus he had to have recourse to falsifiability or shut up.

Falsification is a temptation whenever positive proof is unattainable. A sophistical soft option.

Popper was at odds with Marxists because they refuse to be deflected by observational disproof, the non-existence of class say or the assumed antagonism of economic categories, and he opposed psychoanalysis because it does not make empirical predictions. In contrast to the Logical Positivists he never held that non-scientific activities, as he defined them, were meaningless or disreputable.

That Christian theology is scientific Popper doesn't seem to have considered despite Spengler classing it with the higher mathematics and modern physics as the only true sciences left standing.

All of which, and there is plenty more, is proof that Setanta's citing of Popper is ignorant and unscientific and serves the same purpose as the comb he uses to help him look good in the mirror. And he must think we are all going to prostrate ourselves in awe under the radiated gibberish he is spouting which is related to nothing else besides his personal dick-work.

Why don't you ignore Set, Spendi? He's just another troll anyway, to the extent that he doesn't contribute anything of substance but keep lambasting other people who do...

I have posted about this guy on the site before. I don't recall if it was in this thread, although it would have been the logical choice.

A year without god. (If you type "a year without god" into a search window, you can come up with all sorts of stories on this.) This is the link for his blog.

What brought this to mind is that i heard him interviewed on the radio a few days ago. (If you go to his blog, which i linked above, you can look for the comment on the CBC program Tapestry, to find a link to go listen to the interview.) What struck me from the interview is that he is still thinking like a preacher. He tells of going to an atheist meeting of some kind (how bizarre is that!), and suggests that it fills the place of a need for community in people's lives. I became an atheist when i realized i no long believed there is a god. I wasn't "joining" a community or a movement. He also speaks of how wrapped up in the community of the congregation he was when he was still employed as a preacher. (He's since lost his employment not just as a preacher, but as an instructor--it's in the story above.)

I've commented many times that the "issue" of atheism only comes up online. It doesn't come up in my day-t0-day life. I wonder what others here (which is to say, atheists, trolls need not reply) feel about a "loss of community." Would others here attend an atheist meeing? I've known militant, "strong" atheists who have seemed to want to attract a following, which has always seemed strange to me. The only thing i have in common with other atheists is that i don't believe in god. There is no reason to assume that i share a belief set with others because i don't participate in another belief set. Whaddaya think, goys and birls?