Atheists... Your life is pointless

Not sure of your point here, but understand what I said in that last post. An assertion that there are no gods...is NOT a negative assertion. It is a positive assertion.

It does no good to tell you gods are made up and so there is nothing to prove. No matter what kind of answer may be given, you airily dismiss it as a guess. Final answer is the simplest. They are made up and there is no need for evidence against an imaginary entity. You can go on about guesses and evidence to the end of time and that simple fact will never be other than the truth.

Wrong for the very reason there will never be a way to prove that statement that where is no god however if there is a god however he, she or it could prove his existed to all of us in a milliseconds.

Or someone could come up with hard proof of others kind.

The tooth fairy and all the gods mankind had come up with all share that there is no way to disproved their existence.

Still that is no reason to give such imagine beings any likelihood of existing just because the lack of existence can not be proven absolutely.

Not believing in gods = a belief that there are no gods is like saying "off" is a TV channel.

Frank has, literally for years, attempted to claim intellectual and moral superiortiy on the basis of being an agnostic. He attempts to hedge this around with a good many simplistic arguments, for example, that one is morally superior if one "admits" that one does not know. However, Frank doesn't apply this equitably. So, for example, there are a good many atheists who freely acknowledge that they don't know if there is a god, but that they don't believe it. Frank doesn't apply his moral approval to that example of one saying that one does not know. His reaction to that flaw in his argument is to say that he thinks (not believes, Frank claims not to believes anything) that the majority of atheists are so-called strong atheists who deny that any god exists. Obviously, that serves his simple-minded rhetoric. He has remained silent when it is put to him that the so-called weak atheists, who don't know, but don't believe it, are not people he'll likely hear from, and that therefore his sample is unreliable.

It is essential to his silly position to make atheists and theists intellectually equivalent. So, for a very long time, he attempted to assert that anyone who is an atheist is basically saying that there are no gods. He simply would not canvass the possibility that saying "i don't believe that" is not the quivalent of saying that one knows there is no god, nor is it equivalent to a theist saying that he knows there is. He also, only within the last few years, has come up with this horseshit about making guesses. He has claimed that there is nothing he believes--either he knows it or he doesn't. To further this oversimplified point of view, he fails to acknowledge the distinction between blind faith--believing something because one wishes to, and not because one has any evidence--and believing something because one has a reasonable evidentiary basis for the belief. For example, i proceed into an intersection when i have a green light because i believe, based on a lifetime of experience, that cross traffic will stop at the red light. I was very nearly invovled in an horrendous accident early one morning when an idiot driving at excessive speed drove right through the red light into the intersction i was entering. I just managed to crank the wheel around while standing on the brakes, and avoid a collision. Nevertheless, my experience of a liftetime, apart from that sole experience, is that cross traffic will stop at red lights, and that it is therefore safe to proceed into an intersection when one has a green light. Frank has denied that that constitutes a belief.

Finally, Frank does not uniformly apply his agnosticism. He just sneers at the proposition that if he were the perfect agnostic which he claims to be, he would have the same attitutde to the proposition that there are fairies, pixies and elves, or any other supernatural beings. Many years ago, when he was still being honest about this subject, he acknowledged that he couldn't say why he applies a different standard to the question of whether or not there is a god, and whether or not there are any other supernatural beings, such as fairies, pixies or elves. These days, he just ignores the issue or mocks those who bring it up with him. Many, many people here have pointed out this failing of his position to him, but he avoids the discussion of it.

When you get right down to it, Frank is just a smug, sneering hypocrite who gets his jollies claiming moral superiority over anyone who does not think like him. Any of you who attempt to engage him in debate are just feeding a troll.

Perhaps he is not being frank in his comments?

A distinct possibility . . . for a view of how Frank has evolved his thinking, it would be necessary to look at literally dozens of threads. However, the Atheism has the same logical flaws as religion thread, begun by Portal Star more than nine years ago is very revealing about what Frank once said, and what he now says.

And yet--Richard Burton wrote--



And--



Such wisdom leads to a degree of toleration although not necessarily running to voluntary exposure to the stuff of small purpose, for example, the same simple absurdities year in year out with hardly the meanest effort applied to find alternative performance styles if only to be better able to sneak up on the witness. Or any whiffle-whaffling concerning enigmatic mysteries for that matter. What could possibly be of smaller purpose than that? Completing 18 holes in 126 strokes maybe.

Have any of us a larger purpose than just fighting off melancholy? Could any of us defend a claim to a larger purpose under expert scrutiny?

So you are saying you KNOW there are no gods...so there is nothing to prove.

And you talk about ME "airily" dismissing something.

My guess, Edgar, is that you do NOT KNOW there are no gods...and that you are merely making a blind guess. That is the truth.

There is absolutely nothing "wrong" about my statement...and you cannot make it wrong by simply saying it is.



And perhaps some day someone will. Or maybe there are no gods...and no one ever will come up with that proof, because it doesn't exist. But I do not know if there are gods...and I suspect very strong that you do not either.



As far as the gods are concerned, I agree...which is the reason I suggest that an assertion that there are none has to be a guess. You should be agreeing with me on that.

As for the tooth fairy, Easter bunny, and unicorns...they are of interest primarily to immature children and Internet atheists, so I suggest you discuss them with immature children or Internet atheists.



There also is not reason to state positively that gods do not exist...which is all I have been arguing.

Setanta wrote:



That is like Rush Limbaugh calling someone else a fat, obnoxious big mouth.

You are probably correct about the positive assertion. I have never claimed that I have it all correct.

What I am mainly interested in is what people call absurdity. What is this fine line between a God concept being absurd and an elf concept being absurd? What is the qualifier?

Not believing in gods = a religion? So, not collecting stamps = a hobby! Wow! I have a practically infinite number of hobbies! No wonder I'm so busy!

The difference between belief in "elves" and "God" is a matter of social conditioning expediency. The" omniscience factor of God" also tends to promote it into a different league, though historically "God" had some competition with "gods" and "fairies" in the power sharing game.

I think you are correct Fresco. I myself see no different between them when questioning them in what I think is a logical way.

RL,

BTW I agree with Setanta that it is a waste of time addressing your remarks to Frank. He simply does not understand that "God is a reality" to believers, because he has his own quasi-religious belief in "Reality" (with a capital R).

All threads need a soundtrack . . .

I think it was Spendius who talked about "absurdity", RL. You have to ask him. I do not remember using the word on this issue, but if I did, I'd have to see where I used it.

The thing is Frank, 10,000 elves flying round Mars is absurd. Elves can't fly, they're probably pixies.

It is that the God concept can be used to regulate sexual and other behaviours and the elf concept can't. The God concept is absurd if the regulation of sexual and other behaviours is absurd. Which some say is the case. Not anybody on these threads though.

Remove the God concept and regulation is either in the hands of a bureaucratic elite or eliminated. Bureaucratic elites can regulate most behaviours but there are substantial difficulties regulating sexual behaviour. The main one being that the bureaucratic elite are sexual animals themselves.

Thus the God concept has utility in regulating sexual behaviour assuming it needs to be regulated.

The atheist has to be in favour of full-blown sexual promiscuity or government control. I can't see an alternative.

Whether government control of sexual behaviour would be as imperfect as the control by a God concept will probably depend how various law enforcement agencies interpret their duties. Which might depend on whether their staff are required to be celibate or not.