"What we've got here is failure to communicate..."

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Given that being an atheist entails only a refusal to accept the religionist assertions about God without evidence, that's pretty much a true statement.

By the way, I don't demand proof of God, I only demand evidence.

Yes and we all know what sort of evidence......and that makes you doctrinaire.

[Leonard James]

Prove any number of mere assertions you have made about believers then. Prove the materialism on which your drivellings are obviously based.

Floundering about in the bottom of the barrel will get you nowhere, my friend! 

[jeremyp]

Yes and we all know what sort of evidence......and that makes you doctrinaire.

No it makes me rational.

[Leonard James]

Yes and we all know what sort of evidence......and that makes you doctrinaire.

Your use of "we all know" is just self-delusion. The majority of people here are less woolly minded than you.

[Gordon]

Well, this would require huge swathes of the human species to have been suffering from 'fevered brain' syndrome for centuries, if not millennia.

I read what Len said as paraphrasing, to imply that religious belief has always been an indication of the inability of people to understand stuff and so reach for the divine as an explanation.

If so, then I'd agree with Len, since it is obvious from what goes on here today in this wee Forum that fallacious reasoning is still as alive and kicking as it was in historical times, when fallacious arguments from the likes of ignorance and personal incredulity seem like the ideal conditions for the growth of religions in times and cultures when people were both more credulous in religious terms and less educated than today.

Then add in the influence of organised religions had on power and politics over the centuries, such as Christianity from the times of Theodosius, and you can see not so much 'fevered brains' but organised religion as a means social control, so we also get fallacious arguments from authority, tradition and ad populum added to the mix

I realise that some here believe that we are evolving ever-more advanced brains, that will cause such a belief to become obsolete.  Is there any evidence that this is so?

Since I don't recall anyone making this 'ever-more advanced brains' argument here we have another fallacy: the straw man.

It should be quite obvious, looking at the decline in religiosity in the likes of the UK over recent decades, that with better education and the reducing influence of organised religion on general society - to the extent that it is now feasible to live without any religious involvement or influence, and with just the easily ignored background noise of them pleading how important they are as they slowly disappear - that people today are simply more free to, and are better able to, think critically about religion - and many are rejecting it, as the numbers show.

[Bubbles]

I think what we have here is people wanting to be more knowledgable and right than other people.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

No it makes me rational.

No it doesn't. Be rational has a claim to what you are alluding to but I don't think you have.

[jeremyp]

I think what we have here is people wanting to be more knowledgable and right than other people.

What an utterly pointless statement.

I certainly hope to be more knowledgeable than ignorant people of whom there is sadly a surfeit in the World. I'd also like to be more right than people who are wrong.

If you don't aspire to be knowledgeable and right, there is something wrong with you IMO.

[jeremyp]

No it doesn't. Be rational has a claim to what you are alluding to but I don't think you have.

Believing stuff based on evidence is more rational than not.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Your use of "we all know" is just self-delusion. The majority of people here are less woolly minded than you.

And on the Mighty Assertatron at the Bradford Alhambra......Leonard James...............Vaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalencia,dum dee dum dee dah de dah de dah dee Daah Da.................Valencia...........

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Believing stuff based on evidence is more rational than not.

There is no evidence though for your materialism. If you think philosophical materialism is the next logical step from methodological materialism you are sadly mistaken.

[Khatru]

Khat, Floo has asked this question on a number of occasions (in fact she's done threads very like this, but with slightly different title wording, on a number of occasions).  If, as you say, it is thought that he is omnipotent, why should he not choose to use human beings to talk to other human beings about him?  Are you saying that you would believe in God if he was to appear in front of you and explain everything to you?  If so, how would you know that it was God and not just some idea conjured up by a fevered mind?

Is that a question you ask fellow believers?

If someone tells you they" heard the voice of God last night", do you question their mind's hold on reality?  If someone announces they have found "God" is your first reaction always one of scepticism?

Do you also believe that a fevered mind is why there are billions of people all over the world who worship a different god to the one you have chosen?

I'm 58 now and never in my life have I experienced a fevered mind.  While not impossible, I'd say that the likelihood of me doing so is pretty remote.  It doesn't say much for religion if your first response is that someone's encounter with the supreme cosmic mega being is just be the workings of a brain that's lost its anchor to reality. I guess questioning a person's sanity is what you do when you know their statements are ludicrous.     

Yes, imagination is great. We can make up lies at will and cannot be dis-proven. "A talking goldfinch just flew out of my bible and landed on my knee. We carried on quite a conversation for 10 or so minutes."

I decided to give the bible another go so I opened it at a random page.

I was absolutely gobsmacked when a great crested newt suddenly appeared and fell into my lap.

I then had a truly inspirational conversation with the newt, who informed me that he was speaking on behalf of the Lord of Hosts and that I had been chosen to hear his new message. 

As a believer, you have to seriously consider that I am 100% truthful in what I say.

[jeremyp]

There is no evidence though for your materialism.

"Materialsim" is just a label that you have applied to my position because you think it makes you look clever.

I ask for evidence simply because it is the only way to assign a provisional truth value to some phenomenon.

If you think philosophical materialism is the next logical step from methodological materialism you are sadly mistaken.

I don't give a monkeys for your jargonising. It's just an indication that your tank is empty.

[Khatru]

It should be quite obvious, looking at the decline in religiosity in the likes of the UK over recent decades, that with better education and the reducing influence of organised religion on general society - to the extent that it is now feasible to live without any religious involvement or influence, and with just the easily ignored background noise of them pleading how important they are as they slowly disappear - that people today are simply more free to, and are better able to, think critically about religion - and many are rejecting it, as the numbers show.

Education education education

Education is the single most devastating response to religion and venereal disease. Where there is better education there are less of these two problems.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Education education education

Education is the single most devastating response to religion and venereal disease. Where there is better education there are less of these two problems.

Khatru has said here what others think.......of religion in epidemiological terms.
That's just Stalinist......or worse.

Khatru....I think there has been a flaw in your education somewhere along the line.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

"Materialsim" is just a label that you have applied to my position because you think it makes you look clever.

OK call it naturalism then...........but in my view that is worse because it is definitionally anti-god from the get go.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

"Materialsim" is just a label that you have applied to my position because you think it makes you look clever.

I don't give a monkeys for your jargonising. It's just an indication that your tank is empty.

Your argument can't even be said to have been flushed down the bowl since it never even got that far up the pipe.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Education education education

Education is the single most devastating response to religion and venereal disease.

I expect you said that for applause. You wanted to get the clap from your antitheist supporters.

[Shaker]

OK call it naturalism then...........but in my view that is worse because it is definitionally anti-god from the get go.

It's non-god, not anti-god.

Still, for you I suppose that's the same thing.

[Shaker]

And that means would be science wouldn't it ?

Name something else that can do the job.

[Bubbles]

What an utterly pointless statement.

I certainly hope to be more knowledgeable than ignorant people of whom there is sadly a surfeit in the World. I'd also like to be more right than people who are wrong.

If you don't aspire to be knowledgeable and right, there is something wrong with you IMO.

 

No, it's why you are part of the problem.

One true wayism, arrogance, the sense of superiority etc.

Must be a facet of human nature.

It's not just confined to the religious, that attitude.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Name something else that can do the job.

What, name something else that can do science?......How about science........don't display such twattism in future.

[Shaker]

What, name something else that can do science?......

No. Name something else other than science that can consistently give us accurate, reliable, testable, shareable, repeatable knowledge of reality.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

No. Name something else other than science that can consistently give us accurate, reliable, testable, shareable, repeatable knowledge of reality.

Science gives us accurate, reliable, testable, shareable, repeatable and falsifiable knowledge of matter-energy Shaker........matter-energy are constantly revised (by science) arbitrary definitions......how can that be defined therefore as reality?

[bluehillside Retd.]

Shakes,

Well, I did warn you about troll-boy's tactics a few posts back...the barrage of dull incomprehension and dishonesty you've had is all too typical I'm afraid. Suffice it to say that the materialism schtick is a piece of deep misunderstanding that he's had corrected by me and by others dozens of times now, but he's so invested in it that he clings to it nonetheless as a man clings to a plutonium parachute.

Be nice if t-b or anyone else for that matter would ever finally turn his attention finally to suggesting a method to distinguish his faith claims from just guessing about stuff but, as we know all too well by now, that's a door that'll remain forever locked.

Ah well.