Atheism, please note the capitalisation❤️

[Walt Zingmatilder]

You seem to use "scientism" to mean "science I don't like".

What scientific theory have I disrespected? What sacred cow on this mishmash of science and antitheism of a forum have I supposedly not bent the knee to, Steve?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

What are you talking about now? You seem to be the only person on this forum who thinks RD is some sort of atheist icon.

No I think he was an atheist icon and now the same atheists are going Richard Dawkins?Richard Dawkins and Richard Dawkins? Never supported him...ha ha.

[Gonnagle]

Dear Stranger,

What are you talking about now? You seem to be the only person on this forum who thinks RD is some sort of atheist icon.

Away!! come on 

Gonnagle.

[Gonnagle]

Dear me,

No no please I apologise, Mr Dawkins is a lovely man, its your fault Vlad you mentioned the name shame on you, please please lets not go down that road again

Gonnagle.

[Gonnagle]

Dear Gordon,

Cheers mate

https://thejeshgn.com/wiki/great-speeches/the-value-of-science-richard-feynman/

I will read it again at my leisure, my first reading he sounds very Albert, Albertesque

Gonnagle.

[Alan Burns]

You have never posted even the tiniest hint of any evidence and you seem to be completely incapable of using reasoning at all. You just descend into an endless stream of stupid fallacies.

No, it is not. Obviously.

Obviously?
Please I invite you to expand on what you deem to be obvious and why.

What is obvious to me is that you have utilised your conscious freedom to guide your thoughts to reach a conclusion which you consciously deem to be obvious.  But what puzzles me is that you continue to claim that conscious control of your thoughts is a logical impossibility and that all our thoughts must be pre determined by past events beyond our conscious control before they enter our conscious awareness.  So I once more ask how you can give any credence to the conclusions you draw without the ability to consciously verify and validate how you arrived at your conclusions.

[Stranger]

But how can one establish it’s existentially real or relevant when, as you are doing, already concluded without being involved that there is nothing there and showing bias to those who claim not to have not found God.

I've just looked at the evidence, or rather, lack thereof. I'm not biased towards those who have not found anything, I'm just noting that they are part of the group who have sought, along with those who later change their minds and those who radically disagree with each other.

[Stranger]

No I think he was an atheist icon and now the same atheists are going Richard Dawkins?Richard Dawkins and Richard Dawkins? Never supported him...ha ha.

I really never saw that amongst atheists here. He's always been an obsession of yours, on the other hand...

[Steve H]

But how can one establish it’s existentially real or relevant when, as you are doing, already concluded without being involved that there is nothing there and showing bias to those who claim not to have not found God.

And in English...?

[Stranger]

Obviously?
Please I invite you to expand on what you deem to be obvious and why.

What is obvious to me is that you have utilised your conscious freedom to guide your thoughts to reach a conclusion which you consciously deem to be obvious.  But what puzzles me is that you continue to claim that conscious control of your thoughts is a logical impossibility and that all our thoughts must be pre determined by past events beyond our conscious control before they enter our conscious awareness.  So I once more ask how you can give any credence to the conclusions you draw without the ability to consciously verify and validate how you arrived at your conclusions.

More lies and misrepresentation. Great advert for your faith.

You're not at all puzzled, it's been explained to you endless times.

"Conscious control of our thoughts" is still idiotic without further explanation because it implies that we can consciously decide what our next conscious thought will be. You have consistently refused to clarify this.

The extent to which consciousness might be in control of our actions or the overall direction of our contemplation is irrelevant to my argument, and I have not stated a position on it (apart from the obvious point above).

I have also said nothing about the role of consciousness in verification. Again, it doesn't matter to my point.

My argument is against the 'free will' you say we have, i.e. the idea that we could have done differently in exactly the same situation. It is not about consciousness. It is you who constantly conflates 'conscious control' with the self-contradictory idiocy of that sort of 'free will'

ETA: Of course what was obvious, was simply that no human ability can possibly be evidence for a God. To the extent we don't understand everything about how human minds work, that is just an unknown. Trying to use an unknown to argue for God-magic is an argument from ignorance fallacy (stupid mistake in reasoning that you could easily learn to avoid if you weren't so afraid/complacent/bone idle).

[Maeght]

You keep claiming no supporting evidence or sound reasoning for the existence of God, but this is a very subjective claim.  There is evidence and reasoning in abundance, but you appear to personally choose to seek reasons to dismiss, ignore or ridicule such evidence.  You do not seem to realise that your ability to do this is evidence of God's miraculous gift of freedom which nature alone could never give you.

Alan, you see things as being evidence to support the existence of your God because you have a belief in the existence of that God. To someone who doesn't have that belief then these things are not evidence for the existence of God since there are either other natural explanations or because they are willing to say 'I don't know'. It is not that they don't 'realise' but rather that they don't accept your claims. Rather than repeating your claims why not just accept that people don't see things as you do. It doesn't mean they are ignoring things you see as evidence but rather they don't think the things you see as evidence are that.

[Stranger]

Dear Stranger,

What are you talking about now? You seem to be the only person on this forum who thinks RD is some sort of atheist icon.

Away!! come on 

Gonnagle.

Not you too? Seriously RD was never even the most influential of the so-called 'new atheists', certainly as far as I was concerned, or, as far as I could tell, most of the other atheists here. Those who regard him as an atheist leader, are, in my experience, pretty much exclusively theists.

Maybe it's hard for theists to think that atheism doesn't need icons and leaders.

Dawkins himself said "Indeed, organizing atheists has been compared to herding cats, because they tend to think independently and will not conform to authority.".

[Gonnagle]

Dear Stranger,

Well just had a quiet walk down memory lane, 13 pages full that mentions Dawkins, ah the good old days for a certain type of atheist he was the golden boy, for other foam at the mouth type of atheist we had Hitchin, for the laid back, hey can you see the pretty pictures kind of atheist we had Harris, and last but definitely least we had Dennett, he was for the erm! ahem! intellectual type atheist and yes ten years ago wee Albert was back then my go to, love that man❤️

Gonnagle.

[Stranger]

Dear Stranger,

Well just had a quiet walk down memory lane, 13 pages full that mentions Dawkins, ah the good old days for a certain type of atheist he was the golden boy, for other foam at the mouth type of atheist we had Hitchin, for the laid back, hey can you see the pretty pictures kind of atheist we had Harris, and last but definitely least we had Dennett, he was for the erm! ahem! intellectual type atheist and yes ten years ago wee Albert was back then my go to, love that man❤️

Gonnagle.

Well, you don't say where you found all these pages, who was talking about these people, or what they were saying, so it's hard to comment. For me Dennett was the most interesting but then again, much like Dawkins, his other books were far more interesting than his contribution to 'new atheism'.

And yes, you've always seemed to like to quote Einstein, although why is more of a mystery.

[Alan Burns]

More lies and misrepresentation. Great advert for your faith.

You're not at all puzzled, it's been explained to you endless times.

"Conscious control of our thoughts" is still idiotic without further explanation because it implies that we can consciously decide what our next conscious thought will be. You have consistently refused to clarify this.

The extent to which consciousness might be in control of our actions or the overall direction of our contemplation is irrelevant to my argument, and I have not stated a position on it (apart from the obvious point above).

I have also said nothing about the role of consciousness in verification. Again, it doesn't matter to my point.

My argument is against the 'free will' you say we have, i.e. the idea that we could have done differently in exactly the same situation. It is not about consciousness. It is you who constantly conflates 'conscious control' with the self-contradictory idiocy of that sort of 'free will'

ETA: Of course what was obvious, was simply that no human ability can possibly be evidence for a God. To the extent we don't understand everything about how human minds work, that is just an unknown. Trying to use an unknown to argue for God-magic is an argument from ignorance fallacy (stupid mistake in reasoning that you could easily learn to avoid if you weren't so afraid/complacent/bone idle).

You keep claiming that the role of consciousness does not matter in your arguments.
In all this you have still failed to give any feasible explanation for how validated logical conclusions can be reached without any form of conscious control.  The point I am making is simply the impossibility of reaching validated conclusions without conscious control of the thought processes involved.  You can't just dismiss this impossibility with a "don't know" claim or a "personal incredulity" claim.  If you have no conscious control of the thought processes needed to reach valid conclusions then what does invoke the control needed?

[Stranger]

You keep claiming that the role of consciousness does not matter in your arguments.

Yes, and you keep on ignoring me and repeating your mindless script.

In all this you have still failed to give any feasible explanation for how validated logical conclusions can be reached without any form of conscious control.

FALLACY: Argument from ignorance.

The point I am making is simply the impossibility of reaching validated conclusions without conscious control of the thought processes involved.  You can't just dismiss this impossibility with a "don't know" claim or a "personal incredulity" claim.

I absolutely can. You've provided no reasoning. Just stating that something is impossible, does not make it so.

FALLACY: Argument from personal incredulity.

FALLACY: Argument by assertion.

If you have no conscious control of the thought processes needed to reach valid conclusions then what does invoke the control needed?

Your brain.

And, in all the above you have again ignored the fact that I have not ruled out all 'conscious control' just the utterly absurd "conscious control of our own thought processes" that implies consciously deciding each conscious thought before we think it, which is clearly absurd.

Clearly we cannot consciously control everything we think. We rely on things occurring to us - a process that we have no conscious control over.

YET AGAIN: What is actually impossible is your version of 'free will' (we could have done differently) which is logically entirely separate from any debate about 'conscious control'.

[Outrider]

Actually RD does not put himself in the 100% certain group (7 on his scale), but in the "De facto atheist. Very low probability, but short of zero." group.

Spectrum of theistic probability

Personally, I'm not sure how useful this sort of scale is. New evidence can always change things.

That's what I was going with when I said 'functionally 100%', that idea of almost but technically not quite, but obviously I wasn't as clear as I needed to be - apologies for the confusion.

O.

[Gonnagle]

Well, you don't say where you found all these pages, who was talking about these people, or what they were saying, so it's hard to comment. For me Dennett was the most interesting but then again, much like Dawkins, his other books were far more interesting than his contribution to 'new atheism'.

And yes, you've always seemed to like to quote Einstein, although why is more of a mystery.

Dear Stranger,

Top right, search button.

As for Einstein, the man was a genius who also had a fantastic hair stylist.

Gonnagle.

[Stranger]

Top right, search button.

Ah, right, so all you've done is picked out all the mentions on the entire forum. And, looking through the first two pages, a large proportion originate with our very own Vlad (even those from other people, are often quoting or responding to him).

As I said, it's the theists who think he's something special to atheists.

[Gonnagle]

Dear Stranger,

Well Vlad is the golden boy, beats me where he gets the stamina, he has a huge fan club on here, everybody loves a pop at old Vlad.

Gonnagle.

[SqueakyVoice]

Dear Vlad,

'seek and ye shall find'.

Also known nowadays  as 'Confirmation  bias'.

They have to ask first, its in the manual, rules dear boy rules✝️

Manners Maketh the Man.....

...but you end up with...ner, ner, ner ner-ner.

[Gonnagle]

Dear Squeak,

And we have a whole thread just for jokes but it does state only if they are funny

Is this post a derailment, no but it might be slightly off track.

Come on!! come on!! author! author! encore! encore!!

Mods I would like to report that Gonnagle character, give him the comfy cushions, no no not the comfy cushions.

Gonnagle. no not Gonnagle really handsome guy but slightly frayed at the edges.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

And in English...?

OK I’ll try and break in down. The bible suggests that the way to find God is to ‘seek’ him.
That suggests setting out to meet God himself rather just have God down as another fact that you know.

[Gonnagle]

Dear Fellow Posters, ( you crazy lot )

Just a quick post, I have a slightly busy morning ( the Devil makes work for idle hands ) but this forum at its best, sometimes, only sometimes gives me pause to think, to wonder, to reflect and this link, does exactly that.
https://thejeshgn.com/wiki/great-speeches/the-value-of-science-richard-feynman/

this link was posted by a good friend of mine ( atheist that he is ) I sometime think, has more Christianity in his little finger than I have in my whole body.

To end, if any poster no matter what flavour you are can do the above I will gladly shake your hand.

Gonnagle. must resist, must resist, damn, damn😀

"I'm not an atheist, and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations."

Sorry, I think I suffer from that strange disease Einsteinitis, there is no cure, I am doomed❤️

[Stranger]

The bible suggests that the way to find God is to ‘seek’ him.

And why should we take an old book, riddled with contradictions and morally obnoxious nonsense, at all seriously?

That suggests setting out to meet God himself rather just have God down as another fact that you know.

Meet which God? Set out, how? To be objective, you wouldn't start with the assumption that there is a God to find. Speculating that there is a God is a blind guess, but one that actually wants to interact with humans, is even more of a leap in the dark.

If you assume a God exists that wants to interact with us, you've already set yourself up for confirmation bias.