The Faith & Religion mega Thread

Originally Posted by SL00b You either believe a god exists, or you don't.

Wrong. Besides "believe" and "don't believe" there's also "i don't care"/"I haven't decided". I'd recommend to stop thinking in binary unless you're machine. By the way, telling other people that they share your religious beliefs (when they don't agree with you) is generally a bad idea.

Originally Posted by SigTerm Wrong. Besides "believe" and "don't believe" there's also "i don't care"/"I haven't decided". I'd recommend to stop thinking in binary unless you're machine.

So which one applies to you? Don't care, or haven't decided?

Because I think you do care, or you wouldn't be participating in these discussions. And I think you have decided, because you wouldn't be looking for new definitions of the word "god" if you didn't believe he existed.

A false dichotomy fallacy only exists if the dichotomy is false.

Originally Posted by SL00b So which one applies to you?

I think I explained my position before and see no reason to do it again. If your intent is to prove to me that I'm an atheist, then I'd suggest to give up.

Originally Posted by SL00b Because I think you do care, or you wouldn't be participating in these discussions.

You're mistaken.
I'm looking for strong/interesting/new arguments/tactics i have not encountered before.
Since the beginning of this year there were 5 such arguments in the entire forum.

Originally Posted by SigTerm Since the beginning of this year there were 5 such arguments in the entire forum.

And which ones were they?

"If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people"

These threads are simply a waste of time and effort. Religious people are simply not open to argument, they can't be as their religion itself defines faith as belief without proof.

Atheists won't change their position because they need evidence, and to date that amounts to precisely zip.

If everyone on this thread spent all this mental energy doing something useful the world might be a better place.

(I don't count myself out here, I sometimes wade in for a bit of fun)

Originally Posted by baldy3105 Atheists won't change their position because they need evidence, and to date that amounts to precisely zip.

Well I would say I don't "need proof" when faced with something as ludicrous as God. I guess if there was genuine proof of a God existing then I would accept it, but that's kinda arse about face really. I'm happy to dismiss it out of hand as utter laughable nonsense. Proof, or lack thereof, doesn't come into it.

Originally Posted by SigTerm I think I explained my position before and see no reason to do it again. If your intent is to prove to me that I'm an atheist, then I'd suggest to give up.

If you reread my previous post, you'd see I was hinting at quite the opposite, actually. Why look for a new definition of god if you don't expect to find him?

I've had religious debates for over a decade all over the internet, and I have yet to challenge a self-professed agnostic who did not, upon honest reflection, admit to having a belief in a deity of some sort... typically a universal pantheism, or else some sort of "first cause" deity like you've hinted at here.

That's not to say that being an agnostic theist is a bad thing. It also helps to know that most atheists you're dealing with are agnostic atheists. There are a very few out there who have arrived at atheism for dogmatic reasons, and they make great straw men in these sorts of debates, but most atheists have arrived at this conclusion based on careful analysis of the evidence and arguments in favor of god/s.

Originally Posted by SigTerm I'm looking for strong/interesting/new arguments/tactics i have not encountered before. Since the beginning of this year there were 5 such arguments in the entire forum.

Perhaps you were just being closed-minded to the good ones, just like you're being closed minded here.

Originally Posted by acid_kewpie Well I would say I don't "need proof" when faced with something as ludicrous as God. I guess if there was genuine proof of a God existing then I would accept it, but that's kinda arse about face really. I'm happy to dismiss it out of hand as utter laughable nonsense. Proof, or lack thereof, doesn't come into it.

"Need" was possible a bad choice of words. I also have no "need" for someone to provide me proof. I would "require" proof before entertaining such odd notions.

If all-that-there-is is infinite, then necessarily god, and anything else we may care to dream up, must exist. For without them all-that-there-is cannot be infinite. Worse yet, everything that we have or may ever dream up must simultaneously not-exist, for those also are limitations whose absence prevents all-that-there-is from being infinite.

If all-that-there-is is finite, it must have some kind of boundary. The question then arises, what lies beyond that boundary? Currently it is asserted that nothing lies beyond it, because, if we ever admit that something does lie beyond it, we immediately return to the paradoxes of the 1st paragraph.

But you will readily appreciate that asserting there is nothing beyond it, is as much a declaration of faith as is faith in the existence of god. The problem is that what goes on in our minds is not reality, it is a only model of it, and therefore something quite different. In our minds, all that we have is delusions, whether they be logically proven or accepted on faith.

Originally Posted by SL00b Why look for a new definition of god if you don't expect to find him?

I do not look for new definitions of god. Argument != definition.

Originally Posted by SL00b Perhaps you were just being closed-minded to the good ones,

Whether you like it or not, majority of religion-related arugments can be quickly reduced to a very small number of base ideas and types, which people repeat again and again (it is strange that you haven't encountered them all during a "decade of internet religion debates"). A truly unique strong argument (that isn't taken from some other source but is a result of person's thoughts) is an extremely rare occurrence.

Originally Posted by porphyry5 If all-that-there-is is infinite, then necessarily god, and anything else we may care to dream up, must exist.

I disagree. In mathematics and in philosophy in it's purest form, this might be the case. But we live in a physical world.

Assume we live in a infinite universe with infinitely many galaxies. I can easily care to dream up the existence of a planet with repellent gravity (Not including dark matter as we don't know how it behaves). This however makes no sense, because planets in it self is hold together by gravity. Therefor such a planet cannot exists. But you claim that such a planet should exist in an infinite universe. Ergo your claim is reductio ad absurdum, or whatever.

So even if there is infinitely many perturbation and combination in the universe, they still must lie within the constraint of the "laws of physics"*.

*: Well, they aren't really laws, but we believe them to be true until observed otherwise. This won't affect this particular argument however.

Originally Posted by porphyry5 If all-that-there-is is infinite, then necessarily god, and anything else we may care to dream up, must exist.

This part requires proof.

Originally Posted by porphyry5 If all-that-there-is is finite, it must have some kind of boundary.

Let's see...
Imagine you're located on the surface of 4-dimensional sphere ("3sphere"). You cannot leave the surface of the sphere. You perceive space in 3d (in space of sphere surface). You can move in any direction, but if you keep moving in same direction, eventually you'll end up in the point where you're started. Space is obviously limited, but there is no boundary you can perceive. Now what?

Originally Posted by SigTerm Space is obviously limited, but there is no boundary you can perceive. Now what?

Whether we can perceive, or even conceive of, such a boundary, says nothing as to its actual existence, or non-existence. We do not deal directly with reality, it is filtered through our sense organs, and our minds then construct a model of reality from our perceptions. The model is not reality.

Because of this, whatever we construct with our minds is unreal, or more bluntly, delusory. Our intellectual accomplishment most admired is probably mathematics, and certainly extreme efforts are made to ensure its logical consistency. Yet it is riddled with inconsistencies.

Originally Posted by porphyry5 Because of this, whatever we construct with our minds is unreal, or more bluntly, delusory. Our intellectual accomplishment most admired is probably mathematics, and certainly extreme efforts are made to ensure its logical consistency. Yet it is riddled with inconsistencies.

But your God isn't unreal or delusroy? Seriously. I don't understand where you are trying to go..

Also, are there any well known inconsistencies in mathematics you can think of that you would like to share?

Originally Posted by porphyry5 Whether we can perceive, or even conceive of, such a boundary, says nothing as to its actual existence, or non-existence. We do not deal directly with reality, it is filtered through our sense organs, and our minds then construct a model of reality from our perceptions. The model is not reality.

This does not answer my question.
You have finite space with no boundary, so there's no "behind the boundary". Now what?