Atheists believe in miracles more than believers

[Pogo]

So, you don't know anything except that everyone else is wrong for wanting to speculate? If you're an atheist, you're speculating, too.

It is not irrational to surmise that some metaphysical, supernatural source is required for existence to have occurred as it has. In fact, it's the only logical possibility. And no matter how many times you repeat that you don't accept this, it will remain true.

How humans choose to characterize this necessary mystery source, for themselves, is up to them. And this clearly annoys you for some reason. But that's your problem to get over. It's not an endictment of humanity. Nor of theists.

You admit it is speculation, but then you insist it is necessary. Necessity requires demonstration not just speculation.

 

[ratiocinator]

And yet you cannot seem to offer any logical reason why it is.

I have, multiple times now. Try reading my posts.

Why? You have nothing to offer and no reason to care.

My reason to care is that it's irrational to turn pure guesswork into certainty and preach it to other people. Why do you care enough to argue about it if it's just speculation?

What about those words don't you understand? "metaphysical"; the conceptual source of physicality. "Supernatural"; transcendent of the limitations of nature.

And.....? Still just words that mean little more than 'beyond what we currently understand'. You're using them like they make some sort of specific sense.

And yet there IS something.

How do you know. Why do you think reality needs to conform to what you regard as reasonable?

And we humans being human, we want to understand how, and why. And we start with our imagination and some logical reasoning. Which for some reason you find highly offensive. Even though you engage in this sort of speculation the same as anyone else. This strikes me as being very inconsistent. Incoherent, even.

But you're not using logic. Your premises are simply wrong. As far as I can tell, you're using guesswork and wishful thinking to fill in a total unknown.

It still does not address the core question. That is the question of possibility. How and why is THIS expression of existence possible, and all other expressions of existence NOT possible?

In the context of everything that can exit, does, maybe just logical self-consistency? I'm guessing as much as you are. The difference is that I admit it's a guess, not some sort of logical conclusion.

But the facts very clearly are NOT arbitrary.

How do you know? Are you now claiming omniscience?

According to what criteria?

Actual science, supported by real evidence.

 

[leroy]

Do you really not understand. The point is that there is noting about the numbers that's going to stop you counting them. You can go on for an to arbitrarily large number. There is nothing in the reality of a continuum that limits you. Practical limitations are totally irrelevant.

As a side note. My view is that numbers don't exist....... But even if I grant your comments .. how does that affect any of the premises of the KCA?

So you still haven't got time as a dimension, rather than a sequence you have to move along. If space is infinite, then there is nothing stopping you from being here, just because you'd be an infinite distance from somewhere else.

But I couldn't arrive from a infinity distant point to this point.

You are suggesting, it seems to me, that I was born after an infinite number of seconds/moments or events. ... This would be analogous to walking and infinite distance (space) to get to this point. ...... Yes yes I know that words like "after" are not applicable but I don't think is even possible to speak with tensless words

Well, yes, sort of. The problem is that your distinction between God and the universe (about starting to exist) doesn't work any more as neither started to exist. So you're left with an infinite regress of reasons or special pleading - take your pick....

Well the KCA says that the universe has a reason (and reason means cause) weather if god has the same problem or not is beyond the scope of this argument.


If you don't reject the conclusion of the ,KCA it seems like we can agree on this and move to a different issue.

Yes, there is time between cause and effect.

Under a tensless model of time.....today and tomorrow are equally real. Both exist In the block universe , both are happening now..... Therefore they are simultaneous .....in the same way Mexico City and New York City exist in this moment, despite the fact that I am only experiencing Mexico city.

Any time between today and tomorrow is subjective


If you deny this then .... Why can't I simply say that the things that will excist tomorrow will begin to exist as a consequence of today's events ?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

You admit it is speculation, but then you insist it is necessary. Necessity requires demonstration not just speculation.

There is another problem. If there is a creator, then that is all there is, a creator of the universe. Nothing else follows from that.

 

[leroy]

Yes we are making an effort to understand "doest" best guess seems to be does or doesn't? could you please clarify.

Doesn't


I made a mistake.......see how easy it is to admit them?


Lammal

 

[PureX]

There is no universal our as for one response.

In effect I can as an atheist believe in that creator without in a pratical sense being religious or claiming objective morality for how we all ought to do it.

We can respond any way we choose. But interestingly, whatever way we choose, it will become us. We will be in effect 'creating ourselves' by the choices we make. This is how it matters. And this is a universal truth.

 

[Pogo]

Okay, how much of what you claim can be actually observed directly or measured by instruments that measure physical properties.

The problem I have is that it seems that you treat the math as physically real. So how is a term like infinite real in physical terms and not just rational in the minds of some people?

Can you or @PureX or @leroy prove that it isn't, no you can't and so the argument still needs to be considered unless you insist on intuition.
As much as you want to include possibilities because they are not disprovable, so you cannot eliminate others.

 

[ratiocinator]

As a side note. My view is that numbers don't exist....... But even if I grant your comments .. how does that affect any of the premises of the KCA?

I started with numbers, what is physical is space-time, which may well be continua.

But I couldn't arrive from a infinity distant point to this point.

You don't have to, that's my point.

You are suggesting, it seems to me, that I was born after an infinite number of seconds/moments or events. ... This would be analogous to walking and infinite distance (space) to get to this point. .....

What makes you think you have to traverse an infinite distance through a timelike direction, to get 'here', but not a spacelike one? You still don't seem to get time as a dimension.

Well the KCA says that the universe has a reason (and reason means cause) weather if god has the same problem or not is beyond the scope of this argument.

WLC made the mistake of using presentism and temporal causation. I believe he even attempted to reformulate relativity to get around the fact, because he at least understood that he had a problem with the relativistic view of space-time. Needless to say, his efforts did not impress anybody.

Once we switch to atemporal 'reasons', the God has the same problem as the universe, so we get nowhere.

Any time between today and tomorrow is subjective

No, it isn't. There is a between timelike intervals and spacelike ones, and the cause-effect relationship only occurs along timelike ones.

Why can't I simply say that the things that will excist tomorrow will begin to exist as a consequence of today's events ?

The flow of time appears to be subjective, not time itself. So if you track alone time, then things 'begin to exist' in the same way that if you track though space, things 'begin to exist' as you encounter their spacial boundary. If I walk to a park, the park 'begins to exist' as I reach its boundary.

 

[PureX]

The logical option is the posited one that there is no demonstrable reason for a god requirement, so non-belief is the logical alternative.

I am very curious what you hoped to gain by using the term "demonstrable" in this sentence. What is "demonstrable" reasoning? And why do you need to have reasoning demonstrated for you? How does one demonstrate a reason beyond simply stating the course of logic that is being followed?

How has anyone here "demonstrated" to you that there is no logical necessity for some source beyond existence, for the advent of existence?

Also, "non-belief" (actually it's just a rejection of the proposition) is not an "alternative". It's just a rejection. S when I asked for an alternative, your rejection did not suffice, because it's not an alternative.

If you can come up with something better than "you are stupid" you might be able to engender a real conversation.

When people post stupid things, I point out the stupidity for these posts. And of course they don't like it. But I have to presume that they are here to learn or they wouldn't be posting in a debate thread. They'd be posting on the idiots-are-us website. There are many of them out there. And they can't learn anything if no one bothers to tell them that they are posting stupid stuff ... AND WHY IT'S STUPID.

But to learn they have to listen. And they can't listen if all they want to do is blindly auto-defend themselves. As many do. So they remain stuck in their own stupidity.

None of this is my fault, nor my problem to solve.

 

[Pogo]

What follows is our response to this realization.

Which is entirely made up of emotion on your part. You cannot demonstrate it, thus your frustration and lashing out when called on it.

 

[leroy]

As you and @leroy have been told innumerable times, no we don't have the video but we know start and endpoints and in this case with some more study we can assemble a pyramid. Your complaint that we don't have the video has to be contrasted with your explanation of Poof the Magic dragon dunnit. We know far more than you do if going by mechanistical information. Motes and Beams?

Why are you misrepresenting my claim ? Nobody is asking for a video ...


All I am saying is that we don't know if

1 the eye evolved just by random mutations and natural selection

Or

2 if other mechanisms ( other than random mutations) also played an important role .... Some of the other mechanisms that have been proposed in the literature are epigenetics, Natural genetic engineering transposons etc.


The only one who claims with certainty that option 1 is the correct is you ( and @Valjean )....... But us normal people (and scientist ) have no access to secret alien knowledge don't know yet what the correct answer is.

 

[PureX]

You admit it is speculation, but then you insist it is necessary. Necessity requires demonstration not just speculation.

A transcendent source is logically necessary because there are no logically coherent alternatives. And because existence DOES exist, and we humans are designed to want to understand how and why this is so.

What is it that you are not understanding, here. What is it that you are objecting to, exactly?

 

[leroy]

Can you or @PureX or @leroy prove that it isn't, no you can't and so the argument still needs to be considered unless you insist on intuition.
As much as you want to include possibilities because they are not disprovable, so you cannot eliminate others.

Treating numbers as real objects is unparsimous,
But I don't have any problem if we treat them as real for the sake of this conversation

 

[Pogo]

People that claim they are against scientism on this thread seem to be making up theory and knowledge, claiming all those that recognize this are scientismists.

The definition of scientism is not those that do not agree with my views. But on here, that seems to be the definition in play.

Nailed that one, It is fairly easy to identify people who practice scientism, it is the people who claim it is a problem.

 

[Pogo]

There is another problem. If there is a creator, then that is all there is, a creator of the universe. Nothing else follows from that.

Yes, even if his argument requires a creator, that is all that it is, all his extra baggage is just that.
Further, his argument doesn't require a creator (active entity) at best a condition with a result.

 

[Pogo]

We can respond any way we choose. But interestingly, whatever way we choose, it will become us. We will be in effect 'creating ourselves' by the choices we make. This is how it matters. And this is a universal truth.

This is just your personal opinion and as the thread demonstrates, far from universal. Creating ourselves? what does that even mean outside of your head?

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

40,000 years of ancient science that looked at life from the inside without even having concepts like "species" while naming the animals allowed them insights into reality of which Newton and Darwin would be jealous.

I doubt it. If you were correct, you might have provided a few here. Naming animals isn't going to give any insights. In the Old Testament, the word they use for taxonomic divisions is kinds. What that language reveals is that they didn't understand taxonomy or nested hierarchies. They considered bats birds:

"And these you shall detest among the birds; they shall not be eaten; they are detestable: the eagle, the bearded vulture, the black vulture, 14 the kite, the falcon of any kind, 15 every raven of any kind, 16 the ostrich, the nighthawk, the sea gull, the hawk of any kind, 17 the little owl, the cormorant, the short-eared owl, 18 the barn owl, the tawny owl, the carrion vulture, 19 the stork, the heron of any kind, the hoopoe, and the bat." Leviticus 11:13-19

Here's some more of that early work, where insects can have four legs: "All flying insects that walk on all fours are to be detestable to you. There are, however, some winged creatures that walk on all fours that you may eat: those that have jointed legs for hopping on the ground. Of these you may eat any kind of locust, katydid, cricket or grasshopper. But all other winged creatures that have four legs you are to detest." (Leviticus 11:20-23)

This is the kind of thing we see from the ancients.

But they were all different stripes of sun addled bumpkins according to anthropology, archaeology, Egyptology et al so we can ignore them with impunity and maintain our omniscience.

We don't ignore them. We keep the useful ideas from antiquity and disregard the rest. Pythagorean and Euclidean proofs are still taught today.

And your hyperbolic description of the ancients isn't too far off when it comes to what those people knew. The Bible writers didn't know where the rain came from or where the sun went at night, nor that bats aren't birds nor that insects are hexapods.

atheists think existence just popped into being from absolutely nothing, and for absolutely no reason at all. That it has no mystery source, which is far crazier and more irrational than theists claiming that there is a metaphysical, supernatural source (that they call God).

Here you go again with your false claims about what atheists believe which have already been rebutted multiple times. One wonders if your inability to modify your posting is a cognitive defect or malicious (bad faith argumentation). I'm going with the latter. You seem to be able to make progress in other areas like politics and economics, but you simply can't learn anything about atheism form atheists.

Well logically, for an atheist, either existence just popped onto being from nothing and for no reason, or it has always been (it us eternal) even though nothing IN existence is eternal. So either way, you're married to a completely irrational premise. So which is it!

Special pleading. Theists are forced to choose between the same two counterintuitive possibilities: something has either always existed or came into being uncaused. @ratiocinator says that the latter claim is incoherent.

We all know that atheists believe there are no gods unless someone can prove otherwise.

You're wrong again. You don't know that and it's incorrect.

It's a despicable thing you do here making up claims and then berating people who don't hold such beliefs for the beliefs you made up for them. One might think an atheist hurt you in life and now you're going to get your revenge forever on RF by verbally besetting them. Good luck with that. All you do is invite these kinds of responses, and I assure you that this is unflattering for you.

They just lie about it because they know they can't prove it any more than anyone else can prove otherwise.

You're lying now. I have no need to lie to you about my beliefs, and neither do other atheists. Nor do I need to prove that gods don't exist to reject the claim that they do.

But you seem to have a need to lie about what they actually tell you they believe.

I'm comfortable in my beliefs. You seem agitated by yours.

Most atheists pretend they have no ideas or beliefs regarding the source of existence because they know they cannot defend the ideas and beliefs that they clearly do have

That's another lie. Atheists aren't pretending. You are.

I provided my ideas on that issue in this thread a few weeks ago in the middle of this post. As I noted earlier, @ratiocinator considered my second hypothesis incoherent. As I understood him, he's saying that nothing can cause reality which includes time to come into being. Causality implies time already exists.

But the existence of God is understood as the source and purpose of all that is. So to reject the existence of God, you must be rejecting it as the source and ourpose of all that is (all that exists). Which then logically requires some reasoned alternative. Otherwise, it's just empty negation. A reasonless and pointless attempt to end the philosophocal discussion.

You can stop with the first two sentences. Your initial premise is incorrect - that's not my understanding of gods nor what I call the source if any of existence. I call that, "the source if any of existence."

And the logic (deduction) in your second sentence was flawed. Your use of the word "must" is unfounded. Agnostic atheists do not reject the possibility of gods. You know that but like to repeat your error anyway.

What do you think it says that you prefer to attack straw men than to engage atheists as they are? What do you think it says when whenever I bring these anomalies to your attention, that you have no desire to discuss them and prefer to pretend that they weren't written? It tells me that you know what you are doing and it's deliberate. If you were blind to the matter, you'd be confused about why people think such things about you and concerned enough to explore the matter with those who claim to see what you can't.

But that's not what you do. You evade the issues instead.

Regarding the philosophical discussion of our source and purpose, I completed that analysis decades ago. Spoiler: we will never know the source if any of reality, and if we have an exogenous purpose for our existence in the mind of some sentient creator, we can't know that, either.

Some people see searching forever as a virtue and consider positions like mine giving up or unimaginative. I think that once one has gone as far as evidence and reason permit, he's done and should move on to other matters.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

[cont.]

I agree that it is very disconcerting, this absurd veneration of science as the mighty source of all truth and wisdom. It is a rejection of all the other tools we humans have at our disposal to help us attain some measure of truth and wisdom.

And there it is. As I've been saying to you all along, what you call excessive reliance on empiricism and call scientism is really an objection to the rejection of the claim that you or anybody else has special ways of knowing or that your methods reveal truth or wisdom. You like to speculate untethered to reality (observation) and you want these idle speculations which can be used for nothing respected and you want to call them truth without being disagreed with.

I don't need to ask you to share any of this alleged truth and wisdom because I know you have none. I've asked you and many others to do that, and it's always crickets. It somehow pleases you to think that you see further, and you want that respected, but if you can't produce any fruits with these other ways of knowing and seeing further, then why should others respect your reveries?

Science is not going to provide any answers because it cannot.

Neither are you, although you will offer your unfalsifiable guesses as answers.

Is my comment an example of scientism to you?

The proposal is that whatever God is, God must by necessity transcend existence. The fact you can't understand how this could be so is not a flaw on the proposition

What's not to understand? It's an unfalsifiable claim, and I would add incoherent. Whatever can interact with nature is also a part of nature. The idea is simply rejected, not not understood.

I like this from Pat Condell:

"Faith-peddlers like to put themselves beyond question by claiming that their faith transcends reason, the very thing that calls it to account. How convenient. Yes, faith transcends reason the way a criminal transcends the law. The word "transcendent" is very popular with religious hustlers because they never have to explain precisely what they mean by it, other than some vague superior state of understanding more profound than mere reason, which is crude and simplistic next to the subtleties and profundities of belief without evidence. If you hear a senior clergyman (and you will) using the word “transcendent" to explain the nonsense he claims to believe, then you know two things: one: he doesn't know what he's talking about, and two: he doesn't want you to know what he's talking about either."

They do not believe it based on WHAT? On the idiotic assumption that if it were true, they would somehow know it??? Because that's the absurd argument I see them posing all the time.

That followed, "I believe the atheists understand the bold, but simply do not believe it," the bold referring to, "The proposal is that whatever God is, God must by necessity transcend existence."

You've outdone yourself. You make an unfalsifiable and incoherent claim, create another straw man about atheists and what they claim, call claiming to know what can't be known idiotic, and then make such a claim yourself.

A made up supernatural being IS a rational speculation.

Not if you believe it exists. That's faith-based thought, which is never rational.

I am not interested in reading anyone's mind.

Not even when they write their mind out for you in words.

Whatever anger or rage you think you're seeing, you are inventing in your own mind, I can honsetly assure you.

Your assurances aren't very helpful, and I've seen what passes for honesty from you - strawmen galore.

I agree with the other poster you're answering here. And the one who wrote this to you: "Pejorative caustic name calling is not an appropriate way to describe those that believe differently than you"

You're agitated and in grievance mode. You resent atheists but can't give a reason for it better than "scientism." You leave others to speculate what your reasons might be.

I guess it doesn't matter how often you read words like these. Like you said, you aren't interested in reading minds even when it can be done with eyes. They have little effect on you.

taco soup

Update: From lunch yesterday. This is typical Azteca soup. As I noted, compared to taco soup, the color and consistency are different, cheese if present is a small sprinkle, lots of crispy tortilla strips, and avocado is usually present, as is cilantro (not seen here):

View attachment 94435

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Can you or @PureX or @leroy prove that it isn't, no you can't and so the argument still needs to be considered unless you insist on intuition.
As much as you want to include possibilities because they are not disprovable, so you cannot eliminate others.

Well, we can include that it is possible that infinite space-time is real, but there is no evidence for it. We can also include that it is possible that a creator is real, but there is no evidence for it.

So for what objective reality is in itself that is metaphysics and as it stands right now not known. That goes for all of possible variants of postive metaphysics including the supernatural and natural ones.
They can all be considered posible, but none are known to be true.

 

[ratiocinator]

When people post stupid things, I point out the stupidity for these posts. And of course they don't like it.

The problem is that when other people respond with counterarguments, like for your 'poofing or eternal' options, you just double down, rather than actually responding rationally, You even resorted to calling science that has stood for more than a century now, with a perfect track record of prediction, and used in everyday technology, as 'fantasy science'.