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Atheists believe in miracles more than believers

Pogo

Well-Known Member
Of course you don't believe "he" needs evidence. Because you have no clue of underlying responsibilities or philosophical underpinnings. You have blind faith, and you have tribalistic adherence to anyone who believes in the same blind faith as yours.
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Valjean

Veteran Member
Premium Member
You have to prove your positive claim. If not, you practice no responsibility. Which means you are just believing your positive claim out of faith.

By the way, trying to turn the tables is a burden of proof fallacy.

So do you have evidence or proof for your positive claim? Of course you don't. You have blind faith with no evidence or proof. Blind faith.
OK, so pick one of the millions of facts, observations, events, reactions, &c you want evidence of.

Yes, I have "faith" that my kitchen table won't float into space, I won't sink through the floor, that the moon will remain in orbit around the Earth, and that the tides it generates will occur on schedule. I trust that my pecking at keys will generate a readable post on whatever device you're using. There is solid evidence underlying my faith in physics -- so is it really faith?
 
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ratiocinator

Lightly seared on the reality grill.
Eternity cannot have a finite past.
Do you actually know what eternalism in the philosophy of time is? Because this statement suggests that you don't. I provided a link to wiki, perhaps you should read it? It's the philosophy of how time works. There are three options: presentism (only the present exists), a growing past, where the past and present exist, and eternalism in which past, present, and future are equally real, otherwise known as the 'block universe'.

There is no logical reason why the eternalist or block universe view cannot have a finite past.

There is no past or future because it's all always the present.
So you've just dogmatically chosen one of the three philosophies of time (presentism) because.......? You like it? You think it's easier to argue for a God? What?

This is why the idea of an eternal existence is incoherent. Because nothing within existence is eternal. Everything within existence is finite because everything is always changing. Why would an eternal existence manifest itself as ever-changing? That makes no sense.
Why not? Not to mention that you're using empiricism and extrapolation, of course (a lot like science).

NON-existence is truly eternal.
Either that makes no sense at all, or you're changing the way you use the word 'eternal'. The passage of time is not nothing. Nothing cannot have time because time isn't nothing.

So why is there SOMETHING?
No idea. But remember, the trilemma:


Just slapping labels on something, like 'God' or "the transcendence of both something and nothing", is logically meaningless.
 

Valjean

Veteran Member
Premium Member
The more I think about it (radio waves & such), the more the Bible's words make sense to me. Like about seeing God. And why Paul was blinded for a while after Jesus appeared to him in a miraculous vision. He recovered for the most part, but I know a man who was paralyzed when he was struck by lightning. I don't know how many children die from sticking their fingers in sockets, but maybe when I have time I'll look it up.
Why do you believe that unevidenced legend? You endeavor to fit your world into the mythology you embrace. Everything is interpreted to fit into your biblical narrative, but the narrative itself is questionable -- and you refuse to question it.
 

Valjean

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Yes. You claim you know that the universe is natural. That is in effect metaphysical naturalism.
Just as some theists don't understand science, so people don't know when they are doing philosophy and not science. Learn what the difference between methodological and metaphysical naturalism is.
I make inferences from actual observations, of actual objects, and actual operations. Philosophy is a speculation on ideas. Physics deals with the tangible.
 

mikkel_the_dane

My own religion
I make inferences from actual observations, of actual objects, and actual operations. Philosophy is a speculation on ideas. Physics deals with the tangible.

Yeah, that is not seeing as you claimed. So here is what you claimed:
A fourth: That there are fixed laws and constants, of unknown origin, and that the universe we see is the natural and unguided unfolding of these.

So do you see or do you inferer? So can you understand that you don't see, but that you think as inferer. That makes it speculation that it is natural and thus philosophy.

BTW inference is not physical and tangible, but thinking in your mind.
 

Valjean

Veteran Member
Premium Member
That the universe has the property of being natural. I.e. evidence that the universe is natural.
Isn't "natural" defined as what actually is; what's actually observed?
If "natural" is defined as what the universe actually is, the query is meaningless.
 

mikkel_the_dane

My own religion
Isn't "natural" defined as what actually is; what's actually observed?
If "natural" is defined as what the universe actually is, the query is meaningless.

A defintion is not a fact. If defintions worked as fact, then this defintion of God would be a fact, but that is not the case:
The creator and ruler of the universe and source of all moral authority; the supreme being.

So it is not a fact the universe is natural just as you claim it is so. Further everything you know is not observed. For example you understand and know the concept of everything and knowledge, but you can't observe those. They are non-tangible, non-physical abstract concepts. And yet they are a part of the universe, but not actually observed!!!
 

Pogo

Well-Known Member
A defintion is not a fact. If defintions worked as fact, then this defintion of God would be a fact, but that is not the case:
The creator and ruler of the universe and source of all moral authority; the supreme being.

So it is not a fact the universe is natural just as you claim it is so. Further everything you know is not observed. For example you understand and know the concept of everything and knowledge, but you can't observe those. They are non-tangible, non-physical abstract concepts. And yet they are a part of the universe, but not actually observed!!!
Definitions are understood to be descriptive of general consensus, not proscriptive as some sloppy thinkers understand, lets not trip over rabbit holes because our heads are stuck in the clouds.
 

YoursTrue

Faith-confidence in what we hope for (Hebrews 11)
Why do you believe that unevidenced legend? You endeavor to fit your world into the mythology you embrace. Everything is interpreted to fit into your biblical narrative, but the narrative itself is questionable -- and you refuse to question it.
Since there is no warning to people they may be shocked or electrocuted it makes sense that there are obviously things that exist but cannot see. Of course you would not believe the Bible as evidence of certain things (miraculous, such as Jesus encountering Paul in a blinding flash), but the discussion about things seen and unseen, as well as electricity and radio waves is very interesting as far as I am concerned. I cannot account for everything the Bible says except I think and believe it is God's message to men, nevertheless the unseen being there has been a very interesting discussion to me.
 

YoursTrue

Faith-confidence in what we hope for (Hebrews 11)
Isn't "natural" defined as what actually is; what's actually observed?
If "natural" is defined as what the universe actually is, the query is meaningless.
Why? Do you think the universe is "naturally" made?
 

blü 2

Veteran Member
Premium Member
The problem is that we have no idea what energy actually IS. We can only see what it does. For all we know energy is 'God's will'. But no atheist is ever going to accept that possibility, so they have to insist that it's something scientific and materialistic. Because to afmit that we don't know opens the door to possibilities they refuse to accept.
No one is pretending to know anything with perfect certainty, as I've emphasized to you many times.

Outside this sentence there are no absolutes. The justification for science is that it works, not that it's perfect.

If you're in doubt, compare the achievements of science to the achievements of religion, both good and bad, and see which has actually increased our understanding of reality.

As for God, as I've also said to you before, the only manner in which [he]'s known to exist is as a concept, notion, thing imagined in individual brains. If you disagree, if you assert that God exists independently of any brain holding the concept of [him], then point [him] out in reality, demonstrate to us what God is made of, describe how many legs, eyes, senses, [his] manner of feeding and breeding &c ─ and of course how you know.
 

YoursTrue

Faith-confidence in what we hope for (Hebrews 11)
of course waves have existed long before humans existed.

And yes, radio waves existed long before the invention of radio. Yes, science have allow people to harness them through various technology.

You are stating the obvious, but you really you don’t understand, that scientists already know this, and you would know too if you bother to learn physics.

What do you think electromagnetism are?

They are electromagnetic waves. They are radiations. EM waves include radio waves, microwaves, X-ray, gamma ray, ultraviolet, infrared, visible light. How they differ from each other, are known by the respective ranges of their wavelengths.

Radiation is emission or transmission of waves (or the radiation can be emission of particles, eg photons, radioactive decay, etc), which are propagated through space or through medium.

Yes, they can be harnessed, so the source of transmission of these waves, can be man-made, but there are natural sources of emissions, such as from radioactive elements, eg uranium, or many of waves come from the sun itself. The sun not only radiated heat, light, and ultraviolet, but also gamma rays, radio waves.
The point I am bringing out is not whether scientists knew these things of did not know these things about the existence of radio waves before radios were invented, but rather that the unseen existed.
 

YoursTrue

Faith-confidence in what we hope for (Hebrews 11)
OK, so pick one of the millions of facts, observations, events, reactions, &c you want evidence of.

Yes, I have "faith" that my kitchen table won't float into space, I won't sink through the floor, that the moon will remain in orbit around the Earth, and that the tides it generates will occur on schedule. I trust that my pecking at keys will generate a readable post on whatever device you're using. There is solid evidence underlying my faith in physics -- so is it really faith?
Once a person realizes that things are there (exist) that had not been recognized prior to their discovery by experiments harnessing certain elements, it would be reasonable to conclude that there are things that are invisible to our eyes. And which exist.
 

Dan From Smithville

He who controls the spice controls the universe.
Staff member
Premium Member
OK, that's good you understand my little comparison there about not seeing birds, etc. But a poster brought up about radio waves -- and I assume (but I don't know what science teaches about radio waves, whether they were in existence before radios, but I figure they were.
I assume that they existed prior to discovery. I don't have proof that they all didn't come to exist just as they were discovered, but I have no reason to think that.
 

Dan From Smithville

He who controls the spice controls the universe.
Staff member
Premium Member
The point I am bringing out is not whether scientists knew these things of did not know these things about the existence of radio waves before radios were invented, but rather that the unseen existed.
They discovered them and then they found applications for them.

Yes, there are things that have been discovered that are not visible in our range of vision and there could exist other things. But there is a big difference between could and did or maybe and is.
 
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