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Why do atheist believe something can come from nothing?

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
Are you insinuating that an unrestricted negative can't be proven? On the other hand wouldn't that render your own claim an unrestricted negative?


In turn, if unrestricted negatives cannot be verified, then no one can prove that no one can prove an unrestricted negative. But if there is absolutely no way to prove that no one can prove an unrestricted negative, it must be possible to substantiate an unrestricted negative.


Which means that your allegation is self-refuting - if it's true, it's false!


Ex: Evidence Santa Claus cannot exist in reality.


Now try to apply the same approach to God Almighty.
All of the arguments against Santa Clause are "refuted" by the same argument that theists use:

"No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen"

Refutation: Magic.

"Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seemes logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc.

This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a pokey 27.4 miles per second - a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour."

Refutation: Magic.

By the way, you do not seem to understand the burden of proof. By your "logic" all gods exist. And the refutation for arguments against them is the same for all. Magic.
 

columbus

yawn <ignore> yawn
In reality basically everyone believes in a form of something from nothing.
I don't.
Something happened, around 15 billion years ago, that launched reality as I know it.
How, I don't know. Why, I don't know. What, I only know a tiny sliver of, mostly I don't know.
The operational phrase here is "I don't know". That is not the same as nothing.

It's theists who claim to know important things about the why, how, and what. They'll often get as specific as "The Creator doesn't like it when you have sex with another guy."
But, as far as I can see, they're just making up a God/Creator who agrees with them. Making up A God in their own image. A Being who does things the way they would, if they were God.

I don't find those people at all credible. Religion is fiction. So, I am a nontheist.
Tom
 

SugarOcean

¡pɹᴉǝM ʎɐʇS
Could this explain it? :D

And then they claim to be Rationalists. :)
What's really funny that in real life the real Hitler was a devout Catholic. He believed his acts during the WW2 solution was ordained by his God.

I like those Hitler pieces. Very funny stuff. And the guy who plays Hitler makes the part being he is so similar in appearance.
 

columbus

yawn <ignore> yawn
What's really funny that in real life the real Hitler was a devout Catholic. He believed his acts during the WW2 solution was ordained by his God.
I don't understand why people think that they can read the mind of a dead, psychotic, megalomaniac.
I certainly am not that gifted.
Tom
 

SkepticThinker

Veteran Member
My disbelief in Santa Claus is, for instance, is driven by positive evidence for his non-existence.

I asked you about unicorns, not about Santa Claus. Why did you change it?

Here's absolute, 100% probative evidence Santa Claus cannot exist in reality.
Oh didn't you know that Santa uses magic to make the reindeer fly, and to make it around the whole world in just 31 hours.
Millions of children believe in Santa Claus. You just need to have faith, like the children.

Now try to apply the same approach to God Almighty and justify Atheism's claim that God does not nor cannot exist.
That is not the atheist's claim(s). As I just tried to point out.
 

SkepticThinker

Veteran Member
Are you insinuating that an unrestricted negative can't be proven? On the other hand wouldn't that render your own claim an unrestricted negative?


In turn, if unrestricted negatives cannot be verified, then no one can prove that no one can prove an unrestricted negative. But if there is absolutely no way to prove that no one can prove an unrestricted negative, it must be possible to substantiate an unrestricted negative.


Which means that your allegation is self-refuting - if it's true, it's false!


Ex: Evidence Santa Claus cannot exist in reality.


Now try to apply the same approach to God Almighty.
You'd need to define "God Almighty" first.
 

SugarOcean

¡pɹᴉǝM ʎɐʇS
I don't understand why people think that they can read the mind of a dead, psychotic, megalomaniac.
I certainly am not that gifted.
Tom
I don't understand why people who think to disavow what others state about Hitler from a point of knowledge imagine psychism is involved. No, simply committing to reading Hitler's own words. And researching his speeches. And taking note of the images captured at the time. And noting that while he was a Catholic, neither Hitler nor any member of his SS, who were Catholic, were excommunicated by the then Pope, Pius XII.


Excerpted from Adolf Hitler's, Mein Kampf ("My Struggle")
"I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.."

The Catholic Church considered the Jews pestilent for fifteen hundred years, put them in ghettos, etc, because it recognized the Jews for what they were".... I recognize the representatives of this race as pestilent for the state and for the church and perhaps I am thereby doing Christianity a great service by pushing them out of schools and public functions.

-Adolf Hitler, 26 April 1933, [cited from Richard Steigmann-Gall's The Holy Reich]


The fact that the Vatican is concluding a treaty with the new Germany means the acknowledgement of the National Socialist state by the Catholic Church. This treaty shows the whole world clearly and unequivocally that the assertion that National Socialism [Nazism] is hostile to religion is a lie.

-Adolf Hitler, 22 July 1933, writing to the Nazi Party (quoted from John Cornwell's "Hitler's Pope"


While we destroyed the Centre Party, we have not only brought thousands of priests back into the Church, but to millions of respectable people we have restored their faith in their religion and in their priests. The union of the Evangelical Church in a single Church for the whole Reich, the Concordat with the Catholic Church, these are but milestones on the road which leads to the establishment of a useful relation and a useful co operation between the Reich and the two Confessions.

-Adolf Hitler, in his New Year Message on 1 Jan. 1934

More @ link
Easier than citing Mein Kampf and then reading a rebuttal like, "prove it!'


p7_Cornwell.jpg



N-Clergy-Nazi-Officials-apr-16.jpg


Excerpts from Mein Kampf
 

columbus

yawn <ignore> yawn
No, simply committing to reading Hitler's own words.
Hitler was a megalomaniac politician.

Why would anybody believe anything, just because he said it? He would say absolutely anything in his quest for power.

The truth didn't matter any more to him than Trump.
Tom
 

Audie

Veteran Member
Hitler was a megalomaniac politician.

Why would anybody believe anything, just because he said it? He would say absolutely anything in his quest for power.

The truth didn't matter any more to him than Trump.
Tom

Soon we will have to have another sort of Godwins
Law, one that covers the phenom of every freakin'
conversation somehow ending up being about trump.
 

columbus

yawn <ignore> yawn
Soon we will have to have another sort of Godwins
Law, one that covers the phenom of every freakin'
conversation somehow ending up being about trump.
With a bit of luck, the USA will shed Trump next year. Then he'll be no more important than Clinton is now.
Tom
 

columbus

yawn <ignore> yawn
OMG that's funny.
Thanks for a typical Christian nonresponse.

Did Hitler ever actually kill anybody? If so, I don't know about it. What I do know is that the German people who bombed London and invaded Poland and operated the ovens were 95% Christians. Mostly Lutherans with a large percentage of Catholics.
Tom
 

SkepticThinker

Veteran Member
That's not a definition, it's an opinion.

Atheism is the lack of belief in god(s). That's it. As an atheist I say, "I don't have a good reason or evidence to believe that god(s) exist."

There are hard atheists who will say "there is no God" but I am not one of them.

All that is required to be an atheist is lacking a belief in god(s).


Definition of atheist
: a person who does not believe in the existence of a god or any gods : one who subscribes to or advocates atheism
Definition of ATHEIST

"Atheism is not an affirmative belief that there is no god nor does it answer any other question about what a person believes. It is simply a rejection of the assertion that there are gods. Atheism is too often defined incorrectly as a belief system. To be clear: Atheism is not a disbelief in gods or a denial of gods; it is a lack of belief in gods."

What is Atheism? | American Atheists
 
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