If I were an Atheist

[Drew_2013]

Michael,

Then I am going ignore kost of what you say.
When you make claims like "the universe is finely tuned to blah blah blah" then you need to show your working - where you aree getting this idea from, what you are basing this claim on, so that anyone you are making this claim to is able to at least verify if you are referencing valid ideas and research, or just repeating crackpot conspiracies. Until you do, your claims are completely empty.

I'm not making an argument for fine-tuning in this thread, when I did in the case for theism thread I cited a well respected atheist scientist to support my contention.

Secondly atheists seem to think its up to them to decide if any case made in favor of theism has merit as if I am seeking your approval or acceptance.

You are on an atheism forum, talking about how you think atheists are wrong.
You do the math there.

At the moment I'm on an atheist board discussing how I would argue, promote and defend atheism were I an atheist.

When someone dies we believe its either the result of natural causes or intentional causes (homicide).

I guess suicides and car accidents aren't a thing in your world.

They are things but they fall in the category I described. A suicide is a homicide, its intentional death caused by the decedent. An accident (barring and foul play) is ruled natural causes. If someone falls off a cliff (and wasn't pushed) even though the fall causes mass trauma its still a natural death.

I just named two. Do you think maybe - given your haste to try to create a false dichotomy above you completely missed/forgot about several possible causes of death - there could be more you are missing?

No because I'm correct about the dichotomy above.

Again, this post of yours demonstrates you are clearly uncomfortable with not having an answer - so uncomfortable in fact that you will make up an answer or use a clearly incorrect answer just so that you can have the comfort of having one.

I don't have an answer, I have an opinion. I'll cite a reference...

OPINION

a belief or judgment that rests on grounds insufficient to produce complete certainty.
2. a personal view, attitude, or appraisal.

3. the formal expression of a professional judgment: to ask for a second medical opinion.

An opinion isn't an answer, its a belief. I am comfortable with having an opinion and I made a case in support of that opinion. Why are you afraid to have an opinion regarding this matter? You seem very confident no Creator designer is needed to cause what we observe how does that not result in the opinion God doesn't exist and isn't necessary?

Do you see a snowflake and conclude a personal agent is in the clouds making them intentionally in that pattern? No. Because there are other mechanisms for creating that pattern.

I don't believe a personal agent intentionally creates the designs in snowflakes anymore than I think there is a personal agent inside your car making it move. Whether a personal agent is responsible for the laws of nature is the point in question.

Yes, but competing hypotheses are not necessary to evaluate any other hypothesis.

In the matter we are discussing it is necessary. There are only two competing hypotheses, we owe our existence to a Creator/designer who caused the conditions that led to our existence or we owe our existence to mechanistic forces that fortuitously created the conditions that allowed our existence. The two hypotheses are mutually exclusive. Any evidence in favor of one is at the expense of the other. In this forum you can advance the absurd idea that there is some other unknown hypothesis and no one will call you out. But if you advanced this ridiculous notion in front of a crowd of impartial people they'd just snicker and look at you cross-eyed.

There isn't anything we have personally observed that wasn't either the result of intentional design or the result of unguided mechanistic forces.

That we have personally observed? Sure. There are a lot of things we can't/haven't personally observed, though.

This is the essence of logical deduction that what applies to everything we have observed to be true to things we haven't observed. Otherwise extrapolations and correlations would be impossible. We couldn't even say there are laws of nature otherwise.

Whether or not I make any claims has no bearing on the quality of yours.

It has bearing on the outcome of a debate, not here on this board where its a foregone conclusion but in a real debate before impartial people casting aspersions on one belief without supporting the only logical alternative is a losing proposition.

I'll also go as far as to say "I/we don't know" and "I don't need to make up an answer just because I'm uncomfortable not having one".

Again you can get away with that answer in this forum where no one will challenge it. Do you think the I don't know how we got here is going to persuade anyone on the fence that God doesn't exist?

Really? Where is your supposed creator? What is he made of? What does he look like? Where did he come from?
What mechanisms did he use to create the universe? What mechanisms did he use to create matter?

I cited the definition of theism which says nothing about where God is or what God is made of or how God created the universe. Those are theological or religious matters and even though you denied it theism is a philosophical belief, not a religious one.

You don't give us a single thing. All you say is "there must be a creator!" and stop.

No I made a case for my opinion and cited 5 lines of evidence in favor of that belief and argued why those 5 facts support my conclusion to the detriment of the only viable counter hypothesis.

[Drew_2013]

Kinich Ahau wrote

Nice finds. On previous form I'm expecting Drewl to completely ignore this.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...e-shadows.html
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/2014...ever-disappear
http://www.washingtonpost.com/nation...285_story.html

I read some of the first article again I really don't have time to read a link and figure out what part of it supports your contention.

Its interesting that the author of the first article compares atheists as a group to homosexuals as a group. 30 years ago, homosexuals were about as reviled as atheists. Gays have made leaps and bounds compared to atheists in the market place of ideas. Today coming out gay is practically a badge of honor.

Studies on the demographics of atheism have concluded that atheists comprise anywhere from 2% to 8% of the world's population, whereas with irreligious individuals are 10% to 20%.[1][2][3] A poll by Gallup International, featuring over 50,000 respondents worldwide, recorded that 13% of those interviewed said they were "convinced atheists".[4] In Scandinavia and East Asia, and particularly in China, atheists and the nonreligious are the majority.[4] Globally, atheists and the nonreligious are concentrated in Asia and the Pacific with over 76% of all the irreligious or nonreligious residing in those regions.[5] In Europe, the nonreligious make up 12.5% of the population and in North America they make up 5% of the population.[5] In Africa and South America, atheists are typically in the single digits.[4]

Even with countries that have enforced atheism at gun point it still doesn't drive the % of atheism world wide beyond 2-8%. That's getting crushed.

I know most of you won't pay attention to my post, being arrogant and obnoxious and self righteous is part of the charm of being an atheist. That and the lack of some viable alternative to theism is why you gain little traction even though as the article points out people are abandoning organized religion.

Unlike atheism, theism has a working model. We have incontrovertible proof that intelligent beings can and are inclined to create universes. In the case of humans, we can't as yet create a real universe but we can create virtual universes. If we could populate such universes with sentient entities they too would ponder the cause of their existence whether it was designed or the result of unplanned mechanistic forces.

[Davin]

How cute, Drewl tried to make an argument. Sadly, the idiot forgot to look at the change over time. I don't know how the anencephalic uses the word "crushed," but if the thing I crushed kept getting bigger and bigger while being "crushed" I might have to re-evaluate my usage of the term. Hilariously though, I doubt Drewl will see how stupid it looks to others.

[Sinfidel]

Drew_2013 wrote

Unlike atheism, theism has a working model. We have incontrovertible proof that intelligent beings can and are inclined to create universes.

[Smellyoldgit]

Drew_2013 wrote

.... theism has a working model. We have incontrovertible proof that intelligent beings can and are inclined to create universes.

[Sinfidel]

Drew_2013 wrote

Michael,

I'm not making an argument for fine-tuning in this thread, when I did in the case for theism thread I cited a well respected atheist scientist to support my contention.

Confirmation bias, also called myside bias, is the tendency to search for, interpret, or recall information in a way that confirms one's beliefs or hypotheses.
- Wikipedia

[Sinfidel]

Drew_2013 wrote

I know most of you won't pay attention to my post, being arrogant and obnoxious and self righteous is part of the charm of being an atheist.

Are you a pathological liar?

Take this quiz to find out if you are a liar or not.

http://www.selectsmart.com/FREE/sele...=CharmedThings

[Sinfidel]

Trying your skill at deception, that favourite pastime of the slimy treacherous theologues trying to put over lies and fallacies.

http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.p...urden_of_proof

A theist is someone who claims that there is a god. An atheist is someone who doesn't. Since the theist is the one making a positive claim, it is the theist's job to demonstrate that a god exists.

Drew:
Therefore was I an atheist I would argue from those facts God doesn’t exist which ironically means I’m making a better argument than most atheists make.

We don't have to prove your fucking god doesn't exist. It's your claim you prove it.

So, Drew Prove you're not a child molestor!

[reddhedd]

Sinfidel wrote

So, Drew Prove you're not a child molestor!

Ahh yes, the logical fallacy..... "When did you stop beating your wife?"

[Kinich Ahau]

Unlike theism, atheism has a working model. We have incontrovertible proof that unintelligent beings can and are inclined to create gods.

Fixed.

[reddhedd]

[Michael]

So this finally happened:


The text that you have entered is too long (10478 characters). Please shorten it to 10000 characters long.

So I will put this into two messages. Because I'm sure as shit not cutting things out because fuck being concise.

Drew_2013 wrote

Michael,

Drew.

I'm not making an argument for fine-tuning in this thread, when I did in the case for theism thread I cited a well respected atheist scientist to support my contention.

We'll come back to this.

Michael wrote

You are on an atheism forum, talking about how you think atheists are wrong.
You do the math there.

Drew_2013 wrote

At the moment I'm on an atheist board discussing how I would argue, promote and defend atheism were I an atheist.

And you're telling us how you would do it 'differently' because you think we're so right?

They are things but they fall in the category I described. A suicide is a homicide, its intentional death caused by the decedent. An accident (barring and foul play) is ruled natural causes. If someone falls off a cliff (and wasn't pushed) even though the fall causes mass trauma its still a natural death.

Good god, no.
A shooting death doesn't become natural causes just because the shooter didn't intend to hit their victim. That's ridiculous.
So i was looking through some literature on this to try and set you straight, and although it's not too complicated, it's less straightforward than we want for this.

You want to set up a dichotomy, I get that - you love your dichotomies after all, everything has to fall into an either/or situation with you - but you've done it horribly.
So let's try to get it right, because the one you're going for is a mess.

You seem to want two options (and only two options), one of which involves deaths intentionally caused and one which involves deaths not unintentionally caused.

So let's go with that, shall we? Intentional deaths and not intentional deaths. That is much closer to a true dichotomy than whatever the hell you had before.

No because I'm correct about the dichotomy above.

Lol.

I don't have an answer, I have an opinion.

Because you're uncomfortable with not having an answer.

I'll cite a reference...

OPINION

a belief or judgment that rests on grounds insufficient to produce complete certainty.
2. a personal view, attitude, or appraisal.

3. the formal expression of a professional judgment: to ask for a second medical opinion.

Do you actually know how to reference things? I'm guessing you didn't get a higher education, or even a decent school education. If you had, your teachers/professors wouldn't have stood for this shit and you'd actually know what you were doing.

The thing is, when you reference something, you have to refer to the thing you referenced. That way it can be independently checked to confirm that the assertion is correct.

Simply copying and pasting from a random dictionary and not including the dictionary it came from is not referencing - there is no way for me to check that the source you took this from is a valid source, or if it even says what you say it does.
For all I know you just made that up on the fly, since there is no way for me to validate where you got it from.

An opinion isn't an answer, its a belief. I am comfortable with having an opinion and I made a case in support of that opinion.

An opinion you came to because you couldn't handle living with "we don't know".

Why are you afraid to have an opinion regarding this matter? You seem very confident no Creator designer is needed to cause what we observe how does that not result in the opinion God doesn't exist and isn't necessary?

You're close. You're off, but you're close.
We have natural explanations for things that do not require us to add more questions than answers by invoking supernatural causes.

[Michael]

Part two.

Yeah that's right.

I don't believe a personal agent intentionally creates the designs in snowflakes anymore than I think there is a personal agent inside your car making it move.
Whether a personal agent is responsible for the laws of nature is the point in question.

So you agree with me, then, that can determine things to be naturalistic or unaturalis based on the mechanisms for creating said things? You agree with me that finding a geodesic dome of toothpicks will be deemed as unnatural because there are no natural mechanisms for creating such a thing, whereas we find a pattern in a snowflake natural because there are natural mechanisms for creating it? And we do this despite both having complex patterns and symmetry?

In the matter we are discussing it is necessary. There are only two competing hypotheses, we owe our existence to a Creator/designer who caused the conditions that led to our existence or we owe our existence to mechanistic forces that fortuitously created the conditions that allowed our existence.

I think I might have figured out what bugs me about your description and attempts to binarise this. It's the way you try to categorise the "mechanistic forces" as being completely random and unguided and could only result in our current situation by pure stupid blind luck.
It's an unfair categorisation intended to lend credence to your favoured alternative.

So, no. I don't agree with this. I wholly disagree that mechanistic forces are truly random and unguided.

Forces do not act independantly of one another. It is in no way truly random or unguided, and to represent it as such is either incredibly naive or dishonest of you.

The two hypotheses are mutually exclusive. Any evidence in favor of one is at the expense of the other.

That is true. But you don't need to prove one to disprove the other. You can disprove it based on the claims it makes. If it makes a claim and we can show this claim to be false, we can disprove the hypothesis without having to offer an alternative. It's weird you can't understand something so simple.

In this forum you can advance the absurd idea that there is some other unknown hypothesis and no one will call you out.

You and your dichotomies again.
Much like your homicide/natural causes debacle, I get what you are probably wanting to represent as a dichotomy - you're just doing it really badly.

"Creator/mechanistic forces" is wrong. Dichotomies are meant to represent two logical opposites, so in this case you actually want "creator/no creator".

But if you advanced this ridiculous notion in front of a crowd of impartial people they'd just snicker and look at you cross-eyed.

No.

This is the essence of logical deduction that what applies to everything we have observed to be true to things we haven't observed.
Otherwise extrapolations and correlations would be impossible. We couldn't even say there are laws of nature otherwise.

No.

"I have only observed planets made of rock, therefore all unobserved planets are also rock".
"I have only seen birds that fly, therefore all unobserved birds must also fly".
"I have only seen people with white skin, therefore all unobserved people must also have white skin"
"I have only ever observed snow in america between October to January, therefore snow must only occur anywhere between october-january".

"I have only observed you making ridiculous statements, therefore all your statements I haven't observed must also be ridiculous"

Actually that last one may have some merit.

You don't know how to do this. Stop embarrassing yourself, and go learn about how to actually apply skepticism and what you're actually trying to refer to (inductive reasoning, not deductive reasoning). In fact, just go study up on logic in general.


Here, I'll get you started. Here is a direct quote from that page I just linked you to -

A classical example of an incorrect inductive argument was presented by John Vickers:

All of the swans we have seen are white.
Therefore, all swans are white.


Look familiar?

I doubt it can be made any clearer that you don't know what you are talking about.

It has bearing on the outcome of a debate, not here on this board where its a foregone conclusion but in a real debate before impartial people casting aspersions on one belief without supporting the only logical alternative is a losing proposition.

It's not "the only logical alternative", so there really is no point addressing this any further.

Again you can get away with that answer in this forum where no one will challenge it. Do you think the I don't know how we got here is going to persuade anyone on the fence that God doesn't exist?

No.

I think disproving their own god hypothesis and teaching people proper application of skepticism and logic will persuade people into not accepting claims without evidence.

I cited the definition of theism which says nothing about where God is

Which is what makes it generic.

or what God is made of

Which is what makes it generic.

or how God created the universe.

Which is what makes it generic.

And I suspect you did it because to do otherwise would make your claim falsifiable, which would jeopardise your "opinion".

Those are theological or religious matters and even though you denied it theism is a philosophical belief, not a religious one.

Since religious people are religious but also theists, You can clearly be a theist with a religion. But can you be a theist without a religion? If the answer is yes, then you're on the right track. If the answer is no, then theism and religion are tied together.

No I made a case for my opinion and cited 5 lines of evidence in favor of that belief and argued why those 5 facts support my conclusion to the detriment of the only viable counter hypothesis.

So to negate something I said, you bring up your argument for fine tuning.
Yet earlier in this post, in order to negate a comment I made about your claiming fine-tuning you said this -

I'm not making an argument for fine-tuning in this thread

You can't have it both ways. I know you love your either/or's so let's give you another one -

Either you're referencing your fine tuning arguments or you are not. Pick one.

[dogpet]

Kinich Ahau wrote

Unlike theism, atheism has a working model. We have incontrovertible proof that unintelligent beings can and are inclined to create gods.

Fixed.

Like it Kinich .

[Davin]

Kinich Ahau wrote

Unlike theism, atheism has a working model. We have incontrovertible proof that unintelligent beings can and are inclined to create gods.

Fixed.