Attn: Theists - What would it take to prove you wrong?

[fr0d0]

Christians affirm each other's experiences

No, you can agree that you think you experienced something similar, but you can't compare those experiences in any objective manner since they are entirely internal.

A person tells me what they've experienced and I can confirm that it it's also true for me. There's no guess work there. Nothing vague, but a definite, solid experience. We are sharing subjective experience with another person... and can agree when both experiences converge.

The only way it isn't objective, is if you take someone who doesn't accept the logic, will not understand the reference.

So in a test study where 50 people are Christians and 50 people are not, 50 people could confirm God acting in their lives, where 50 would see no link. If 100% of your sample group were Christians, you would surmise that experiencing God was objective, and vice versa.

---

You make yet another unsupported assertion by equating justice and God.(1)
And another by asserting that my ability to achieve happiness is limited.(2)

1. It's a coherent logical model. You are free to challenge and decide upon its validity yourself. For the sake of argument, you should consider the premise as support for the conclusion...

2. How isn't your potential happiness curtailed when compared to the Christian who's reality has justice when yours does not?

[The Reality Salesman01]

No, you can agree that you think you experienced something similar, but you can't compare those experiences in any objective manner since they are entirely internal.

A person tells me what they've experienced and I can confirm that it it's also true for me. There's no guess work there. Nothing vague, but a definite, solid experience. We are sharing subjective experience with another person... and can agree when both experiences converge.

The only way it isn't objective, is if you take someone who doesn't accept the logic, will not understand the reference.

So in a test study where 50 people are Christians and 50 people are not, 50 people could confirm God acting in their lives, where 50 would see no link. If 100% of your sample group were Christians, you would surmise that experiencing God was objective, and vice versa.

Except, what about all the other people in the world, of all the countless other religions, claiming to share experiences with all the countless other Gods, with the same supposed certainty. Surely you recognize that they can't all be right. Surely you recognize that this alone brings a great discredit to this form of verification of experience.

[Chas]

No, you can agree that you think you experienced something similar, but you can't compare those experiences in any objective manner since they are entirely internal.

A person tells me what they've experienced and I can confirm that it it's also true for me. There's no guess work there. Nothing vague, but a definite, solid experience. We are sharing subjective experience with another person... and can agree when both experiences converge.

The only way it isn't objective, is if you take someone who doesn't accept the logic, will not understand the reference.

So in a test study where 50 people are Christians and 50 people are not, 50 people could confirm God acting in their lives, where 50 would see no link. If 100% of your sample group were Christians, you would surmise that experiencing God was objective, and vice versa.

The only objective fact is that the Christians agree that they have similar internal experiences. There is no way to compare those experiences other than their subjective descriptions. They are comparing explanations; the explanations are filtered through pre-existing suppositions and group reinforcement - social interactions.

I agree that there is something there, but not what you say it is.
There is something there that calls for explanation. However, evolutionary biology and neuroscience have begun to have explanations. These are hypotheses. They are testable.

[fr0d0]

Surely you recognize that this alone brings a great discredit to this form of verification of experience.

Absolutely. In the end it would be illogical for it to be objective.

[The Reality Salesman01]

So in a test study where 50 people are Christians and 50 people are not, 50 people could confirm God acting in their lives, where 50 would see no link. If 100% of your sample group were Christians, you would surmise that experiencing God was objective, and vice versa.
not?

I would conclude that 100% of my sample group were convinced they were experiencing God. Whether or not they actually were is something different entirely. It's 50 counts of a subjective, and unverifiable claim.

[fr0d0]

I agree that there is something there, but not what you say it is.

I'm not talking about feelings or suspicions or superstition. I'm talking about verified shared knowledge and understanding. Like two people have been to see a concert, and two people haven't. The two people without the experience cannot relate to what the other two share. They can hear what they're saying, and perhaps relate to it, but until they experience it for themselves, the words are empty.

[FallentoReason]

1) Amorality
While I don't believe that all atheists are amoral (and yes, I am referring to 'amoral', not 'immoral'), I would however argue that they do not possess morals because of their atheistic stance, but rather in spite of it. Without God, "Might makes right" as Thrasymachus would say. Since you may ask, examples include Armenia, Ethiopia, Darfur, Bosnia, Kurdistan, Combodia, the Soviet Union and many more. Atrocities are always rationalized, and a persecutor will justify their actions with religious pretext where opportunity presents itself.. but this goes against the Bible (the only religious stance I will argue for, as I've found the rest to be very faulty), so the truth remains; amoral actions under religious pretext (such as the Crusades) are done is opposition to God's standard, while moral actions done under atheistic pretext are done in spite of atheistic principles - I need not resurface my uncontested point on torture in the world, which can be found in the thread Abusive Theology 101.

Why would you condemn atheism like that based on a select few i.e. generals/presidents or other people in power who shaped history? The fact that you straight up confess not all atheists are amoral undermines any sort of point you were trying to make. I mean, I can raise up my hand and say I'm not amoral. Now what..? *shrugs* nothing to see here, so moving on.

2) Meaninglessness
Without God life is meaningless. We can only be a drain on the planet, pursuing our personal advancement. Nothing will last. If you'd argue that we can find purpose in preserving the planet, then obviously that would be accomplished better by reducing the amount of humans on it, in fact total extinction of ourselves would help it the most.. though in the spirit of carrying on a pointless existence, we could follow Hitler's philosophy and only keep the best. We can attempt to distract ourselves from this depressing emptiness through education, medication, indoctrination, recreation, trying to prove theists wrong.. think about it. Carl Jung might of been on to something when he said the central neurosis of our time is emptiness. Regardless, you aren't helping the case for Atheism.

I love how in the paragraphs before, you say something like "our desires don't shape truth" (paraphrasing. I'm on my phone and I deleted those paragraphs since I only wanted to respond to these points..). Yet, what do you do; claim that meaninglessness is somehow a point against atheism? But.. why??? Why would your desire for an objective purpose have any bearing on the truth about our purpose (if any)?

Our purpose on earth is subjective in a way that nihilism is self-defeating; you can decide for yourself what your purpose will be, which means that deciding that you have no purpose *is* a choice in itself about what purpose your life has. Either way, this point of yours is again of no negative consequence whatsoever *precisely* because you're speaking from your desires.

3) Incoherent
As an anti-position, Atheism is not verifiable. It's not possible to prove the non-existence of God. Atheism affirms the very thing it denies; In order to be sure that no omniscience, all-powerful being exists in all the cosmos, you would have to be omniscient and all-powerful. Another reason for incoherency is that Atheism claims there's no absolute truth.. but again, for that statement to be trustworthy, there must be absolute truth. Relativism stems from wishful thinking, and trying to defend it while holding on to science and reason just comes across as uneducated. Whether speaking of physical, or metaphysical, an external measurement must be used - this is known as absolute truth. I've also heard it argued that reality is empty of meaning, and that meaning is in the mind of the thinker. Again, by claiming everything is meaningless, the statement itself must also be meaningless.

You're bunching up a whole lot of random points under the category of atheism as if there's a handbook that states all this stuff. I'd consider myself an atheist and I disagree that there's no absolute truth (and consequently, relativism with regards to truth) and your non-sequitur on a rumour you heard about reality being meaningless. *Yet again*, I'm left with nothing more to do but simply shrug my shoulders.

So far there isn't anything concrete that *strongly* suggests there's something fatal about my position. You're attacking random philosophical ideas that aren't necessarily all held by "atheism" (as if it's a mass organisation) with the hopes that the arguments will all come together in a way that defeats atheism, yet here I stand unscathed by the firing of random arguments in every possible direction.

4) Incomplete
Atheism argues that God cannot be real because He is not physical. This is an incomplete view, because it does not include all aspects of reality. None of us can deny the existence of anger, love, justice, etc. For example, when was the last time you measured how many ounces of anger you plow through in a day? How many kilowatts of rage will fuel your response to this post..?
For another example, lets say someone says, "An opera is simply black ellipses on paper, connected to vertical strokes, appearing on parallel lines in certain mathematical relationships to one another."
The statement isn't wrong.. just incomplete.
Atheism also fails to answer the seven basic questions of human existence: Origin, Destiny, Identity, Relationship, Morality, Meaning, and Purpose.

I've never *ever* heard an atheist say God isn't real because he's not physical. That's just about the most shocking attempt at refuting God I've ever heard.

I'm a dualist (like many other atheists, such as Michael Tooley), and therefore shrug my shoulders when you bring up experiential stuff or sensations. Yeah, what about them?

Moving on.

5) Inconsistent
A final reason Atheism fails

Well.. technically, it would be the *first* reason we have yet to see.

is inconsistency. One cannot reason consistently when restricted by unbelief in anything. Let me elaborate briefly on six areas this is the case...
First off, while Atheism rejects absolute morality, atheists are unable to do so. On one hand, an atheist can claim that evil does not exist (to excuse the concept of sin), since evil is, after all, the product of evolution. But on the other hand, atheists reject God either because of suffering in the world that He does nothing about, or because He is evil. We see this constantly on these forums when an Atheist says something like, "I don't believe in the existence of God because I reject a God that would be evil enough to condemn people to hell." Feel free to substitute in the word 'value' for morality, but the concept stays the same, and the argument employs circular reasoning. You cannot say there is not evil in the world because there's so much evil in the world (at least, I wouldn't).

You've failed to grasp how the problem of evil works; it assumes God (and therefore the theistic idea of evil) to exist so that an inconsistency *on your turf* can be exposed. It's got nothing to do with atheism per se.

Moving on...

Secondly, Atheists reject the idea of a Designer, saying reality has no design.. then they go on to use the laws of science to say there is no proof of God, because everything is natural (as opposed to supernatural). I would point out that design and laws prove the same argument. Science is made up of laws that prove a design.. otherwise science cannot be used. I'm sitting here at a computer, surrounded by walls, floors, ceiling, tiles etc. Would you consider me reasonable if I said there's no evidence of a design, and thus no designer, but instead attributed all of it to the laws of engineering? It's the same thing.

Your presupposition leads you to say the analogy is valid, but my presupposition doesn't. More needs to be done here than simply pointing to something and dressing it up with your presupposition.

Third on the list: Atheists claim to have higher philosophical ground than theists. But.. there's a weakness in epistemology; if you claim the brain is our means of cognition, and it is the result of a process that was driven by chance, in a universe driven by chance, then there is no good reason to trust its perceptions. According to theism, however, the brain is sufficient for comprehending reality, because God designed it to do so, through the processes of biology he set in place (or evolved.. it's irrelevant in this case). This puts theism on more solid ground.

*Now* we're getting somewhere! Plantinga's argument on the reliability of our cognitive faculties is an interesting one, but it fails for those who accept qualia; the fact that I can experience e.g. greenness *means* there is greenness to be experienced. It was causal relations that led to me having such an experience, which means that I *know* that it must be the case that e.g. I'm holding a phone which has 4 bars of connectivity, because the fact that I have a phone with 4 bars of connectivity means that causal relations have given me the quale of my phone. Qualia basically guarantees that there is an adequate connection between the external world and how we percieve it.

You might at first think it's circular reasoning I'm employing, but that's not correct. I'm not using the conclusion in my premises.

Fourth reason: While I have seen this very infrequently on these forums, some Atheists will use circumlocutions to try to get around using the word 'God'. They will say things like, 'Mother Nature', creation, fate, 'Gaia', or or other all-powerful entities. Going back to neopaganism only weakens the argument...

Now we're getting desperate! Moving on!!!

Fifth: Ecology. I mentioned this previously, but it also contributes to inconsistency. I will add, though, that responding to ill-informed theists' stance that we are above nature does not mean we are only a part of it.. why not both, as the Bible teaches? After all, it is clear that we share certain aspects of nature, but it is also clear that we have dominion over other species on earth at this point.

Yep.. so what?

The sixth inconsistency I will mention is on the subject of judging. Atheists often ridicule believers for being intolerant. The Bible only condemns hypocritical, selfish, and arrogant judging. While theists often do this too, I would argue it is never the Bible they are really supporting in those cases, but their own cause. After all, if it is simply wrong to tell someone they are wrong, then how can you tell a theist they are wrong?
In light of this I think a slight distinction is necessary: It is one thing to judge something (decide whether a statement is incorrect or a behavior is immoral) and quite another to be judgemental (to judge without grace or concern for others).

Now we're just taking stabs in the dark. The topic of "judgement" isn't exactly something that makes or breaks my beliefs.

Because of all of this, nobody can live as a fully consistent atheist, because there is no absolute standard.

The only point of worth was Plantinga's argument which actually takes something that would apply to *all* non-believers - their cognitive faculties - and uses that as a vehicle for an argument. Apart from that, I honestly wasn't forced to rethink my position at all. This is due to the fact that you think atheism is some sort of organised philosophy where anything not-God must be included. Well, at least for me, I found that your arguments were way too broad to the point that you weren't really addressing "non-belief in God and it's fatal implications"... kind of like what Plantinga's argument hopes to do, but rather, a whole lot of varying philosophical stances which you thought made up *every* atheist's beliefs. In essence, this is one giant strawman.

[The Reality Salesman01]

Frodo,
Have you seen people pretend to be hypnotized?

Have you seen skinny girls that think they're fat?

Have you seen people that have wonderful lives, ignore the great things in it entirely and convince themselves that they have nothing to live for?

No claim about what a person says is true for them is strong enough to count as evidence for science.

[fr0d0]

I would conclude that 100% of my sample group were convinced they were experiencing God. Whether or not they actually were is something different entirely. It's 50 counts of a subjective, and unverifiable claim.

How is it unverified if 100% of your sample just verified it?

[Chas]

I agree that there is something there, but not what you say it is.

I'm not talking about feelings or suspicions or superstition. I'm talking about verified shared knowledge and understanding. Like two people have been to see a concert, and two people haven't. The two people without the experience cannot relate to what the other two share. They can hear what they're saying, and perhaps relate to it, but until they experience it for themselves, the words are empty.

Well, no. Really, no. The concert was an external, verifiable event.

This is not a good metaphor.