Serious question for atheists

Hurr, that's not text dipshit. This, what you are reading, is text. If you read it out loud, what you are hearing is not text.

Fail.

What is it with the name calling suddenly? I was just offering a response based on your question of "how do you listen to text?"

IMO the voice only comes about by inputting text, and people are able to listen to the voice. I get that this is not exactly 'listening to text' by your anal standards. But sometimes its actually easier to just figure out what the guy is trying to say than poking at his quote and focusing on some random word play.

... How about figuratively, like a comic of someone listening to their teacher. Comic <-> Text, Person <-> Listening. Would that work?

EDIT: You don't get it? Like, seriously?

---------------- You
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|_________________ Stupid Barrier
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| [size=10]aaaaaaahhhhhhhhh [/h]

Atheist: So can you prove one bit of god's existence?
Christian: well no, but you cannot DISprove him.
Atheist: So you mean out of an entire religion there's not any facts that even support it?
Christian: No, but like i said you still can't disprove it!
Atheist: Have you ever heard about the invisible pink unicorn?
Christian: I hate atheist proverbs! They are always so oversimplified!
Atheist: ...That's because it is simple.
Christian: I still have my faith!
Atheist: Here we go.
Atheist: Well, I have FAITH you're a retard.
...end of conversation
Christian flew away with his faith

with faith =3

Well after reading 13 pages of heated discussion it makes me wanna post my views too.

I think atheists asks question because they wanted to know more about the religion,not necessarily trying to prove someone religion is wrong or flawed.They just wanted to know why you believed in God,thats all.

About Christians trying to convert you, well i had the same experience except i was a Muslim. Yep, missionaries can sometimes be pushy especially on Atheists.Heck, they even tried to convert me. But i declined politely,even if he's fuming mad.

Everybody has their own views about this world.Sure some of them are extremists but we are here to discuss,not blaming and proving each other wrong.But hey, we have something in common anyway. We love hentai,right?Or am i wrong?

touche` my good person, touche`

I apologize in advance for the wall of text.



I will give you that you have a talent for misdirection, subtle subject changes, and sugar coating. And I don’t doubt in the least that you actually believe all of this nonsense you are spewing about everywhere. It doesn’t make you any less of an asshat simply because you renamed your behavior as such to a †˜direct approach’. There is a difference between getting to the point in a concise matter, and getting there with attitude, which can truly only be something other than a direct approach.

But I am in danger of following your lead, so I shall get to my own points.

Everything in this world suffers from a base uncertainty. The implications of which lead to the conclusion that there is nothing at all that can be proven in an absolute unquestionable manner. Because of this, this argument is a favorite among everyone who is losing an argument, because it is something to fall back on and it never fails.

Whenever someone insists on using this argument, you have to assume that belief in everything becomes pointless, life becomes pointless. The debate becomes pointless. Now maybe there is some sagely truth about the depressing lack of purpose to life hidden in there, and maybe that is unavoidable. I don’t really care however, and neither should you. The choice is synonymous with choosing to live on your couch, and choosing to live with the rest of humanity, hopefully not a hard choice. My point is, you need to disregard the fundamental uncertainty when dealing with real life issues, because as soon as you factor it into anything that we consider “real” you might as well get back on the couch.

Now I’m sure you are going to say that you were never talking about the fundamental uncertainty in the first place, and that there really is an element of faith to science that is “real” (that is to say, not directly related to this base uncertainty). When back in the real world though, what decides if something is based on faith or not is its ability to be verified. So what determines if something is verifiable? Again, remember that we are ignoring Descartes for now. Something that is verifiable is something whose functionality can be tested (or according to the first dictionary on google “based on observable phenomena"). Science is functional and observable, and has proven itself as such millions of times over. If you ever find your “faith” in science wavering, you can always go set up a laboratory and run whatever experiment a couple million times until you are satisfied that the result never changes (this is functionality). Thus it does not rely on faith in any real sense.

Religion on the other hand is not verifiable. It is not observable. You could possibly make the argument that it is functional, in terms of moral teaching to the populace, but that functionality is not related to the existence or nonexistence of god, only the belief in such. Religion is, at its core, still stuck at the base uncertainty, and therefore not “real” as we consider things to be real. The rest of the world moved on a long, long time ago, and the only argument religion has left is “You can’t be sure! Nothing is certain!”.

Sugar coating? Not really.

I'm sorry, you seem to be misunderstanding me.

I am stating that the reason you DO NOT KNOW FOR SURE is a good reason why there is an essence of faith in science.

The fact that everything has it does nothing to get rid of this. I have no idea why you believe this.

But that is not the only reason I am discussing faith. Or did you miss the entire point I made about the scientific method.

You have a misunderstanding. Science uses verifiable phenomenon to try to understand the forces that are not observable. An apple falls to the ground because of gravity. The apple falling to the ground is observable. Gravity must be inferred because of the apple falling to the ground.

And what do you use? The scientific method. However, AS I HAVE STATED MULTIPLE TIMES, the scientific method is NOT provable.

And this is where you gain the basis of faith I am discussing.

I only said sugar coating in referance to you calling your being rude as a direct approach. That is sugar coating.



I understand you quite clearly. Unfortunately it is you that does not understand me. Science is based on that which is verifiable and, pay special attention to this next part, functional. If it looks like it works and feels like it works and has worked a couple million times in separate instances of observation, it works. Now I understand that you are saying that we cannot make a leap from one to the other, and I am saying that we can. Again, this is because science is functional. If we didn't make a leap from one to the other, we most likely would not be talking now on the internet, and you most likely would not be reading this. I agree that there is potential uncertainty about our fundamental understanding of the concepts we use to build this technology, but there is no uncertainty, in any real sense, that the concepts are correct in some form. It is only our understanding that is uncertain.

I would also like to point out, while we are on the topic, that we are primary talking about two types of uncertainty here. Complete and total uncertainty in god's existence, and a very small possibility that we have misunderstood classical concepts in science. The first one, we can flip a coin. The second one, we probably need a super computer to calculate.




I told you why I believe this in my first post. This was pretty much entirely what the post was about. But I will reiterate for you. If everything requires 'faith' to sustain it, then belief structures are completely arbitrary. It doesn't matter what you do or believe, because everything is equally uncertain. You choose to eat, or goto work, or even live simply on faith that this is what is best for you.

However we know that this is not accurate. We choose to eat because we are hungry. We choose to goto work because we need money to pay the bills. And we choose to live, most likely, because we fear death. The difference between these things is that faith exists in a state of total uncertainty, and the others are things we have gathered from our senses. Certainly it does not dispel this fundamental 'faith' we must take in all things, but if we operate at that level there would be complete confusion in society. We would most probably die rather quickly. Of course, this wouldn't matter, because all we ever had in the first place was faith that life was better than death, and what is faith besides uncertainty?



You are arguing a technicality here that is irrelevant to the content of this discussion. It is a matter of perspective as to whether or not gravity is observable. You say that you observe an apple fall to the ground, and gravity is inferred. I say gravity is observed pulling an apple to the ground. They are one in the same, and again, this technicality is irrelevant to the discussion.

I am certain that you will retort with "We only named it gravity after observing the apple.", and this is where my earlier point comes in. It is not the underlying concepts that are uncertain. There is no uncertainty that the apple falls for example. It is our understanding of these concepts that is uncertain, and that understanding has evolved. This is where you of course claim that science requires faith, but certainly the concepts that support it do not. So maybe you are claiming that the understanding of these concepts requires faith, but I don't think that they do either, because this understanding is built on what we have observed and tested. Maybe ordinary people must take this understanding on faith, but scientists certainly do not. They never have to simply take someone else's word for it, if there is doubt, they will test it again for themselves.

But just to keep things in perspective, we have now arrived at the very qualified statement of 'the understanding of science as viewed by those who don't understand it requires faith'.

As for the scientific method being unprovable, you have been very vague about this throughout the entire thread. You leave us to guess as to what we think you think is unprovable about it. I think that maybe you mean that it is only an arbitrary system defined to prove other things, but the truth is that it is not arbitrary. The system is functional. So your real argument here goes back to the fundamental uncertainty I talked about earlier, but again, you say that this isn't true. So please, tell us explicitly what is unprovable about the scientific method.

I will thank you to note also that my argument does not consist of "You have a misunderstanding." "I'm sorry, you seem to be misunderstanding me." "I have no idea why you believe this.". You will notice that I use actual arguments to support my points. I know I have also been quite passive aggressive, and it is hard not to with the tone you set in your posts, but I will refrain from it in the future if you leave it out of your arguments. Emotions really have no place in debate.

*sighs*

I did not change the subject. You hoped into the argument midpoint, and now you're complaining when I go back an reiterate why I am talking about faith with science.

I mean really, if you're going to come and whine at me because you want to try and change the argument into the one YOU want when there was one already well underway then just go fucking leave because I'm not your nanny.

I have not been vague about why the scientific method cannot be proven. But I'll reexamine this for you since you apparently can't read.

How would you go about proving it? Well you just start by using the scientific method, OH WAIT! You can't use something to prove itself because that would create bias.

So how do you go about proving it? Are you going to suggest that it provides results? Of course this would be the whole "Proving the system with itself thing again." which would ding ding ding have bias.

So no, you cannot prove it works.

You cannot see a force such as gravity. You can only see the results of said force, the apple falling to the ground. Magnets being pulled in to each other and such.

You infer that there is a force because of these observations.



Oh and btw, thanks for proving you misunderstand what I said.




this would be a valid argument, if it weren't for the fact that I didn't say everything only relied on faith, just that because everything had this fundamental faith doesn't mean it just goes away.

The current thread of the argument had nothing to do with the scientific method. Just because I jumped in 'midpoint' does not mean that a post you made several days ago is relevant to what I had to say. These religious threads tend to be quite long, and they do a lot of wandering. For example, this thread was originally about why atheists feel the need to impress their beliefs on other people. Do you expect that I should have addressed that as well in my post? Do you think that it would have been relevant? The thread really isn't on that topic anymore.



Again, saying it is so and insulting me won't make it true.



What basis do you have for assuming that the scientific method was used to construct the scientific method? How is that even possible? This is complete and total gibberish that you have invented. That’s like claiming that you can use a crane to construct itself. I don't think anyone but you is under the pretense that the scientific method was used to verify itself. If you want to know how it was *really* constructed, look at the history section of the Wikipedia article you yourself quoted (but most assuredly did not read).

Suffice to say that it was an iterative process defined by what is functional and logical. No one suddenly decided to write up a process by which to prove everything scientific from scratch. At its very roots, the scientific method is just what makes sense. Now you can argue that what makes sense is unverifiable, but you would be treading on the toes of that other argument I’ve been going on about (fundamental uncertainty).





Again, I think I could almost directly quote my previous post. This is a matter of perspective only. Seeing the results of gravity are akin to seeing gravity. You can reword this argument however you like, but it doesn't change the fact that you are arguing a technicality, whether you realize it or not.

Oh and btw, thanks for proving you misunderstand what I said. No, that’s not a quote. I thought it fit perfectly into my argument. It explains everything so well, and does a great job of supporting my argument. It is also highly relevant to the discussion.



I know you have not stated that everything relies only on faith, and I never said that you did. I only used that example in my post while attempting to explain the concept to you. You have of course taken it out of context however and put words in my mouth, while missing the point entirely.

You asked why I believed you could remove fundamental faith from the equation. I demonstrated that IF you factor it in, then belief structures become arbitrary. I did not say that you did factor it in, only that if you do, beliefs become arbitrary. This is because they are reduced to two states, absolute certainty, and complete uncertainty, and nearly everything will fall into the second category. How many times do you want me to reword this argument? It doesn't matter if you try to pair up this uncertainty with other things, if it is one of your factors in any argument, your entire argument becomes pointless.



Let me rephrase that for you:

"You're wrong!"

Strong argument you have there. My argument as to why the fundamental faith that exists in everything is irrelevant in day to day life is not as simple as you suppose. I am sorry to say that you might have to actually address my points. This is the third time I have had to reword it, and I probably should not have obliged you. I am sure that there are other people reading these forums that are smart enough, or perhaps open-minded enough, to learn something from it however, so I am sure that my post is not wasted.

*shakes his head*

You hoped on, arguing about my usage of faith.

THAT IS CALLED HOPING IN ON THE FUCKING ARGUMENT AT HAND.

If you're going to argue that, then don't point to the name of the thread and go "Well you weren't"

And don't whine about days ago. This is a thread on a forum. A couple of days is not a good enough justification to null something. Especially when you come and try to attack an argument constructed from it.

If you want to whine about what I'm arguing with, then don't jump into the fucking argument. Be a bitch somewhere else.

Now for the topic at hand.

"It's not able to construct itself." Well no fucking duh. That's the POINT.

Ding ding ding.

Wow, way to go "You're wrong." And then restate what I said as if this evidence goes against what I said.

It doesn't. It just reiterates what I said. You can't use it to prove itself, just like you can't use it to construct itself.

Functional and logical. You really like those words.

But the thing is, while it is a good idea. And it seems logical. How do you actually validate it to BE logical.

It's all fine and nice to say it was built on logical ideas, but you can't prove they were logical ideas.

So really, they are just sound ideas. Yes there is a lot of knowledge and experience behind those ideas, but they don't have evidence supporting them other than it SEEMS plausible and it SEEMS to work.

Yes it was well thought out. But that doesn't change any of that.

So again. You cannot prove it actually works.

Now you try to jump back to your fundamental uncertainity thing again. But the difference between other items and the scientific method, is that they have something to prove them, support them while the scientific method does not. It only has results that look like they are working, but that is only if it is actually working. But you have that fundamental uncertainity of yours that you are talking about, and without proof you have to know that your ideas are good, ie faith.

Like I said before, whether or not everything has fundamental uncertainity, DOES NOT change the fact that it has it.







Umm, what? No I'm not.

Fine, how about something less abstract than gravity.

Let's say a flood. You can see the results of the flood. Water damage, down trees etc etc. But seeing these results, is not the same as seeing the flood. How do you not know these results weren't do to a tsunami? Even if it was a flood, how high did it get? Why did it occur? Etc etc. See, it's not the same because if looking at the results was the same as looking at the actually thing, you could just look at the flood and spout off this information.

But no, you have to go through the evidence and gather enough of it to infer that there was indeed a flood and things about it.

So again, NO, looking at the results of something is not the same as looking at something.

I won't bother working in a circular argument with you on the last portion because it's unnecessary to bother.

>>; a flood is actually far less abstract than gravity. And about your gravity statement, it wasn't the apple thats only falling, the apple is what made newton start to think about "O_o now that i think about it, why the fuck is everything stuck to the ground? why is it that if i lift the apple around shoulder level and let go, it still wants to get back to the ground!? wtf is this!? hmmmmmm......" <=== that prompted him to think about "gravity".

Yes it is merely a theory, but thanks to over millions of experimentation, it is pretty much "fact" as every time someone starts the experiment, we get the same results. Why does gravity exist? because the earth rotates and revolves around the sun, how do we know? its not 100% certain, but it is more than likely proven with a simulation of an object's orbit around a center point (in fact, somewhat proven with satellites currently orbiting around our earth's atmosphere).

Theory, is but an abstract idea. However, theory can be as real as E=MC^2 <== familiar? thats the fundamental of nuclear technology right there. I believe static really made extremely valid points in his arguments.

However, do not get me wrong, I for one do not believe that faith is completely useless or stupid; Though I may be biased towards the side of "logic", I am not entirely without sympathy on the side of "faith".

I have come to the conclusion that you don't really care about the direction of the argument, only about winning it. I hope anyone else reading this finds it as comical as I do that you would say "well they really aren't logical ideas, we don't know for sure, they just make a lot of sense". And then I will address that in my next post and you will go "well they really aren't sound ideas, we don't know for sure, they just have a lot of logic".



And this is the point you are missing, what seems plausible and seems to work is all we have to go on in this world. You must either take observable evidence at face value, or be prepared to argue that nothing is certain at all.



More vagueness. Other items? You mean other things that we take to be real? Other beliefs? How am I supposed to see that there is some uniquely special way to prove these other items when you don't talk about them? Am I just to take your word for it? I am relatively certain that any specific case you could create I could tear down in the same way you are attempting to tear down science. This is of course because you can argue that anything is uncertain.



Great, everything is equally uncertain and pointless. I agree with you. Lets all just stop arguing then.

The difference I keep trying to outline to you is that while yes, everything is uncertain, this is not something that we normally care about in day to day life. It is not relevant. I never stated that the fundamental uncertainty does not exist, only that it isn’t important.



This is not in the least bit similar to the previous analogy. In the previous analogy it was assumed that I was there to watch the entire process. Now you have created a new analogy and said that I am not allowed to watch the apple drop. Of course you will have to collect evidence and make deductions. For all we know a little kid ran up and pulled it off the tree. There are any numbers of way the water damage could have occurred as there are any number of ways the apple could end up on the ground. In both situations you can tell however, if you are there to see the process, what happened. As I said before, you have quite a talent for misdirection.

Go ahead though, try another analogy, there is little denying that you messed that one up. I won't blame you though, I know sometimes things make more sense in our heads before we write them down.

Now you're arguing I'm being vague?

Look up the definition of my words if you want.

So you're saying that Seems is all we have.

Well thank you for agreeing with the point I was originally making. I guess that nicely wraps up the argument and shows you don't understand what I was arguing at the same time.

As for other items, I meant within Science. Sorry I didn't make that clear, I was just talking about the science portion so I thought it would be implied but I was wrong in assuming you would get it, my bad.


Anwyays, moving onto the analogy comment.


My first reaction is to laugh as what you wrote.

I didn't do any misdirection.

Here is what you wrote




My analogy fits perfectly within that.

Now if you want an analogy of something that occurs?

Alright then.

An invisible man walks into your house when you are sitting there. He suddenly start punching and kicking the wall.

All you hear is the sound of the contact. All you see is suddenly holes and dents start to appear.

You have no idea what this man is. You cannot be sure of how tall he is. You cannot be sure if it is female or male.

Heck, you can't even tell that it is an invisible man. You just know something is happening until you examine the results.

.................... Okay, whatever you say, if you are happy with that, just be happy with that.

It´s useless to try making people change.


And I have a better idea, as people believe in an imaginary god, we should believe in CHUCK NORRIS, a true one. He is the only true god (same bullshit but funny).

-¨And as Jesus walks on water, Chuck Norris swims through the ground (Norris facts).¨

I tell this to religious people, answering me ¨God will send you to hell, siner¨, I answer ¨hahahaha, God?, hell?, HAHAHAHA¨.

Now you're just trolling.

And Bruce Lee kicked Chuck Norris's ass.

Well, you were being vague. I don't think there is very much you can say that won't make that true. No point in attacking me because I pointed out that you didn't explain these mysterious 'other items' were that were so different. I am supposed to just look up what 'other items' are in the dictionary am I? Will I really find anything remotely relevant to the discussion?



Yes, the way things seem, how they are observed. That is all we have to go on. And that is all that is relevant. If I am not mistaken, you also had a claim that science relied on faith however, which so far as I knew was what we were debating about. I have been saying from my very first post that observable evidence - the way things seem - is all that we have. The fact that you have only now realized this proves that you don't understand what I am saying, not the other way around.



You just love that passive aggressive shit don't you? You think it makes an amazing argument or something.




You are interpretating the word 'results' differently than I intended it, and you know it. I did not mean that seeing an apple on the ground is akin to seeing it fall. I meant that seeing an apple fall (the results of gravity) is akin to witnessing the force of gravity. Even if you were confused by that particular statement, it would have been obvious to you from my earlier post where I said:



In this post it is extremely clear that I intended the viewing of the whole thing as part of the observation. There is nothing about seeing only the apple on the ground and drawing inferences. You play with semantics, and this argument has no substance. Words in the english language have countless definitions, there is little anyone can say that cannot be misinterpreted by someone determined to overlook the most apparent meaning. I know you really aren't so stupid so as to have overlooked it. In fact, I am certain that you are reasonably intelligent, just very stubborn to lose an argument.




You are right, science couldn't possibly explain the invisible man, and neither could I from observing it. I wouldn't know what to call that if I ever observed it. However, I don't think that there is anything wrong or unusual about this, seeing as how the scenario is completely imaginary. Science deals with forces that actually exist, and so, though my understanding of science, I can come to call those forces by their names when I see them. Unfortunately for your argument, the imaginary man-force has never existed and has no bearing on any of this because it is in fact imaginary, and science, dealing with things that are not imaginary, would not be expected to provide a name or an understanding for something that does not exist.

Care to try another analogy?

I do, incidentally. I enjoyed reading your arguments, but in order to fully grasp what you were countering, I began to read that too. I didn't enjoy the latter so much, so I quit while I was ahead. I do feel like repping you however, which I will attempt to do so at the next opportunity.