To prove God not existing, atheists conflate God with invisible unicorns.

That was the question...

That premise remains to be demonstrated.

Such as? Citation(s) please...

Ummm... Because they are rational and have no need of fairy tales and sky-daddies?

Perhaps agnostics grew in number because gnostics grew in number?

In your mind maybe, but here that is an unsubstantiated statement based solely on your opinion, not fact.

 

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Well, I am still waiting for Seattle to reply to my last post here prior to the present one.


Dear readers, he said he wanted out, that is very dismaying to me, for I thought that he was keen on us two having a dialog on the issue God exists or not, now he wants out.


You see, readers here, that is the way with atheists like Seattle, they make a lot of gratuitous statements peppered with words like magic, invisible unicorn, superman, etc., but just ask them to present information on concepts like God, cause, evidence. logic, etc., and they will like Seattle resort to harsh words like stupid.


At this point of our dialog, if and when he returns, I will just repeat my requests to him, that now he has the information from the Finnish atheists' Dictionary of Atheism, he can just choose one of the concepts there, and we can already take off in our exchange for his contention that God does not exist, and for my contention that God does exist.


And also I want him to tell me as he is a master of nature, to tell me what he knows of the relation of nature to the universe.


There. Now I will wait for Seattle to return. If he does not return, then I will see if any atheist will engage in a one on one dialog with me, including Sarkus.

In the case of Sarkus, I decided for the time being not to continue my dialog with him, because he does not care to produce a statement similar to mine, Everything with a beginning has need of a cause; which statement from me he insists that it is not any kind of logic, but he refuses to produce a statement similar to mine and we will both discuss how my statement and his example are or are not examples of logic.

 

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Atheists can have congregations too. I would love it if there were no such thing as atheism due to the fact that there was no theism to compare it with.

 

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Uh, no.
If there were no theism at all then, by definition, everyone would be an atheist.
But we wouldn't have the term itself.

You're going to have to provide something more than your own uninformed opinion that atheists are "envious".

 

It's certainly possible to be envious of the benefits of religion, as there are some clear social advantages. I'm not sure if that means it's true. Perhaps Kerux is implying that God exists because even atheists depend on the concept to be atheists. In that case, it's a weak argument.

 

Yet in all the posts you have made on this thread, it is you who has waffled almost incessantly. Your posts are long yet what you actually say is almost non-existent.
You have made almost no effort to actually have a discussion, merely insist that people abide by your requirements in responding.

I gave you explicit reasons why I didn't (and still don't) think your statement is an example of logic. You ask for "a statement similar to mine" that is an example of logic, yet you can not seem to grasp that it is not the content of the statement but the structure of it that is the issue. Thus a "statement similar to mine" will not be logic either.
I gave you plenty of examples of how your statement could be included within an example of logic. I gave these to you, as did Baldeee. You chose to ignore them.
You called me out for not understanding logic and then ignored all subsequent responses.

The only one not wanting to get involved in a discussion on this forum is you, Pachomius, as evidenced by your 150+ posts of waffle, air and minimal actual content.

 

Then there is nothing to say that God is not as fictitious as unicorns or the celestial teapot, other than your confidence in what you admit to yourself you can not grasp.
Furthermore, you claim that the "Creator's angels visited the fleshly birth of the Christ, but never now", yet what do you have in support of that claim? Other than the veracity of the Bible which is the question in hand, and so can not be assumed.

You are claiming. You do so even now with your claim of "Biblical truths", and you do it in your statement above regarding the "Creator's angels".
And you also seem to be claiming that notions other than the Creation story are "evil angelic stories"?
All I see here is someone believing the Bible with nothing outside of the Bible to support their beliefs.

And yet if things can be explained by the material, even if as hallucination or illusion, then what recourse to the non-material do we have need for?
Are you merely hanging onto the notion of the non-material because you fear the alternative is to accept that you hallucinate?

So how do you know that the Bible is true? That the Creation story is true, as you claim? Other than your belief in the veracity of the Bible? On what do you base that belief?
You claim that the Biblical God Creator can not be grasped, so how is anyone supposed to "grasp" him.

 

Okay, Sarkus, let us get started.

I say Everything with a beginning needs a cause.

What is your reaction

 

OOHHH! What a novel argument!

I say it's been done. And done again...

The argument to be made here is a form of the cosmological argument which originated in the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, and was refined by Thomas Aquinas. With the advances of modern science, the version I will provide will be perhaps clearer for some than the form set forth by Aquinas. It is a composite of Aquinas’ vertical cosmological argument and the Kalam cosmological argument:​

1. 1. Everything that has a beginning needs a cause.
   2. The universe had a beginning.
   3. The universe needs a cause.
   4. There cannot be an infinite regress of caused causes.
   5. There must be a cause for all else which has no beginning and needs no cause for its own existence.

http://carm.org/the-cosmological-argument

The first cause argument is the argument that everything that has a beginning of its existence has a cause, that the universe has a beginning of its existence, and that the universe therefore has a cause. This cause, unless it too has a cause, must be without a beginning; it must be eternal. If successful, this argument proves the existence of an uncreated Creator.​

http://www.existence-of-god.com/first-cause-objections.html

The questions can go on and on — everything that causes something is in turn caused by something else. We can trace this chain of causes back as far as we want, but Aristotle thought that eventually we reach a first cause that just was —causing but itself uncaused. This is Aristotle’s “Prime Mover.”​

http://atheism.about.com/od/argumentsforgod/a/cosmological.htm

I first ran into this in entry level philosophy at university in 1979 or 80 - I'm pretty sure Sarkus has dealt with it as well...

 

My reaction is to ask on what basis you make this generalisation?
While we have empirical evidence that matter changes form, and thus one could claim that any change of form (i.e. the beginning of a new form needs a cause, it's questionable whether we have evidence of anything actually beginning to exist, and thus can not say whether it is true or false that in order to begin to exist one needs a cause.
As for claiming that a change of form (i.e. the beginning of a new form) at least needs a cause, one could argue that radioactive decay, for example, is such an example but this actually appears to be causeless (i.e. the exact trigger mechanism appears to be non-existent).

So, rather than be the self-evident presumption that you might wish it, even before you use it as part of the Cosmological Argument, you're going to need to justify acceptance of this premise.

Anyone with even the vaguest interest in philosophy has dealt with it at some level, I'm sure.

 

I said that it is an example of logic that everything with a beginning needs a cause?

Are you denying that everything with a beginning needs a cause, or what are you talking about?

I present a proposition, just present the opposite proposition, okay?

Then we can talk about the merits of my and your proposition respectively.

 

First, I have explained already and at length why your proposition in and of itself is not "an example of logic" as you believe: it is merely a proposition. If you have arrived at it through logic then present the logic. Otherwise you're just presenting a wheel and saying "here is my example of a car!"
Second, in my post above I am questioning the soundness of your proposition. After all, if one can not demonstrate the soundness of the proposition, one can not demonstrate, through logic, the soundness of the conclusion. All we are left with is conditional conclusions at best.
So I'm tackling the issue as you raise it... you began with just a proposition (which is not "an example of logic" in and of itself) and I am questioning the soundness of that proposition.

Therefore please justify why I should accept that proposition? I have given in my previous post a reasonable justification of why it should not be accepted as sound. It might be true, it might be false. I feel it is unproven and thus as a proposition I see it as unsound.

You asked for my reaction: My reaction is to ask on what basis you make the generalisation you do?
I am not here to propose an alternative - I am here to see if your argument stacks up. At the moment you have presented a proposition, seemingly as the first step on the Cosmological Argument. I have questioned the soundness of that proposition.

The question now is: what is your reaction? Are you going to show how we should accept the soundness of your proposition, or are we going to leave it - and thereby the conclusion - as being unsound?

 

you have tangible evidence there is a god???

 

Okay, please Sarkus, are you advocating the proposition that everything with a beginning need not have a cause?


I am advocating the proposition that everything with a beginning needs a cause.


Please don talk so much, just produce your opposite proposition, and then we can each bring up an example of a thing with a beginning that has a cause -- from my part, and you an example of a thing with a beginning that does not have a cause.

 

What's a cause? Doesn't the universe have to already exist for there to be causes?

 

No. I'm saying I don't know whether it is true or not that everything with a beginning need have a cause.
Can you even name one thing that definitely had a beginning to its existence, rather than just be a change of form of a pre-existing thing?
So I am not advocating any proposition.

I know you are. I am asking you to now justify that proposition. What is so difficult for you to understand about that?
You make a claim / proposition: please support it. Justify it. Show why it should be accepted.

This is not a formal debate between two competing ideas. This is you presenting an argument, and some of us asking questions about your argument, probing your argument, attacking it to see how well it stands up to scrutiny.
We do not need to present an alternative to see if your argument is solid or not. But at the moment all you've done is made a claim and then refused to go any further.
That's not really how discussion should go.

As for "talking so much", I say what I feel needs to be said. Hopefully it's not complicated. It's certainly not rocket science. But if there is anything in what I say that you do not comprehend, simply ask for clarification.

But if you're looking for a formal debate, where they only use words of one syllable, and sentences of no more than 10 words, then perhaps you should look elsewhere.

 

Remains to be? It had been demonstrated a long time ago. Many atheists when bedridden still were agnostic and finally said a little prayer to their self-version of a god/powerful spirit, lol. What a shame! Anyway, there really were true atheists until death.

In your mind, they are rational, but actually very irrational and erratic. Why should someone who never acknowledge a super-power argue that superpower? Or maybe, the very real situation is this: some atheists just challenge that "Spirit" to confront them. hehe. Very childish!

No agnostics contradict the teachings of gnostics and they successfully persuaded the "doubters."

Not solely on my opinion, there are plenty of authors who seemed to be atheists but actually a believer of a "Creator" like Charles Darwin. Even Dawkins admit that "he can be wrong"? In that statement alone, any atheist can be wrong for him. Lol. Atheists should insist certainty that really their beliefs are truthful! Theists, on the other hand, insist even to the extent that they killed each other. True Christians don't butcher human beings.

 

"Can have congregations" is just into a process of forming. Ten years ago, I already suggested that atheists should form a congregation. Actually, as long as there is human being, there will always be an atheist. It was already written in the Book of Revelations. Atheists are still in that great Judgment Day.

 

Theists shall always exist and their opposite atheists shall always exist as long as this earth is still but on that Judgment Day atheists shall witness whether they are right or whether they are wrong.

 

FAME - this is what these atheist authors and defenders are actually craving for. They want to eradicate any known beliefs or myths about a creator. hehe. I notice the ending in a series of mythology, in a movie, and television episodes, by the slaying of one of the important gods of ancient greek mythology and what a surprise, it's a work of atheists. Although I agree with that idea, the end of myths, but I insist in this web, not only here in this fora, the survival of the Bible until Judgment comes. Remember the burning of one of the translators of the earliest Bible? It's not a work of a God-fearing human being but a work of a nonbeliever, merciless and satanic atheist, who appeared to be an advocate of theism.