i dont really remember where i said god is totally true and provable because there was this old book written about him.....but thanks for putting words in my mouth. My point being, that the teapot and whatever "cockamamie" imagined comparisons you'd like to make to god, any god, is retarded at its core in that at no point in human history has a pasta dragon been culturally, historically, or politically relevant or significant

now having said that, am i saying that then this must be true? of course not, although you can keep insisting i am. What i am saying is that if we were to take your teapot and a god of mythology, i am less inclined as a being of intellect to believe, or otherwise be persuaded or influenced by the former. Now before you put more words in mouth, I am not saying that this means you should believe in god, or allah, or fucking santa. I am merely pointing out the ridiculous comparrison of mythological dieties of historical and cultural relevance, to something utterly irrelevant that you made up (not you personally but you know what i mean, the spaghetti monster crap)

You've got to be kidding me! Of course it's impossible to prove it either way! That's the entire damned point of the Flying Spaghetti Monster! You can't prove it except to assert that because people wrote a book to worship, it must be true!

You expect me to accept that there is some all-powerful, perfect, magical, interdimentional being that created everything at a whim, yet somehow never had to be created Himself, is eternal, demands that I live my life a certain way, is supposedly all-loving despite all of the suffering that He causes, and the only reasons that you can give me to believe such a cockamamie story are that a lot of people really believe that it's true (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum), and that there is a book that says that it's true (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_reasoning)! Forgive my crass interjection, but that is complete and utter horse shit!

Moot my ass, it's exactly the point! If you want to stick with Santa, then let's! It's the same thing! You don't expect me to believe that there is a Santa as the mythical, magical figure that we know him now just because there are a lot of kids that believe in him and he's an important cultural figure, do you? And he was at least based on a real person!>> ^smooman:

>> ^Sketch:
You CANNOT prove the non-existence of something like this! It's the same old Celestial Teapot, Pink Unicorn, Flying Spaghetti Monster issue! As with my laser eyes, prove that they don't exist! It is a ridiculous thing to even request!

i would argue that it is fundamentally impossible to actually "prove" it either way, existence or nonexistence. However, when compared to the tired diatribe of the teapot or spaghetti monster, its moot. No one could disprove your laser eyes, or a celestial teapot just as no one could prove them either. I am less inclined to believe in your laser eyes or a celestial teapot in that at no point in human history have they ever been relevant or significant enough for men to write holy works about them throughout the centuries. The whole spaghetti monster thing is really just dumb. If you want to illustrate your point youd be better served sticking with santa (dozens of myths written about the character in many nations over many centuries) than something like these teapots and pasta monsters that are entirely irrelevant

>> ^Sketch:

You CANNOT prove the non-existence of something like this! It's the same old Celestial Teapot, Pink Unicorn, Flying Spaghetti Monster issue! As with my laser eyes, prove that they don't exist! It is a ridiculous thing to even request!


i would argue that it is fundamentally impossible to actually "prove" it either way, existence or nonexistence. However, when compared to the tired diatribe of the teapot or spaghetti monster, its moot. No one could disprove your laser eyes, or a celestial teapot just as no one could prove them either. I am less inclined to believe in your laser eyes or a celestial teapot in that at no point in human history have they ever been relevant or significant enough for men to write holy works about them throughout the centuries. The whole spaghetti monster thing is really just dumb. If you want to illustrate your point youd be better served sticking with santa (dozens of myths written about the character in many nations over many centuries) than something like these teapots and pasta monsters that are entirely irrelevant

How do you prove something that exists outside of space and time? What physical process could you use to point to it? Anyone could go and examine you and verify whether you have "laser eyes". There is no way to put God under a microscope.

Therefore, we rely on Him to communicate with us. Faith is in the unseen, it is not blind. I don't believe in God because the bible told me to. I believe in God because He showed me He is real. He would show you too, if you honesty sought Him out. Yet, you just believe what you've heard and haven't looked for the truth yourself.

Lets say there was a certain King, whom you had never seen..and you are one of his peasants. You're under his authority and expected to work for him in the fields for a wage, and that when you are of the age of retirement, he will give you a home on his land and thank you personally. You see soldiers of his, marching through the town. You hear people talking about his attributes, his justness and intelligence. You witness his authority displayed all around you. It is plain there is a King though you had never seen him.

Now lets say one day you refuse to work, refuse to submit to his authority. You say to yourself, I don't believe this King is really real; I've never seen him with my own eyes.. This a conspiracy, I will just do whatever I want. You even decide to go into the towns square to tell others to stop working for this King. That it is a fools errand, the King is a hoax you say. You're wasting your lives when you could live for yourself! Yet, when the King gets wind of this he tells his soldiers "Fetch my ungrateful servant and bring him in front of me"

The soldiers fetch you and bring you before the throne. Finally, you get to see this King with your own eyes. Yet, it's too late..you've already earned His judgment. If you had pleased him the evidence would have been forthcoming. If you had done a good job, you would have earned a reward. Instead you refused to do your duty, and thus earned a criminals fate. Cursing your foolishness, you are taken to the gallows, but there is no reprieve forthcoming.

>> ^Sketch:
You CANNOT prove the non-existence of something like this! It's the same old Celestial Teapot, Pink Unicorn, Flying Spaghetti Monster issue! As with my laser eyes, prove that they don't exist! It is a ridiculous thing to even request!

You CANNOT prove the non-existence of something like this! It's the same old Celestial Teapot, Pink Unicorn, Flying Spaghetti Monster issue! As with my laser eyes, prove that they don't exist! It is a ridiculous thing to even request!

Maybe we need an invocation of "notdupe."

The person who duped me doesn't agree with you or gwiz. The person who isduped that particular vid is a self-described noobie who was trusting the first call of dupe. (I asked her -- this is what she told me.)

This is all tempest in a teapot. And. We are here because we like to do this.

Having a "notdupe" invocation could slow down the dupe process if there is a difference of opinion. Right now, all it takes is two people with a similar wrong notion (or innocence and trust) to knock out a perfectly good vid.

If it really is a dupe, it will get duped. If it isn't, it won't.




>> ^blankfist:

I didn't watch it. If it wasn't a dupe, it shouldn't've been dupeof'ed.
Not sure where people are getting the definition of a duplicate confused. An excerpt isn't a duplicate. A duplicate is a duplicate.

>> ^AnimalsForCrackers:

Maybe I'm just weird like that for being puzzled here, but if something is "outside of science" or "outside our universe", then by what magical method of knowing do people claim to know or suspect it exists in the first place? Shouldn't the most parsimonious answer be a provisional designation of non-existence until shown otherwise?
Something that can be asserted without evidence can reasonably be dismissed without evidence. It's not up to the unbelievers to prove a negative.
I understand people do not want to appear to be extreme or dogmatic, but an appeal to the middle ground (a 50/50 split probability for or against; a false equivalence) in the name of moderation, is still fallacious.


It's not entirely clear that people mean something that is "outside of science," and I certainly don't see many claiming that their god is "outside the universe." Most claim to have had direct personal experience with a deity. Many of whom are people I trust. Further, they seem to be honestly recounting their experience, and seem to have no motivation to deceive me (unlike claims of spaghetti monsters or martian teapots). While typically I wouldn't consider such reports particularly strong evidence of anything, it is certainly as strong (if not stronger) than the evidence opposing the existence of a deity, which are typically inferred from vague concepts like "parsimony" (aka Bayesian kool-aid). All evidence of existence (e.g. your existence) is tenuous at best, and all of it is inferred from internal mental states. That's why I find that the null model is typically derived from commonsense, not any hard and fast rules about existence or nonexistence. In this particular case, I find that people are relatively split. I have accordingly split my prior.

>> ^AnimalsForCrackers:

Maybe I'm just weird like that for being puzzled here, but if something is "outside of science" or "outside our universe", then by what magical method of knowing do people claim to know or suspect it exists in the first place? Shouldn't the most parsimonious answer be a provisional designation of non-existence until shown otherwise?

The error people run into is the false dichotomy that a person has to either believe something unobservable definitely exists or definitely cannot exist.

Both of these positions are unsupportable because they claim knowledge of something unobservable. We can neither test for presence nor absence.

All we can really say is that we don't know what can or cannot exist beyond what we can observe, be it gods, orbiting teapots, or invisible garage dragons.

How about - Evidence, real, physical, in your face factual evidence. Evidence doesn't care what your beliefs are. It doesn't care how you feel about a subject. Evidence is evidence and evolution is a factual reality. So is geological time and speciation. You can spout on all day long about how you "believe" the sun rotates around the earth, or that there's a mystical teapot flying around Jupiter that grants wishes. You can believe anything you want. Reality doesn't care. Reality dictates Reality. Not yours or anyone's personal attempt to do so on their own.

What nonsense.
Any derived absolute 'purpose' in this world is just purely absurd.
And we know electrons exist.
What we don't accurately know is where they are at any given time.
The argument is similar to the 'intelligent design' one in that just because there are alternative ideas around, it doesn't mean they are all equally valid or should be considered by anyone on any meaningful level to be competing theories.
Science is always open for new ideas, but a teapot on orbit of mars needs some evidence in support of it before anyone takes real interest in it.

I do agree on religion not being the main 'big evil' in the world but it is a powerful catalyst.
Religion is the fuel that is sprayed all around the house and is benign as long as you don't light a candle.

Sure, it's -possible- that the corporations, the wealthy, and the Republican party all oppose the public option because it's a bad idea (let's ignore the recorded statements by Republican figures that show it to be a purely political move to weaken this administration)...

It's also possible that there is an invisible teapot that orbits the sun directly opposite the Earth where we can't observe it.

But anyone with half a brain (and a smidgeon of honesty) can tell you which is the -likeliest- possibility.

>> ^ReverendTed:
>> ^rougy:
Yes, there's something wrong with it because the corporations are fewer in number than the general population, yet it is the corporate needs that are being catered to. It's wrong because the few who have wealth and power are being served while the common man and woman are being ignored. That's not a straw man.

Your argument here assumes that the public option is a good thing. This is not a universally-accepted position. Yes, it's possible that the evil corporations and the greedy, uncaring wealthy and those heinous, inhuman Republican monsters oppose the public option because it threatens their wealth and power. It's also possible that the public option is opposed because it's not a good idea. Even if it WAS a good idea, it's also possible that it's none of the government's responsibility, at least given the current Constitutional framework.

>> ^Psychologic:
> it is incorrect to say that there is evidence disproving their existence.


Technically, yes. On the other hand, "God" is unlike Russell's orbiting teapot in an important sense: that if there was a god, the universe would probably be a very different place, and God's presence would presumably be pretty obvious. More like an elephant in a room than a teapot in space. So in that sense, the absence of evidence is evidence of absence. And while we yet have much left to explain, science has provided some amazingly accurate and powerful alternative answers to the mysteries formerly occupied by gods. A blind man cannot describe the room that well, and technically, he cannot even be certain that there is no elephant in it, but he can, by fumbling around in the dark, shed some light on what the room does contain, and that the elephant is nowhere to be found.

I sort of want to parody this video where all the missionary work everyone complains about suddenly disappears. Then all the people in the video start dying of horrible diseases from the dirty water, or starving to death because they don't know how to properly irrigate their fields...

I like the comparison to overzealous vegans... this whole thing is getting old. Yes, people lobby for religious interests. There's also a meat lobby. Leave me alone, I won't sign your petition, and I don't have any money. To Dawkins and the rest, the public trust pays you to research biology, not pontificate on teapots from outer-space.

The reason nonbelievers don't organize is because we all have different political priorities. Why would you organize if you don't want the same things?

Um... Crillep... You may want to consider reading some books about logic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance

Also, there was this really good video a while back that touched on the beginning of the universe:
http://www.videosift.com/video/A-Universe-From-Nothing-by-Lawrence-Krauss-AAI-2009
Fascinating stuff.

Anyway... teapots and all that... proving a negative... etc etc...

Reason? You be... Appeasin'!

Evidence? Has no relevance!

Russell's Teapot? ....... Asshole.