It most certainly is a leap of faith to say that there is no God, since you cannot disprove God. You have no evidence that God doesn't exist.

Since you say that you're using logic, and presumably you're a materialist, how do you account for the laws of logic in nature? Could you point to them for me? How do you account for the laws of logic in your worldview?

As far as science goes, why should we prefer empirical evidence as the best way of discovering truth? For science to be done, it must assume a little thing called the uniformity of nature. This is to say that the future will be like the past. Of course, there is nothing to guarantee this will be true even five minutes from now. The only way to justify this is by circular reasoning. It is no better than saying that God justifies God.

I can account for the laws of logic and uniformity in nature in my theistic worldview, how do you account for them in yours? The idea of the Uniformity of nature was a Christian idea which was that God made an orderly universe based on univeral laws and that we could investigate secondary causes to determine what those laws are. That is how science really got its start in Christian europe. You're welcome.






>> ^Drachen_Jager:
>> ^shinyblurry:
of all choices, atheism requires the greatest faith, as it demands that ones limited store of human knowledge is sufficient to exclude the possibility of God.
francis collins human genome project
Complete and utter B.S.
Everything we know about the Universe has been learned through the rigorous application of logic.
There is nothing. Literally nothing that we have gained any other way.
Now you're trying to tell me, that because I am using the deductive tools by which 100% of substantive knowledge has been derived I am the one using faith? Atheism requires no leap of faith. Only the rigorous application of the scientific method, intelligence and logic. Just because you cannot manage some, or all of the skills required to arrive at the correct conclusion does not preclude others from doing so. To believe such would be the worst kind of hubris.
I repeat, total and utter B.S. Shame on you for even mentioning it.

>> ^shinyblurry:

of all choices, atheism requires the greatest faith, as it demands that ones limited store of human knowledge is sufficient to exclude the possibility of God.
francis collins human genome project

Complete and utter B.S.

Everything we know about the Universe has been learned through the rigorous application of logic.

There is nothing. Literally nothing that we have gained any other way.

Now you're trying to tell me, that because I am using the deductive tools by which 100% of substantive knowledge has been derived *I* am the one using faith? Atheism requires no leap of faith. Only the rigorous application of the scientific method, intelligence and logic. Just because you cannot manage some, or all of the skills required to arrive at the correct conclusion does not preclude others from doing so. To believe such would be the worst kind of hubris.

I repeat, total and utter B.S. Shame on you for even mentioning it.

What you're doing is showing your faithiesm

of all choices, atheism requires the greatest faith, as it demands that ones limited store of human knowledge is sufficient to exclude the possibility of God.

francis collins human genome project

The difference between everything you mentioned and God as a concept is that the idea of God has explanatory power. The question of whether the Universe had intelligent causation is a valid question, and from what we know (that space time energy and matter had a finite beginning), the cause of the Universe would be immaterial, spaceless, timeless and transcendent. These perfectly describe attributes of an all powerful God. We also have evidence of design in the Universe and the fine tuning of physical laws. So, to rule God out as an explanation is simply ignorant. Between evolution and special creation, you have virtually exausted the possibilities of how life came to exist.



>> ^Drachen_Jager:
>> ^Morganth:
No, this just illustrates that you do not understand. If there is a god who created the universe, why then would he have to be wholly provable from inside of it? You're actually having to make a number of assumptions about the nature of god to make your claim.
If there is a creator god, we would not relate to him in the way that Hamlet relates to a character in another act of the play, but rather in the way that Hamlet relates to Shakespeare. He could not find him in the highest tower or prove that Shakespeare exists in the lab. Really, the only way Hamlet could ever know that Shakespeare exists is if Shakespeare writes something about himself into the play.
Seriously dude? Hamlet? That's not a person. He's a character in a play, your analogy is utterly useless other than to confuse the gullible.
I make no assumptions about the nature of God, you are the one who makes assumptions about the nature of God. You HAVE to make assumptions about the nature of God to make your argument work. I'm saying there is no God, so there are no necessary assumptions about his nature, since he doesn't HAVE a nature.
There is an infinitum of proposals you cannot prove to be true or false. Unicorns, wizards and dragons ruled the earth 2000 years ago. The Flying Spaghetti Monster created God. All the matching pairs of socks that go missing are stolen by sock-goblins. The proposal that God exists is, therefore only one in an infinity of unprovable junk. Unless you are prepared to believe that UFOs abduct people and mutilate cows and every other stupid theory people throw out there, you have no reason to believe the Universe was created by some kind of sentient being. One is just as likely as the other. If we believed in unprovable junk we'd never get anything done, the scientists would all be bogged down in nonsense and we wouldn't have iPods and personal computers. We'd still be banging rocks together.

Oh, I was mistaken... I only had one queued up to go:

http://videosift.com/video/Francis-Time-on-our-side
In reply to this comment by schmawy:
I liked it. It felt genuine and honest.

In reply to this comment by oritteropo:
Thanks : There were two more in the set, and I'll post them tonight (my queue was full before).
In reply to this comment by schmawy:
*promote

I liked it. It felt genuine and honest.

In reply to this comment by oritteropo:
Thanks : There were two more in the set, and I'll post them tonight (my queue was full before).
In reply to this comment by schmawy:
*promote

Thanks There were two more in the set, and I'll post them tonight (my queue was full before).
In reply to this comment by schmawy:
*promote

People without good critical thinking skills can be misled to do stupid and harmful things (like voting for prop . Faith is synonymous with lack of critical thinking. Faith is a problem no matter how benign some of its practitioners currently are because they can more easily be misled by clergy, politicians, and hucksters.

Stupid people do stupid things, whether they are theists or atheists. Faith has nothing to do with it, and your idea that believing in a higher power is a suspension of critical thinking shows that you are intellectually satisfied with a stereotypical and superficial analysis, which itself shows a lack of critical thinking.

With over 90 percent of the world having some kind of faith in a higher power, and 93 percent of this country, you must think you're pretty darn special, considering that you must believe that the vast majority of people on this planet, and those who came before them, are inferior to you. Yet, you have more faith than anyone else. Here is a smart person to tell you about it:

atheism requires the greatest faith, as it demands that ones limited store of human knowledge is sufficient to exclude the possibility of God.

francis collins human genome project

Christian theology is bullshit because the problem of evil is insurmountable.

You apparently don't know the difference between the logical problem of evil and the evidential problem of evil. They are separate issues.



Malaria was not created by free will. If there were a benevolent all-powerful creator, he would not have allowed Malaria to exist.

What about poisonous mushrooms? Should He allow those? Someone might eat one. Should He have allowed us to invent electricity, since people have been electrocuted? How about hang nails? Long lines at the grocery store?

Sin fucked up the world? Well, the creator would have had to create the magic that would cause the world to become fucked up when sin occurred. Malaria is necessary for the greater good?

Man screwed up the world. Sickness, disease and death are the consequences of sin entering into the world through man. None of it was necessary, but God is still capable of using it to achieve a greater good.

You just have a very imbalanced view here. You blame God for the bad but fail to notice the good. If there is anyone to blame for scourge of Malaria today, it is the apathy of human beings:

http://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/preventive-care/malaria-prevention.htm

That makes your supposed creator about as 'benevolent' as Hitler who thought gassing Jews was necessary for the greater good. The god of the old testament is a genocidal megalomaniac, exactly like Hitler.

Hitler didn't send his son to die on a cross for your sins. God has His hand extended to you to pull you out of the fire at any time, but it's on you to reach out for it.

>> ^jwray:

People without good critical thinking skills can be misled to do stupid and harmful things (like voting for prop . Faith is synonymous with lack of critical thinking. Faith is a problem no matter how benign some of its practitioners currently are because they can more easily be misled by clergy, politicians, and hucksters.
Christian theology is bullshit because the problem of evil is insurmountable.
Malaria was not created by free will. If there were a benevolent all-powerful creator, he would not have allowed Malaria to exist. Sin fucked up the world? Well, the creator would have had to create the magic that would cause the world to become fucked up when sin occurred. Malaria is necessary for the greater good? That makes your supposed creator about as 'benevolent' as Hitler who thought gassing Jews was necessary for the greater good. The god of the old testament is a genocidal megalomaniac, exactly like Hitler.
It is pretty fucked up to believe in / worship this bloodthirsty megalomaniac without any evidence that he even exists.
Yes, church gives you a sense of community. That's fine. I still even go to a church event once in a blue moon to catch up with some old friends from 10 years of attending the same small Sunday school classes. But for fuck's sake, there are other ways to meet people and serve your community than through glorifying a fictional genocidal tyrant who wouldn't even deserve it if the bible were true.

It's natural that atheists proselytize, because atheism is a religion:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/6034949/Atheism-Is-Protected-As-a-Religion-says-Court-

It has its own creation story:

"Thus, a century ago, [it was] Darwinism against Christian orthodoxy. To-day the tables are turned. The modified, but still characteristically Darwinian theory has itself become an orthodoxy, preached by its adherents with religious fervour, and doubted, they feel, only by a few muddlers imperfect in scientific faith."

Grene, Marjorie [Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, University of California, Davis], "The Faith of Darwinism," Encounter, Vol. 74, November 1959, pp.48-56, p.49

with its own miracles:

"Time is, in fact, the hero of the plot... given so much time the 'impossible' becomes possible, the possible probable and the probable virtually certain. One has only to wait: time itself performs miracles."
George Wald, "The Origin of Life," Physics and Chemistry of Life, 1955, p. 12.

In which its adherants have total faith:

I have faith and belief myself... I believe that nothing beyond those natural laws is needed. I have no evidence for this. It is simply what I have faith in and what I believe.

Isaac Asimov
Counting the Eons P.10

I do not want to believe in God, therefore I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible: spontaneous generation arising to evolution

George Wald - Harvard Professor
Nobel Laureate

They believe it even in the face of contradicting evidence

Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed but rather evolved.

Francis Crick Nobel Laureate
What Mad Pursuit p.138 1988

Much evidence can be adduced in favor of the Theory of Evolution from Biology, Biogeography, and Paleontology, but I still think that to the unprejudiced the fossil record of plants is in favor of special creation.

EJH Cornor, Cambridge
Contemporary Botanical Thought p.61

It provides a comprehensive belief system:

Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideaology, a secular religion- a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with its meaning and morality...

Michael Ruse Florida State University
National Post 5/13/00

Atheists know they are right no matter what:

No evidence would be sufficient to create a change in mind; that it is not a commitment to evidence, but a commitment to naturalism. ...Because there are no alternatives, we would almost have to accept natural selection as the explanation of life on this planet even if there were no evidence for it.

Steven Pinker MIT
How the mind works p.182

Even if they have to suppress the truth to prove it:

"Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."

Lewontin, Richard C. [Professor of Zoology and Biology, Harvard University], "Billions and Billions of Demons", Review of "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark," by Carl Sagan, New York Review, January 9, 1997. (Emphasis in original)

"In fact the a priori reasoning is so entirely satisfactory to me that if the facts won't fit in, why so much the worse for the facts is my feeling."

Erasmus Darwin, in a letter to his brother Charles, after reading his new book, "The Origin of Species," in Darwin, F., ed., "The Life of Charles Darwin," [1902], Senate: London, 1995, reprint, p215.

They are true believers:

of all choices, atheism requires the greatest faith, as it demands that ones limited store of human knowledge is sufficient to exclude the possibility of God.

francis collins human genome project

It won't be long before there are atheists churches and street preachers handing out tracks.

Happy 911

http://videosift.com/video/Makeshift-Patriot-Sage-Francis

>> ^Boise_Lib:

Is that Father Guido Sarducci (Don Novello) at the end?


Playing Edgar Allan Poe, no less!

some backstory:

A case involving an altercation between two police officers at the New Mexico Wine Festival at Bernalillo last month has been turned over to the District Attorney�s office in Sandoval County for review.

According to the State Police incident report, Rio Rancho police officer John Francis and Bernalillo police officer Anthony Ortega, who is listed in the report as George Ortega, were involved in a confrontation at the wine festival.

Ortega told State Police officers that he was aware that Francis is a Rio Rancho police officer, but did not know he was on duty and working the event. Francis was working in plain clothes as part of an underage drinking/DWI task force, according to the report.

Ortega missed a mandatory briefing prior to starting his shift that would have made him aware of Francis working at the event. Ortega thought Francis was off-duty and fighting with other attendees.

Ortega then placed Francis in an arm hold and asked him to step back. Francis repeatedly lifted up his shirt to display his badge.

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*isdupe>> ^Skeeve:

dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/Francis-takes-exception-to-Diablo-3

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