While I can fully understand if you were to decide to leave (the quality of recent debates has been dwindling a tad), it would be a shame to lose one of the brightest and most influential members of the community.
Regardless, many congratulations on making it this far in!
If sir may unrustle his jimmies for one moment, then perhaps we could have some civilised discourse instead of this poop slinging match we appear to be having? Otherwise I shan't be pursuing this conversation for much longer (I shouldn't even be writing this now, don't really have time, but hey).
The examples were arbitrary, but hey, if that constitutes a victory for you, congratulations, feel free to strike that as a win. Honestly the Biblical stories could have been replaced with anything, they were just the first things that sprang to mind.
What “theories about the universe”?
M-Theory.
“What obsolete concept of God”
The one that creates and interacts with the universe.
What passive refutation
A subsequent refutation as opposed to a consequent refutation. Science indirectly refutes God through its work, though it never directly says anything about it.
I know the science very well.
Then, if I may be so bold as to ask, have you not brought up the crowning jewel of modern physics, the theory of M?
If you could take some time out from being so hotheaded, it may help you if you use asterisks to highlight chunks of text you are disputing. Something like:
AsteriskAsteriskquote hereAsteriskAsterisk would make it appear bold.
Personal or impersonal deities do not succumb to Occam’s Razor. Your statement it meaningless. That’s my point, and then you go on to talk about a specific personal God. . . .
Then immediately we are at an impasse, one which renders both our arguments pointless. My argument was centred around a personal deity, not impersonal.
I don't feel the need to argue Biblical literature, you seem to have become far too distracted by my arbitrary examples to focus on my key points (indeed I emphasised them through the use of italics). As it goes it appears your love of the word "hermeneutics" is rather overshadowing your argument.
Are you going to rebut that science passively refutes God through obsoletion, or will you continue with ad homs and straw men of parts of my argument irrelevant to the point? I will outline my point clearly once again:
Science does not, and cannot, actively refute the existence of a deity, due to the unfalsifiable and untestable nature of such an agent. However, as science works on its own, its theories about the universe and how it works obsolete the concept of God, leading to a passive refutation of God.
Oh right, I don't pay much attention to the sides. Fair enough .
I'm somewhat familiar with that, are you sure this is meant to dispute? Heat death shows a finite universe, one where all energy is used and "nothingness" is left.
You're being willfully ignorant, and you know it.
Post your sources on religious death tolls, or you have nothing. It doesn't matter if only one person died due to democide, it's one more than you've even attempted to prove.
PS: This is not part of the debate, but I want you to know this anyway. The reason the ranges are so high is due to the significant cover ups of communist regimes in the mid 20th century. No-one will ever know how many died, and the fact we even have a range when people like Stalin were ruling is quite incredible. To call the greatest efforts of the brightest academics on the planet "amateurist" is extremely disrespectful and arrogant.
PPS: The cultural revolution of China was responsible for around 3 million deaths, all of which were indubitably murder, not famine or natural causes, but murder. This is the usual figure, though it ranges from half a million to 30 million (I explained the reason for the range above).
You've missed my point entirely. Before I even begin, I am referring to personal Gods here, those which interact with the material world, like the god of the bible. Deistic gods (though they still fall to the razor) are not what I'm disputing.
Science never has, and never will actively dispute the existence of God. However, by sheer virtue of being so successful, the scientific method passively refutes the existence of God. Whilst God himself is not empirical, the things religious folk attach to him are empirically testable, and the only reason science gets so much shit is because these tests show that most religious lore is Grade A bullshit.
The great flood? Geology disproves that.
Young Earth? Isometric dating disproves that.
Every single creature on Earth living on one boat without dying? 1st grade biology disproves that.
It is not that God himself is empirically testable, but the feats attached to him are, thus meaning that science passively refutes the existence of God. Not actively.
And speaking of Occam's Razor, given the inescapable fact of the material realm's nature of infinite regression, God, in terms of origin, not materiality, satisfies Occam's Razor more readily.
How have you come to the conclusion that the material realm has an infinitely regressive nature? Because you should know that science most definitely states that currently our universe is very finite in its nature.
You also don't seem to be very up to date on modern physics. God is no longer needed to explain the origin of our universe. I implore you to read A universe from nothing by Lawrence Krauss, a physicist who explains the origin of our universe from more humble beginnings than an omnipotent, omniscient, invisible, flying space daddy.
I'm not sure I quite understand the OP. Are you arguing that putting God in the gaps of science is justified or unjustified?
Majority of dead under Mao's rule died because of hunger caused by natural disasters that lead to about 20% food production drop and also there was no healthcare at all. Not because Mao took their food or medicine, it was simply no available.
And why wasn't healthcare available? Oh that's right, because of Mao.
The major natural disasters were flooding, which were caused by Mao's dam policies. The floods would not have lead to millions being left without crops if Mao hadn't ordered the building of thousands of shoddy, rushed dams. Of course, anybody that's studied Maoist history will know that the one reason the famines happened more than any other was the commune cropping policies. The mass government control over food meant that millions starved.
Of course, this isn't even counting the cultural revolution.
You are missing little think that you cannot form large army who you don't pay and/or feed and expect them to die for you. Every army has priests or it's equivalents eve USSR had "Politruks" who were pretty much communist priests..
This means nothing.
If you read any speech done by generals, leader, kings.. to soldiers that there is always without exception mentioned that they fight in the name of god, or they are ensured that god is on their side. I'm sure that let's say 4000 years of wars can beat about 75 000 000 "killed by governments"
Of course they do, it's just a go to phrase. When I want something to go well, I'll normally say something like "Please God, let this happen", even though I'm thoroughly atheist. But saying that you are fighting for God, and actually fighting for God are massive differences. Every WW1 leader said that they were fighting for God, but only a blinded fool would assert that WW1 was a religious conflict.
And you still haven't shown me any proof. All you've said is "I'm pretty sure". I don't care how damn sure you are, show me evidence. Here, I'll post some evidence for why government's role in murder is far higher than religion.
Mao: Responsible for 20-100 million deaths (figures fluctuate depending on source). We'll take 50 million.
Stalin: Responsible for 20-60 million deaths (The true death toll is explained in this excellent read). We'll take 40 million.
Hitler: Responsible for 18 million deaths (this one doesn't need explaining).
Those three alone give us 108 million deaths mean. Suddenly PF's 262 million is starting to look quite realistic. Now post your figures please, or I'm afraid you have nothing but vague quotes and sophistry.
262,000,000 seems reasonable actually. I've not done in depth research, but based on the fact that Mao alone is responsible for nearly 60 million deaths, 262,000,000 really doesn't seem difficult at all.
Trust me, religion is overplayed when it comes to death tolls, and this is coming from a near on gnostic atheist. Unlike Prayerfails, you've not provided a figure, you've just vacuously claimed that religion is responsible for more. I'd like you to prove that please.
Nice, nice, downvote without a response, I like it, keep 'em coming.
Are there possibly an infinite numbers of Universes?
Yes.
Where did all of the matter come from?
I don't know, nobody does, there are multiple ideas, but nobody cares unless they're absolutely convinced.
What is OUTSIDE the Universe, what is it expanding into?
Outside the universe means nothing currently, as it literally means "everything". To ask what everything is expanding into is quite perplexing.
If matter can exist in higher dimensions, could human consciousness?
From here we move from genuine metaphysical curiosity to unfathomably vague pseudoscience.
Did a Living Truth create Live, or did it happen by chance?
By chance, I would say.
What is the foundation of the Universe made of.
Energy, I suppose.
There, I answered all the mysteries of the universe, time to collect my fucking internet cookie and go home.
Sigh, yet another misguided atheist.
The death toll from religion is pitiful compared to the death toll from basically any other cause. The death toll from religion includes what, the Crusades, a few African civil wars, and MAYBE the Thirty Years War. Combined death tolls from those are not even close to 262,000,000.
Well this is subjective to the person isn't it? To me intellect is more important, to most others I would imagine emotion is more important.
I agree, but since we have nothing, we can say nothing.
This I agree with. The concept of God should be treated with the most resounding apathy imaginable.
That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence
Ah yes, Christopher Hitchens, perhaps he was the only one of the "New Atheists* I still align myself with.
I would agree if I didn't think we might be on the verse of a new Fundamentalism around the world.
New Fundamentalism? I doubt it. There are surveys all over the western world right now documenting the fall of religion and the increase of atheism. Perhaps in the Middle East, but in my eyes, tension with the Western world will stop Islam becoming too strong.
Y'know, as much as I love riddles, can your rebuttal be written in regular prose please?
Science is incomplete and overly complicated.
Nonsense.
The God is Simple.
God = Living Truth.
While I prefer this concept of God to the typical one, I'm fairly confident it's not the one up for debate.
That is all your need. Truth rules the universe. Nothing exists that is not true. For if it is not true, it cannot happen. Truth is formless and invisible, but creates consciousness. That consciousness sets the intentions of creation, yet all creation follows truth. In spite of the desire, the creation and manifestation of must follow truth. Creation is a mixture of desire and truth.
This means absolutely nothing.
Truth creates nothing. Truth is a property we give to an existing object or agent, not something that causes objects and agents to exist. Your house has the property of "truth" (I'd much rather call it existence), but it wasn't created by "truth" (created by existence, as I'm sure you'll see, is a worthless statement).
You then go on to talk about the consciousness of truth, which I assume means God to you. In which case you must prove it my friend.
The razor just cut you my friend.
Let's review:
Science: Has fully working models of most of the universe that do not require intervention from any God, deity, or other being.
You: There's a living breathing consciousness out there that created everything completely contrary to all the empirical studies of the past 500 years.
On review, no, no it didn't.
But evidence against something does not exclude the possible existence of the thing
Of course, but it gives us a solid reason to not believe in it.
Just because we are currently unable to perform any experiments to test the god hypothesis, doesn't mean we will never be able to
I severely doubt we will be able to. Not using empiricism anyway.
It may be true that we can never know, but it may not.
This doesn't matter, the point is that the notion of a God is irrelevant nowadays, and thus rather than care about whether he exists or not, we should assume (in academic circles not devoted to theology) that he doesn't and move on.
Evidence disproving is a nonsensical phrase used only to create some notion of equality regarding the existence and non-existence of a given thing. There can never be evidence that disproves fully, this does not mean that we must give credence to views that cannot be disproved. Indeed the very fact that the notion of a deity is in and of itself completely unprovable, unfalsifiable, and thusly unreasonable, means that whilst we do not have evidence disproving it per se, we do have evidence against it.
This of course is not even considering some genuine attempts to "disprove" deities (personal or impersonal), many of which are potent logical arguments (see the Problem of Evil, the Omnipotence Paradox, the 747 Gambit, etc).
...
Is this supposed to be an argument, or is it just an irrelevant proverb?
Where's the "they're both fucking awful" option?
Oh well, I suppose that socialism is preferred, but capitalism is more realistic in our society.
It is not that science actively disputes and refutes its existence, rather it is that modern scientific theories do not require God to operate effectively, which one may consider a refutation, based on the fact that science is partially founded upon the premise that William of Ockham laid down many a century ago.
The current scientific theories we have leave no room for God. From there, Occam's Razor takes precedence. It's as close to a refutation that a philosophy can carry out.
religious beliefs have been proven as false
This is not true. Religious beliefs will never be proven as false, as they are based on an unfalsifiable premise.
