Believers & Unbelievers Are Idiots

Allow me to elaborate. It is completely impossible for anyone to really know if God exists or not. It is for this reason that anyone who claims that God does not exist is a complete idiot, and the same goes for those who claim God does exist. Atheists claim to be intellectually superior to religious people, but in reality, atheists are exactly the same as they are, only instead of having blind faith in the existence of a higher power, they have blind faith in the nonexistence of a higher power.

>>1
Agree, although I would argue that they are not idiots unless they claim their belief (whether it be in existence or in nonexistence) gives them superiority & should be recognized as such.

Allow me to elaborate.  It is completely impossible for anyone to really know if the Smurfs exist or not.  It is for this reason that anyone who claims that the Smurfs do not exist is a complete idiot, and the same goes for those who claim the Smurfs do exist.

do u c wat i did there?

I don't have faith/trust in your religion/psychobabble, I'll ignore anything and everything you have to say, NATURALLY.

RETARD. Retarded little crybaby. 

"WAAAAAAAAAAAA!  You don't trust my nonsence! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! It's soooooo well thought out! WAAAAAAAAAA! People have been working on it for decades! WAAAAAA!".


That's what you sound like.

Allow me to elaborate. It is completely impossible for anyone to really know if leprechauns exists or not. It is for this reason that anyone who claims that leprechauns do not exist is a complete idiot, and the same goes for those who claim leprechauns do exist. Skeptics claim to be intellectually superior to believers, but in reality, skeptics are exactly the same as they are, only instead of having blind faith in the existence of leprechauns, they have blind faith in the nonexistence of leprechauns.

ITT some faggot who doesn't realise (a)gnosticism and (a)theism are orthogonal.

>>3

For all we know, Smurfs could exist, somewhere in the universe. Same goes for leprechauns, the tooth fairy, and everything else.

Replacing God with something a little more far-fetched doesn't prove anything at all. An intelligent person can admit that he doesn't know the answer, which is why atheists and believers are fools.

>>7
If you think leprechauns are more far-fetched than God as he's typically understood, you need a sense of perspective.

Also, >>6 is right.

>>8

Whether or not leprechauns are more far-fetched than God is neither here nor there. All I'm saying is that nobody knows the answer, but most people think they do, which is why they are idiots.

ARen't they jsut midget Irishmen?

>>1
God damn it, fucking fail. I hate people like you.

>Allow me to elaborate. It is completely impossible for anyone to really know if God exists or not.

No atheist debates this. Despite how intelligent you might feel after such an eye-opening discovery, everyone but you is already well aware of the painfully obvious fact that a greater being who magically covers up his tracks is not falsifiable.

>It is for this reason that anyone who claims that God does not exist is a complete idiot, and the same goes for those who claim God does exist.

That's quite a leap. It's also very wrong.

A God who magically changes the universe and covers his tracks is not actually relevant to the universe. For example, my cat could have created the universe yesterday and implanted all our memories. Does this matter? No. Does it affect my life in any way? No. Should I assume my cat has some moral code I should follow and attempt to guess what it is? No. The cat may as well not even exist; it doesn't matter.

Unfalsifiable == Irrelevant. These are not the gods we talk about when we call ourselves atheists.

>Atheists claim to be intellectually superior to religious people, but in reality, atheists are exactly the same as they are, only instead of having blind faith in the existence of a higher power, they have blind faith in the nonexistence of a higher power.

No. Read this next paragraph carefully, because it's important:

Religious people believe in a God who is aware of their existence, cares about and will reward or punish their actions, and gives them instructions in order for them to follow his moral code. This means their God interacts with, or has at some point interacted with the universe in a measurable way.

Hey, guess what: such a God is falsifiable! Not only that, but such Gods have already been falsified by research in fields such as evolution; massive disproof of gaping sections of the Bible (for example) shows that the contents are not divinely inspired, but rather the nonsensical ramblings of a bunch of cave-dwellers who barely figured out that they shouldn't shit in their food.

So no, I'm not an idiot when I say God doesn't exist.

Also, I don't have a cat. I fucking hate cats.

psyops fake godfag in every thread

Humanity and the planet we live on are nothing more than an insignificant speck in this massive, unknown universe. There is absolutely no way of actually knowing whether there's a higher power or not, so making an assumption either way is just basically saying "I'm an idiot and I can't accept the fact that I don't know anything."

Being an atheist is completely ridiculous and illogical. You're just saying "There's no God, end of story" when you really have no idea. All religious beliefs, atheism included, are based on unfounded assumptions. Atheists are just as closed-minded as fundamentalist Christians.

God is falsifiable, but the non-existence of God is also falsifiable. Just face it - you don't know the answer. You're not in control. You are an insignificant human in one of the billions of insignificant galaxies in this universe.

According to my math, I need .9999999999999999... pounds as a counterweight over this fulcrum. I guess I can just put one fucking pound on it, because it will work almost exactly the same, but it's still technically wrong. It's not .9999999999999999... pounds, in fact it is off by .000000000000000...1 pounds. Practically, this will never matter. Philosophically and mathematically, it is not the correct number because it is different than the correct number.

Personally, when I say I'm an atheist, I mean that I don't believe in god because it's highly unlikely. I've never said that he doesn't exist, because I can't prove that. Thankfully, the burden of proof isn't on my side.

Only the Sith deals in absolutes.

>>11

1 + 1 = 2; Unfalsifiable, thus irrelevant?

I am not believer myself, but seeing atheists like yourself makes me want to throw up.

>>15
Oh, and mathematicians, but their field is so far from reality that it doesn't matter.

Math and science are not proof of Gods existence.

For that matter, there are mathematical models that prove that math is not perfect. 

If you have faith, then you can trust God's plan, because he knows what he's doing.  If you try to alter that plan, that means you don't trust him, and are therefore, faithless. Whether you're just a practitioner, or the Pope(And HE says a bit of slavery is okay, so he can suck a dick, the fucking Nazi), you should have faith in God's divine plan.

Now, either Trust in God, and stop opposing him and let scientists do their work, or suffer hell because you don't believe.

>>17

What do you mean by "far from reality"? Reality is whichever mathematical model fits best.

It seems like this is yet another thread arguing the definition of atheism.

I consider myself a skeptic, I do not believe a god by traditional Jewish/Cristian/Islamic definition can exist. It is way too contradictory to what we know of life. This god is traditionally defined as being All-powerful, All-knowing, and morally perfect.

If god is morally perfect, then why is there suffering of the innocent ? Is their even such a thing as moral perfection ? Is this to say that morality is not in fact subjective as is the popular opinion these days ?

If god is all knowing, then do we have free will ? If god knows everything, then he should know what we do before we do it. That would mean we have no free will. So how can god be omniscient if we have free will ? Or do we actually have free will at all ?

If god is all-powerful, then what motivation could possibly exist for him to create the universe ? If god is all powerful, then cannot be over powered by his own desires or his own needs, because by the very definition of omnipotence, he could NOT be over powered by such things. He could not have created the universe out of desire, that would imply that he had no power over such desire. He could not have created the universe out of need, because again that would imply he had needs to begin with, an omnipotent deity needs nothing. He could not have created the universe involuntarily, as that would mean he was not infact omnipotent.

These are all arguments that philosophers have been making over the centuries, all of which point out the fundamentally contradictory nature of the traditional god.

But as a scientific skeptic, my main reason for rejecting god as an explanation for anything is because it explains basically nothing. When a scientist asks the question "How was the universe created?" the religious state "God created it", but they fail to explain HOW god created it, all they do is assign responsibility for the creation of the universe to a conscious entity, and never explain how he did such a thing. and if you ask such a question, you are told "there are some things man is not meant to know". Using God as an explanation is basicly the equivalent of shrugging one's shoulders and saying "I don't know and you shouldn't ask"

It also seems like a double standard in my opinion. As a scientist, I admit that there are some questions that science can never answer that religion attempts to answer, such as questions considering purpose and ethics, because science was never meant to answer these questions. Science was meant to answer questions about the material world around us, about the universe and nature. Yet religion also attempts to do this too. Religion tries to explain the nature of the universe at times, so why should we not put such explanations under the same scrutiny that we put science under ?

Ockham's Razor state that all things being equal between multiple explanations, that is they all explain just as much, the best explanation is the one that uses the least assumptions. I am a beliver in Ockham's razor, and reject god as an explanation for the mysteries of the universe for two reasons, first it actually explains very little, and secondly, It requires a ENORMOUS number of assumptions.

>>16
I think you misunderstand the term "unfalsifiable". Falsifiable means that the there is a hypothetical situation in which such a statement can be proven false, basically, a counter example to said statement. Yes in fact the statement

1+1 = 2

is falsafiable ! All you need to do is find any situation where

1 + 1 =/= 2

though this is basically impossible.

unfalsifiable is not the same thing as "always true". Unfalsifiable basically means "cannot be tested for truth value"

I can make pairs of things for all eternity as a way of testing 1 + 1 = 2, the point is that very fact that it is testable is what makes it falsifiable.

The concept of god is unfalsifiable by both scientific definition and religious definition. It is not a theory, it is not a hypothesis, it is dogma. By definiton, dogma is any idea considered to be always true, in no way falsifiable, not even hypothetically.

The religous idea of god is dogma, if you ask any religious person of great faith, they will tell you that you can never disprove god's existence, even hypothetically. Thus to a scientist, the concept of god is irrelevant

>>21

Yet Steven Hawking, by his own words, believes in God.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TI9a3bTy1j4

>>22

Steven Hawking is an idiot.

>>11
FISHING CAT IS GOD.

>>9
Bullshit. Very few atheists are saying "I know for a fact God doesn't exist". Instead, they're saying "I don't believe God exists", which isn't even close to being the same fucking thing.
You're attacking straw men because being a fence-sitter allows you to not have to make the effort to think about the issues at hand. Protip: intellectual laziness only makes you cool if you're in middle school.

Atheists and Theists only believe there are two sides of the fence, so fansitters are cowards who refuse to take side. Think about it, there could be smurf-like creatures living somewhere in this universe, maybe you can't call them smurfs, maybe you can, then we can start a new argument all over again. Similiarly maybe there is a God that made us, but if the God isn't what is written in the Bible, or totally what you imagined him to be, can you still call him a "God"? What is the extent of his powers such that you can term such a thing a "God"? Is a God someone who made humans? Some other higher life-forms could have done that. Could it be someone who made the universe? Even if so, does he really fit the description of what is written in the bible? If he doesn't, do you call him a God or not? The answer is one face of a million-faceted dice, not a fucking 2-side coin.

Perhaps there are fence-sitters who just refuse to think, and also fencesitters who know that there are a million possibilities to the answer, and we don't know a single shit.

>>22
it is irrelevant in the sense that its not worth testing.

>>26
Parsimony, faggot. Look it the fuck up.

That's why we all subscribe to mysticism daily. Mysticism sells, the church is the hugest promoter, and we all take lessons from them to sell you your own bullshit back to you to narfl down. The best part is, it's free, just $9.95 shipping and handling. :P

>>25

Saying "I don't believe God exists" is an opinion, opinions are based on facts, and there are no facts that can actually prove, or disprove the existence of a higher power in the universe, therefore Atheists are nothing but close-minded morons making assumptions about things that are impossible to even know the truth about.

>>30
Nothing has to be proven or disproven to be able to make an educated guess. All opinions are not equal, and it most certainly isn't the case that it's equally likely that God exists as that he doesn't.
Have fun trying to rationalise your inability to think an argument through, though.

Read "The Impossibility of God". It's a collection of 33 papers that take the most common definitions for God and apply a little something we skeptics like to call "Logic".

God doesn't exist because it's definition is logically impossible, not just unlikely.

As a service, I challenge any believer or agnostic out there to define their view of God so I can show you how retarded you are. If you can't define it, you don't really believe in anything except conformity and good feelings.

Again, read the book to see why:
--Logically speaking, nothing is truly worthy of worship.
--No sentient being can be Perfect AND interact with (or create) anything.
--No being can Necessarily Exist because we can easily imagine it not existing.
--Omnipotence, Benevolence, and Evil cannot all coexist (with all the most popular refutations debunked for the nonsense they are).
--Etc, etc, etc.

Also, while I'm here, let me ask you believers and "agnostics" this:
What more reason do you have for believing in the Aramaic deity than any of the 28 million other deities worshipped in the last 60,000 years of Human history? The answer is simple. There is NO REASON to believe in any of them. No reason that stands up to rational thought, anyway.