Yes, it really is that stupid

[Koumei]

Hyperbole
[hahy-pur-buh-lee]

...wow. Having never heard the term spoken, I sort of thought it was pronounced hyper-bowl, like a better version of the superbowl.

I now feel pretty stupid.

[Zinegata]

I don't give you crap for being agnostic.

Hyperbole
[hahy-pur-buh-lee]
Noun
Defintion: Go fuck yourself.

I know it was a hyperbole. I was being deadpan.

[Zinegata]

http://atheistethicist.blogspot.com/201 ... exist.html

The person who wrote this blog is just ranting and going around in circles. He's not providing any arguments against being agnostic at all.

God has not been proven to exist. We don't have evidence that can be evaluated. Thus belief in God in the present day is irrational.

But God has not been proven not to exist either. And one of the fundamental rules of logic is that the absence of proof is not proof of absence.

Agnostics are thus free to believe what they want. There is in fact a middle line.

[Sashi]

Fuck you. I just spent 5 minutes of my life reading that blog defend the atheist position by trying to redefine "know" the same way Bill Clinton tried to redefine "is". That blog just reaffirmed my categorizing "atheists" into two groups:

Fuckers want to use "atheist" conversationally to be shocking.
Fuckers who haven't though about what "atheist" means past "achristian".

Note that I said agnosticism is the only scientifically sound position to take. It's easy to see that the Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Shinto, Confucian, etc. faiths don't stand up to scrutiny. But that's not the same thing as "disproving god". In the late 1800's it was easy to show that the alchemists claiming to turn lead into gold were charlatans, but that doesn't mean the Curies can't come around and prove Radium turns into Radon.

For all we know "God" could be a supernatural asshole who delights in giving cancer to random people and sometimes sends messages to "prophets" that tells them to rape kids and brainwash people into becoming suicide bombers. In the Greek myths gods were significantly more arbitrary and vindictive than the Christian god, and so even things like the existence of evil don't "disprove" god. If you want to say "I find it impossible that a being anyone would choose to call 'god' exists" I would agree with you, but if you want to translate that into "There is no god or gods" I would have to say "you're making an awfully big assumption that requires logical leaps".

[Zinegata]

Sashi is correct. The person who wrote the blog is a self-important moron who does not even know of the very basic logical concept that "The absence of proof is not the proof of absence."

Being an agnostic is really the only logical position to take. Logic backs it up 100%, and it doesn't require the person to be irrational at the same time.

[Kaelik]

Sashi, do Leprechauns exist?

How about Garbaralalala-aasdfasdflkandsls?

Are you agnostic about Leprechauns? No, you know that Leprechauns don't exist. Just like you know Unicorns don't exist. Just like I know that God doesn't exist.

Pretending that the existence and the lack of existence of something are both equal is not the only scientifically sound option, it's not even scientifically sound at all. It's completely ass backwards. It's not Scientifically sound to be agnostic about our brains having a portal to a far away place that we just can't detect inside them storing far more brain matter over there.

It's fucking retarded, and it's anti scientific to give a view with no evidence whatsoever (a universe with a "god" whatever you mean by that) the same weight as a universe explained by naturalistic processes.

One has evidence, the other has no evidence. Giving them equal weight is not the only scientifically sound position, it's literally the exact opposite of scientific soundness.

[Sashi]

I don't see it that way. I see it more as people refusing to believe guilt unless they see it.

There's a good ole boy network going on, though. Where the evidential requirements to even investigate a white man for murdering a black man are far higher than the opposite.

So really, should you blame people who signed up for something but which extremists twisted into something terrible, or should you instead blame the extremists themselves for manipulating people?

I really think it's the latter. Again, most people don't really think about religion or politics all that much. It's not important to them. So when somebody comes along and tried to manipulate this apathy into a camouflage for committing atrocities, that makes them a bad person.

And that's the point. If you "don't think about" religion or racism or whatever then you are far more willing to vote for a fuckhead candidate like Christine O'Donnel who loudly proclaims her Christianity at the drop of a hat over an atheist who's actual political views align with your own just because the atheist is part of the wrong club.

Before WWII antisemitism was incredibly popular. Hitler was explicitly upfront about wanting to rid the world of Jews and even if he hadn't been, the fact that there were people walking around arresting people for being Jewish and interning them was bad enough without the mass murder.

Antisemitism wasn't really frowned upon socially until after the true extent of the Holocaust was made apparent. The abject horror of the holocaust made "moderately antisemitic" people realize their antisemitic beliefs were illogical and stupid and made the antisemitic extremists either hide their beliefs or turn into batshit holocaust deniers.

So the point isn't that antisemites pre WWII were all in favor of concentration camps, it's that when Hitler started walking around saying "The Jews are subhuman and the Aryan race is the only one that deserves to live" all of the moderate antisemites didn't turn and say "hey now, that's too far" they said "well yeah, Jews are bad, but maybe murdering people is worse? It seems like murdering people would be worse ..." The US was significantly worried about the communist threat in Russia than the Fascist threat in Germany or Italy, just because we felt that communism was more politically threatening. Hitlers racial views were just seen as slightly more radical versions of the majority's racial views.

P.S. Fuck you for Godwinning the thread.

[Zinegata]

Wow. Kaelik's way of critical thinking is so retarded it belongs to the Dark Ages. What a surprise.

Leprechauns have not been proven to exist. No evidence has ever been presented to show that they do exist. Hence, belief in Leprechauns is irrational.

However, belief in Leprechauns would not be illogical.

Why? Simple...

-------

Back in the Dark Ages, people used to say that there is no such thing as Black Swans. Because no one had ever seen a Black Swan.

Until our technology advanced, people travelled the world, and found that Black Swans did actually exist in some corner of the Earth.

Again, repeat after me: Absence of proof is *not* proof of absence. This is basic logic.

So in order to disprove something from a logical perspective, you can't just say "There's no proof!". To disprove the existence of Leprechauns, you actually have to scour every corner of the universe, and show that in your universal survey you never found any life form that matches the description of Leprechauns.

Needless to say, with billions of stars and galaxies out there, disproving Leprechauns is gonna be next to impossible.

That's why people then created a concept known as rationality (with help from theologians, BTW) around the time of the Rennaisance. Which is different from being logical.

Rationality means that you should believe in things that you can evaluate. Since we don't have evidence of leprechauns, belief in the existence of leprechauns is irrational. And we thus shouldn't really make a lot of decisions based on this belief.

However, logically, someplace somewhere in the universe there really may be a race of Leprechauns. Until we actually go out and scour every nook and cranny of the universe, we can't logically say they won't exist.

The real modern day scientist - bound by the rules of logic and rationality - thus wouldn't say "Leprechauns don't exist". They would say "Let's build a rocket, explore the Cosmos, and see if they do exist or not!"

-------------

So really, what Kaelik is proposing is that we regress to the way of thinking in the Dark Ages, where concepts like "logic" and "rationality" do not exist.

Instead, we should - like the people of the Dark Ages - believe that the Earth is flat because no proof exists yet that it is in fact round. That the sun goes around the flat Earth, because people hadn't discovered evidence of astronomy yet.

In short, the blog and the person pushing that blog are charlatans. They don't know shit about logic or rationality and yet claim to champion it.

[For Valor]

jesus... what are we even talking about at this point?

[Zinegata]

And that's the point. If you "don't think about" religion or racism or whatever then you are far more willing to vote for a fuckhead candidate like Christine O'Donnel who loudly proclaims her Christianity at the drop of a hat over an atheist who's actual political views align with your own just because the atheist is part of the wrong club.

If you want to assign some of the blame and moral culpability to ordinary folks because their apathetic and ignorant, that's fine. I would agree. I certainly don't think all Germans are guilt-free. They could have done more to press for accountability and such.

My main concern though is that we should still assign the primary blame to the people manipulating the ordinary folk. Hang Hitler and the Nazis, but don't line up every German up a wall and shoot them. Because if these bad people didn't exist to manipulate the public, the bad things wouldn't have happened in the first place.

P.S. Fuck you for Godwinning the thread.

People should really stop making a big deal about discussing the most important event of the 20th Century.

[Zinegata]

jesus... what are we even talking about at this point?

Kaelik is saying that you're stupid for being an agnostic, because "Atheists have proved God does not exist".

Sashi and I are demonstrating that Kaelik's brand of thinking belong to the Dark Ages. Because agnostic belief - based on the rules of logic and rationality - is the only correct belief.

Specifically, I was showing that logic and rationality are two different concepts. I can explain further in simpler terms if you're confused.

[Sashi]

Sashi, do Leprechauns exist?

How about Garbaralalala-aasdfasdflkandsls?

Are you agnostic about Leprechauns? No, you know that Leprechauns don't exist. Just like you know Unicorns don't exist. Just like I know that God doesn't exist.

Haha, fuck you. I have high certainty that Leprechauns and Unicorns don't exist because they have actual fucking definitions. A leprechaun can't have a pot o' gold at the end of a rainbow because rainbows are a product of refraction through water droplets and don't physically have ends. There's not enough unexplored forest left to support a breeding population of horse-sized mammals we don't know about. And it's highly unlikely that tiny magical humanoids just decided to stop interacting with people after spending centuries making deals with them and stealing their babies.

Pretending that the existence and the lack of existence of something are both equal is not the only scientifically sound option, it's not even scientifically sound at all. It's completely ass backwards. It's not Scientifically sound to be agnostic about our brains having a portal to a far away place that we just can't detect inside them storing far more brain matter over there.

Pretending that whatever your definition of "god" is that you've managed to "disprove" is the only definition for god that can happen is both arrogant and unscientific. It's not about giving equal relevance to the existence or non-existence of god, it's about atheism claiming to prove a negative, which is impossible.

It's fucking retarded, and it's anti scientific to give a view with no evidence whatsoever (a universe with a "god" whatever you mean by that) the same weight as a universe explained by naturalistic processes.

One has evidence, the other has no evidence. Giving them equal weight is not the only scientifically sound position, it's literally the exact opposite of scientific soundness.

No, you're an arrogant fuckhead who has made the illogical leap that sufficient evidence to disprove the modern world religions is sufficient evidence to disprove all possibilities of god. Making the leap from "it is not possible for the god of any world religion to exist" to "no god exists" is an impossible logical leap. It's exactly as impossible a logical leap as any attempt to prove any other negative. There is plenty of evidence that there is no Christ or Allah, but there is no evidence that there is no god.

You're exactly the kind of atheist that keeps me from declaring myself an atheist. If "atheist" actually meant "I strongly believe there is no god" in conversation like that blog post tries to claim, then I might be willing to describe myself as such, but the fact is that conversational usage of "atheist" still means "I affirm the complete nonexistence of god". Which is a completely unfounded statement the same way "I affirm that you aren't thinking of the number three."

[The Lunatic Fringe]

Note that I said agnosticism is the only scientifically sound position to take.

Never make a post conflating inductive and deductive logic ever again. It hurts our brains. It hurts even more when you do so while arguing that another person is doing exactly the same thing.

[For Valor]

Sashi, do Leprechauns exist?

How about Garbaralalala-aasdfasdflkandsls?

Are you agnostic about Leprechauns? No, you know that Leprechauns don't exist. Just like you know Unicorns don't exist. Just like I know that God doesn't exist.

Haha, fuck you. I have high certainty that Leprechauns and Unicorns don't exist because they have actual fucking definitions. A leprechaun can't have a pot o' gold at the end of a rainbow because rainbows are a product of refraction through water droplets and don't physically have ends. There's not enough unexplored forest left to support a breeding population of horse-sized mammals we don't know about. And it's highly unlikely that tiny magical humanoids just decided to stop interacting with people after spending centuries making deals with them and stealing their babies.

And there's also a high probability that there's something in the Bible that's false. But we (society in general. And in person. I have no idea what YOU will say ON THE INTERNET) generally don't say "I know the bible is wrong."

That guy's article, which was full of a lot of ranting, boiled down to saying, "The word 'know', in all non-touchy subjects, is used with the assumption that you can be proven wrong. Why should religion be treated any differently? I can 'know' that God doesn't exist, and I don't need lots of evidence and 100% conviction to do so."

He's essentially saying that society uses it one way in a certain scenario, but a different way in another scenario, and that we should use the same definition for 'know' everywhere. Hell, the argument's base has little to nothing to do with agnostocism or atheism. It's a definition for the word 'know' followed by a rant.

[Sashi]

If you want to assign some of the blame and moral culpability to ordinary folks because their apathetic and ignorant, that's fine. I would agree. I certainly don't think all Germans are guilt-free. They could have done more to press for accountability and such.

My main concern though is that we should still assign the primary blame to the people manipulating the ordinary folk. Hang Hitler and the Nazis, but don't line up every German up a wall and shoot them. Because if these bad people didn't exist to manipulate the public, the bad things wouldn't have happened in the first place.

I think we're agreed on this. The Catholics who merely go to church and tithe are obviously less responsible for boy rape than the priests who did it, or the bishops who shuffled them around to try and hide it instead of reporting them to the cops. But the fact that they're still going to church and tithing means they're actively pretending that part of their money isn't going to pay the salaries of people responsible for boy rape. And the reason they do this is because it's easier for them to pretend than to examine their beliefs and at the very least stop tithing.

[Username17]

Moderates of all religions close ranks around and protect the extremists until they do a suicide bombing or rape a kid or something, at which point they're suddenly No True Scotsman.

Pretty much. Note that religious apologists are doing exactly that on this thread. Jehova's Witnesses make up less than 2% of all self identified Christians and even their wikipedia entry says that their beliefs are "outside mainstream Christianity". The vast majority of Christians do not believe that JWs count as Christians, since they do not actually believe most of the things they do, refuse to acknowledge Christian religious holidays, do not worship Christ, and have their own holy book that is "based on" the bible that mainstream Christianity uses.

However, these fringe fanatics are held up as being "True Christians" in order to falsify generalities about what Christians believe and do. And yet, is there any doubt that if they were to hold a Jonestown or a Waco that they would instantaneously be just as much "not real Christians" as the People's Church and the Branch Davidians? Hell, these guys have theology that is more out there than these other ones.

When outsiders come in to say that the JW beliefs about blood transfusions are irrational and kill children, Christians close ranks to protect them. But of course, when it comes to asking Christians amongst themselves whether JWs count as Christians or not, they overwhelmingly say no.

So yes, JWs are Christians only so long as we are talking about how crazy the Trinity is, and only to make a lame come back about how not all Scotsmen believe in the Trinity. The moment we start talking about JW refusal of medical care and how crazy and dangerous that is, then they suddenly aren't True Scotsmen any more.

-Username17

[Zinegata]

And yet Frank still somehow manages to generalize that contradictory dogma is what ordinary religious folk believe in, when it's been shown on this very thread that 40% of Christians in America don't even agree on the most basic dogma on the divinity of Christ.

Proving yet again that you don't need to be religious to "close ranks". Assholes and fake atheists like company too.

[Sashi]

That guy's article, which was full of a lot of ranting, boiled down to saying, "The word 'know', in all non-touchy subjects, is used with the assumption that you can be proven wrong. Why should religion be treated any differently? I can 'know' that God doesn't exist, and I don't need lots of evidence and 100% conviction to do so."

I accept that "I know the bible is wrong" is using "know" in the conversational sense of "there are enough contradictions in the bible that I don't care it's correct about who's Pharaoh in 430 BC". It's also conversational usage when I say "I know my car has enough gas" when what I really mean is "The last time I looked at the gas gauge it had enough gas, and a gas leak or gas thief is highly unlikely.".

But the problem I have is that people who define themselves as "atheist" do exactly the same thing when you point out their belief is unscientific as people who define themselves as "Christian" do when you attack their beliefs. The same way Catholics will claim that the cracker is metaphorically turned into the body of Christ while actually believing it becomes Jesus' body, that blog post is saying that "I know god doesn't exist" is the conversational meaning of "know", where "know" means "am extremely sure of" when you can also say "I am agnostic and see no evidence there could ever be a god" (which is my position). It's just fuckhead atheists attacking you for not being a part of their illogical atheist club.

[Sashi]

And yet Frank still somehow manages to generalize that contradictory dogma is what ordinary religious folk believe in, when it's been shown on this very thread that 40% of Christians in America don't even agree on the most basic dogma on the divinity of Christ.

Most Christians "believe" in contradictory dogma simply by not thinking about it. It takes some kind of dedication to apologetics to learn the doublethink it takes to support contradictory dogma. Your specific beliefs don't actually matter. All that matters is that you support the Religion club enough that saying "I wouldn't vote for an athiest, no matter their political position" is a valid viewpoint and you're part of the problem.

[Username17]

But the problem I have is that people who define themselves as "atheist" do exactly the same thing when you point out their belief is unscientific as people who define themselves as "Christian" do when you attack their beliefs. The same way Catholics will claim that the cracker is metaphorically turned into the body of Christ while actually believing it becomes Jesus' body, that blog post is saying that "I know god doesn't exist" is the conversational meaning of "know", where "know" means "am extremely sure of" when you can also say "I am agnostic and see no evidence there could ever be a god" (which is my position). It's just fuckhead atheists attacking you for not being a part of their illogical atheist club.

But it's not unscientific. Science relies upon the null hypothesis unless it gets falsified or called into question. The Earth moves, there is no Firmament, the Earth is roughly spherical and there is no height you can look down from where you can see all of it at once. The Judeo-Christian hypothesis has been falsified. The scientific thing to do is to then embrace the null hypothesis, not to hypothesize tinier and tinier gods in tinier and tinier gaps that have yet to be falsified.

If you don't make a positive testable claim, the scientific thing to do is to ignore the possibility of you being right. If you do make a positive, testable claim and that is tested and falsified (ex.: Firmament), then the scientific thing to do is to decide that your hypothesis is False.

Assigning a truth value other than "false" to the existence of Jehova or the gods of any other religion is a failure of epistemology. We're all agreed that Frodo was never a real person and that Santa Claus doesn't exist, right? No one here is agnostic about that shit, right?

-Username17

[cthulhu]

I'm know god doesn't exist in the same way I know that aliens are not spying on us from Mars and planning to invade.

[Zinegata]

Most Christians "believe" in contradictory dogma simply by not thinking about it. It takes some kind of dedication to apologetics to learn the doublethink it takes to support contradictory dogma. Your specific beliefs don't actually matter. All that matters is that you support the Religion club enough that saying "I wouldn't vote for an athiest, no matter their political position" is a valid viewpoint and you're part of the problem.

Actually, I tend to believe that they simply don't care rather than not thinking about it. But really, I don't think we disagree.

[Zinegata]

But it's not unscientific. Science relies upon the null hypothesis unless it gets falsified or called into question.

Frank's mistaking "scientific" with "rational". Really, it's getting tiresome how fake-atheists appeal to science even though they don't understand it beyond a grade school level.

Again: Something can be rational, but logically incorrect.

Rationality is again very simple: You can only test a theory if you have evidence that you can evaluate. If you don't have evidence, the theory is irrational. There is no evidence proving God. Hence it is irrational.

However, this does not make the statement "God does not exist" logically correct. To prove this, you must actually search the entire cosmos, look under every nook and cranny, make sure there aren't alternate dimensions, etc.

Because again: The absence of proof is not the proof of absence. This is a consequence of humanity's lack of omniscience. We don't know *yet* what is actually true because we haven't collected all possible data.

Thus, if you want to prove God does not exist, build a fucking rocket and travel the cosmos. You've got several billion stars to explore.

If you rely soley on rational/irrational thought, you end up with Dark Age shit like "The Earth is actually flat because no evidence exists it's actually round, since nobody has sailed around the world yet".

[Sashi]

AGAIN you make the exact same fucking arrogant mistake that Kaelik makes. By declaring myself agnostic I'm not saying I'm holding out for Christianity to be proven right. The Null Hypothesis of the Judeo-Christian god is the nonexistence of the Judeo-Christian god, not all gods. And again some arrogant atheist who thinks they're smart enough to have their certainty about the nonexistence of Christ mean they're also certain about any possibility of god ever in any way and starts bringing up straw men like being "agnostic about Frodo" as if that's even relevant.

Jehovah or Allah obviously don't exist because the literature that belief in them is based on is fundamentally flawed. And the existence of evil precludes the existence of a kind and loving god. But nothing I've ever observed precludes the existence of an asshole god who doesn't want to be found.

[Psychic Robot]

Atheists will always be angry. No matter what, they will stew an impotent rage and froth and scream, and nothing will make them happy. Makes me want to vote for Palin.