Yakk

It is no more or less ridiculous than belief in the flying spagetti monster, invisible pink unicorns, or running around with your skin painted blue so the UFO over-masters will take you to space.

I disagree.

The only "existance of God" that cannot be disproven is a claim without any conseqence in this universe. It is, effectively, utter and complete nonsense wrapped up to look pretty.

So long as those who believe in the existance of God don't try to infect me, my children, or anyone placed under my care, and they don't place any restrictions on my behaviour based on their ridiculous beliefs, I am fine with their ridiculous beliefs. Once they step beyond that, they are harming me, and as a matter of self defence I am justified in harming them.

Evidence that the non-existance of God is false can exist. As an example:

A big glowy person with a white beard showing up, talking at the same time to everyone at the same time, explaining that they made the universe, demonstrating millions of physically impossible tasks, demonstrating personal knowledge of everyone he talks to -- that is an example of some pretty strong evidence that "God does not exist" is wrong.

So "God does not exist" is a testable belief.

It isn't possible to prove anything, period. Not beyond a shadow of a doubt. But you can test things -- take what you believe, predict what will or will not happen, and see if you are right. Beliefs pass many such tests are often called "proven". Beliefs that fail such tests are called "disproven".

"God does not exist", as a belief, has produced predictions. These predictions have tended to pan out. As such, one could say "God does not exist" has been "proven".

Meanwhile, the weakest "God does exist" "statement", the one that cannot be disproven -- it doesn't produce any tests or predictions that can be checked. Stronger "God does exist" statements (ie, "God exists, and the God that exists wrote down the literal truth of history in the Bible") have been "disproven" pretty damn often.

As an example, the Flying Spagetti Monster "global warming is caused by lack of pirates" can be demonstrated to be false -- in this case, because their graph of # of pirates is way off (not even close to the right shape).

Or the Christian Bible's implied approximate 6000 year age of the Earth -- it predicted certain things that didn't pan out (and really surprised people when they discovered them!).

I consider them to be wrong, and that they hold a ridiculous belief. I may respect them for other parts of their lives, but their religious belief reduces my respect for them.

Belief justified by social acceptance. As such, if society stops accepting the belief, there is no longer a good reason to believe it.

If that is the only good reason to believe it, then once it is ridiculed there is no longer a good reason to believe it.

One claim is extraordinary, the other is pretty mundane. In one case, the literal existance matters, in the other it doesn't matter that much.

In one case, the existance "matters", in the other it doesn't. If Socrates turned out to be a fabrication by some other ancient scholar or scholars, the study of Socrates would be just as imporant as it is today. The Socratic Method would keep it's name.

Let's have a though experiment. Time travel is invented that lets you look into the past. Using other technologies, we also are able to pick up the internal monologues of people as they act. Cool, eh?

Using it, we find out that Socrates was invented by Plato. He wanted to express the Platonic Ideal of what he thought a Philosopher should be. The action behaviour of Socrates is a mixture of imagination and the acts of various other people Plato knew.

At the same time, we find that almost every single event in the Bible where invented by Priests who wanted power. There was no burning bush, the Isrealites never came from Egypt, the person "Jesus" never existed but was rather cobbled together from various other myths.

Somehow, I think the responses of people who "believe" in the Christian God and people who "believe" in Socrates will be different.

I have chosen to value Truth, Intelligence and Honesty. Not above all other values, but I hold them to have some value.

I dislike lieing. I dislike it when people are basing their actions off of ridiculous motivations, and those actions interfear with my goals.

If that where true, you might have a point. But even as I speak, the government subsidizes Churches. Their morality is imposed upon me in my private affairs. And occasionally religions convince people to blow themselves up, threatening aquantances of mine. Some of them are beating up gay people, others of them are blocking funding for effective stem cell research.

If people where willing to keep their beliefs out of the public sphere and in their homes, that would be one thing. But they don't.

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Last edited by JHVH : 10-29-4004 BC at 09:00 PM. Reason: Time for a rest.