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Originally Posted by KnifeMissile
I believe this to be the motivation behind your vehemence for the defense of religion but I, personally, find it to be misguided.
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I am not defending religion. I think most religions are wrong, but the key is that *I* think that. Yet somehow I manage to keep my tone respectful when talking to those who do believe in their religion. I don't talk about eradicating their beliefs. I don't say they're ridiculous, or stupid, or any of the other vitriolic sputum that has been aired in this thread.
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Already, you're probably reading this thinking "okay, lets see what I can find wrong with anything he says" and, in the process, ignore anything that's right in what I'm about to say...
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Nice try.
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I would very much like to know why you think "the first two examples" have been "established to not exist."
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OK, you win. If you want to drag this thread down into the realm of silliness, so be it. No, the spaghetti monster cannot be proven to not exist. There's a lot of evidence that it doesn't - not the least being it is a work of fiction invented as a joke within the past 10 years - but yes, I will acknowledge that it is not possible to prove conclusively that there is no spaghetti monster somewhere in the universe, because it is not possible to prove a negative.
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The point of those examples is that they demonstrate how powerful an argument that "you can't disprove His existence" is not. In exactly the same manner that you can't disprove the existence of God, you can't disprove the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster or the Invisible Pink Unicorn.
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Correct. However I would point out that there is no billion-dollar organization (much less many billion dollar organizations) dedicated to the concept that the spaghetti monster exists. There is no long history of belief in the spaghetti monster, and there is no ancient text proclaiming the existance of a spaghetti monster, and there is no widespread belief or teaching about the spaghetti monster. In other words, it would be much more understandable were we to look askance at someone who genuinely believed in a spaghetti monster.
But to say that someone is ridiculous and stupid for essentially trusting their parents (after all we generally learn about god first from our parents), not to mention a huge percentage of the world's population, is way, WAY out of line.
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You're probably pretty sure they don't exist, mostly because they were notably made up by men but, then again, so was the Old Testemant
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That's a matter of debate. Religious people will tell you it was merely dictated to man by God.
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Given the context, I don't think this is an appropriate followup to the claim "put your money where your mouth is." The underlined text was made by me to demonstrate the context that you appear to have ignored. Yakk never said that he can disprove any notion of God.
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And that is my point, which you seem to have missed. Until Yakk can conclusively prove that something which a large percentage of the world's population believes in is false, he should avoid calling them stupid. He should instead, frankly, sweeten his tone or shut the hell up. I am not objecting that Yakk does not believe in god. I am objecting to the rude, disrespectful, and hate-filled way in which he is expressing that disbelief.
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He qualified his claim to all aspects of God that have been testable. For instance, there have been surprisingly many experiments to test the power of prayer (personally, I'm surprised anyone was willing to pay for said experiments!) and they consistently produce as many positive results as the Michelson-Morley experiment.
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Yes, but while the Michelson-Morley experiment proved conclusively that either there was no aether, or that the aether did not have the slow-down effect on light it had been assumed to have, the power of prayer experiments do not have sufficient controls to prove that prayer doesn't work. After all, maybe those who are praying, simply aren't doing it right.
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I think this is a prime example of you reading what you want to read. Motivated by your attitude that all beliefs must be respected (your "tolerance" motivation), you will say anything that even appears to be reasonable. Of course no one can simply disprove God so it's a pretty safe challenge to put forth and so you do, even if it isn't really a response to what was said. I believe this is part of the dishonesty that Yakk loathes...
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If you want to talk dishonesty, then we have to look at Yakk's original premise. Yakk cannot prove that there is not a god, yet he dishonestly acts as though he, with his faith that there is no god, is superior to those who have faith that there is a god, because he is not being honest enough to admit that neither side is any more provable than the other.
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Nonetheless, they believe in something that is utterly unreasonable and they use it to make your life hard. Not all of them, mind you. Just the powerful ones... Most of them simply keep their delusional beliefs to themselves and let the others do what they will with it. Would you be motivated to take these people out of their delusion, despite that not all of them are using their delusion to hinder your life?
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No. I would be motivated to stop those who were hindering my life from hindering my life. And even the hinderers could continue to believe whatever they wanted, for all I care. I'm not interested in destroying their beliefs, as Yakk has claimed to be. But I expect the same courtesy to be extended my way. I won't destroy your belief, but don't even think about destroying mine.
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The point that atheists, here, have been making is that it's reasonable to disblieve in God without the proof of nonexistence for which you are asking.
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It absolutely is, and I would certainly not stop them from doing so. It is, however, unreasonable to insult and attempt to destroy the beliefs of others.
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This is simply false. Not only is there plenty of evidence that travelling faster than the speed of light is impossible (just check out Tilted Knowledge) but we have been testing these limits out, for quite some time now, in particle accelerators...
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1) light has recently been stopped in a laboratory. Before that it was slowed to 38mph. It is certainly possible to go faster than that.
2) We used to say it was impossible to go faster than the speed of sound, but then technology advanced and we figured out how to do it. It is entirely possible that hundreds of years from now we will figure out how to go from point A to point B faster than a light beam could get there.
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You may fault his attitude
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that is all that I am faulting. His attitude is atrocious.
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Is there a reason why you are trying as hard as you can to not understand his point of view?
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I understand his point of view. I think we all do. However we expect him to be respectful of other people's points of view.
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Atheists contend that the believability of God is quite low and wonder why theists think it's so high. Some theists think it's rather high while others think it's a test of their faith that it's so low...
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Quite correct. But there are two kinds of atheists. Polite atheists, and atheists who act like jerks. I do not protest that Yakk is an atheist. I merely protest that he has not yet achieved the title of polite atheists.
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It may not be "polite" to show theists how ridiculous their beliefs are but it can be argued that it's impolite for them to push their belief system onto the rest of us so what else can Yakk do?
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I assure you, if a theist had told Yakk that he was a ridiculous idiot I would be jjumping on them as well. There is nothing wrong with expressing your beliefs. But some need to learn to express those beliefs without making insulting blanket statements about those who do not see things their way.
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The hope of atheists is that, without religion, there will be no more stake burnings, metaphorical or otherwise. At the very least, their motives won't be hidden behind religion...
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Yeah, that's Dawkins' hope too. Unfortunately he, like Yakk, needs to learn that you can, to borrow a phrase, convert more flies with honey than vinegar. You're certainly not going to win over the religious types by telling them they're stupid.
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it is unambiguously their duty to save our souls by forcing their beliefs on us.
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No, it isn't. They are supposed to preach the gospel, not slaughter the Indians for not believing in Jesus. They can preach all they want, but they're not allowed to oppress.