I had to slightly re-arrange the order of your responses in order to make them easier to respond to.
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Originally Posted by willravel
If your position and my position were equally opposed, you'd be right. They are not. You obviously believe in the existence of god. I'd have to equally but oppositely believe that there is no god for the two ideas to be equally opposed. When I say, "Prove god exists", I am asking you to defend your point. When you ask me to prove god doesn't exist, you're asking me to defend a point that is not my own.
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This is almost like getting in an argument with someone who says that zero isn't the same as one divided by a million. While, statistically, they're not the same the difference between them is so negligible that we call them equal.
On numerous occasions you have stated that the statistical probability of God existing is minuscule that it's safe to assume he doesn't exist. I'm simply asking you to defend that point through scientific reasoning (Which is what you're basing your argument on, anyway).
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I'm an agnostic atheist. I believe in the almost certain fiction of god. That means that while I recognize that god may exist, the probability is so low that his non-existence is a virtual certainty. And we're all a little crazy...
...Defendant, but that's really not important. The fact is that you absolutely believe in the existence of god. I think that's irrational. I've shown, by lack of any evidence, that god almost certainly isn't real, so you're position isn't reasonable.
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I've taken the liberty of summarizing your argument.
1.) If God were to exist, then there would be good objective evidence for that.
2.) There is, however, no good objective evidence for God's existence.
3.) Therefore, God probably doesn't exist.
Correct?
I know that I've said this before, but not having evidence for something is not proof that something is not nor cannot be true. Similarly, merely not having evidence for a particular proposition is not proof that an alternative proposition is instead the case-- It is in fact simply lack of evidence, and nothing more (
Wikipedia).
Your position is no more 'logical' than mine.
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But the evidence to support the existence of Zeus is the same as the evidence to support god. Why favor one over the other? Why is god more likely than Zeus?
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I don't believe I ever said that one was more likely than the other, but rather that I believe in the Judeo-Christian God more so than I believe in Zeus.
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You've met god, then? You've come across some evidence to tell you god is real? I'd love for you to share reasonable evidence that can lead to the natural assertion that the existence of god is a certainty, thus justifying your faith, and changing your faith to science.
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Trying to use science to explain religious beliefs/phenomena is rather problematic, wouldn't you say? Religion explains the 'who' and 'why' while science typically tries to answer the 'how'.
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I sincerely hope you weren't thinking of listing things like 'a child's laughter' or 'someone reading the Bible and crying'.
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No, I wasn't.
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Have you ever died? No? Then you're not qualified to tell me my experience was wrong.
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I said that your experience was wrong? Find it. I believe I said that you can't qualify other people's experiences based on your own, which you were trying to do.
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Both are illogical. Thank god (pun intended) that I fall into neither of those camps. You, on the other hand, do. Even if I was someone who absolutely believed that god doesn't exist, that wouldn't make your position any more logical. We'd simply both be wrong. Someone else being wrong doesn't make you right.
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The only way to not fall into one of those two categories is to make no conclusions regarding the existence of God either way. Anyway, I don't believe I've ever claimed my argument to be logical (By scientific standards) and I'm perfectly happy to admit that my beliefs contradict what science knows about the natural world. You, however, claim to base your argument on scientific reasoning yet the conclusions you make exist outside the realm in which science is able to estimate (See link above).
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If your faith had nothing to do with spiting me, then why did you suddenly assert that every time I make an argument your faith grows?
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Didn't I, like, already explain this?
Your argument against the existence of God relies heavily on the premise that, while you might not be able to disprove God's existence today, tomorrow you might know more than you know today and thus be able to disprove his existence (Stop me now if I'm wrong). Such an argument simply avoids the fact that science will
never be able to make claims regarding God's existence one way or the other. With that being said, I believe God to be inexplicable. As I'm sure you're well aware, two contradictory statements (Or in this case, beliefs) can't both be true; Either God can be explained or he can't be explained. The growing inability to explain/rationalize God only serves to support my claim that God is unexplainable.
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That's clearly a weak attempt at taunting, and you're hardly the first person to try and use that to try and make me angry. It's never actually gotten me angry, though it usually ends the conversation because when others make that statement, they have lost all my respect and they're not worth my time. There are plenty of people out there who are more than willing to actually listen to me, and who I am willing to listen to.
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*Points above*
It has nothing to do with taunting.
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YOU made the claim, so I have to look it up? I'm sure your professors love reading your citations.
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You continued the discussion, even though I clearly stated that it was slightly off-topic and better suited for a thread of it's own.
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I know plenty of Mexicans, Arabs, Asians, and yes even African-Americans who are agnostic atheists. I'm having lunch with one today as we go over performance standards for March today at work, in fact.
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I didn't say you won't find
any atheists from different ethnic backgrounds (As you seemingly believe I said), but rather that the
majority of atheists do stem from a singular background.
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You were trying to do a hit an run, and I called you on it. You suddenly dropped the race card, then you said, "Oh, but don't worry about it".
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You can't call me on anything when I specifically stated (Before you replied, mind you), "
Slightly off-topic, but I've always wondered why atheism is most prevalent in non-minorities. I guess, however, that's another topic for another day."