"all brians; no common sense." Don't worry, I will put write it down to put in in the 'logic does not apply to me' crowd which already consists of believer & prophet.

"Lets comepare that to AIG." I hope you're not comparing AIG to science, what they do surely isn't based on methodological naturalism.

torent, "someone who chases the wind " What does that even mean? The wind is at least detectable, measurable unlike oh you know what... "listen to someone who is so wound up in logic principles" Far be it from me to be so demanding to require evidence for your propositions. How audacious of me to request evidence! I guess in your fantasy land, evidence isn't a requirement, but more of ...more

torent,

"someone who chases the wind "

What does that even mean? The wind is at least detectable, measurable unlike oh you know what...

"listen to someone who is so wound up in logic principles"

Far be it from me to be so demanding to require evidence for your propositions. How audacious of me to request evidence! I guess in your fantasy land, evidence isn't a requirement, but more of a luxury for conclusions. I guess in your view, logic doesn't matter either, any ol thing can be totally contradictory in principle & in its properties & we needn't be bothered by concepts which don't adhere to logic. Good thing you can read my comments, that much shows you can grasp the concepts of non-contradiction.less

"according to who?" According to Galelio. According to Giodorna Bruno. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno

"...blah, blah blah" Translation: I don't understand basic logic principles, like other who think circular reasoning (believer) is just dandy for the bible and laws of non-contradiction (prophet) doesn't exist, even though they use language. Logic doesn't apply to me

Torrent, “Can you empirically prove that God does NOT exist?” Philosophically, no. But then again one cannot disprove a negative, it’s logically impossible, so there is no need to. You can no more disprove that god doesn’t exist anymore than you cannot disprove a celestial teapot doesn’t exist, or that santa doesn’t exist. The evidence of a santa type character is absolutely...more

Torrent,

“Can you empirically prove that God does NOT exist?”

Philosophically, no. But then again one cannot disprove a negative, it’s logically impossible, so there is no need to.

You can no more disprove that god doesn’t exist anymore than you cannot disprove a celestial teapot doesn’t exist, or that santa doesn’t exist. The evidence of a santa type character is absolutely at odds with reality & everything we know it suggests it’s not only improbable, but impossible.

Thus the evidence for such a santa character would warrant the (reasonable) belief; & conversely the lack of evidence for it doesn’t warrant a belief. Evidence comes first, then the belief, always.

The burden of proof however goes to the one claiming the affirmative (theists/you) & thus the burden is on them to demonstrate reasonable empirical evidence that said thing exists, as they describe based on properties, in the first place.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance

e.g Many theists contend that god is all powerful, all knowing, & all loving & compassionate. However Epicurus asks us to square such premises & determine if they're possible, & they're not.

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

But if you’ve already conceded that ground that you cannot prove the affirmative you’re proposing but rather imposing failed logical fallacies such that I have to disprove something that you cannot already prove, well, then it would appear my case is solid.less

torrent, "you're the type of guy/gal that would require empirical evidence for every chair you're about to sit in...because you'd need to have faith that every chair will hold you when you sit in it" No, not at all. For one, it's quite evident chairs exist. I can, as well as others can, measure them both in weight, height, how much load they can carry & various other properties to know, with...more

torrent,

"you're the type of guy/gal that would require empirical evidence for every chair you're about to sit in...because you'd need to have faith that every chair will hold you when you sit in it"

No, not at all. For one, it's quite evident chairs exist. I can, as well as others can, measure them both in weight, height, how much load they can carry & various other properties to know, with far greater certainty that they exist when compared to some supernatural thing for which no one can directly or indirectly test to know its height, weight, or any other properties.

I & others can know these properties of a chair & thus can deduce its existence. At the very least based on methodology of reductionism we can tell for certain what a chair isn’t, we cannot do this with the supernatural either. You can nor more tell me how many angels can fit on the head of a pin anymore can you describe in detail how a non-material brain works.
We can refer to our own as well others analysis on said chairs to determine its nature of existence.

Sadly, the same cannot be said of gods where no two people can even agree on the specific nature or properties of a god. This is precisely why there are SO MANY differing views of religions, nearly 30,000 denominations of Christianity alone, most are mutually exclusive. Chairs however do not share any such conflation, nor mix-up in their empirical nature.less

"I watched your video and am amazed at all the fools they listed. " 'fools' only according to the bible. Interesting though it is that those listed are but a partial list, & of them, their actions question the premise that if they're not believers they cannot be moral. "You may want to know the difference between fool and intelligence." According to you, apparently intelligence is found i...more

"I watched your video and am amazed at all the fools they listed. "

'fools' only according to the bible. Interesting though it is that those listed are but a partial list, & of them, their actions question the premise that if they're not believers they cannot be moral.

"You may want to know the difference between fool and intelligence."

According to you, apparently intelligence is found in those who believes things without evidence, while the foolish reject claims made in appeals to authority which are absent of evidence.less

"It's a shallow person who needs to actually SEE the evidences of God in the sense of the physical" Hmm, then one must ask, why don't you believe in other religions & other gods? They too lack a lot of evidence & require lots of faith, but you reject them, so on what grounds do you reject them?

"A good cartoon video puts this into a way I like" way of the master, Muppet for hire. Here's my take on it. http://vimeo.com/15773748

"by the time you get your empirical evidence..it's too late" Well, isn't that convenient for you. You're only claim to evidence for the belief is AFTER one is dead. Well, that's no evidence at all. One needs evidence in the here & now to make sound reasoning of what to believe in the here and now. If I told you that this was all 'The Matrix', you too would require empirical evidence & not some ...more

"by the time you get your empirical evidence..it's too late"

Well, isn't that convenient for you. You're only claim to evidence for the belief is AFTER one is dead. Well, that's no evidence at all. One needs evidence in the here & now to make sound reasoning of what to believe in the here and now. If I told you that this was all 'The Matrix', you too would require empirical evidence & not some nonsense excuse that you'll know later when you're dead.

BTW, when one is dead, they no longer have a physical body, & thus no physical brain, so how exactly does a non-physical brain work in order to think, & know what you claim?

Asking a person to believe for beliefs sake, or belief in absence of empirical evidence is to subject ones reason and logic to not even to exist.

If such examples as those I gave occurred, or something comparable to it, I think many non-believers would convert. If christian prayers showed higher efficacy according to a certain denomination or over all other religious prayers, you'd have more believers. If prayers showed higher efficacy over clinical procedures & medicines, you'd have more believers. The fact that they do not occur is your problem, not mine.

Pleading that evidence now doesn't matter, & asking those to accept a promissory note for zero evidence for itself is laughable.less

“Most of militant atheists are troll and cowards.“ Oh boy. First let’s get one thing straight, being critical of your faith, or questioning it isn’t militant any more than questioning Islam or other religions. No, militant would be something like Christians plotting to execute govt officials in Michagan. So much for them being imaginary… http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content...more

“Most of militant atheists are troll and cowards.“

Oh boy. First let’s get one thing straight, being critical of your faith, or questioning it isn’t militant any more than questioning Islam or other religions. No, militant would be something like Christians plotting to execute govt officials in Michagan. So much for them being imaginary…

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/29/AR2010032901541.html?wprss=rss_nation

“ forget that they live in country where 77% are Christians.”

Yeah, where for decades polls on religious knowledge have shown those espousing a belief as a christian cannot even answer better than 50% on the most basic concepts in their bible. They can’t tell you who made the comments on the sermon of the mount, they very rarely can tell you any of the non-social laws of the 10 commandments, and they rarely even go to church. They’re quite literally Christian in name only, & besides, like Islam, most of the followers are not fundamentalist wackos bent on bringing Armageddon.

“If we are so violent, why you are not afraid to bash Christianity most of the time?”

Most of christiondome resides in the westernized secularized world, where there are laws protecting freedom of speech & there are laws prohibiting persecution of those who critique religion openly. Historically this wasn’t the case though, as open dissention against the church was seen as heretics & they were commonly if not tortured to covert, killed. The main difference is that most of the Christians live in societies which have largely undergone the blows of modernity & secularism & killing in the name of god, or b/c you don’t believe in X god is no longer allowed nor considered sound reasoning. This isn’t quite so in some of the theocratic muslim countries, most times apostates are killed.

“Remember that Salman Rushdie, Theo van Gogh, Kurt Westergaard, South Park Cartoonist and many more”

But they were non-believers critiquing islam/religion.

“ which in their imaginary world is so violent that the last war caused by it is 1000 years ago.”

And what of the current war ongoing in Ireland between the protestants and catholics? This conflict wouldn’t even exist were it not for the religious differences.less

"most atheist that I know or humanist want empirical evidence for God" And why should we require anything less? All claims require evidence, they cannot logically stand simply b/c they're miraculous, use appeals to authority, or are in opposition to known natural laws. David Hume pitied such excuses for belief. Only religions require that things be believed by faith alone. If god audibly us...more

"most atheist that I know or humanist want empirical evidence for God"

And why should we require anything less? All claims require evidence, they cannot logically stand simply b/c they're miraculous, use appeals to authority, or are in opposition to known natural laws. David Hume pitied such excuses for belief.

Only religions require that things be believed by faith alone. If god audibly used ESP to speak to the worlds population all at once, & in unison gave the same comment, you'd have a lot more believers. If god healed amputees, you'd have more believers.less

torrent "if this Dawkins actually read the Bible" He's had to at least read the bible, how else could he site the plethora of passages in it which are deplorable? How could he cite in 'the god delusion' the section in OT where jews were ordered to massacre all the men, boys, and non-virgin women, but to keep all the virgins for themselves?

j4bigtyme, “compared to the rest of the universe not just our galaxy.” Sure, earth is ‘relatively young’ at 4.57 billion years old, where the universe is 13.7 billion years old, but surely there are other younger planets that have been formed since earth. “The theory of the Plurality of Worlds is if life can exist here if must exist somewhere else in the universe.” It’s ...more

j4bigtyme,

“compared to the rest of the universe not just our galaxy.”

Sure, earth is ‘relatively young’ at 4.57 billion years old, where the universe is 13.7 billion years old, but surely there are other younger planets that have been formed since earth.

“The theory of the Plurality of Worlds is if life can exist here if must exist somewhere else in the universe.”

It’s a possibility, especially when one considers not only the current age of the universe, but also that it will go on for many more billions (trillions?) of years, not to mention the destructive/creative process of new stars being formed & the corollary planets which orbit them. But I am not a big proponent of asserting the existence of something with lacking evidence (such is a logical fallacy), so even though the numbers are favorable, we cannot say we know life exists elsewhere until it’s found, or finds us, or shows certain evidence in communication. We can say within reason we believe, but not know, there is a difference between belief and knowing. ; )

“do you think he made a few pit stops before coming to Earth?”

I am agnostic, so I do not know of any certitude regarding a god(s) existence, & as for belief, I really find it hard to believe in any fabled stories of god, let alone the christian one. So I am more of an atheist in that respect, though I’ve always thought the deistic concept of god as one being more congruent with reality. As far as god creating life elsewhere, well sure, I guess. But then you’ll have some fundamentalists who insist that b/c it’s not explicitly stated as such in the bible, & their interpretation doesn’t cover it, thus it cannot be true. I don’t agree with such a premise, but I am just pointing out the dogmatic views.

"A supreme being that came down from the stars." Sounds like a definition of an extraterrestrial”

Certainly a possibility. What is important is that many cultures in their ignorance were quite open to nonsense that today much of the educated world knows is wrong, bunk, & not congruent with reality. I think we naturally see patterns in nature, & when we cannot adequately explain them with nature we assign some supernatural, or magical force as being behind them. This is how you get ‘rain dances’, and other such nonsense ritualistic sacrifices as seen with the Mayans or even the OT Jews.

The ancients in many respects lacked a sound methodology (no science) to distinguish baloney from reality & many would readily replace an unknown & affix some magic as being the agent controlling it. From the ancients view, something like the Internet or a NASA space shuttle would surely seem as if powered by magic, or something alien.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/776.htmlless

"the best book that I have read that as a science green horn that I can understand" Hmmm, one wonders why you only bothered to ready that book, and not others from the likes of Myer, Bakker, Carrol, Dawkins, & so on.

I'll take your ignoring me as a concession that my points were validated with citations, whereas yours were not.

Jeffy, What can I say, you're special. " a tree can have more than one ring in a year" Rarely, maybe 1/1000, but I don't see how this matters as there are always *other* trees to measure the dates against to determine if it's a false positive or not. BTW, dendrochonology shows the earth isn't only 6,000 years young. "I understand half lives." Sure you do, I mean that's why you...more

Jeffy,

What can I say, you're special.

" a tree can have more than one ring in a year"

Rarely, maybe 1/1000, but I don't see how this matters as there are always *other* trees to measure the dates against to determine if it's a false positive or not. BTW, dendrochonology shows the earth isn't only 6,000 years young.

"I understand half lives."

Sure you do, I mean that's why you utterly failed in conflating that C-14 dating cannot measure carbon beyond 5300 years, as according to you it wold all be gone, but this is no so. Or as you put it.

"If we found some C14 it cannot be billions of years old. Please explain how there is any C14 in diamonds that are supposed to be billions of years old."

My point in the rebuttal earlier, or as you'd eloquently put it - Please read what someone actually types before responding.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/rate-critique.html

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/c14.html

"If we found some C14 it cannot be billions of years old"

Obviously, but I am not the one suggesting C14 dating is used for such long periods of lengths. It's not used to date the earth, jeffy.

'The geologic column does not exist in nature."

Baloney. Go to the Grand Canyon, you can directly witness most of the layers & in succession before your very creationist eyes.

"I am saying that there are problems that make no site match the model. (to include: rock layers are out of order"

(rolls eyes), have you not heard of deposition and erosion then?

and about your tree fossils...

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

"ever heard of a pregnant virgin?" Ever heard this is narrative was a common folk tale in the ancient times? Buddha for instance was allegedly born of a virgin. "With man this is impossible. But with God all things are possible." Then tell your god to heal amputees already.

"what we observer today BOTH creation and evolution supporters start with their pre-suppositions" The only assumption evolutionary biology uses is that it's the result of nature, not magic. "One supposes the model found in the bible" There is no 'creationism model', were it actually valid, it would produce fruits and explain physical reality better than the alternative methodological natu...more

"what we observer today BOTH creation and evolution supporters start with their pre-suppositions"

The only assumption evolutionary biology uses is that it's the result of nature, not magic.

"One supposes the model found in the bible"

There is no 'creationism model', were it actually valid, it would produce fruits and explain physical reality better than the alternative methodological naturalism model (science).

"BOTH have stepped outside of the scientific realm of testability and repeatability"

Baloney. We can test physical reality and nature, what we cannot test is the mind of god(s), nor if they made the sun stop for joshu, or made a global flood. The science shows donkey's and snakes do not talk, that there is no such thing as a 'tree of knowledge'.less