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The five best reasons not to believe in God

I'm an MSc in Biology. Yes I'm aware of it, lol. I didn't say evidence that consciousness is occurring, I said evidence for the nature of consciousness. What is it? Nobody can answer this question. There is no evidence that brain waves = consciousness. Brain waves mean that the activities of consciousness are occurring but we don't know if they are consciousness or not. Yes, there is a difference, and yes, the difference is important. I work in a faculty neighbouring a neurology research lab. I've had this conversation with people who know way more about this than you or I. They say they'd like to believe consciousness is in the brain but they can't prove it. Even if they could say that consciousness is in the brain they still can't say what consciousness is. We are taking about the nature of being here. Please make the distinction. There's nothing in this that tells you how or why you are you. I can't point to a part of your body and say that you reside there, or what is this "you" that's in there.

All of this is beside the point. You generally agree without evidence that a person is conscious even though you can't see inside of them or know their internal workings, because you were taught that this is true and you believed it. Don't act like you held off on believing it until you read studies about EEGs. You believed people were conscious much earlier than that. If you are so bent on evidence then you have already contradicted yourself.

Similarly, other people "know" that God is real. They might not be able to point to something and say "God is there" but they are having a genuine epistemological experience. It's real. It's a phenomenon. It's not delusional.

Apples and oranges. EEGs are evidence for consciousness whether you care to admit it or not. You wouldn’t be participating in this conversation without consciousness. And they are welcome to have all the non-delusional epistemological experiences that they want. When you can find one of them who can offer objective, reality-based evidence, let me know.
 
Apples and oranges. EEGs are evidence for consciousness whether you care to admit it or not.

You're not an empiricist so you should stop pretending you are. This is a belief, not a fact.

You wouldn’t be participating in this conversation without consciousness. And they are welcome to have all the non-delusional epistemological experiences that they want. When you can find one of them who can offer objective, reality-based evidence, let me know.

"Reality-based evidence."

People who believe in God would say you're delusional for not seeing that God is there. See how that works? *shrug*

Thanks for this conversation, although it was mostly useless. Upon probing, your view of things does not have much depth, and when that depth is offered to you, you retort with childish dismissal. That's unfortunate. At the end of the day it's no skin off my back how you choose to see things. I just thought you'd enjoy conversing about it.

You're a fan of saying "whether or not you admit it [A and B] are true"... but this is not an empirical statement because empirical statements are not ultimatums. Nobody writing an evidence-based paper would put things that way. Yours is actually an ontological statement. The irony is that you're dismissing my attempts to talk to you about ontology yet you yourself are steeped in it. I was just trying to get you to see that, but I did not succeed.

Cheers.
 
I have three reasons:

I wasn't born rich
Trump was born rich
I haven't won the lottery yet
 
Very good. You get an “A” in Ontology 101. Boring. Get back to me when you done some evidence for “God”.

Look, if you had come out and said that you were a material rationalist or something along those lines (framing your belief system), and then said there is no evidence within your way of seeing things that God could exist, I probably would've said, "Yeah, you're right, there's no material evidence that God can exist."

Instead, you're saying there's no evidence at all and that there can't be evidence, which contradicts other schools of thought who have their own standards of evidence. The schools of theology, for example, would say that there is plenty of evidence for God... in miracles, in our inexplicable existence, in the mystery of our being.

I can't put your consciousness in a lab setting and test for it, to confirm that it's there or identify the location of "you", but I concede that you are a person on the other end of the internet talking to me. I have no proof, but I know it's true. That knowing is not rooted in the kind of evidence you're asking for to prove God is real. It's a different kind of knowing. I wish you would cop to it instead of avoiding it.

You're acting like empiricism and material reductionism are all there is. It's pretty limited, and you won't allow it to be challenged. That's why I see no point in conversing further. All the power to you in what you choose to believe is real. Cheers.
 
You're not an empiricist so you should stop pretending you are. This is a belief, not a fact.



"Reality-based evidence."

People who believe in God would say you're delusional for not seeing that God is there. See how that works? *shrug*

Thanks for this conversation, although it was mostly useless. Upon probing, your view of things does not have much depth, and when that depth is offered to you, you retort with childish dismissal. That's unfortunate. At the end of the day it's no skin off my back how you choose to see things. I just thought you'd enjoy conversing about it.

You're a fan of saying "whether or not you admit it [A and B] are true"... but this is not an empirical statement because empirical statements are not ultimatums. Nobody writing an evidence-based paper would put things that way. Yours is actually an ontological statement. The irony is that you're dismissing my attempts to talk to you about ontology yet you yourself are steeped in it. I was just trying to get you to see that, but I did not succeed.

Cheers.

You gat an “A” in obfuscation. Let me know when you run across some objective, reality-based evidence for God. And I really don’t care what people who “believe in God” would say about me until and unless they can show me said evidence. And I note your resort to ad hom and your lame excuse for doing so.
 
Go design a test for whether or not God is real.

The fact that you can't create a test doesn't mean God can't exist, it means it's untestable.

More people should study science in school. Any true scientist will tell you that examining God is not in their purview. Trained scientists know the limits of science. Lay people don't, which is why they use it to strongarm believers.
 
You gat an “A” in obfuscation. Let me know when you run across some objective, reality-based evidence for God. And I really don’t care what people who “believe in God” would say about me until and unless they can show me said evidence. And I note your resort to ad hom and your lame excuse for doing so.

Childish and petulant. I'm out. Take care.
 
Go design a test for whether or not God is real.

The fact that you can't create a test doesn't mean God can't exist, it means it's untestable.

More people should study science in school. Any true scientist will tell you that examining God is not in their purview. Trained scientists know the limits of science. Lay people don't, which is why they use it to strongarm believers.

But scientists have devised a test to show that there is objective, reality-based evidence for consciousness—it’s called an EEG. And I really don’t care whether there is a “test” for God or not. All I am looking for is the least vi5 of objective, reality-based evidence. Can you cite any? I’ve asked you this a number of times now, and all that you do is deflect.
 
. I didn't say evidence that consciousness is occurring, I said evidence for the nature of consciousness.

Not true. You started by discussing “consciousness” and I responded with the EEG being evidence of same. Now you decide that is not good enough and you move the goalposts buy stating FOR THE FIRST TIME that it is actually the “nature” of consciousness that you are talking about. You will need to expand. What exactly is this “nature of consciousness that you are seeking?
 
There are things that we, as a society, believe in that can't be proven. For example, inalienable rights granted at birth, simply for being human. We believe that to be a good thing so the belief becomes axiomatic. It is self-affirming. At it's core, it is based on nothing but an affirmation, one that could easily be undermined by rationality. Do we care? No. The ontology affirms an essential morality that maintains our society's structure
Haha, I see the con right away.

. Claiming we have certain rights is not a Faith based belief. It's simply an opinion on how humans should be treated.

The con disappears quickly, under any scrutiny.

"I think people have a right to food and shelter."

What is there to prove? Nothing. It's just a semantic shortcut to saying people should have food and shelter. Calling it a right is merely an attempt to grant it special legal status. It's not a divine decree about possession of an abstract, ethereal object. No comparison.
 
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Fact: NO ONE HAS EVER PRESENTED ONE IOTA OF PERSUASIVE EVIDENCE THAT THERE IS A GOD.”
If the Niners win the Super Bowl with Jimmy Garappolo as QB, will you think differently?
 
Haha, I see the con right away.

. Claiming we have certain rights is not a Faith based belief. It's simply an opinion on how humans should be treated.

The con disappears quickly, under any scrutiny.

"I think people have a right to food and shelter."

What is there to prove? Nothing.
It's just a semantic shortcut to saying people should have food and shelter. Calling it a right is merely an attempt to grant it special legal status. It's not a divine decree about possession of an abstract, ethereal object. No comparison.

There's no con. The Founding Fathers decided that these rights were divinely ordained because the powers that bestowed them are above humanity. The philosophy behind this is that humans can't infringe upon each other's rights because we are born with these rights and humans cannot grant or remove the rights from other humans. They can try, but it will lead to injustice and eventual destabilization of society.

This is not supposition. You just have to study the history of the founding the U.S. in greater detail, including reading the writings of the founding fathers, to know.

I don't particularly care about the example of food and shelter, I'm not sure why you brought it up, but I'm going with it because you cited the example. The part I've bolded... you're not wrong, but somebody else can come along and say, "Well I think you don't deserve those rights and because I have more worldly power than you, I'm going to take them away. Who's going to stop me? Might makes right and there's nobody around to tell me I'm wrong." I think we should use a more important example, like freedom of speech, or freedom of association.

The whole point is... if society holds the philosophy that rights can only be granted by humans, then it means they are weak and easily trampled, i.e. they are transient. However, if we are born with them, it means we don't create the rights, they are already in us, ordained by a creator.

The implications of this are really important and profound, if you could put aside your disdain for theism for one moment. Divinely ordained rights mean that human beings can't equivocate about them. They are rendered sacred. It's saying that secular humanism has spiritual importance, not just worldly importance. It's not transactional and not divisible by human drama. If something isn't sacrosanct then it is violable.
 
There's no con. The Founding Fathers decided that these rights were divinely ordained because the powers that bestowed them are above humanity. The philosophy behind this is that humans can't infringe upon each other's rights because we are born with these rights and humans cannot grant or remove the rights from other humans. They can try, but it will lead to injustice and eventual destabilization of society.

This is not supposition. You just have to study the history of the founding the U.S. in greater detail, including reading the writings of the founding fathers, to know.

I don't particularly care about the example of food and shelter, I'm not sure why you brought it up, but I'm going with it because you cited the example. The part I've bolded... you're not wrong, but somebody else can come along and say, "Well I think you don't deserve those rights and because I have more worldly power than you, I'm going to take them away. Who's going to stop me? Might makes right and there's nobody around to tell me I'm wrong." I think we should use a more important example, like freedom of speech, or freedom of association.

The whole point is... if society holds the philosophy that rights can only be granted by humans, then it means they are weak and easily trampled, i.e. they are transient. However, if we are born with them, it means we don't create the rights, they are already in us, ordained by a creator.

The implications of this are really important and profound, if you could put aside your disdain for theism for one moment. Divinely ordained rights mean that human beings can't equivocate about them. They are rendered sacred. It's saying that secular humanism has spiritual importance, not just worldly importance. It's not transactional and not divisible by human drama. If something isn't sacrosanct then it is violable.

Calling something divinely decreed is not as big a thing as you make it out to be. It never stopped the violent removal of divinely decreed rulers. Human beings just like to pretend their views are backed by a higher power as a means of intimidation, but it only works to a limited degree. In the end, power is held by human beings and rights are granted and denied by human beings. The reason for this is because no human created gods have ever shown that they will intervene in human affairs, no matter what beliefs human beings create. So deep down all human beings know it is a farce to declare that we have any inborn sacred rights. No one really believes this.
 
The Founding Fathers decided that these rights were divinely ordained because the powers that bestowed them are above humanity.
Haha, no they didn't. That was appeasement language. Notice it only applied to white men.

And all you have done here is a bait and switch, switching believing humans have rights with religious belief. This only demonstrates how bad the comparison is, that you have to do this.
 
Here is another thought about the lack of evidence for a “God”:

“Many people are atheists because they think there is no evidence for God's existence - or at least no reliable evidence. They argue that a person should only believe in things for which they have good evidence.

A philosopher might say that they start from the presumption of atheism.

The presumption of Atheism​

This is an argument about where to begin the discussion of whether or not God exists.

It says that we should assume that God does not exist, and put the onus on people who believe in God to to prove that God does exist.

The philosopher Anthony Flew who wrote an article on this said:
“If it is to be established that there is a God, then we have to have good grounds for believing that this is indeed so.
Until and unless some such grounds are produced we have literally no reason at all for believing; and in that situation the only reasonable posture must be that of either the negative atheist or the agnostic.
So the onus of proof has to rest on the proposition.
It must be up to them: first, to give whatever sense they choose to the word 'God', meeting any objection that so defined it would relate only to an incoherent pseudo-concept; and, second, to bring forward sufficient reasons to warrant their claim that, in their present sense of the word 'God', there is a God.”


 
he fact that you don't like my answer to the question that you asked does not mean that it is not an answer to the question that you asked.

Why don't you ask someone else who is familiar with the mathematics of logic in which situation the statement

If "A" then "B"
is considered to be a "false statement" as you obviously don't know.

I’m moving this discussion to a more appropriate thread (see the thread title).
Yes, I know. Instead of addressing the points that I made in my post, you once again deflect by making inaccurate accusations that have nothing to do with it. This has been your modus operandi the entire time. But this still stands: no evidence, no God.
 
I’m moving this discussion to a more appropriate thread (see the thread title).
Well, I most certainly won't be moving with it because the "Five best reasons" differ between each and every person.
Yes, I know. Instead of addressing the points that I made in my post, you once again deflect by making inaccurate accusations that have nothing to do with it. This has been your modus operandi the entire time. But this still stands: no evidence, no God.
And yet you deny that your position is "There IS no God." and refuse to back up that position with concrete, verifiable, reliable, evidence.

Enjoy debating in your own private little echo chamber.
 
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