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New book proves conclusively that the Bible is not the word of a god
#76

New book proves conclusively that the Bible is not the word of a god
(05-08-2021, 04:28 PM)Dancefortwo Wrote:
(05-08-2021, 09:59 AM)Lion IRC Wrote:
(05-08-2021, 07:30 AM)SYZ Wrote: if you're going to claim that supernatural entities and paranormal events exist in the real world, then you need to provide supporting, empirical evidence.

Why?
So you can just hand-wave, special plead, gainsay...

(05-08-2021, 07:30 AM)SYZ Wrote: ...the notion of "theophany" is bogus, with zero historical evidence of such a supernatural event
ever occurring.  

...people do not and never have had any sensory experiences of the real-world presence of
God or gods.  

No, you pathetic nitwit.  Because you make an extraordinary claim, YOU provide the evidence.  The burden of proof is on the claimant and no one else.   Also, theists have a corner market on special pleading crap.  When no evidence is ever provided theists constantly fall back on special pleading fallacies.

So again, provide evidence your god exists.   

I'll wait.

Waiting
(my bold)

Atheists waiting for actual evidence of gods to be provided:
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#77

New book proves conclusively that the Bible is not the word of a god
(05-08-2021, 09:03 PM)TheGentlemanBastard Wrote:
(05-08-2021, 09:59 AM)Lion IRC Wrote:
(05-08-2021, 07:30 AM)SYZ Wrote: if you're going to claim that supernatural entities and paranormal events exist in the real world, then you need to provide supporting, empirical evidence.

Why?
So you can just hand-wave, special plead, gainsay...

No. Because the burden is yours. You're making the claim, you get to prove it. It really is that simple.

There's no burden to present evidence that someone has already stated they refuse to accept - as evidence. There's posts in this thread which even go as far as stating that sensory evidence is epistemically invalid.
...that we literally can't believe our own eyes when looking into a microscope or telescope.
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#78

New book proves conclusively that the Bible is not the word of a god
(05-08-2021, 09:12 PM)Lion IRC Wrote:
(05-08-2021, 09:03 PM)TheGentlemanBastard Wrote:
(05-08-2021, 09:59 AM)Lion IRC Wrote: Why?
So you can just hand-wave, special plead, gainsay...

No. Because the burden is yours. You're making the claim, you get to prove it. It really is that simple.

There's no burden to present evidence that someone has already stated they refuse to accept - as evidence. There's posts in this thread which even go as far as stating that sensory evidence is epistemiclly invalid.
...that we literally can't believe our own eyes when looking into a microscope or telescope.

You really don't understand evidence or the burden of proof, do you?

From the small sample size of your posts so far, that's not surprising, though.
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#79

New book proves conclusively that the Bible is not the word of a god
(05-08-2021, 09:03 PM)TheGentlemanBastard Wrote: No. Because the burden is yours. You're making the claim, you get to prove it. It really is that simple.

Hitchens's Razor comes to mind: What can be asserted without evidence may be dismissed without evidence.
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#80

New book proves conclusively that the Bible is not the word of a god
(05-08-2021, 09:12 PM)Lion IRC Wrote: There's posts in this thread which even go as far as stating that sensory evidence is epistemiclly invalid.
...that we literally can't believe our own eyes when looking into a microscope or telescope.

What you see is determined by the health of your occular system, whether it needs correction, and the magnification of the microscope.
What you see may to some extent approximate what is actually there, at the level you're looking, but if you use a 20x magnification you see one thing, if you're using electron microscopy you see something entirely and completely different. Your senses cannot be relied upon, even with technological assistance, without verification and validation. You go to the eye doctor all the time for new prescriptions.
If you have no clue what you're looking at, (ie been trained in electron microscopy) and the learning laid down in your memory correctly, you would have no clue what you're looking at, or how to interpret what you see in an electron micrograph.

Do try a bit harder next time.
You're so cute with your big word you learned : "epistemic". Chuckle
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#81

New book proves conclusively that the Bible is not the word of a god
Dogs can see and hear things which we can't.
We wouldn't dismiss the evidence of their senses just because we didn't share the same sensory experience.
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#82

New book proves conclusively that the Bible is not the word of a god
(05-08-2021, 09:27 PM)Thumpalumpacus Wrote:
(05-08-2021, 09:03 PM)TheGentlemanBastard Wrote: No. Because the burden is yours. You're making the claim, you get to prove it. It really is that simple.

Hitchens's Razor comes to mind: What can be asserted without evidence may be dismissed without evidence.

I agree with this axiom.
But that's not what is going on here.

The problem here is...

"That which can be dismissed as 'evidence' can be conveniently ignored rather than dealt with."

I can deploy the exact same methodological skepticism used by presuppositional atheists and dismiss (gainsay) claims made by folks who believe they saw the polar ice caps melting, or a planet named Pluto, or Armstrong standing on the moon.

Hallucinations? Poor eye sight? Conspiracy theory? Noble lie? Swoon theory? Body double? CAPS LOCK screeching the words...THATS NOT EVIDENCE!!! etc etc
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#83

New book proves conclusively that the Bible is not the word of a god
(05-08-2021, 09:12 PM)Lion IRC Wrote: ...that we literally can't believe our own eyes ...

10,000 years ago looking at the night sky how would we have been able to correctly ascertain what we're seeing?  Nothing about the cosmos has any meaningful similarity to what can be experienced on a terrestrial surface.

Are we able to visually track a fired bullet?

Magicians make their living depending on the imperfection of human visual perception.

Eyewitness testimony, once considered the gold standard of trial evidence, has been so thoroughly discredited it's no longer admissible without corroboration from independent sources.

And so on.

Humankind has built an entire universe of sensory apparatus precisely because our own senses are so meager.  Yes, absolutely, we should never believe our own eyes uncorroborated.  ESPECIALLY if we're ignorant enough to imagine our senses are dependable.
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#84

New book proves conclusively that the Bible is not the word of a god
Last time I checked, natural selection had conferred a survival advantage to primates who believed their own eyes.
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#85

New book proves conclusively that the Bible is not the word of a god
(05-08-2021, 09:55 PM)Lion IRC Wrote: by folks who believe they saw the polar ice caps melting

We have satellite imagery to cooberrate this, and, y'know, video footage.  Deadpan Coffee Drinker

Terrible analogy. See what I mean about him making really dumb arguments?
“For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.” -Carl Sagan.
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#86

New book proves conclusively that the Bible is not the word of a god
(05-08-2021, 10:02 PM)Lion IRC Wrote: Last time I checked, natural selection had conferred a survival advantage to primates who believed their own eyes.

Last time I checked, natural selection gave zero fucks whether lightning was natural or thrown by Thor, yet there was an entire culture that believed the latter based on visual evidence.

Then there's you and the small minded like you, that insist that culture must have been right. After all, they witnessed the lightning with their own eyes. [Image: Eye_Roll.gif]
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#87

New book proves conclusively that the Bible is not the word of a god
(05-08-2021, 10:13 PM)TheGentlemanBastard Wrote:
(05-08-2021, 10:02 PM)Lion IRC Wrote: Last time I checked, natural selection had conferred a survival advantage to primates who believed their own eyes.

Last time I checked, natural selection gave zero fucks whether lightning was natural or thrown by Thor, yet there was an entire culture that believed the latter based on visual evidence.

Then there's you and the small minded like you, that insist that culture must have been right. After all, they witnessed the lightning with their own eyes. [Image: Eye_Roll.gif]

Speaking of lightning, why didn't god give people lightning rods back then? Seems like a basic thing that would've helped a lot.
“For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.” -Carl Sagan.
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#88

New book proves conclusively that the Bible is not the word of a god
(05-08-2021, 10:19 PM)GenesisNemesis Wrote:
(05-08-2021, 10:13 PM)TheGentlemanBastard Wrote:
(05-08-2021, 10:02 PM)Lion IRC Wrote: Last time I checked, natural selection had conferred a survival advantage to primates who believed their own eyes.

Last time I checked, natural selection gave zero fucks whether lightning was natural or thrown by Thor, yet there was an entire culture that believed the latter based on visual evidence.

Then there's you and the small minded like you, that insist that culture must have been right. After all, they witnessed the lightning with their own eyes. [Image: Eye_Roll.gif]

Speaking of lightning, why didn't god give people lightning rods back then? Seems like a basic thing that would've helped a lot.

It also begs the question, why do churches need lightning rods. Allegedly, they have the all-powerful creator of the universe protecting them.
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#89

New book proves conclusively that the Bible is not the word of a god
(05-08-2021, 09:55 PM)Lion IRC Wrote: ... who believe they saw the polar ice caps melting, or a planet named Pluto, or Armstrong standing on the moon ...

No one has ever seen the polar ice caps melting with their own eyesight.  The phenomenon is too slow at its scale of thousands of square miles.  We can see meltwater rivers in an ice cap, calving glaciers, and so on, but none of these necessarily translate to the actual dissolution of an ice cap.  Ascertaining the dissolving of an ice cap requires corroborating observations across months or years of time.

Is Pluto even visible to the unassisted eye?  And even if so, would seeing it 10,000 years ago be sufficient to determine what it is?

Likewise Armstrong stepping onto the moon would have been imperceptible to an unaided eye, even though the Sea of Tranquility is right there on the lunar surface permanently facing the Earth.

Our means of augmenting our horrible vision have become so embedded we're not even conscious of how much we depend on knowledge and magnifying glasses and other methods to supplement vision - which is why none of your examples are meaningful as illustrative of sufficiency of human eyesight.

And, of course, sensing visible light will obviously confer survival advantage over an organism lacking that faculty - which is why the eye has been found to have independently evolved at least 7 times in a variety of organisms.  But having the faculty vs not having it does not mean the faculty is therefore perfect.
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#90

New book proves conclusively that the Bible is not the word of a god
(05-08-2021, 09:55 PM)Lion IRC Wrote:
(05-08-2021, 09:27 PM)Thumpalumpacus Wrote:
(05-08-2021, 09:03 PM)TheGentlemanBastard Wrote: No. Because the burden is yours. You're making the claim, you get to prove it. It really is that simple.

Hitchens's Razor comes to mind: What can be asserted without evidence may be dismissed without evidence.

I agree with this axiom.
But that's not what is going on here.

The problem here is...

"That which can be dismissed as 'evidence' can be conveniently ignored rather than dealt with."

I can deploy the exact same methodological skepticism used by presuppositional atheists and dismiss (gainsay) claims made by folks who believe they saw the polar ice caps melting, or a planet named Pluto, or Armstrong standing on the moon.

Hallucinations? Poor eye sight? Conspiracy theory? Noble lie? Swoon theory? Body double? CAPS LOCK screeching the words...THATS NOT EVIDENCE!!! etc etc

I'd imagine that the key word in your reply is "beliefs".

You have your beliefs. You don't have objective evidence for them. There's no facts that compel me to accept your viewpoint.

In the end, you need to understand that unless you can convince people with evidence, proselytizing your beliefs is a waste of time.

We have factual evidence of ice-caps melting, a planet named Pluto, and Neil hoisting Ole Glory. When you have evidence of that caliber to support your beliefs, they may garner higher regard. Until then, you're just some other guy online saying what you believe to be real -- and without you presenting any evidence, I'm not obligated to marshal any facts at all to dismiss your claim.

That's the difference. Absent supporting evidence, your extraordinary claims rely on faith. You have faith. I don't. Get over it.
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#91

New book proves conclusively that the Bible is not the word of a god
(05-08-2021, 10:02 PM)Lion IRC Wrote: Last time I checked, natural selection had conferred a survival advantage to primates who believed their own eyes.

And if you think that primates all "see" the same thing, with uncorrected vision, when they actually percieve large variations of what their optic systems allow in, correct, and integrate, you're even more ignorant than I thought.
https://blog.eyeglasses.com/vision-magaz...20get%20it).
What they/we perceive is actually a very narrow (actually all our senses) range of the possible. Dogs smell far better, some animals can see the infared range, (we can't but it's there), some animals (elephants) hear a much larger range than we do. If we only "believed our own eyes", we would all be dead of COVID, now wouldn't we ? LOL
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#92

New book proves conclusively that the Bible is not the word of a god
(05-08-2021, 10:03 PM)GenesisNemesis Wrote:
(05-08-2021, 09:55 PM)Lion IRC Wrote: by folks who believe they saw the polar ice caps melting

We have satellite imagery to cooberrate this, and, y'know, video footage.  Deadpan Coffee Drinker

Terrible analogy. See what I mean about him making really dumb arguments?

I told you ... he was the runt of TTA.
His arguments are laughable.
I wonder if that Christian site really just wanted to be rid of this nonsense.
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#93

New book proves conclusively that the Bible is not the word of a god
(05-08-2021, 09:12 PM)Lion IRC Wrote: There's posts in this thread which even go as far as stating that sensory evidence is epistemiclly invalid.
...that we literally can't believe our own eyes when looking into a microscope or telescope.

I didn't say that sensory evidence (what you're meaning to say is "anecdotes", but you can't bring yourself to write that word now, for some reason) is invalid. I said that it is questionable unless and until evidence for those claims is presented.

Sensory experience is not valid until it's -- wait for it -- validated. Do you know how that's done? That's right, it's done with evidence -- objective evidence that does not rely upon one observer.

Your sensation of being in the presence of the divine might be accurate. It might be a result of sleeplessness. It might be a result of hunger. It might be a result of drug use. It might be that you want to filch ducats from my wallet so you make up a happy story.

I'm not obliged to process your personal experiences as absolute truths. Get over yourself, and present your evidence that this little feeling you had demonstrates the existence of divinity.

Oh -- that's right, you can't. Buh-bye.
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#94

New book proves conclusively that the Bible is not the word of a god
(05-08-2021, 10:02 PM)Lion IRC Wrote: Last time I checked, natural selection had conferred a survival advantage to primates who believed their own eyes.

Last I checked, people who believe in false religions probably nevertheless have a survival advantage, especially when such religions encourage marriage and having babies.
“For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.” -Carl Sagan.
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#95

New book proves conclusively that the Bible is not the word of a god
@Thumpalumpacus 

Forget about sufficiency.

You said...
"we should never believe our own eyes uncorroborated.  ESPECIALLY if we're ignorant enough to imagine our senses are dependable"

Never.

Surely our eyes are the sole and necessary mode of receiving vast amounts of evidence - critical evidence, life saving evidence - in most cases. And this is true even if nobody says they TOO saw a hungry sabre tooth tiger coming this way.
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#96

New book proves conclusively that the Bible is not the word of a god
I look left and right when crossing the road.
I DONT ask bystanders to corroborate my belief that I saw a car coming.
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#97

New book proves conclusively that the Bible is not the word of a god
(05-08-2021, 11:01 PM)Lion IRC Wrote: I look left and right when crossing the road.
I DONT ask bystanders to corroborate my belief that I saw a car coming.

Thanks for confirming you don't understand how science works at all. Same nonsense you spewed over at TF.  Deadpan Coffee Drinker
“For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.” -Carl Sagan.
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#98

New book proves conclusively that the Bible is not the word of a god
(05-08-2021, 11:01 PM)Lion IRC Wrote: I look left and right when crossing the road.
I DONT ask bystanders to corroborate my belief that I saw a car coming.

And in general that serves you well.
You're attempting to create a false analogy, a faulty generalization.
You're trying to generalize that which is not appropriate to do. It's such a common error, it even has a name.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faulty_generalization
The question is, would you get in a car on the Autobahn with a 95 year old with dense cataracts, who drives 95 miles an hour ?
LOL
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#99

New book proves conclusively that the Bible is not the word of a god
(05-08-2021, 10:56 PM)Lion IRC Wrote: @Thumpalumpacus 

Forget about sufficiency.

You said...
"we should never believe our own eyes uncorroborated.  ESPECIALLY if we're ignorant enough to imagine our senses are dependable"

Never.

Surely our eyes are the sole and necessary mode of receiving vast amounts of evidence - critical evidence, life saving evidence - in most cases. And this is true even if nobody says they TOO saw a hungry sabre tooth tiger coming this way.


I didn't write those words. The following is a complete list of every post I've made in this thread:

Show ContentSpoiler:

You're either dishonest or whacked on some really good shit. I didn't write what you ascribed to me.

I lean towards your being dishonest. After all, religionistas must first lie to themselves before they can lie to anyone else ... it's kinda trained into you at this point. And I've seen you be dishonest before.
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New book proves conclusively that the Bible is not the word of a god
(05-08-2021, 11:01 PM)Lion IRC Wrote: I look left and right when crossing the road.
I DONT ask bystanders to corroborate my belief that I saw a car coming.

The differences between a car and your god.

1) Cars exist, while your god doesn't. We have evidence of cars. We have no evidence of your god.

2) Cars are actually useful. They can transport us hither and yon.The only use your god has is allowing preachers to prey upon the weak.

3) While cars sometimes require money, unlike your god they don't demand us to stroke their egos, or their preachers' penises.

4) When bad shit happens on the highway, the car with its roll-cage can protect me, while your little godling can do fuck-all.

Some areas where cars and your god are similar:

1) People can use both cars and gods to get somewhere -- but at least drivers are honest about that part. A taxi-driver charges you and lets you out. A preacher sinks his hooks into you and squeezes you as dry as he can before you get wise.

2) They both exhaust a lot of hot air that is poisonous under the wrong circumstances.

3) People who don't look into the workings of either are equally mystified. People who do look into the workings of cars or gods find both simple.

4) If you go breakneck speed in either one, you can end up killing innocent people.

Hope that helps.
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