Please explain why you find belief in Jesus, Satan, God etc as untenable and yet reincarnation, the existence of spirit beings,  is acceptable.   As an atheist I accept neither scenario ( lack of compelling evidence ) but I am curious as to your reasoning.  

   PS, welcome to the forum.

Quick and short instructions on how to use the quote function.

Click the word "quote" at the bottom of the post to which you want to reply.

An edit window will open. At the beginning of the text you will see: [ quote={person's name} ] (without the spaces).

At the end of the post you will see [ /quote ] (with the slash - again, without the spaces)

Enclose everything you want to reply to within the quote code.

If you want to reply to multiple parts of the post, be sure you have matching beginning and ending quotes, i.e. [ quote ] and [ /quote ]

First off, welcome to the boards.  Glad to have you, just so long as you aren't a kid playing a trick (we've just had one of those come through).  

You have to qualify the "firsthand" thing for all of us.  We don't know your mom.  We're not going to take her word for it that she communicates with spirits.  For anything to be firsthand, the spirits would have had to have contacted you personally; anything else is hearsay.  If they have, please share.  Also, please understand that you've just purchased a bright, shiny new 2009 model Burden of Proof for yourself.  It doesn't belong to us.  If you're okay with that, then you may be able to have some fun here, but please don't think that just because you aren't a traditional religious believer anyone's going to think you're any more credible than a traditional religious believer.

No I did not read all that into it but y do I own a car I never purchased? LOL. The burden of proof only comes into play when I'm trying to actively convince you of something that I myself believe which you don't. I don't recall that being a part of my motives. I clearly stated in the title of this thread that these are MY beliefs and I'm introducing myself. That should be a HUGE indicator as to whether or not I am truly concerned with what OTHER people think of MY beliefs. Right?

Huh?

This makes no sense. You are the one who has made claims on the basis of subjective and anecdotal evidence. Such evidence is poor. It's difficult for you to call our reasoning "subjective"" when the form of evidence we are demanding is objective in nature (double blind testing) and that which you are accepting is subjective.

I just saw this post.

I wasn't trying to provide any.

LOL. How does your opinion turn MY beliefs into speculation???? That's an irrtional belief if I ever heard of one.

We understood you perfectly well. We just don't care. You made a claim about the nature of reality. It doesn't matter that you aren't trying to prove it to us, we'll still put the claim to the test. That's what people do here. Unsubstantiated beliefs get ripped apart very fast. First and foremost, this is a debating forum.

   Then what is the point of continuing to post here ?   Just log off and have a nice life.....sheesh!!!

Actually, most people here are familiar enough with basic psychology, evidence evaluation and logical argument format to understand that beliefs based on subjective and anecdotal evidence tend to be irrational. That is the link between subjectivivity and irrational beliefs. In general, I would strongly advise against forming any serious beliefs on the basis of evidence that depend on things which are overly subjective.

Nothing. That isn't the point. You made a claim. This is debating forum, so if you're here, you probably want to defend the claim. If you don't want to defend the claim, people will still tear it apart, it will just be easier for them since you offer no resistence.

Well, if the basis of my disagreement is sufficiently rational, then the only rational thing you could do (provided that the basis for my disagreement was more rational than the basis for your belief) would be to agree with me. Of course, if you didn't think I had a rational basis for my disagreement, then you could try something novel like defending your bloody knowledge claim!

Wait, who forced you to sign up, exactly?  

Well, if you were a rational person (a title which is slipping away from you) then it might be possible for me to convince you that your particular belief is false, provided I gave I sufficiently strong argument to convince you that these beliefs are false. If you so desired, we could easily debate the truth or lack thereof of life after death.My expertise is actually in cell biology, but that covers enough neuroscience for me to be familiar enough with the nature of thinking minds to be able to defend the claim that life after death is impossible.

But that would be an irrational position for you to hold. If I thought a particular thing about your beliefs, and argued for that particular position with a sound argument, then it would be irrational for you to continue to retain that position in the face of a more rational argument against it.

I don't feel like this is turning into a cohesive discussion. It's just all over the place. I'm trying to explain the difference between subjectivity and actuality. Not objectivity.

This commits an ad hoc fallacy. Anyone could defend a faulty and poorly argued conclusion on the basis of the assertion that "reasoning is subjective" and people reach different conclusions. In other words, you've made a vacuous statement, which cannot be used to defend any form of justification. At the same time, philosophical discussions are often grounded in very objective arguments. If you want to see a real philosophical discussion, look at this thread and observe the nature of the arguments employed:

Does incoherence/meaningless lead to strong atheism, or non-cognitivism?

This (below) is a philosophical paper I wrote on this site. The reasoning employed is objective in nature.

Problems with the "out of body" model of consciousness

Additionally, I should point out that your previous assertion contained two logical fallacies which I have outlined and which  you have yet to address.

Because you have dichotomized a situation with more than two possible outcomes. If two people cite sources to claim contrary positions, it does not necessarily follow that both positions are equally valid.

Even if that were true, it would be a tu quoque fallacy to assert that your argument is not fallacious merely because other people have commited the same error. However, you have not pointed out where other people in this thread have commited such a fallacy, so I see no reason to take this claim as true.

You are still commiting the same fallacy, merely implictly this time.

Once again, you have yet to establish precisely what parts of my reasoning are subjective. I assembled your propositions into a set of connected sentences and then established where the non sequiturs were. You are deferring from your epistemic responsibilities by the meaningless ad hoc of claiming that my criteria are subjective. But they are not. The form of logical evaluation I am employing is entirely objective.

Why is it irrational to suppose that a person could be swayed by a well-argued proposition? I suppose in the case of you, you may be a lost cause, but hopefully you are not the norm. The fact of the matter is that I have broken down your arguments, established the non sequiturs in them, and all you do is repeat the same meaningless ad hoc fallacy (I have already explained why your line that reasoning is subjective constitutes an ad hoc fallacy), and otherwise insult me. You are clearly incapable of rational thought.

In that case, what was "always your point" constituted a fallacy of ad hoc. As I have established, the assertion that reasoning is subjective is:

1) Incorrect. Sound forms of reasoning are based on the structure of logical sentences and objective evidence which is not intrapersonal.

2) The claim is vacuous. The form the argument can be used to defend false claims, and thus by definition must be invalid (because it is not possible for a valid argument to contain all true premises but a false conclusion)

I'm not giving you a reason to defend your claim. I'm trying to explain to you why your argument contains a fallacy of ad hoc.

I suspect you are unaware of what a fallacy even is (given the casual use of the term). In any connected set of sentences, a formal fallacy occurs when there are a set of truth-values for premises in a truth table, and there is a line where the premises are all true and the conclusion is false. An informal fallacy is not an error of reasoning structure, but rather on the soundness of the premises (either the original premise or the connecting premise). In this case, I have established precisely where your premises are unsound (or do not support your conclusion). I have broken your line of reasoning into a connected sentence set and explained where the fallacy occured by demonstrating the error in your reasoning. You have not done the same, and are clearly unfamiliar with basic argumentation.