Problem argument.
Posted on: April 9, 2006 - 11:14am
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Problem argument.
Hey, there's a theist on another site that continually responds to atheists who tell her that the burden of proof is on the person who claims something exists with "prove love exists." It's a stupid argument, but difficult to respond to, other than with things like brain scans could be compared between different people feeling love at the time. Any ideas to counter this?
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hahah..she got this from Contact the movie..hahahah...ad hominem...here's the thing. to compare God with Love shows then, that God is nothing but a feeling, an emotion, Love is unprovable in a sense, because it is a very subjective feeling. Your idea of love may be differnt then my idea of love, that being true, then your idea of a god is differnt than my, AND some people may not be capable of love at all. Which, then, would be comparable to god not existing. So if God=Love, then god is an emotion. Which would hardly make him/her/it anything supernormal or omniscient. All she is doing is changing the subject don't let her do that...ad hominem...It's like the argument I get with political discussions..I say Bush lied!! The response..WELL CLINTON LIED. Stick to the point. Prove god exists. Period, IF she cannot and has to resort to chanign the subject then you win already.
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I'm on the same forum at Matt and know who he is referring to.
I like this response someone made to the theist:
If love is a feeling...
"I don't feel god, so therefore he does not exist."
Kinda like what I said above, but not so verbose. good job hahah...
Atheist Books, purchases on Amazon support the Rational Response Squad server which houses Celebrity Atheists.
This same type of person points out whenever anyone mentions how bad God's behavior is in the Bible as an argument against christianity something along the lines of "well are you saying God doesn't exist, or God does bad stuff?" Hello? Fictional characters can be evil, too!
Matt Shizzle has been banned from the Rational Response Squad website. This event shall provide an atmosphere more conducive to social growth. - Majority of the mod team
Love is a chemical reaction in the brain. This reaction is based off of a value judgement which takes place when any number of your values are reflected in another person or that person has values which you admire and wish to have as your own. Intelligence, beauty, genocidal rage, and the list goes on. It is a physical reaction which generally connotes happiness. There is no floating, ethereal "love" cloud that rains on people randomly.
Tell the theist to fall off a cliff unless she can meet the burden of proof. It's a red herring she is throwing out there. Don't bite. Make her answer the question.
another one theists use is : "we cannot see the wind either but we see what it does, just like we cannot see god but we can see his influence on our lives." - this is not a valid argument! we know what wind is, how it works, we know it exists, etc - science can explain wind. god is not something you can compare to the wind, there is no objective evidence of a god or gods existing and any seen influence on your life is purely imagination.
I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My
idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own,
so both of them together is certain death.
- George Carlin
When asked why god only answers SOME prayers and not all, this theist (the one Matt is talking about) uses the old argument "Well, have you ever asked your parents for something and they told you no. You may not have understood why but there was a reason."
She also claims to be an ex-atheist.
Haha when I used to go to Sunday school my teacher took us outside to say something similar: "alright, now stand still and be quiet. what do you feel? you feel the wind, right? well God is like the wind, you can't see him, but you know He's there." I was irrational then, so I went along with it with only a hint of doubt. A short time later though, I told another teacher at the church that I thought "Couldn't "God" just be a word we give to things we don't understand? There are a lot of things we don't know and can't figure out, but we have to have a word for it, so isn't "God" just that word that we use for everything we don't understand?" She went quiet for a moment. I asked it in a room with about 5 other kids in it and they all heard, but she went passive, agreed (kind of), and rushed us out the door so we wouldn't think about it anymore. It was the end of class so I can see why she wanted us out, but they always said they were there if we had questions. Hmmm...
I always thought that if you want to change the world then you have to start with yourself. So if the heads of state want to end terrorism, they should go ahead and kill themselves. - Anti-Flag
God is love eh? That makes about as much sense as any other two random words...
3 o'clock is pink
Binary is belief
Blair is honest
The arrogance of saying 'god is love' - it sounds like they're taking ownership of the concept. Next, people will be debating whether athiests can be in love!
NSane
PS In case they do, the subjective answer is yes. :shock:
Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind. ~ Virginia Woolf 1928.
Natto,
I know these are radical concepts, but your comments here are actually quite profound. What if that which we thought was merely an abstract property was actually an expression of Personhood?
There is something to be said about the conflation of different categories that produce meaningless statements, such as "3 o'clock is pink". In isolation, there just doesn't seem to be any sense in which that kind of statement can be meaningful.
But then suppose there are certain kinds of things that don't make sense unless they are personified, whereby in the absence of such anchoring, the meaning becomes diffused and easily conflated; in a word: Relative. "God is good" and "God is Love" can be said to belong to such categories.
It may be that contemporary modern mindset has taken moral confusion as just part and parcel of reality, and so is no longer even perceived as a problem. But it does give us some interesting things to think about.
Heh... I see some irony in this, but by virtue of the above insights, I suppose it really does become a rather serious question as to whether an atheist can really be in love, just as much as whether an atheist can really be Good.
From my reading of the Bible "God is Love" and "God is good" are completely false!
Matt Shizzle has been banned from the Rational Response Squad website. This event shall provide an atmosphere more conducive to social growth. - Majority of the mod team