i'm starting up a new thread because I haven't heard any atheists following this line of reasoning (perhaps there have been) and I thought it was rather good.

Many christians including Bill O' Reilly, claim that they believe in God because of Pascal's Wager. Unfortunately they don't realise that pascal's wager isn't even an argument for the existence of God.

As we all know an argument is a statement (premise) or group of statements (premises) offered in support of another statement (conclusion). Pascal's wager supports the conclusion that you should believe in god if you wish to avoid hell, with the premise of a possibility atheism can result in damnation.

It will be useful for us to get clear on the notion of "positive ontology". "Ontology" when it's used as a mass term usually means the study of being as such. But this cannot be what one means when one says "provide a positive ontology for x". For, it wouldn't make sense to say "provide a 'the study of being as such' for x".

So what does one mean by "positive ontology"? Well, to answer that question it's important to note that "ontology" can be used -- and is often used by philosophers -- as a count-noun rather than a mass term. For example, when philosophers say "my ontology includes 4-dimensional spacetime worms," they're using "ontology" as a count-noun. When we use "ontology" in this sense, we're referring to our commitments about what exists, our ontological commitments.

church is an unusually thing for me.  i don't have a certain church that i go to but rather visit a variety of them.  most of them assume that i am lost.  although i don't agree with some of the things religion teaches i have always learned something from a sermon.

during the services i pray contentiously for God to enter into the message.  as a pastor it is easy to get discouraged and i find that a smile and nod from an actively viewing participant does wonders.  in part i go to church for their own good and not my own.

The number one argument I hear for Athiests against Christians is they believe that science is so accurate that it must contradict the Bible.  They love to talk about Newton's law of how matter cannot be created nor destroyed.  They also love to talk about carbon dating which can record fossils that are millions of years old, supposedly discretting the Bible. 

 While Science has definitely come a long way and has provided some answers to many questions, I ask you Athiests how reliable really is science?  Let's start with Columbus.  It took scientists thousands of years to realize the world is round.  Every scientist who studied and made claims about the earth was wrong until then.  Granted that was a long time ago, but my point is that science is always changing.  Everything we know now that scientists are so confident in will probably be disproven in 500 years.  Albert Einstein is considered a greatly intelligent man, but yet many of his theories have been proven false over time.  Even today with all the knowledge that humanity has we still cannot answer so many questions.  There are scientific questions like:  is time travel possible, do loopholes exist, how infinite is the universe, is there an end to it, are there many universes, could there be other universes with their own planets?  There are philisophical questions, most importantly, what happens in death? 

First off, an introduction. I'm starting college next year at Caltech, and have a decent background in math, science, and the like. I believe myself to be fairly rational, but, of course, I have certain irrational tendencies. I'm currently searching for ideas. I'm Jewish, because I like the teachings, and they mostly agree with my beliefs. As for the stories, I doubt they happened as portrayed, but I find it likely that at least some of them have a basis in reality.

As far as my belief in G_d, that's an interesting story. When I was very young, I was taken to some Christian church (my dad is Jewish, my mom is Christian). My main memory of that was playing under the chairs. After that, I went to Temple, semi-regularly, with Sunday school. At that point, my belief in G_d was something in the back of my mind. It was there, but not very strong. It's not really a concept you're prepared to fully contemplate at that age...

This is a reply to another post of Todangst's wherein he claims that the term "God" is incoherent. (This particular post of his was brought to my attention by my friend Sodium. Sodium hasn't seen any decent replies to Todangst, so I offer this one.)

Todangst starts out by telling us that he’s shown that certain terms having to do with immateriality are “necessarily incoherent”. As it turns out, he hasn’t shown this at all. (See my short essay here to see why.) He now makes two attempts to show that the word “God” is incoherent. The first attempt involves showing that the concept of a disembodied person (i.e. a soul) can only be defined negatively and is thus incoherent. Since on most versions of theism, God is a disembodied person, those versions of theism would be incoherent if Todangst is right. The second attempt involves showing that various attributes belonging to God contradict themselves or observed features of the universe.

 Hi this is my first post to this forum.

I dont know if this the correct topic under which to pose this question, but here goes. I am an atheist jew. I practice certain jewish customs out of a purely cultural appeal. However could this in and of it self be just as dangerous and devisive as religious practice. I have not been an atheist long, and am having a bit of trouble reconciling my disbelief with my appreciation of jewish culture.

Thanks in advance,

espania19

Todangst claims that terms like "immaterial" are meaningless. He wants us to believe that such terms are "broken concepts". Why should we believe this? Well, Todangst thinks we can’t positively denote anything with these terms. There’s nothing out there that these terms actually refer to. The terms, says Todangst, “are therefore meaningless, incoherent.”[1] Thus, Todangst’s argument rests on the view that bits of language are meaningful when there is something to which they refer. (The problems that I am about to present for Todangst’s view will take us into some philosophy of language. This area of analytic philosophy may be unfamiliar to some readers. But do not let the jargon intimidate you. If there’s something you don’t understand, PM me and I’ll be happy to explain it for you.)

i found this interesting article on the news , and it might provide proof of the old testament as being legit im posting it for all to review please let me know what you think.   god bless....  pat

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/11/ntablet111.xml&CMP=ILC-mostviewedbox

So let's say I have a "mystical" experience. I'm meditating over my Lucky Charms cereal and I have a vision of a pink pony and it tells me there is a coffe can of gold double eagles in the back yard under the Tumtum tree. So I go out with a shovel and , DAMN, there is a coffee can with gold coins uner the Tumtum tree.

What is this evidence of?