Why won't you face atheists? What are you afraid of? Could it be that you have no intellectual defense for your magical claims? Could it be that if you did face us and debate us people who follow you might be given the better choice of reason and your bread and butter living would be at risk? Is that why you are afraid to face us? Because atheists are lifting the veil of the superstition exposing the man behind the curtain?

No, you don't have time for us. You are too busy selling books and making money expanding your empires. Don't feel bad, the Pope won't debate us either, nor will most Muslim Clerics and Jewish Rabbis. Intellectual bravery in theism is severely lacking.

You'll ignore this challenge, not because some magical being exists, but because you have no defense for such a claim. I love to be proven wrong and would welcome such a challenge.

OK, so your theist friend says "well, evolution is just a theory, it hasn't been proven."

Response:

"You're right,  evolution IS just a theory.  But look at what you have,  you have a myth!  A theory is what you get when you look at the evidence and you USE the evidence to create a story that explains the evidence and that makes predictions about what other evidence you might find.

A myth is a story that someone made up with NO EVIDENCE at all!  People who believe in myths like to fish around for evidence that supports their myth, and then they systematically ignore all evidence that refutes their myth. 

I have a theory.  You have a myth!"

I like this tactic, because it disarms them and puts you on the offensive.  What do you guys think?

Sapient recently explained that he could disprove theism by conceiving of something that doesn't exist. Since conceiving of something that doesn't exist allegedly refutes theism, conceiving of something that DOES exist must refute atheism.

Atheists, the following things exist:

My brain

My house

My computer

Atoms

Camels

QED.

Hi,

What will you do if science ends and you still can't prove God didn't create the universe and life?

Here we have a moderate (if evangelical) preacher and his flock.

Yep. Religion is so harmless. (And they call us fatalists!)

Well I got in a discussion with a Christian and realized something god actually disproves himself. Well the first point addressed why god would create humans in the first place however it proved to be something more destructive to gods existence.

Christians argue that god always existed and don’t have a beginning however lets think about this for one second if point 0 represents the moment when god started to created our universe what did he do before this ? Exist ? How long did god exist alone with no need for humans ? One millennium ? A googolplex of centuries  ? A  long period of time and he didn’t need humans.

However we need to realize that god existent a entire eternity  , and  then suddenly and magically  the eternity ended and this  is impossible , because if we regress in god-time he never did have a beginning the time that god existed before creation of us is infinite and can not end !

So is it going to be :
A) god did have a beginning
or
B)god never created us because it takes a entire eternity to arrive at the point 0.

On the side note god existed a insane amount of time without humans and never felt the need to create us (in a entire eternity) so why would god create us if he existed forever without us and didn’t have a problem ?
 

Below is a link to a presentation on the scientific evidence for the existence of psi (psychic phenomena) given by parapsychology researcher Dean Radin. This is a "GoogleTechTalk." The actual presentation is about an hour, followed by a thirty minute Q & A session. The audience appears, based on the questions asked, to consist primarily of skeptics. I suggest you actually view the video before posting any comments. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw_O9Qiwqew

Just FYI. In his book entitled "Entangled Minds," Dean Radin presents a theorectical framework to account for the psi evidence based on the idea of quantum entanglement (what Einstein called "spooky action at a distance" ). The relevance of this evidence for  theism is that it supports a pantheistic and/or panenthestic worldview based on a quantum mind(s) hypothesis. Although he does not go into this theory in the video, he does hint at it toward the end of the Q & A session.

I am not a professional logician or anything but I just took a philosophy class and so I dabble in it. So I was wondering if anyone could assess the following argument. There is often a distinction between agnoticism and atheism, the former being defined as not knowing that god exists and the latter not believing that god exists. I am aware there are those that define athesim as believing there is no god. I do not see this as a logically entailed position. And for me the difference between the two definitions seems rather trivial in it's real world effects. But I might be wrong on this matter. Any way the deductive argument I formed seems to indicate that not knowing logically requires not believing. Any comments?

P1 To know that God exists is to claim that God exists

P2 To believe that God exists is to claim that God exists

P3 To not know that God exists is to not claim that God exists

P4 To not believe that God exists is to not claim that God exists

This will seem to be a bit random, but bear with me here:

I was watching "The Nightmare Before Christmas" last night when I noticed that a parallel can be made between the mad scientist character and some peoples' concepts of god. In the film the mad scientist shouts at Sally (a Frankenstein's monster he made) that he created her, so she is his property. He treats her like a slave in this film and this is his excuse for imprisoning her and keeping her as a servant.

This got me thinking about this excuse for abusing someone and I remembered that in The Jesus Incident by Frank Herbert, the book's antagonist does the same thing. This antagonist takes clones of people and has them tortured or raped. His excuse for his actions is that clones are artificially made, so they are property, and he will do with his property as he pleases.

What got me seeing the parallel between these abusive, controlling fictional characters and some peoples' concept of god is that I have had a friend actually tell me that since god made everyone, we are his property and he will use us as he sees fit. My friend told me this as a way of excusing god from any bad things that happen. I think it is a bit ironic that movie and book antagonists that use this excuse are seen as the monsters that they are, but some people can not see that a god doing the same thing is just as bad.

In another thread, Eloise responded to one of our mailbag posts: