Exposing Atheistic Myths

[steve_bank]

As to laws, yet again reality does not conform to science, laws are tested mathematical description of reality.o.

If that is the case then my original point was quite valid. If laws are derived from reality, then it makes no sense to talk about a new phenomenon you haven't previously encountered as the "breaking of physical laws". If a phenomenon happened at all, then it hasn't broken any laws, it just needs to be incorporated into your existing sense of nature and natural laws. Which for a theist is obviously a theistic one. The idea that a theist would see God as a law-breaker, let alone that miracles can only be called such if God has broken some sort of law, is silly and does not correspond with what most theists I have ever met, regardless of tradition, generally think. Rather, most would consider the "law of the universe" to be God's to enact as he or she chooses.

From Genesis god is the creator. Would not he, she, or it be able to change reality as desired?

He, she, or it brought down the flood did he, she, or it not?

People claim miraculous cures from god. For the believer god controls reality.

 

[Politesse]

As to laws, yet again reality does not conform to science, laws are tested mathematical description of reality.o.

If that is the case then my original point was quite valid. If laws are derived from reality, then it makes no sense to talk about a new phenomenon you haven't previously encountered as the "breaking of physical laws". If a phenomenon happened at all, then it hasn't broken any laws, it just needs to be incorporated into your existing sense of nature and natural laws. Which for a theist is obviously a theistic one. The idea that a theist would see God as a law-breaker, let alone that miracles can only be called such if God has broken some sort of law, is silly and does not correspond with what most theists I have ever met, regardless of tradition, generally think. Rather, most would consider the "law of the universe" to be God's to enact as he or she chooses.

From Genesis god is the creator. Would not he, she, or it be able to change reality as desired?

He, she, or it brought down the flood did he, she, or it not?

People claim miraculous cures from god. For the believer god controls reality.

Well, that's quite my point. How would such an action break any sort of "law"? What law, if they have created said laws in the first place, and govern them?

 

[Politesse]

Agnostics are fence sitters, maybe yes maybe no. I don't think there is a god but I think there may be some kind of cosmic intelligence, or maybe....

Agnostics are people whose rule is not to pretend at knowledge where none yet exists. It is a position on epistemology, not theism.

An agnostic can be any number of categories. Atheist agnostic for one.

It is avoiding the issue. God exists, does not exists, or you are unsure. Make a choice or sit on a fence.

Decisiveness in all situations, whether or not your decision has a reasonable basis, is not the inherent virtue some people seem to think it is.

 

[Rhea]

Probably because its not Gods world any more.

He wasn’t powerful enough to keep it, eh?

Interesting to think about - who did he lose it to? (Or give it to)
Who or what was too powerful for god to resist?

A fly falls into your soup. Are you still going to eat it, when you take the fly out - being that you're powerful enough to keep it ? A fresh clean bowl is more likely preferable, I would assume.

(best I could come up with at the moment )

I take it you don’t camp?

 

[Atheos]

Probably because its not Gods world any more.

He wasn’t powerful enough to keep it, eh?

Interesting to think about - who did he lose it to? (Or give it to)
Who or what was too powerful for god to resist?

A fly falls into your soup. Are you still going to eat it, when you take the fly out - being that you're powerful enough to keep it ? A fresh clean bowl is more likely preferable, I would assume.

(best I could come up with at the moment )

This is an absolutely classic example of what I was talking about when I mentioned how that every attempt to resolve the Problem of Evil attenuates one or more of the Omni-'s in question. Why would one be tempted to toss out the entire bowl of soup if a fly fell in it? Because that individual lacks the ability to be sure that not only has the fly been removed but that all vestiges of fecal material on which the fly might have been crawling earlier have also been removed.

But an omnipotent god would be able to excise exactly the fly and every atom of fecal material from the bowl while leaving the completely untainted remainder of the soup completely intact. And an omniscient god would be able to know with unimpeachable certainty that this had been done and there remained no risk of eating fecal material by consuming the soup.

And if the metaphor is then applied to the real-world context wherein "god" destroyed nearly every animal on the planet via drowning the problem of "omni-benevolence" rears its ugly head. The flood would be the metaphorical tossing-out of the bowl of soup for a fresh one. But this isn't soup we're talking about, it's people and animals. And lest we allow ourselves the callous tendency to think of a million deaths as a statistic let's consider one single child, maybe a 6 year old girl who has a mommy and daddy who protects her from all the bad things in the world. Along comes the flood waters, destroying their home. She watches in horror as her parents are swept away from her, leaving her to struggle and gasp for air, her arms growing more and more fatigued until that horrible moment comes when she can no longer stay afloat. It takes a couple of minutes for the brain to completely lose consciousness through asphyxiation and the sensation is indescribably torturous.

According to this myth, this is the method which the most benevolent creature in all of existence chose purposefully in order to exact the death penalty on billions of life forms on the planet. Somehow religious ideology manages to brainwash people into being incapable of seeing the disconnect here, which after I escaped that mental prison I find fascinating.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

A fly falls into your soup. Are you still going to eat it, when you take the fly out - being that you're powerful enough to keep it ? A fresh clean bowl is more likely preferable, I would assume.

(best I could come up with at the moment )

This is an absolutely classic example of what I was talking about when I mentioned how that every attempt to resolve the Problem of Evil attenuates one or more of the Omni-'s in question. Why would one be tempted to toss out the entire bowl of soup if a fly fell in it? Because that individual lacks the ability to be sure that not only has the fly been removed but that all vestiges of fecal material on which the fly might have been crawling earlier have also been removed.

But an omnipotent god would be able to excise exactly the fly and every atom of fecal material from the bowl while leaving the completely untainted remainder of the soup completely intact. And an omniscient god would be able to know with unimpeachable certainty that this had been done and there remained no risk of eating fecal material by consuming the soup.

And if the metaphor is then applied to the real-world context wherein "god" destroyed nearly every animal on the planet via drowning the problem of "omni-benevolence" rears its ugly head. The flood would be the metaphorical tossing-out of the bowl of soup for a fresh one. But this isn't soup we're talking about, it's people and animals. And lest we allow ourselves the callous tendency to think of a million deaths as a statistic let's consider one single child, maybe a 6 year old girl who has a mommy and daddy who protects her from all the bad things in the world. Along comes the flood waters, destroying their home. She watches in horror as her parents are swept away from her, leaving her to struggle and gasp for air, her arms growing more and more fatigued until that horrible moment comes when she can no longer stay afloat. It takes a couple of minutes for the brain to completely lose consciousness through asphyxiation and the sensation is indescribably torturous.

According to this myth, this is the method which the most benevolent creature in all of existence chose purposefully in order to exact the death penalty on billions of life forms on the planet. Somehow religious ideology manages to brainwash people into being incapable of seeing the disconnect here, which after I escaped that mental prison I find fascinating.

And according to many adherents the child was evil and had to be destroyed. Even today, the most innocent and defenseless infant is condemned and filthy with sin until cleansed. It literally takes a depraved mind to adhere to same.

Perhaps the behavior is a carryover from times when human bands routinely annihilated each other and took their resources because this was as far as their kit of problem solving skills could take them.

You are right however, it is fascinating to observe.

 

[Keith&Co.]

And according to many adherents the child was evil and had to be destroyed.

Or was going to grow up to be evil, and God had absolutely no option but to drown her along with the evil ones...

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Kith, that is the basis of materialism atheism. No minds were around when the Big Big happened, planets were forming, stars were forming etc.

no. You are wrong. Quel suprise.

The basis of atheism is that i do not believe in gods.

I do not believe human minds were around more than, i dunno, 2 million years ago?

But there is still a lot of room between 'human mind' and 'god' for other minds to exist, or have existed. Do you have any evidence that there have never been any othrr minds?

Holy mother of God, Keith!!!

He just goes by Keith here.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Probably because its not Gods world any more.

He wasn’t powerful enough to keep it, eh?

Interesting to think about - who did he lose it to? (Or give it to)
Who or what was too powerful for god to resist?

A fly falls into your soup. Are you still going to eat it, when you take the fly out - being that you're powerful enough to keep it ? A fresh clean bowl is more likely preferable, I would assume.

(best I could come up with at the moment )

This implies God discarded the universe (or at least Earth). This is pretty much untold in the holy book(s).

 

[Gun Nut]

Well, if there is no mind to perceive it doesn't look like anything. 'look' implies perception. No thinkee no lookee, savy?

How can the Earth look like anything but the Earth, at least within the visible spectrum of our eyes.

Wow, this philosophy stuff is way cool. Can you earn a living with it?

Oh, you guys really are amateurs.

Consider color. Is the grass actually green? No, but our mind perceives it that way. A colorblind person would conceive grass color differently. Thus, it can not exist in objectivity, something that is both completely green and completely not green via law of non contradiction.

Everything we observe encounters this same problem. Still unrefuted.

Is the grass no longer green when observed by a colorblind person... or felt by a fully blind person... or read about by a retarded person barely comprehending a really poorly written description?

Color may be an attribute of something we might call an "object".. but differences in perception leave the color unchanged. It's not a "problem" for anyone except those that wish to be dishonest and exploit such differences in perception as a difference in existential attributes.

 

[fromderinside]

Actually if the light falling on the grass has no energy in the complements that render something that might be received as being green and has no light in the green range of the spectrum it will not be seen as green. It will be seen as some other hue, perhaps even black, or not seen at all if no light is reflected from it.

 

[James Brown]

According to this myth, this is the method which the most benevolent creature in all of existence chose purposefully in order to exact the death penalty on billions of life forms on the planet. Somehow religious ideology manages to brainwash people into being incapable of seeing the disconnect here, which after I escaped that mental prison I find fascinating.

Totally agreed. Using the flood to rid the world of evil (and did it work?) is like burning down your house because you found a handful of carpenter ants. It's the HULK SMASH! action of a less-than-omnipotent being.

Or--and I'm just spit-balling here--it's a non-falsifiable story to explain the big flood that happened before great-grandfather was born, that it was a punishment sent by God because of the way those people were behaving back then. This explanation makes more sense to me because:

A) it doesn't require pretzel-twisting explanations about how koala bears in Australia were saved (local flooding has been common throughout all of human history) and

B) the same stories are made up every single day, here in our supposedly scientific age. There is no natural disaster that occurs today that isn't blamed on some out group by a fire-and-brimstone preacher. Earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, and yes even flash floods are always God's punishment for some kind of sin, like being gay, drinking alcohol, or voting Democrat. No gods are necessary to get someone to blame something bad on someone else.

If it happens today, there's no reason why it didn't happen 5,000 years ago.

 

[bilby]

No, because your opposing theory no evidence, either, AND it violates Occam's razor. So it'has less goingbfor it than materialism. It's into negative evidence.

Keith, if "reality exists independently of minds" is a statement with no evidence whatsoever, then we know reality can not exist independently of minds. It then logically follows that an eternal mind that is always perceiving must always exist.

You don't believe there were ANY MINDS around billions of years ago. And reality can not exist independently of minds.

But you can apply the EXACT same reasoning to the claim "reality depends on minds for its existence", and reach the opposite conclusion. Thereby demonstrating that your reasoning is flawed, as it can "prove" two contradictory claims simultaneously.

All you have proven here is that you are utterly shit at applying reasoning and logic. Which your regular readers already knew.

 

[atrib]

The flood would be the metaphorical tossing-out of the bowl of soup for a fresh one. But this isn't soup we're talking about, it's people and animals.

Lets not forget the plants. Plants do good things for us, like absorbing carbon dioxide and producing oxygen, and producing food. Why did God have to kill the plants?

 

[Keith&Co.]

The flood would be the metaphorical tossing-out of the bowl of soup for a fresh one. But this isn't soup we're talking about, it's people and animals.

Lets not forget the plants. Plants do good things for us, like absorbing carbon dioxide and producing oxygen, and producing food. Why did God have to kill the plants?

Because they wrre not alive.
Biblically, spirit enters the body with breath, and the person or animal bevvomes a living thing.
Plants, insects, fish have no nostrils, Noah had no reason to save them.

How else could an olive branch be available as soon as the waters receded?

 

[Learner]

Well the waters didn't recede in just a day which would obviously give the wrong erroneous impression, and seeds for example could lay dormant for quite a few years. Only takes a few days to gemnate and weeks and months to grow depending on plants. Trees could lay dormant - still have life in them while rooted under water for a few months, whille the outer-layers although dead-ish, becomes a somewat protective barrier (briefly saying).

 

[Keith&Co.]

Well the waters didn't recede in just a day which would obviously give the wrong erroneous impression, and seeds for example could lay dormant for quite a few years. Only takes a few days to gemnate and weeks and months to grow depending on plants. Trees could lay dormant - still have life in them while rooted under water for a few months, whille the outer-layers although dead-ish, becomes a somewat protective barrier (briefly saying).

But this was sea water, no? The Waters Below rising up and over....

Or worse. The churning required by the Creationist model, to explain strata and fossils, would have meant a shitload of matter in suspension during the Flood. Trees and plants buried in that muck for up to ten months. Not only dormant, but on the way to ICR fossils.

Your model does require fossilizing clams on top of mountains, right?

So, and trees from before the Flood were not going to be green in that model. And new seeds might land in the mountaintop mud, germinate, and grow for a short time when the waters fell.....
but the dove didn't bring back an olive sprout, did it?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Well the waters didn't recede in just a day which would obviously give the wrong erroneous impression, and seeds for example could lay dormant for quite a few years. Only takes a few days to gemnate and weeks and months to grow depending on plants. Trees could lay dormant - still have life in them while rooted under water for a few months, whille the outer-layers although dead-ish, becomes a somewat protective barrier (briefly saying).

Underwater for a "few months"? Wasn't it a couple hundred days? And wasn't the flood busy creating all the sedimentary rock and varved clay deposits YEC'ers insist were created during this period because otherwise, there simply isn't enough time in the YEC model to explain shales and varved clays?

 

[James Brown]

Well the waters didn't recede in just a day which would obviously give the wrong erroneous impression, and seeds for example could lay dormant for quite a few years. Only takes a few days to gemnate and weeks and months to grow depending on plants. Trees could lay dormant - still have life in them while rooted under water for a few months, whille the outer-layers although dead-ish, becomes a somewat protective barrier (briefly saying).

How did all the modern plant species survive?

• Many plants (seeds and all) would be killed by being submerged for a few months. This is especially true if they were soaked in salt water. Some mangroves, coconuts, and other coastal species have seed which could be expected to survive the Flood itself, but what of the rest?
• Most seeds would have been buried under many feet (even miles) of sediment. This is deep enough to prevent spouting.
• Most plants require established soils to grow--soils which would have been stripped by the Flood.
• Some plants germinate only after being exposed to fire or after being ingested by animals; these conditions would be rare (to put it mildly) after the Flood.
• Noah could not have gathered seeds for all plants because not all plants produce seeds, and a variety of plant seeds can't survive a year before germinating. [Garwood, 1989; Benzing, 1990; Densmore & Zasada, 1983] Also, how did he distribute them all over the world?

 

[Keith&Co.]

Now we're reminding Learner that Flood proponents cannot have it both ways. Can't have a light submerging of surface plants for a little bit while also needing massive rearrangement of the Earth's crust.


Still, have to wonder when we're ever going to get these atheistic myths that were threatened...