Hello again. I want to clarify some things.
-the God Faq was a joke meant to emphasize the methodological importance of the burden of proof. Apparently you guys thought that's an argument against God's existance. I'll leave the God issue for now.
-Lyra your observation from above is tardive,pointless and pathetic. Nobody but you complained about it and you are not even making a good case, because from that website it surely looks as if this forum is connected to it, because there's a direct link to this forum right in the first page. Anyway even if it weren't , I;d say that this place is a proper one to talk about that theory since already some users acknowledged the fact that they belive in the theory one way or another, with varying degrees of conviction. Calling it "completely unrelated " is weird to say the least.
-Khatru: So,, there are people here able to express different views with fairplay and not resorting to complicated words. Thanks for posting. I'd like to add something but rest assured that the only debate I wanted to win was about reptilians and I did that already.
khatru wrote:What you don't seem to understand is that there's an equal amount of dis-empowerment associated with absolute disbelief as there is with absolute belief.As Lyra pointed out, if you fancy yourself a debater, at least learn something about debate and logic. You would never tolerate someone from NR making the statement that God exists, and that He exists because it would be impossible for Him not to exist and that it’s ideologically incorrect not to believe in a Supreme Being. It's obvious from your other statements that you would accuse that person of insanity
How nice this may sound, it does not change the fact that I am still the one who is right ; my absolute disbelief is based on reality, and some other's absolute belief is based on pure fantesy and speculation about a speculation.
In other words, I'm still right, how disbeliever I may be. When comparing and Atheist Fundy to A Christian Fundy, one should consider the fact that one is fundamentalist about the reality, and the other one is fundamentalist about fantesy.
I have the weird impression that you'd expect "absolute methodological reciprocity" in this matters. But don't forget that the burden of proof is the core of the method of discerning what is real and what is not, regarding claims. And it resides only on the shoulders of the one who claims, not the one who disclaims. Think about it. Why sould I want to disprove something that obviously exists? I'd only succeed at making a fool out of myself.
khatru wrote:Certainly you don't know, and can't prove the non-existence of, a supreme being
I did not say "Supreme Being" I said God. With capital G, so I was reffering to Yahwe, the Christian God, and for definition take the general accepted one that is used mostly in discussions.
In fact, the funny thing is that I am now being a cognitivist with regard to the word "god or God" solely for the sake of argumentation. I am in reality non-cognitivist with regard to these words because until now no coherent, non-spiritual definition was given by the supporters of the idea. The idea of an omnipotent, all-knowing creature is pure fantesy. Keeping that in mind you get the point that the expression "Supreme Being" also needs a definition by the proposer.
Let me reformulate,from your point of view so that you'll get my point!!
YOU: "I am certain that you cannot be certain of the non-existance of "a supreme being". Guess what. You just did what you assume that I cannot do. Being certain of a negative is possible.
I can prove that square circles do not exist, because they by definition cannot. Same with "supreme beings" . How the said supreme being would have gotten into existance? Nothing can exist outside the Universe. The Universe by definition is "everything that exists". If a "Supreme Being" could exist, It would necessarily have to exist outside the Universe, otherwise it wouldn't deserve to call it "Supreme". However this is still open for discussion because I do not know what you understand exactly by the SB thing. Some call it Supreme Being, some call it ID , some call it god, some Creator, nonetheless, none of them makes any sense, because before starting to make any statements about it, you must first define it. And since the very definition poses much problems the rest is just speculation about a speculation. There's a principle that says everything must have a cause. However one must not understand the very Universe as being a part of "Everything" but, In my arrogant opinion, the Universe is only the framework where Everything can exist. If you study paradoxes you'll learn that you cannot meaningfully ask "When did time began?" the same as you cannot assert "A SB created the Universe". By this logic gods are killed mercilessly. Just an expression, really, Gods and SBs are so inapt that they can't even die, since to die one must first live/ good luck