by EdenOne 284 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
We find atheism usually very concerned about discrediting the deity of the monotheistic religions, and then extrapolating and making blanket statements about every other form of beliefs in deities.
No. We can refute them one by one.
Atheism makes no unsupported claims at all.
All your bluster doesn't solve your logical problem
To say that something is absent presupposes that it exists.
You have all your work still to do.
If you can prove where the invention of a particular god came from then you prove it's non-existence IMO.
For example, you may believe in Lord Voldemort ... there are books about him so what more evidence is needed? (Heck, he's even been captured on camera)
But if you can prove who and when someone authored the book that the character is based on, you also prove that he isn't the real character claimed.
None of the bible 'evidence' stands up to scrutiny. It is clearly a work of fiction based on previous older works. We know the chronology and development of the stories. Why does anyone imagine they could possibly be true? It's idiotic.
The logic used to presume any gods existence means you also have to consider any claim I make as being potentially true. God is actually my dog who will rid the cosmos of anyone who doubts her.
Really? You think that deserves equal consideration as anything else? If it ever developed into any kind of following the fact that someone could source this post and show where it originated would be proof that it was bogus. But why would proof be needed?
Lack of proof of god is proof that god does not exist IMO. How and why would god hide? Is he afraid of us? Then he is no god ...
EdenOne in my own journey it was a shock for me to discover that atheists like Richard Dawkins and company were refuting a particular theology emnating from one theologian - Richard Swineburne
http://people.bu.edu/wwildman/bce/swinburne.htm
What I have learned since is that many theologians actually attest what you are describing - an absent theist who may be more accessible as a fullness of love, the idea of resurrection, Christ etc rather than as a standing still big person in the sky. I'm not saying these are my beliefs though but simply giving an examples.
Modern atheism is obsessed with presence. Jacques Derrida showed very well how the presence of modernity actually suppresses so that when we actually explore what presence suppresses we find ongoing multiplicity. I think that a religion like Jehovahs witnessses that keeps wanting to locate presence in what can be thought and said in the here and now suppresses like no other by means of thought control. But I think there are individual witnesses who intuitively know this but keep it quiet.
edit: In fact multiplicity turns up in such diverse secular subjects as geography, politics, sociology, history, physics, cosmology etc. So one can be a proper little secular atheistic person who can dip into whatever frame/context one wants in order to enrich one's life. For myself I don't like what absence/void conveys but take what you are explaining provided that void/absence is qualified by animation and unending potential
“Civic Religion” is the term coined to describe a system of worship whose cult is rendered to a human ruler in the form of homage, tribute, loyalty and allegiance. Examples can be found in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome. Romulus, considered the founder of Rome, was deified and worshipped as the deity Quirinus. Julius Caesar was the first roman living ruler to accept the title of “divine”, when a statue of himself was erected in the temple of Quirinus is 45 BC with an inscription: “To the invincible God”. When Julius Caesar died, he was elevated to the status of god in equal standing with the pantheon of roman gods (a process called ‘apotheosis’) and a cult to Jupiter Julius, complete with a temple was established. But it was with his successor, Octavian Augustus, that the imperial cult became fully established. After a string of catastrophes, Octavian brought peace, stability and prosperity to the romans, and such feat was considered so extraordinary that only a divine being could accomplish that. There was no way to explain a power so great without appeal to a divine nature residing within Augustus. As adopted son of the divine Julius Caesar, Augustus started by styling himself as “son of God”, and later accepted and actively promoted the construction of temples dedicated to the worship of himself as a divinity. Mandatory sacrifices to the genius of the emperor were made compulsory, and upon his death, on 14 AD, by an official decree from the roman senate, Octavian Augustus Caesar was included among the pantheon of roman gods, and received a temple and priests. For centuries to follow, the cult of the emperor, this form of “civic religion” thrived both in the city of Rome and in the roman provinces.
Coin with the deified effigy of Augustus, son of the deified Julius Caesar.
Status of deified emperor Octavian Augustus.
Temple to emperor Augustus in Nimes, France.
So, here’s my question: Was Octavian Augustus a fictional character or a real being? Since we all can agree that his existence was a verifiable fact, it is also an undeniable fact that he was considered a deity and received worship from humans and a religion, temples and a pristehood were established in his honor. Just as Yahweh or the deified Jesus Christ or Aura Mazda or any other deity that you can think of. Therefore, here is a deity that exists, or, at least, that existed at one point in time. And here is the problem with the atheist proposition: It requires a certain kind of deity to be feasible. Namely, it requires a spiritual, superhuman deity that claims special powers not commonly held by humans. This is the kind of deity that atheism claims that doesn’t exist. However, their proposition stumbles and hits a brick wall when a different kind of deity is being discussed. Deities DO exist, because what makes a deity is the willingness of human beings to worship said entity. Anything and anyone can be a deity just as long as anyone has some kind of rationale for establishing its cult.
The type of deity that atheists take such pride in debunking may or may not exist. But the proposition that “deities don’t exist” is plain simply a mystification . They can exist, even if, as Simon said, the possibility that they exist in the form that we expect them to exist is so hugely remote that we chose to embrace the notion that it may just as well be inexistent. However, because we haven’t made a research so wide as to scan the entire universe and all the known physical dimensions (not to mention those dimensions who aren’t known yet, but merely theorized that exist), no one can say with a 100% degree of absolute certainty that “no deities exist”. As per the example above, they do exist. Hence, I stand by the proposition that “The only thing that can be said about God is that it's absent”- absentheism.
Modern atheism is obsessed with presence.
No. Let me correct that for you.
Modern atheism is obsessed with evidence. A very different proposition indeed.
What a bizarre thread. EdenOne, you were on a losing streak with this one. If I stated;
"The existence of ThoBerras can't be proved, neither is there evidence of ThoBerras inexistence"
I doubt most people would say "Fair enough". I would suggest most people would immediately say "Who or what is ThoBerras?".
To have a meaningful discussion on any subject you have to check your audience understands what that subject is. If you won't or can't provide an answer to what the subject is then how can the discussion proceed?
Can you see how absurd the above looks? You could do the same for pixies, Father Christmas, the Tooth Fairy and so on. And again, you need to work from a position whereby people have an agreed idea of what you mean when you talk about unicorns, pixies, Father Christmas, the Tooth Fairy etc.Unicorns can exist, even if, as Simon said, the possibility that they exist in the form that we expect them to exist is so hugely remote that we chose to embrace the notion that it may just as well be inexistent. However, because we haven’t made a research so wide as to scan the entire universe and all the known dimentions (not to mention those dimensions who aren’t known yet, but merely theorized that exist), no one can say with a 100% degree of absolute certainty that “no unicorns exist”. As per the example above, they do exist. Hence, I stand by the proposition that “The only thing that can be said about unicorns is that they're absent”- absentunicornism.
To say that something is absent presupposes that it exists.
You're warping the logic with nonsense. If I ask: "Is there a unicorn present in this room or is it absent from this room?" - I'm not asserting or even validating the existence of unicorns. I simply stop short of even discussing it. I'm simply verifying the fact that no unicorn could be found to be present in the room. I'm not making any assertions about the existence or non existence of unicorns. Stop twisting logic with non sequitur reasoning.
Eden
Wizzstick, still you didn't counter my example of Augusus Caesar as an example of a verifiable deity whose existence was real.
Eden
If I said: "Is there a lkahlkaksshalks present in this room or is it absent from this room?"
What would you say?
Let me put it this way: If Joe says: "there is a deity in the universe", and Jack says: "there is no deity in the universe", let me ask you, who has the heaviest burden of proof? Because in order to conclude beyond question that there is no deity in the universe, Jack must scan the entire universe to make good on his claim. As for Joe, if he finds a deity lurking on the nearest planet, his search for evidence is over. Therefore, the heaviest burden of proof falls on atheists, not on theists.
I think there is a difficulty here. Let first focus on the first part of the above paragraph and suppose it reads as:
Joe: There is a X
Jack: There is no X
Obviously how likely we evaluate those statements to be depend on what X is. If for instance X is "A small smooth rock" Joe is very likely correct, if on the other hand "X" is "Santas magical workshop" the burden of proof clearly rests on Joe.
Normally, in science, if X is something belonging to some new type of object not previously seen the convention is to doubt the existence of X until new evidence comes in. Notice the christian god is about as different from any other thing we know of as can be.
This brings me to the second part of the paragraph. The problem is that how easy it is to confirm (or rule out) the existence of X should not affect our belief if X exists. Take this example
X1 : There is a small magical dwarf in my attick
X2: There is a small magical dwarf on Mars
It is very easy to confirm or rule out X1 and very hard to confirm or rule out X2, but we would normally say both claims were equally unlikely and any person who wished to believe them should have good evidence.
