by Julia Orwell 62 Replies latest jw friends
Julia, your points are clear and logical. I know exactly what your position is as regards your thread. I don't know your religious beliefs as far as this thread goes as this is not the topic.
I have an idea form other threads. But thats not the topic of this thread at all, and I can clearly grasp what the topic is. Your frustrations.
Love Kate xx
Well said Julia ! You get a "Good" for use of illustrations too ! LOL
I still find it strange that believers cannot get it in to their heads that Atheism is not a belief, but Theism is. There cannot possibly be proof "for" the Atheistic position as it is simply a position that says I see no proof for a god.
If someone says there are pink unicorns with purple spots and I say I have never seen any proof of their existence, i cannot offer proof of my "position", the onus is 100% upon the spotted unicorn guy to prove their existence to me. Simple.
Where the frustration enters in for us non-unicornists is when the unicornists expect us to listen to inane arguments , non facts and plain nonsesnse and then go along with their delusion. Solid, testable, satisfactory evidence please, or those unicorns do not exist.
It is not worth debating doctrine with a believer, be they JW or some other flavour, that is a huge timewaster, and again frustration enters in because they simply will not look at the evidence, they will ignore what even their own handbook, the Bible, says and hang on to their belief by twisted exegesis or other methods.
Why are not believers simply honest and say "What I believe in is Delusion, but I choose to continue". I would respect that honesty, but a dis-honest approach to facts, I do not respect.
LOL! Phizzy
I am not taking the bait and trolling Julia's Thread. Why not start a thread about what Believer's think, I am free to join in Phizzy. Fireaway I am bullet proof.
Love Kate xx
I will join in on such a thread, but on this one I do agree with Julia, there is a "I am banging my head against a wall " feeling when trying to reason with believers.
This is because belief is not rational, as I said in my post above, if believers would honestly acknowledge that fact, then we could be at peace with eachother.
There is no reasoning with the deluded, especially when they will not look at facts in an honest way.
Trying to reason with JW's in particular is thwarted by all the thought-stopping techniques they use upon themselves, as they have been taught to do by the WT. The "I will go away and research that" technique is also used to stop themselves from thinking, they do not do as they promised, so never have to answer the question/s to themselves.
Frustrating.
Phizzy - "This is because belief is not rational, as I said in my post above, if believers would honestly acknowledge that fact, then we could be at peace with each other."
I dunno.
Acknowledging one's own irrationality ain't all that peacable.
The brain fights against it pretty vigorously, as a matter of fact.
That's why I put in my title, "Some believers" because not all believers are irrational. People have many reasons to believe what they believe, and to not believe too. And, beliefs come in so many different forms, from Bible fundamentalism to someone who accepts evolution and the materialist explanation of the universe yet accepts that there might be 'something'. Believing that there might be 'something' is very common in Australia as we are not a religious people yet open to different ideas.
HI Julia,
Atheist believe they don't have any obligation in this discussion to bring forward any proof. How often do you see a atheist say "You say there is a God or Gods, prove they exists". Well, what are the obligations if a atheist comes forward to a theist or deist and says, "There is no God" and we ask "Well what is your premise or what are you bringing to convince me your position is correct?" The burden of proof shifts to the person making the claim, atheists often wish this was not the case, that they can say "Well, the problem of Evil is what provides evidence that Gods dont exist" or "Since I was born, who gave birth to the gods?" Instead of bringing forward any meaningful dialogue, we get stuck in a useless dialogue where the person making the claim appears to wrongly think they don't have the responsibility to convince us with evidence and proof their argument is strongest "Atheism makes the most sense because theists can't answer my ojections" Well, what did the Atheist actually say to the theist that was so compelling tous, we decided to join their side? Absence of evidence is not evidence of absense or we really should dimiss anything we are not observing or taking place, I see the clips and pastes by people who never went to college, pastes by people who insult themselves by making insane statements. I remember when a few users on JWN were posting that 90% of JWs were mentally ill and mooch off the Government and all the people they find are sick in the head not doing anything productive for society. Can you find where the writers just attacked the majority of JWN while members of JWN were enjoying this post not realizing by default, they 9 out of 10 are insane or mentally ill, milking the government or sponges off government aid.
I was reading the notes of a debate where Dr. Richard Dawkins is speaking about all the scientist pre-1800 (Isaac Newton (greatest scientist ever) Leibeniz, Pascal, Pasteur, and Newtonian Calculous, Pasteur's (destroyed spontaneous generation, his experiment proved that life could not come out of nothing, read his experiment and how the scientific community thought Pasteur was stupid not to accept the prevailing and accepted idea that "life emerges from nothing or non-existence", what do you think Pasteur would say to a person who said "I don't belive origin of life came from anything, just emerged from a nothingness and beyond random chance odds?
The debate continues with Dawkins saying that all the scientist made the mistake of thinking that "Since everything around us gives off the impression it was created, we must ignore that false thinking." Scientist were tricked by how incredibly structured Life is on earth, they allowed themselves to be fooled by their person presuppositions and falsely gave credit to a Designer because everything to the scientist prior to the "Enlightenment Period", made sense aftertheir discoveries to say, "oh, that's how the God or gods did this" instead it's "Oh, that's how Natural Selection and Blind Mechanics opperate.
Dawkins continues and say's "We are too easily fooled by things like DNA or Junk DNA with faulty comparisons." His faulty comparions idea is driven by a concept that humans are not prone to examine something really incredibly complex and say "Oh, this must have just happened and all the DNA encoding was not really encoded, Blind and Unguided forces through multipule trials and errors in Evolutions Labraotory, would keep the good products and destroy the bad ones (Blind Chance and Natural Selection".
It still is not proven we emerged from a pre-biotic soup, I watched him beg the question and say "life came from aliens or outerspace" another scientist arguing said "Something non-temporal and beyond this dimension and without a corporal form might have started life but it was not God or gods." These are the arguments we are to find enlightening?
Look, I wasn't discussing how true the atheist worldview is or not, I was discussing ARGUMENT construction. I'm not an atheist if you must know.
I'm not an atheist if you must know.-Julia
Yes I already knew, from your other posts on this and other forums. Kate xx
Hi Julia Orwell, I am a believer and I agree with you. I tried to point out that once on some board years ago that excepting the bible as Gods word because it says so was circular reasoning, and therefore not valid logically as an argument. I pointed out that the question of if the bible is God’s word or not would require outside material or evidence of one sort of another in order for the argument to not be circular and therefore valid. Obviously much more could be said on what the bible is anyway in terms of which bit would be valid if such outside evidence checked out that pertained to a certain part and so on but the discussion never got that far because I was kicked off that board.
Argument construction is a philosophical discipline with many fancy words what would put most to sleep, including myself, but I find that kindness often overcomes this along with genuine humility and ability to acknowledge that one’s own world view could be wrong. However there is an important issue with regard to world views and valid argument construction. All arguments that are logical and therefor valid, which does not mean true of course, occur within the framework of a world view that is already there, in the person, and not directly related to the logic of an argument being made. The logic of an argument in terms of formal construction may work and be valid in form but it might still contradict the logic of a world view that someone has, and this will be not be addressed by the argument itself.
In a way this a bit like the difference between science and mathematics and why science never deals in proof but instead with theory, theory as the next stage up from hypothesis, whereas mathematics deals with absolute proofs or falsehoods. The two fields of enquiry interconnect but scientific conclusions can always be mistaken or proved wrong. The issue with mathematics is that as a world view it is a bit useless because strictly speaking mathematics doesn’t exist in a physical way as the word does. I guess the best thing to do is to acknowledge that we all have a world view that cannot be proven which means we all need to be very humble with regard to thinking we are correct. However valid argument structure should probably be taught to all children because that might be a perfect world there.
