Do you believe in God?

I don’t need to. Rational would mean theism corresponds to reality, And it can’t be shown to do that until the existence of god has been reasonably demonstrated, which it hasn’t. So defacto theism is irrational, with no need to use superstition as the explanation.

We’ve long since passed the point where you attempt to dodge your obligation to provide reasonable evidence for your claim theism is true.

It’s the same old story. The claim a god exists is your burden to justify, it’s not the atheists job to disprove unfalsifiable claims. We can merely say there is no reasonable evidence to believe it and it’s your job to demonstrate some, or any reasonable evidence or argument.

But you won’t and can’t do that. So you’ll dodge and continue to attempt to shift the burden of proof, because like all Theists you have no reasonable evidence or arguments for your beliefs, you just really really wish it was true.

This suggests to me that you have not actually engaged the relevant literature on this subject. Have you even ever watched a debate on yootoobs with John Lennox* or William Lane Craig?

Of course, I'm not suggesting that you will necessarily be persuaded or convinced by their arguments, but the notion that these folks "just really wish it was true" is just kinda silly in my opinion.

*I accidentally typed 'John Lennon'. 😀

Sure.
John 3:16 :
"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."

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Well, if the arguments presented by Craig and Lennox are indeed rational and convincing, surely you can summarize the main points of them here so that those of us who aren’t all that motivated to watch long videos that likely espouse arguments from incredulity, arguments from authority, straw man arguments, and maybe some other logical fallacies I missed, don’t have to wade through them. Prove me wrong. So they have any actual arguments or is it all just “the universe is just too perfect or complex to have arisen naturally”? The latter is not particularly convincing and really is just question begging - part of the theism vs atheism discussion is precisely whether or not the universe could arise without a creator. This argument just assumes the answer is no.

I’ve siesta thought it was hilarious that John Lennon was a prominent atheist while John Lennox is perhaps the most prominent theist of our age. It’s an easy mistake to make though, I’ve done it too.

I’ve watched a lot of videos of William Lane Craig being eviscerated in debates, because his positions always boil down to “I really wish it was true”. In fact, Paulogia gave him the nickname “Low Bar Bill” after he said a couple years ago that if there was one chance in a million that the Christian god existed you should worship him. That’s an obviously ludicrous rational based purely on wishful thinking.

It look at his favorite logical argument, the Kalam, it doesn’t prove any god exists, let alone the Christian one. This is because God isn’t anywhere in the premises, just a “prime mover” that could be anything including aliens from other dimensions or a natural cause. But it can’t even establish a prime mover exists because its first premise is just an unsupported assertion that the universe is not eternal, that it had a beginning.

I haven’t seen much more than brief videos of Lennox, and he seems to have a a lot more intellectual heft than Low Bar Bill. But the problem is that appeal to authority proves nothing, saying intellectual heavyweight Lennox believes gives us no more reason to believe than saying intellectual heavyweight Christopher Hitchens being an atheist makes atheism true.

So why don’t you tell me which Lennox or William Lane Craig argument is most compelling, and why. Because arguments stand on their own, irregardless of who made them.

by sasa615201 m

Sure.
John 3:16 :
"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."

https://randombibleversegenerator.click/

Random Bible Verse Generator

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Yes, we are all aware of what Christianity claims, what’s the evidence that it’s true?

For counter evidence I would provide the New Testament, which conclusively demonstrates Jesus wasn’t divine, and could not have been Gods only son. First, is that he quoted the Old Testament incorrectly. Cearly he or the gospel writers could not read Hebrew because their misquotes are based on mistranslations in their Greek translation of the Old Testament.

Secondly, the Bible demonstrates Jesus was not the messiah, because he never fulfilled a single messianic prophecy from the Old Testament.

Lastly, the final nail in the coffin is that Jesus clearly didn’t fulfill his own prophecy to return in a second coming (coming in the clouds with the angels of heaven to judge everyone, etc) while some of his disciples were still alive.

I began a new thread ("The Fact of God") which offers an argument for Christianity from a scientific perspective.

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/137/r...

I don't share your view on the burden of proof because my interests are in epistemology. not debate tactics or rhetorical strategies. But I'm glad you are able to admit up front that you're not able to present any arguments that prove theism is irrational. That's very helpful

I'm happy to do what you're unable to do though and provide an argument for the absurdity of materialism: Atheism implies materialism and materialism implies that all actions can be explained entirely in terms of descriptions of matter(neurons, synapsis, chemicals etc interacting). So any description of a person's behaviors, thoughts, actions, or beliefs can be made up entirely of physical descriptions(at least according to materialists). This leaves the materialist in a situation where when they describe the rationality of their belief in terms of non physical descriptions then their explanation overdetermines the actual fact of the matter. Saying "I believe in atheism for x y or z reason, AS OPPOSED TO B, C, or D reasons" is prima facia absurd because the "reason" as a referent is simply a physical description of matter determined by other physical states of affairs interacting with the laws of nature in a certain sort of way that the agent can't control. The belief itself can't be, in any real sense, a reasoning process, rather agents are forced to believe what they believe and never had the option to believe anything other than what they do believe.

Charles Darwin also seemed very bothered by this issue later in his life and summarizes the intuition quite well "But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind." See Nagel, Plantinga, Lewis, or Hasker who provide further argumentation toward the idea that materialism is self referentially irrational, or more accurately arational.

I only care what is true, ie comports to reality and care nothing about rhetoric or debate strategies either. If you truly cared about epistemology, and not rhetoric or debate strategies, you’d understand that no unfalsifiable belief is able to be proven to be irrational. So Theism stands alongside the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus as unfalsifiable beliefs. If you are claiming that as a positive for theism, then you are resorting to rhetoric and a debate strategy of spinning a neutral fact as some sort of win.

“Implies”. Nope, demonstrate lack of a belief implies any other belief.

Your word salad is seasoned with assertions you haven’t demonstrated.

Darwin said many true things and some false things, and no one cares about your appeal to authority arguments. First demonstrate atheism requires a belief in materialism, then demonstrate materialism is irrational.

But before you do please answer one question. What shape is the Earth?

You didn't address a single point made in my post.

I rebutted every assertion you made by pointing out they are without evidence. First demonstrate atheism requires a belief in materialism, then demonstrate materialism is irrational.

And what shape is the earth?

Theists are lost in the weeds. Intentionally. They do better to just stick with the faith idea instead of the sophistry approach, which is why the Christian religion was designed with faith as a pillar anyway. What's the list of other things in which faith in them is posited as a path to its truth?

Faith is the excuse Theists use because they lack good reasons to believe in their gods. Because if they had good reasons they’d never need faith.

Faith has many facets, and is often in Scripture (and elsewhere) used as a synonym for trust or confidence.

The following three sentences propositionally mean the same thing:

a) "I have faith that my car is reliable enough for me to drive to Las Vegas."

b) "I trust that my car is reliable enough for me to drive to Las Vegas."

c) "I am confident that my car is reliable enough for me to drive to Las Vegas."

Please note that the English word confidence comes from the Latin confidentia.

con = with

fides = faith

Here is perhaps the most well known example of this:

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.- Hebrews 11:1 [empahsis added]

You guys question begging back and forth without realizing it is really powerful stuff no doubt. But I'm asking for someone to show us how theism is irrational instead of just asserting that it is irrational over and over. It's becoming clear that this is not something you're capable of doing which has to be discouraging for any intellectually curious atheists reading this exchange. The emperor having no clothes often comes to mind when engaging with New Atheism.

A. Theism is irrational

T. How so?

A. I don't have to tell you but trust me bro it is.

T Uh... Ok?

The person making a claim has a de facto Burden of Proof, unless the claim is common knowledge. Given that the vast majority of folks in the world believe in some sort of deity, it would seem as a practical matter it is the anti-deist who has some burden of proof to show the dum-dums why they're wrong in their belief.

If I say, "There is a God", I have the burden or proof to give an argument why belief in God is more rational than disbelieving in God.

If someone else says, "There is no God", then that person has a burden of proof to show why disbelief in God is more reasonable.

As a theist, I can't just say to the nontheist, "Well, you can't prove that there isn't a God."

Similarly, the antitheist can't merely assert "Well, you can't prove that there is a God."

Of course, an agnostic has no burden of proof because the agnostic isn't typically making a truth claim.

Colloquially all three mean we have reasonable EVIDENCE that our car is reliable enough to drive to Vegas. This us because we have experience with how reliable our car is, we know how it has been maintained, and we have a good understanding based on many cars on hue reliable the typical car us.

But colloquially isn’t how faith is used by theists. Theist use it to profess “blind” faith without evidence for their god proposition.

Word roots are the most meaningless proofs of nothing at all. Word meanings change over time, as societies change them. No scientific “confidence level” ever implies blind faith.

Exactly, blind faith is what the early Christians sought to indoctrinate in their flocks, because they knew they had no evidence. This is actually one of the most corrosive aspects of religion, training adherents to be gullible and easily convinced of irrational things. It’s what makes them such ripe targets for conmen.

You just keep trying to shift the burden of proof and failing. Atheism just means I don’t accept the claims of theists, it’s your burden to demonstrate that I should accept your claim.

It’s clearly irrational to claim that a proposition must be true if no one has proven it false.

Again, Atheism is merely disbelief, it makes no claim that Theism is irrational, despite the lack of rational evidence or arguments for theism.

If appeal to popularity wasn’t a fallacy, then Allah will soon be proven as the one true god when Muslims outnumber Christians.

Atheism isn’t anti-theism, any more than amoral is immoral. Atheism makes no claims, it’s the rejection of theistic claims.

Agnostic and gnostic just mean how strongly you hold a belief, you can be a gnostic or agnostic theist, or a gnostic (anti-theist) or agnostic atheist.

The Bible clearly defines the word faith in Hebrews 11:1 as I quoted it. You literally have no clue what you're talking about. You make these stupid generalizations about what theists actually believe. The definition of faith in the Bible is the opposite of "blind faith."

I agree. But "Blind faith" is the opposite of faith as defined in Scripture itself! Your willful ignorance is astounding.

More unsubstantiated opinions. You are becoming almost as ridiculous as Fella Gaga. Like him, you've devolved into ranting babbler instead of making arguments relevant to the discussion at hand.

Your reading comprehension is amazingly bad. I never claimed that the fact that most folks in the world are theists is evidence for theism.

Huh? By definition "anti-theism" is a "against theism." "Anti-" means against or opposed to. Atheism is not a neutral position.

Atheism means "against theism", while amoral does not mean "against morals."

No, that's not what agnostic means in this context. Look up agnostic in a Philosophy dictionary. Agnostic means one has no firm opinion on the existence of God.

“Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist”

“Antitheism, also spelled anti-theism, is the philosophical position that theism should be opposed. The term has had a range of applications. In secular contexts, it typically refers to direct opposition to the belief in any deity.”

This is a pure definition of blind faith. The “evidence” is unseen. The early church is trying to convince adherents to believe even when they see no evidence.

Please read more carefully.

The passage does not say that the evidence is unseen. We see the evidence of things even if we can't see the thing itself. I don't see radio waves, but I know they exist when I listen to the radio. In other words, the evidence for the existence of radio waves is that I have a working radio. The working radio is evidence I can see that something I can't see (radio waves) exists.

For example, we don't "see" the force of gravity itself. One of the evidences for an invisible force called gravity is that stuff falls to the ground. We know that gravity exists not because we literally see the force of gravity itself, but rather because we see the effects of gravity.

Similarly, as a Christian I don't literally see the Holy Spirit, but I feel His presence in my life.

Hope that helps.