Professor Falken Posted:

QED.

The Irony..

“Relativity must replace absolutism in the realm of morals as well as in the spheres of physics and biology.”

Maybe you should bother reading the explanation. Agnosticism doesn’t create a mystery where there’s none. You cannot logically disprove the existence of “God” or whatever, since you can’t really know what “God” is. Full stop.

I was told once that ignostism > agnostism, but I’m atheist because I don’t like thinking too hard.

Professor Falken Posted:

(I doubt any of the anti-religious nuts (which are just as bad as religious nuts) will take note of this, but it’s still worth a try.)

You can not objectively prove or disprove the existence of “God” or a “soul” AS A CONCEPT IN GENERAL. This is why:

You can not clearly and objectively define what these terms even mean. That’s a fact – just look at the sheer amount of religions, sects and interpretations. You’d be lucky if you get a matching definition from two people of the same religion.

If a theory can not be worded exactly, it can not be disproved (or proved, but you can’t prove a theory anyway). That’s a fact, too: How would you try to (dis)prove “X + Y = SOMETHING”? And if the theory you’re trying to prove is not objective… it’s the same with the data you find. If the basic underlining theory can be disputed and is open to interpretation… so is the evidence you can find. A “fuzzy” theory cannot be validated… or falsified. Boolean logic simply doesn’t WORK here.

We have no idea what “God” even is + We cannot do anything with an unclear defined theory -> Religious discussion from a rational point of view is ultimately futile.

QED.

You could probably disprove certain ridiculous definitions such as those that include omnipotence or omniscience.

Big Brother Posted:

I can easily prove that you have a soul.

Do you actually have some sort of “feeling” in your body right now? You have a desire to be an agnostic. You detect that and think about it. You decide that that is best. If you had none, than you wouldn’t have thought. Your brain cells would have decided. You would have no “point of view”, there would be no you or point of view. I know it. You know it. Stating that there are no souls is sneaky because one can only prove that oneself has a soul, and then only to oneself. Thus if you ignore my arguments, there is no way for it to be proven.

What the hell? Our decisions are simply patterns of neurons firing. Nothing more, nothing less. A soul is an intangible, nonexistent entity. The burden of proof is on the individual who claims one exists. A sensation of self is well-dogreat timesented scientifically and required for such things as advanced social interaction. Complexity does not entail impossibility.

Your brain creates the “illusion” of consciousness.

EDIT: Also, explain the logical steps that led to that conclusion.

Big Brother Posted:

Ugh. The idea that a conscious being- and I know you’re conscious, because I’m conscious and in the end we’re pretty much both humans- would not know that he was conscious is beyond retardation.

In an mri scan people can be asked to view an object and the areas of the brain that light up are recorded. Then the person is asked to picture the object in their mind and the same areas will light up. So to the brain there is no difference.

What is consciousness?

You’re partially right there. There has to be something all those thoughts originate from – cogito ergo sum, as they say. And if you define “soul” as “where the thoughts originate from”, you do have a “proof” of sorts… for that definition. If you, however, give the “soul” any more attributes (a common one would be “immortal” ), all the quarrel starts again… whether or not we’re actually slaves of our brain chemistry or not and all that stuff.

OverclockedJesus Posted:

I did.

Then try understanding it next time, too.

OverclockedJesus Posted:

It does.

Nope.

OverclockedJesus Posted:

Ipse dixit.

What?

Well, at least we can learn how to do subtle religious trolling.

That’s an art imo.

Oh. What exactly is it you think is “bumerted without proof” there? “God” as a concept basically means “something beyond matter” (super-natural, if you will), and of course we couldn’t find definite proof for or against something “not made of matter”. It’s the same as with every philosophical thesis, really – you can argue ad nauseam without ever reaching an unchallengable solution.

King Krimson Posted:

And I would also like to argue about the religious and the non-religious being as bad as each other. The anti-religious are worse because they (ironically) try to shove their viewpoint in your face more than the (normal, non-crazy street preachers) religious. Although technically atheism IS a religion itself, but let’s not get into that now.

I’d say there’s not much of a difference between both, really… they’re just obnoxious in different ways. As in, Theists say you’re going to hell, and Atheists call you a science-hater.