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Professor Fa-
lken

Avatar: 81434 2009-10-14 08:47:28 -0400
10

[team awesome face]

Level 69 Hacker

“Trojan Horse Magnum”

Hm. Alright, I shall have a look. Here we go…

... alright. That website mostly just aims at SPECIFIC BELIEFS, not the CONCEPT of a “God” entity in general. Remember, when I say “God”, I mean the CONCEPT OF THE PRESENCE OF A SUPER-”NATURAL” (super-materialistic) ENTITY, not any specific deity described by some religion.

Here’s a more in-depth breakdown:

#1, #5, #10, #13, #14, #15, #16, #18, #19, #20, #21, #22, #23, #25, #26, #29, #30, #32, #33, #34, #35 etc. exclusively deal with Christian beliefs. Maybe the views/arguments presented here are correct, sure, but “one religion might be wrong” doesn’t equal “there is no god, afterlife, soul or anything”.

#2 is pretty rigid with the expected results, and focuses on Christianity. Also, if a deity really showed mercy, wouldn’t it rather give you a quick death and enjoyable afterlife rather than have you endure this existence any longer? Or something like that?

#3 makes a good point, but it doesn’t prove anything. Not having found the correct alternative yet doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.

#4 made me groan. Imagine you’re looking at a particularly complicated machine, and you’re trying to find an explanation as to why it works in the way it does. You could say “Well, because its creator made it so” and move on, or you could lean a little closer and find out the MECHANIC that makes it work. Both views are equally valid – just not equally useful – and “this cog moves that sprocket” DOES NOT disprove “the engineer made it so”.

#6 has actually troubled philosophers for a long time (just with different examples), and gave rise to many outlandish theories of the “Best Of All Possible Worlds”. It still doesn’t disprove the existence of a “God” entity IN GENERAL, though. All it does is make a detailed masterplan AS DESCRIBED seem doubtful.

#7 is right… basically. But “seeming highly unusual” (or rather, “borderline very special”Log in to see images! DOES NOT equal “wrong” or “impossible”. “Sensibility” or “common sense” doesn’t matter when you’re trying to scientifically prove or disprove a theory. Santa Clause IN THE DESCRIBED FORM can be scientifically / empirically disproved by investigating the North Pole and checking for presents to appear. “God” AS A CONCEPT cannot, since you can just choose the attributes so the data does not contradict it.

#8: “Is this a direct proof that God is imaginary? No. However, it is a direct proof that the NDE (which many people use as “indisputable” proof that God and eternal life exist) has no supernatural meaning.” Nothing to add here.

#9 is sort of like #2. Maybe it contradicts the beliefs about Christian prayers, I’ll give them that. The CONCEPT of a supernatural entity (“God”Log in to see images! or a soul or something still stands.

#11 made me groan the second time. How do we know the deity did/does not leave any evidence? Maybe we’re just misinterpreting the data. Hell, if you take “God” only as a creator, the existence of the universe would be enough evidence. Again, if you choose “God”’s attributes right, these arguments fizzle.

#12 is, again, somewhat centered around Christianity and the “clbumic” flavour of religion. Also, you could even answer this SPECIFICALLY, as its mostly a semantic argument. Maybe the word “magic” was just used as a crutch for us because our feeble minds simply can’t grasp the way “God” works in?

#17 is absolutely correct: As with any theory whatsoever, you cannot prove that ””God” exists” is true. You can only try to find evidence for the contrary, which – for reasons described in my previous post – is impossible.

#24 only proves that there’s a lot of morons to be found in every demographic, which is the sad truth. However, this doesn’t say anything about the issue at hand.

#27 is just wild claims. You may not be able to prove the existence of a “soul”, but you also cannot disprove it.

#28 is basically #3. Also: Maybe nobody found the right alternative yet, maybe “God” doesn’t benefit his/her/its/their believers THAT WAY, there’s also no evidence to the contrary that can’t be avoided by switching definitions, blah blah blah. “There is zero evidence that any of these gods exist” – yes. “That is how we know that they are all imaginary.” – NO!

#31 aims at specific beliefs, not the concept in general.

#34: See #31.

I could go on like this, but I’d just be repeating myself. Therefore:

tl;dr: Maybe you can challenge specific notions of “God” (e.g. Christianity), but the concept in general can’t be falsified or verified. That is to say, you can’t prove Materialism or Atheism to be correct.

God can be scientifically disproven, if his attributes are of the right kind… which is exactly where the trouble lies. Since you can give him/her/it/them any attribute whatsoever – including unmeasurable ones – how could you determine whether or not it exists?

Professor Falken edited this message on 12/07/2008 2:02PM
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