SquareOne Posted February 14, 2013 Posted February 14, 2013 I am so pissed off with Christians banging on about "presupposition". 'Atheists, you presuppose that God doesn't exist! That's why you can't see that he exists!' No shit, Sherlock! I don't suppose that anything exists until I am given reason to believe that it exists. And, if you were intellectually honest, you would acknowledge that you behave in the exact same way. When you were born, you did not suppose that God exists. You only came to believe that God exists because someone told you that he exists, and you were therefore given reason to suppose that he does. The only difference between you and me is that I have not allowed my childhood indoctrination to get the better of me. I have been able to step back and say, actually, do I have any bases for believing that God exists? No I do not. Therefore, I will presuppose that he does not exist. Just like I presuppose that unicorns, fairies and Darth Vader do not exist. Take your presupposition and shove it up your ass. 2
mymistake Posted February 14, 2013 Posted February 14, 2013 Don't Christians presuppose that the thousands and thousands of other man-made gods and goddesses are all imaginary? Why should their god be an exception?
Adrianime Posted February 14, 2013 Posted February 14, 2013 Yes, I try to some extent to try to make Christians realize that they are making assumption after assumption in their arguments. None will ever admit it fully though. I kind of got Ordinary Clay to admit it in the form of an OR statement: He said something like, "Either we won the ultimate cosmic lottery, or the universe was fine-tuned to support life." At least he acknowledges there are other possibilities besides his own conclusion, even if he is far from considering the full picture.
SquareOne Posted February 14, 2013 Author Posted February 14, 2013 Fine tuning is second on the list of Christian apologetic bullshit. I should make a pyramid of bullshit. Presupposition The Universe is fine tuned We feel and act as though morality were objective Life has no meaning without God and we have no free will and so on.... The deterministic free will argument pisses me off something royal. "Atheists, if there is no God, then everything in the Universe is following a deterministic path, and your free will is really just an illusion caused by a series of chemical reactions that started with the Big Bang and will continue until total heat death." "Oh, really. Please tell me about the doctrine of pre-determinism". "Pre-determinism means that God knew everything that would happen in the Universe before he created it. He knows the days of our lives before we do." "And how that is different from natural determinism? If God knew what you would do before he created you, how can you claim to have free will?" "Because we still make the choices ourselves, even though God knows what we are going to do!" "And how is that different from my own illusion that we have free will?" "Because one is true free will and one is an illusion of free will?" "And how exactly are these two things different?" "Because God!"
Adrianime Posted February 14, 2013 Posted February 14, 2013 Fine tuning is second on the list of Christian apologetic bullshit. I should make a pyramid of bullshit. Presupposition The Universe is fine tuned We feel and act as though morality were objective Life has no meaning without God and we have no free will and so on.... Haha, I like it.
sdelsolray Posted February 14, 2013 Posted February 14, 2013 I am so pissed off with Christians banging on about "presupposition". 'Atheists, you presuppose that God doesn't exist! That's why you can't see that he exists!' No shit, Sherlock! I don't suppose that anything exists until I am given reason to believe that it exists. And, if you were intellectually honest, you would acknowledge that you behave in the exact same way. When you were born, you did not suppose that God exists. You only came to believe that God exists because someone told you that he exists, and you were therefore given reason to suppose that he does. The only difference between you and me is that I have not allowed my childhood indoctrination to get the better of me. I have been able to step back and say, actually, do I have any bases for believing that God exists? No I do not. Therefore, I will presuppose that he does not exist. Just like I presuppose that unicorns, fairies and Darth Vader do not exist. Take your presupposition and shove it up your ass. And yet, you and I presume Uniformitarianism, do we not?
◊ crazyguy123 ◊ Posted February 14, 2013 Posted February 14, 2013 Yes, I try to some extent to try to make Christians realize that they are making assumption after assumption in their arguments. None will ever admit it fully though. I kind of got Ordinary Clay to admit it in the form of an OR statement: He said something like, "Either we won the ultimate cosmic lottery, or the universe was fine-tuned to support life." At least he acknowledges there are other possibilities besides his own conclusion, even if he is far from considering the full picture. You somehow got OC to admit, even if it is "kind of", that there are possibilities besides his own conclusion? What kind of magic are you using?
SquareOne Posted February 14, 2013 Author Posted February 14, 2013 Vigile I don't even know what that is....
Adrianime Posted February 14, 2013 Posted February 14, 2013 Yes, I try to some extent to try to make Christians realize that they are making assumption after assumption in their arguments. None will ever admit it fully though. I kind of got Ordinary Clay to admit it in the form of an OR statement: He said something like, "Either we won the ultimate cosmic lottery, or the universe was fine-tuned to support life." At least he acknowledges there are other possibilities besides his own conclusion, even if he is far from considering the full picture. You somehow got OC to admit, even if it is "kind of", that there are possibilities besides his own conclusion? What kind of magic are you using? Here is convo: I made the part that I mentioned red. http://www.ex-christian.net/topic/55281-reason-why-i-have-never-been-intimidated-by-a-religious-person/page-6 Nice try, OC. You know, I saw a blog where you did this exact same thing, shifting burden of proof and redefining words. It's very simple. You claim that hard science supports your teleological argument. Please show proof of this statement, as I have not, despite years of belief in Jesus and fervent scholarly study, ever seen any hard science that supported any apologetics. You don't believe the gravitational constant supports life? As your fellow atheist points out we would not be here if it did not. So the burden is actually on you. Specifically, you argument is that since the universe supports life, the universe must have been created with the intention of supporting life, with that creator being your god. Correct? Isn't this a more accurate description: -The universe supports life (OK we know this is true) -There are constant in the universe that allow life to exist as we know it. (OK, I think scientists have determined this but I'm no expert) -We don't know why these constants exist (You assume it is because of a god). Can you at least acknowledge that you are making an assumption so that you don't look as unintelligent as you are making yourself look? No this is not the claim. Again if you had spent the time to read about the TA you would know that. The claim is that the likelihood of the universe existing with the collection of constants and initial conditions which we observe is extraordinarily small. This set of characteristics support life and that even a tiny deviation of just one of these characteristics would disallow life. That is hard science. This "coincidence" demands an answer. It is not word play. Either we won the ultimate cosmic lottery or the universe was tuned for our existence. If it was tuned than this is evidence of an intelligent sentient being which created the universe and all we see it it. At least you admit that you are assuming a creator with your little disjunction above. Except you are flawed in seeing those as your only options. So why can the universe support life? --We don't know, and can know some day. --We don't know, and can never know. --We don't know, and assume we know (this is you, for the record). Your options are both shots in the dark, and saying they are the only options is arrogant and ignorant. Even when you say we "won the ultimate cosmic lottery", you have nothing to compare against, so you really don't know what your "odds" are. I think you have a bit of the human arrogance bug. You think humans have the ability to understand anything and everything. But I suppose if you really believe the universe revolves around humans, that's an expected outlook.
HymenaeusAlexander Posted February 14, 2013 Posted February 14, 2013 Your comments remind me of something I recently read in John Loftus' chapter of The Christian Delusion: Surely he [presuppositionalist Tim Keller] doesn't mean to say that if we cannot be absolutely certain of something all we have left is blind faith, or that everything that is unprovable has an equal epistemological merit. Christians like him want to claim that skeptics have unproven beliefs, and then they try to drive a whole truckload of Christian assumptions and beliefs through that small crevice.
Adrianime Posted February 14, 2013 Posted February 14, 2013 Your comments remind me of something I recently read in John Loftus' chapter of The Christian Delusion: Surely he [presuppositionalist Tim Keller] doesn't mean to say that if we cannot be absolutely certain of something all we have left is blind faith, or that everything that is unprovable has an equal epistemological merit. Christians like him want to claim that skeptics have unproven beliefs, and then they try to drive a whole truckload of Christian assumptions and beliefs through that small crevice. Haha, shortly after the conversation I quoted above, OrdinaryClay tried to argue that there is no objective evidence that China exists, so people accept that it exists through faith (unless/until they have actually been there). A perfect example of somebody attempting what was mentioned in your quote.
Lilith666 Posted February 14, 2013 Posted February 14, 2013 Don't Christians presuppose that the thousands and thousands of other man-made gods and goddesses are all imaginary? Why should their god be an exception? Because they know in their hearts that he lives. They have seen his works in their lives. Really. I asked my mom more than once why she's Xian, and she had no answer besides that. Dad would say the same thing, except louder and with a redder face. I think he believes shouting something--like Obama is going to become a Communist dictator--makes it more true.
SquareOne Posted March 5, 2013 Author Posted March 5, 2013 I am so pissed off with Christians banging on about "presupposition". 'Atheists, you presuppose that God doesn't exist! That's why you can't see that he exists!' No shit, Sherlock! I don't suppose that anything exists until I am given reason to believe that it exists. And, if you were intellectually honest, you would acknowledge that you behave in the exact same way. When you were born, you did not suppose that God exists. You only came to believe that God exists because someone told you that he exists, and you were therefore given reason to suppose that he does. The only difference between you and me is that I have not allowed my childhood indoctrination to get the better of me. I have been able to step back and say, actually, do I have any bases for believing that God exists? No I do not. Therefore, I will presuppose that he does not exist. Just like I presuppose that unicorns, fairies and Darth Vader do not exist. Take your presupposition and shove it up your ass. And yet, you and I presume Uniformitarianism, do we not? Well you've introduced a new word there. Presume and presuppose are not the same thing. Presumption is based on inference and presupposition is a belief held without evidence. I do not presuppose uniformitarianism is the correct way to view the world. Though, based on everything I have so far seem, I would suppose it from the evidence. I have nothing to disprove it, but no way of absolutely proving it. I can simply say it seems more likely than not. I presuppose only two things. 1. I exist. 2. I perceive. You cannot logically infer anything from anything until you first presuppose those two things. You cannot think about anything without first implicitly acknowledging that you exist to think, and you perceive your thoughts. Every other belief follows from these first two presuppositions. Those two presuppositions might be wrong, but if they are wrong we cannot know that they are wrong, because we would have to perceive our knowledge of its wrongness. Hope that makes some sort of sense... I'm probably wrong anyway, so to hell with it all.
kolaida Posted March 6, 2013 Posted March 6, 2013 Yes, I totally agree. I happened to get into a youtube comment war with someone (usually I avoid them, but there was something said I had to address). Of course the guy is STILL commenting, LOL. I'm done. I don't feel like I do before (I HAVE to convince him, pray for God to have you type JUST the RIGHT words to convince him). It's pretty much the opposite. Somehow, I got compared to Obama ( ok!^^) ........... and Hitler (WTF??) (don't really know HOW they got thrown in, but that's when I pretty much decided the guy was never gonna see any point but his own, LOL!) I'm NOT presupposing that God doesn't exist!! Ugh, I feel like it's SO frustrating. Now I understand how some people must have felt when they encountered me in the past. Geeze, it feels nice not to live in that delusion anymore. (I'm SO glad this got bumped back up, too, because I was totally gonna start a thread that was exactly this!! LOL!)
Recommended Posts