The demons aren't devout either. And you're still calling God a "topic". So you've missed one of my main points. If it's so obvious to them that God doesn't exist, why don't they offer some proof and arguments?


Again, if it's just a topic. And again, if it's so simple, let's hear it.


Understanding whether God exists isn't like composing music. If knowing that He exists is no more intellectually challenging than knowing the external world exists then it isn't even a problem. If you make it into a problem, then again, let's hear what smart people have done to arrive at their conclusion.

Edit: BTW, if you make it into a problem, and if it's no more difficult than simple addition, then no expertise is required. Anyone who is self-aware can correctly add 1+1 as fast as any IQ 200.

Yes that's a necessary premise. You haven't shown that there's anything wrong with this premise. Smarter people are in general better at understanding reality, why should we expect this general rule to be broken in the case of God?

You're welcome to disagree with the first part, but it's pretty well accepted that top scientists and intellectuals are more likely to not hold a belief in a personal God.

I don't know what you mean by the second part. Are you suggesting they came to their lack of belief in God by some method other than reasoning? Like when it comes to religion they all of the sudden just resort to flipping a coin?

This is where I completely disagree with you. If God does exist, by no means does he make it obvious. We can see this simply because many very intelligent people don't believe there is any sort of revealed God. The claim that God made it easy enough that anyone could follow him is ridiculous, since there are many very smart people that apparently are unable to figure out the truth.

Your only way out of this is to assume that everyone who doesn't believe in God has an ulterior motive.

I don't agree that ss are better at reality in general. They are better at intellectual problems. Many of them are completely incompetent at common sense, and many who excel in one area of expertise are dolts in other areas. The New Atheists prove this every time they speak on God, religion or philosophy. And Sub informs us that Newton was an idiot on theology. So if he was and said God exists, why aren't ss's today idiotic when they say he doesn't? Maybe it's because God isn't an intellectual problem.


I don't trust those polls. But even if I grant you they're correct, it's a small part of the picture. You're still just appealing to authority.

Many people never think seriously about God, ultimate meaning, purpose, etc., and fewer seriously investigate it. DS is the poster child for this. Read Pensee by Pascal, he will explain it to you and why it's so mystifying that people remain willfully ignorant about the most important aspect of life. Since I KNOW this to be true why should I trust the opinion of someone who, no matter how smart he is, has very likely not thought deeply about existence or God, nor investigated any of the relevant facts? This is the essence of the logical fallacy - an appeal to an authority about something on which he has no demonstrated expertise.

Superstitions exist. The concept 'God', as people use it, clearly fits in this category. If you want to discuss something else (viz.---something that isn't a superstition), you must clarify what. You cannot, so we have nothing more to discuss.

God is a superstition. The end.

Probably not much, since there's not much here.

That's not a problem. A problem is like: "What is the relationship between semantic and syntactic structure in human language? How, in fact, can we make this question precise?"

I never called Newton an idiot. I said---and you certainly agree with me---that he was severely deluded about religious topics.

Edit - the only difference is that I think he was deluded about all religious topics; instead of almost all.

Anyways, I won't be online for a week or so...I have to go to a pretty place, where the flowers grow. (Life on this planet? Sir, no sign of it.)

Perhaps that will be enough time for Jibninjas to come up with a criterion for 'rational' that doesn't reduce to 'thinks like Greg Boyd.' But I won't hold my breath.

There are whole countries where basically everyone believes the Holocaust never happened.

As we know, large groups of people are never prone to this sort of intense, self-delusional fabricating—to the extent that they’d completely recreate recent history. Ergo, since large groups of people believe the Holocaust didn't happen, the Holocaust didn't happen.

(Or maybe the tens of millions of Holocaust deniers really are capable of this intense, self-delusional fabricating to the extent that they'd completely recreate recent history.)

Where those people in Auschwitz at that time?

What does this even mean?

This idea that scientists need a reason to not believe in god is upside down.
The default assumption must be skepticism, believing everything until it is proven wrong, forces you to believe all kinds of ridiculous and contradictory things.
If I claimed I could beat Tiger Woods on any golf course in the world, earn a consistent 12000% annual return on my investments, or run 100 meters in 8 sec. you would be a fool to take my word for it.
Clearly it should be possible for me to convince you, if I was able to demonstrate to you I could do any of those things. (Shockingly I cannot.)
The point is, until evidence can be shown in favor of the extraordinary claim; there is no reason to believe it.

I was walking out the door when I wrote my response so I did not have much time. Holocaust deniers are not analogous to those that saw Jesus after the crucifixion. It would be more analogous to talk about the Jews that were in places like Auschwitz. Now I did not actually see the context but I think that I know what he was responding to, and he was not talking about beliefs that people hold. So his argument is actually part of the reason that we believe the holocaust happened. It is ridiculous to believe that all of those people were all delusional.

This is most probably from a hybrid blend of politics, alliances and propaganda.

Read up on the Nazi connection to the Haj Al-Amin Husseini:

http://insidecatholic.com/Joomla/ind...174&Itemid=100

A few excerpts:

Anyone who failed to follow the mufti's guidelines was denounced in the mosque during Friday prayers, excluded from the rites of marriage and burial, or physically threatened. Hundreds of moderate Arabs were murdered for resisting his authority or advocating compromise with Jews and the West. German author Kurt Fischer Weth reported (admiringly) in his 1943 biography of Husseini that Palestinian Arabs who resisted wearing traditional Islamic clothes were shot.

Another excerpt:

Husseini arrived in the Nazi capital on November 9, 1941. A German spokesman announced: "This great champion of Arab liberation and the most distinguished antagonist of England and of Jewry is expected to remain in Berlin for a long time." The Nazis provided the mufti with a luxurious apartment and a generous monthly stipend.

Husseini's most open acts of support for the Axis came in the form of radio and pamphlet propaganda in which he called on Muslims the world over to wage jihad on the Allies. Axis radio stations were put at his disposal, and his speeches were regularly broadcast into countries that had significant Muslim populations. As Maurice Pearlman explained in his book Mufti of Jerusalem:

Arabs...were called upon, in the name of the Koran and the honour of Islam, to sabotage the oil pipelines, blow up bridges and roads along British lines of communications, kill British troops, destroy their dumps and supplies, mislead them by false information, withhold their support. The exhortations usually included the suggestion that they could save their souls by massacring the Jewish infidels in their midst.... The Arab immigrants in the United States were urged to hinder the American war effort through political pressure groups and general anti-British, anti-Jewish, and anti-Roosevelt propaganda.

Pearlman quotes a broadcast from March 1, 1944, that gives the flavor of many: "Arabs, rise as one man and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history and religion. This saves your honour. God is with you."

Nothing self delusional about the fabrication. Lots of propaganda went into the illusion. Thats not self delusion that is government sponsored group delusion for the advancement of private political aims.

You think a better analogy would be eye-witnesses to Auschwitz? Where are the eye-witness accounts of the resurrection that make this a better analogy?

Recent... not current ( not that it doesn't go on currently also, but trying to stick to the original claim).
According to this premise, holocaust deniers don't exist .. since they do, er, uhmmmm.

There was a good reason someone earlier in the thread set the line at 1859. As usual it went "whoooosh" over your head.

But to spell it out for you: "The Origin of the Species" was published that year. That closed the biggest gap -- by a wide margin -- that "God" could have been hiding in, and there was no more anything really significant that could not seemingly be explained by science to an intelligent listener. When 1859 had passed, there was no longer any need for a sky fairie with a magic wand to explain anything.

I don't know if he was quoting / paraphrasing someone else, but Dawkins wrote something like this in "The Blind Watchmaker":

I believe that the quoted passage was talking about the 500 that Christ after the resurrection. But there was no link so I am only assuming.

So, if the holocaust deniers wrote a book, and in that book they said something like "Yeah, and this one guy, he was even THERE, he saw WITH HIS OWN EYES, that the Holocaust never happened. True story. He told me about it decades later. So, you know, totally no Holocaust," then they'd be on equal footing?

Lot's of holocaust deniers were there.