/lit/ - Literature

>>13915076
>arguing against something proving a negative
so the author completely misunderstands the very subject he's writing about?

>>13915294
>>13915294
It's to negate normalfag popsci new atheism

>>13915076
>Why science does not disprove god
hmm, let's examine that, shall we:

>has proven both old and new testaments to be unhistorical, contradictory bunk
>has proven the universe is explicable in Naturalistic terms, offering formulas etc. that articulate such facts
>has proven there's no skydaddy "up there", just more space and stardust (and before you tards go "hurr, it's metaphorical"; no, the people writing your scriptures actually believed in god being spatially situated above them)
>has proven miracles aren't a thing, prayer doesn't work etc.
>has proven the primary motivation for all religion is coping mechanism in the face of death
>has proven religious morals are just byproducts of evolutionary processes
>has proven <insert any religious explanation for any given phenomena> is wrong

but sure, the anti-pop-sci book with its cover obviously parodying The God Delusion is probably right.

(for more indepth debunking I'd highly recommend pic related. he's put countless theologians in their place.)

Atheism is a belief system, it takes faith to believe in it.

>>13915501
Yet science still cannot say with any degree of certainty that God does not exist.

Obviously something super limited like science can't disprove God. Why do you need a book about it?

>>13915507
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7ybg0IMPto

>>13915501
why couldn't god create a universe that is explicable in naturalistic terms and formulas? why does the ancients misunderstanding of space disprove god in any way? why couldn't god have created an evolutionary process for humans to develop religious morals? and fear of death motivating people to be religious, literally how does that disprove the truth of religion in any way?

none of these are even convincing rationale if you give them some unbiased thought. I'm not even religious, but this is just mid-wit tier

>>13915595
Not that I agree with everything that poster said, but the biblical writers got multiple things wrong about the world which science has now disproved. The flood, for example.

>>13915507
>Yet science still cannot say with any degree of certainty that (literally anything anyone has ever made up in their imagination) does not exist.

>>13915507
So? Literally nobody but uneducated reddit atheists believes that. To be an atheist is to deny belief in religious gods, just as normal people deny belief in the tooth fairy. We don’t make categorical claims about their nonexistence

>>13915609
Well then it appears that a majority of atheists are 'uneducated reddit atheists'.

>>13915595
Good post

>>13915619
Not true at all. Even the New Atheists make no categorical statements as to whether god does or does not exist. They just say “most probably does not exist”. Atheism has always meant lack of belief.
>but what about agnosticism!!!
Agnosticism is the view that we can have no knowledge about god. Most agnostics are atheists unless they subscribe to an epistemology which allows them to believe in things they can have no knowledge of

>>13915602
The flood is mentioned in many myths around the world. We also know there were enormous floods after the ice age.

>>13915595
>switching to deism because theology has been eternally blown the fuck out
classic

>>13915638
Weak atheism is more honest but the rank and file atheists that you see online are not so nuanced; they claim God does not exist and act as if its true.

>>13915669
literally everyone acts as if some or all gods don't exist. do you live your life as though Vishnu and Shiva exist? what about Allah? Zeus? or do you operate under the assumption that they don't exist?

>>13915507
Prove to me that Krishna is not the true God.

>>13915511
I thought the same thing until I opened this thread. It's a shame the people who most need it are least likely to read it.

>>13915706
>>13915983
Someone said 1+1=3
an other person said 1+1=4
The one and only conclusion therefore is all math is false!
There is no math, math is not real!

>>13915595
Good post, the poster you are quoting should have said science has disproved the Christian god but not that there may be some intelligent creator independent from any current understanding of god

>>13915501
Can you give me your best example of a contradiction in scripture?

>>13915669
Of course atheists act as if god does not exist; we don’t believe in him. As for believing in his nonexistence, I don’t know of any reasonable atheist who would make the statement “I believe in the nonexistence of god”; rather, we say, “I don’t believe in god”.

>>13916028
Does Judas hang himself or fall to his death? Is Luke’s genealogy of Jesus correct or is it Matthew’s? What day does Jesus get crucified, on the Passover as per John or another day which I can’t remember and which is reported by the other gospels? Etc.

>>13916033
I asked you to give me the strongest example, not a gish gallop. I'll address the first one. Why couldn't he both be hanged and later tossed off a cliff?

>>13916028
The old testament vs new testament gods are contradictions within themselves. They are two fundamentally opposing forces yet claim to be of the same spirit. Jesus preaches forgiveness and nonviolence while old testament god is vengeful and full of bloodlust. Jesus saves people from sin while old testament god punishes his own creations over and over again in the most fucked up ways. The biggest fuck up of the christian religion was trying to put the hebrew god and jesus together because there is no way an intelligent person can look at the two of them and just accept them as the same entity.

>>13916043
That's not a contradiction, it's your perception of God's behavior as if God couldn't act in different ways at different times. That's even assuming that your reading of the Old Testament is accurate to reality which I don't think it is.

>>13916041
Anon, it’s not possible to gish gallop in written format. You literally have my text in front of you to refer to so you won’t get lost in all of the points. Lmao.

>Now this man purchased a field with the reward of iniquity; and falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out.
Vs
>So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself.
It’s pretty clear these are contradictory accounts. Not very important in terms of narrative and history, but not something you’d expect if the all knowing all powerful god was writing this. Clear indication of later embellishment by the gospel writers.
Actually we just found another contradiction. In the latter he throws the money in the temple and hangs himself, whereas in the former he buys a field with the money the priests gave him.

>>13916058
>its ok that the supposedly perfect creator is a complete hypocrite that acts in ways that directly contradicts itself
Dude its ok to accept that the Christian faith is mostly wrong with a couple good guidelines to follow. You are limiting yourself by adhereing fully to one gospel instead of taking in others that guide your actual concious life better like Taoism and Buddhism. Only fully accepting one religion over all others, especially one with so many contradicting messages, is the very definition of ignorance in my opinion.

>>13916062
I'm not going to address a dozen different apparent contradictions because time is a valuable resource and I don't owe you anything. I asked for the strongest example because that's what I'm interested in. Now, throughout the gospels we will find examples of them recording somethings and omitting others because they were written by different people and intended for different audiences. Not all of them record John the baptist, for example. This is how ancient history works. It's not a contradiction for one to record one aspect of an event another to record a different aspect of the same event.

>>13916075
What the hell is this? You don't know a damn thing about me or what I believe.

>>13916081
He either died by falling or by hanging. He either threw the money into the temple or he bought a field with it. These aren’t harmonisable.

>>13916096
You can continue to insist that it's an either/or thing but that doesn't make it true. It's a stupid way to read ancient literature.

>>13916104
So what do you think? He threw half of the money into the temple and bought a field with the other half? Kek come on bro.

>>13916108
Matthew records that Judas threw the money into the temple but rather than having the money contaminate their treasury, the priests bought the field with it. Acts 1:18 is a case of Peter making a pun in that Judas indirectly bought the field. It isn't asserting that Judas directly bought the field in person. Acts 1:18 is equivalent to saying that a criminal who tries to funnel stolen money through a charity but fails to retrieve the money only managed to “buy himself a new soup kitchen.”

>>13916104
>its stupid to read ancient literature analytically to determine actual truth, the real way is to just read it, accept it as absolute truth no matter how little it makes sense and use circular reasoning to defend it vehemently
Christfags in a nutshell

Cynical cashgrab

>>13915595
I never understood this argument. Assume God has done what you said, so what. There is no proof that God gives a shit about us or that He wants us to worship him, follow specific morals, etcetera. It is easy to come to the conclusion that God exists, but to give God characteristics resembling any human religion is very difficult.

>>13915502
believe what?

>>13916184
Of course there is a certain point where we have to begin relying on revelation in order to understand God, but that only means we have to use our reason to discern which revelation is true, if any. I think Christianity makes a pretty good argument because they rely on historical evidence which virtually all historians accept to show that the best explanation of the disappearance of the body and post resurrection appearances to multiple people at different times and places is that Jesus actually was who he said he was. If Jesus is God and the historical record shows him establishing a church and priestly hierarchy on earth and promising to protect them from teaching error then we can reasonably believe that Christianity is the true revelation among many pretenders.

HAS ANYONE HERE READ THE BOOK?

>>13915076

I read his book on Bourbaki recently. Although he writes on topics of personal interest, his prose is quite bad, high-school tier desu. Dunno about that book OP.

>>13916062
Christfag here: this is only an issue if you happen to believe in "biblical inerrancy," which our retard OP clearly does.

The very first book of Genesis contradicts itself within the same fucking page with regard to the creation of Adam and Eve by retelling the story twice with different details. Textual analysis proves that these sections had different authors and sources and were just cobbled together in the creation of the Bible.

If the Bible was infallible/inerrant, Jesus wouldn't have had to come down and fix it (if you believe that sort of thing) -- and the parts about him were written down long after, so they're probably just as infallible. Ergo the doctrines of inerrancy and direct authorship by God are absolutely bullshit, and have clearly only been constructed as a means of using the Bible as a form of social control.

>>13915294
The author taught history of science at Harvard, so I'm sure he at the very least understands "something."

>>13916001
Its 2 acording to the axioms humans have created. Try again.

>>13916001
...a lot of reasonable people think math don't real, bud

>>13916200
>>13916200
>>13916200
>>13916200
ANYONE?

>>13916339
it's basically:
wah wah you need god to be moral, you can't just be good on your own
aha but what caused the big bang? checkmate atheists
well actually einstein was super religious ACTUALLY
nooooo god could still exist in these tiny gaps that science hasn't filled in
and other bleating along those lines
i'm surprised it doesn't get trotted out in every religitard thread on here

>>13916367
Thank you you could have ended the thread a while ago.

>>13915501
>has *proven* the primary motivation for all religion is coping mechanism in the face of death
>has *proven* religious morals are just byproducts of evolutionary processes
>has proven

CITATION NEEDED
CITATION NEEDED
CITATION NEEDED
CITATION NEEDED
CITATION NEEDED
CITATION NEEDED

>>13916378
>[incoherent screaming]

>>13915595
As to evolution, the concept of intelligent design influencing the progression of life just doesn’t make sense. According to our understanding of the fossil record, over 99 percent of all species to ever exist have gone extinct. And not due to speciation, just simply dying out. Why would an all knowing creator make living beings knowing they were not built to survive.
You could just attribute a bunch of scientific processes to god and just say he works in mysterious ways, but it doesn’t really make sense, and there’s no evidence to support the claim.

>christians are trying to dogmatize science now

>>13915480
Good thing there’s hard sci proving there’s no way for a concept of gods to exist
>new atheism
It’s still the same atheism as before. It’s not a faith, its just the absence of faith in the supernatural. It doesn’t change, like conception of gods do.

>>13916553
Because science has never been dogma?

>>13916557
There's actually many dogmatic beliefs in science. Things like the laws of nature, the speed of light being static, or the past being real and the present not being just an illusion with the appearance of age.

>>13916556
>

>>13916414
evopsych is pure pseudoscience

>>13916556
It's social attitudes absolutely change however, so yes, it is a distinct thing. New Atheism, for instance, is noticeably pretty reactionary. While a lot of it grew out of fighting against the sort of "Moral Majority" Jerry Falwell-type evangelism that was gaining traction in America starting in the 80s, it transformed into a racist reactionary movement which was used to help justify the War on Terror.

>>13916650
No. You’re thinking of anti-theism. I guess that’s what this is all about. And no, it’s not “reactionary”. It identifies the cause for *religious extremism* as rooted in that religion. The non-extremist is simply a lazy practitioner of his faith. The goal os absolute submission. Used to justify “war on terror”, sure. A poor excuse since poverty breeds these extremist. No two faithful are alike, no two antitheists are alike.

>>13916557
That's why it's laughable.

>>13916237
oh, so he's just deliberately being dishonest. gotcha

>>13916633
I think we've found the cope mechanism

>>13916041
>>13916062
>>13916224

All of you are wrong. First of all, it's supposed to contradict itself, like Plato's dialogues, since God is not a tyrant, not even in words. Second, STEM troglodytes would reject it even harder and claim it is even more "artificial" had it been isotropic.

>>13916677
Sure, but "New Atheism" was/is a movement with strong antitheistic tendencies. This isn't like the difference between henotheism and monolatry, the two things are not mutually exclusive, and more importantly New Atheism used atheism as an argument that extended into antitheism.

The cause of "religious extremism" is not "rooted in religion." Religion as it actually exists is a pretty complicated set of given cultural practices, and like any cultural practices they can taken on benign or malignant forms depending on whose using them. If you can provide evidence for why, say, Islam is inherently extremist, or any other religion for that matter, I can address your points more directly.

>>13915294
>You can't prove a negative
Yes you can, it's obvious. Just go to any math or logic class and you'll be doing plenty of it. William Lane Craig has refuted this "point" many times, yet it remains in the 'science mysticism' and juvenile atheist communities.

>>13917801
>there could be a parallel reality where said thing exists
congrats, you've proved nothing