That narrow meaning of "absent" is interesting, because to most people, to exist, to live, to be nourished , means it has been done for them, it meant work, and because the worker is absent, yet to be discovered, there is this void. I am impressed with the level of eloquence on both sides.
I'm an ABSENTHEIST. Are you also?
by EdenOne 284 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
-
-
Jonathan Drake
When I finally crack the equation, the bit that was missing, or absent, had never been there before ... "absent" doesn't have to necessarily be pre-existent.
Man I think you are losing your damn mind.
if you want to believe in God then do it. But all this convoluted stuff? You're just creating your own thing here, and you want it to be true. You aren't going to get validation of it here, your on your own. but hey man, if this is what you believe and you can make sense of it - go for it.
-
fukitol
Wrong, EdenOne. You've just done it again: presupposed the existence of a 'something'.
In your example, there was 'a bit' that just hadn't been found yet. It was missing but you found it, as you said. To say the "bit that was missing...had never been there before", is absurd.
-
EdenOne
Jonathan Drake,
I'm sure it hasn't escaped you that I'm not being apologetic of theism here; I'm saying that atheism makes a claim at least as extravagant as theism and requires an equal, if not larger, amount of evidence to back up such claim.
Also, why is there a necessity to associate a deity with the beginning, development and sustenance of life on earth? What if a deity is something else that we don't understand yet? As per your illustration from the bank: you cannot compare a bank that never existed with a deity whose existence you cannot verify. Sure, if the bank never existed, the story certainly has at least an element of falsity. But the problem with the deity is that you cannot verify empirically neither its existence NOR its non-existence. So, you can lead your life assuming it doesn't exist, sure - but in the realm of metaphisics, you cannot assert anything but: " All we can safely say about God is the evidence of its absence".
Eden
-
Jonathan Drake
As per your illustration from the bank: you cannot compare a bank that never existed with a deity whose existence you cannot verify. Sure, if the bank never existed, the story certainly has at least an element of falsity.
In my illustration, the bank represents what evidence has been presented about God. Like the bible, different claims about events of the past. Jesus life. God is the man who goes in with his son. You can't prove these guys don't exist, just like you can't prove God and Jesus don't exist. But the bank never existed. The flood never happened. The biblical Jesus never lived. Nobody was ever healed or resurrected. You get my drift?
sure, you can't disprove God. BUT LITERALLY EVERYTHING ASSOCIATED WITH GOD HAS BEEN. God stands severely discredited, why believe it?
the entire point of God, I might add, is completely lost in a deity that is just gone and doesn't care.
-
EdenOne
No, I didn't pressuposed the pre-existence of 'something'. I deducted the need for a 'something', and I went and created it. It wasn't there or anywhere before. Absence doesn't pressupose a pre-existence. It may accomodate a pre-existence for sure, but it doesn't require it.
Eden
-
Jonathan Drake
I think the entire problem with this thread rests in these words:
EdenOne: It just dawned on me.
-
EdenOne
Hindus, Aztecs, Native Americans, and many others will have different concepts of their deities, different from the monotheistic religions we're accustomed to. Some religions believe that God is the entire universe; others believe that God encompasses and also transcends the entire universe. Others believe that God is the collective mind of all living forms on earth. We find atheism usually very concerned about discrediting the deity of the monotheistic religions, and then extrapolating and making blanket statements about every other form of beliefs in deities. They may be right in the end, and perhaps no deities exist. But their logic is just as flawed as the theistic view, as atheism cannot provide hard evidence for the non-existence of deities. They can correctly point out the lack of evidence for the existence of God, but then they make the epistemological leap into the absolute claim of the non-existence of God. That's a fallacy of non-sequitur. Followed by numerous examples of strawman fallacy to hide the embarrassing fact that their claim is at least as logically extravagant as the theist claims.
That's why the proposition of absentheism is much more reasonable and the simplest explanation that can be backed up by empirical evidence: "All we can say about God is that its absent".
Eden
-
EdenOne
It's been a nice chat, but it's late and I'm no deity and need my beauty sleep, otherwise tomorrow I'll surely need to abuse coffee to get me going.
Nite nite, it was interesting. Keep this discussion going, by all means.
I leave the popcorn bowl behind for you.
Eden
-
prologos
'The missing "bit" in the equation illustration can remind us of the 'now you see it, now you don't ' - "Universal Constant" in Einstein's dealing with the stable universe versus the expansion. We can shift our view on creation, ultimately it has to correspond to reality, as it is researched.