The most persuasive arguments againt theism is to simply get theists to talk about their beliefs as exjwslave did above.
Atheists and JWs are on the same footing!
by exWTslave 130 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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defender of truth
exWTslave said: "Virtually every culture in the world has epics or stories that keep the memory of a Golden Age that once existed on earth where humans and animals lived like one-family, and all were vegetarians. At that time man was not hunting animals, nor animals were preying on man or animals."
Why, then, did God allow this Age you speak of to come to an end?
How many millions of years ago was this so-called Golden Age? Here is just one example of an ancient predator, others may know of other examples..
"Entelodonts lived in the forests and plains where they were the apex predators of North America's early Miocene and Oligocene, consuming carrion and live animals and rounding off their diets with plants and tubers. They would have hunted large animals, like the cow-sized artiodactyl Eporeodon major and the sheep-sized cameloid Poebrotherium wilsoni, dispatching them with a bite from their jaws. Some fossil remains of these other animals have been found with the bite marks of entelodonts on them."...."Entelodonts, sometimes nicknamed hell pigs or terminator pigs, are an extinct family of pig-like omnivores...from the late Eoceneto early Miocene epochs (37.2—16.3 million years ago)"
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entelodont -
defender of truth
ExWTslave said: "Same principle applies toTHE NATURAL CALAMITIES too. If people are loving, nature too will be loving."
So if we act lovingly toward each other, natural disasters won't happen? -
M*A*S*H
I would not say (to paraphrase) 'If bad things happen that proves there is no God'. But, I would say, that 'bad things happening' does disprove certain gods; this is because the definition of certain gods run contrary to 'bad things happening'. The Epicurean paradox, I believe, runs contrary to the Christian god mostly described as being 'all loving, all powerful, etc...'.
To look at a sillyexample. "If beard exists, it proves someone has chosen to grow beard--it doesn't prove a barber does not exist". If my definition of my God was: A god that is all powerful, loves the clean shaven as beards go against his very nature, beards represent highest moral wrong, he directs his holy spirit scissors at will throughout the known universe, loves all infinately, but those with beards will burn in hell fire for eternity. Now the fact that beards exist would potentially mean my god does not exist...eg if he infinately loves some with a beard, he would not want them to burn in hell, my god has the power to cut a beard off so why would he not?
An atheist can only really examine your God hypothesis by the characteristics you assign to the god if no direct evidence for your god exists.
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exWTslave
Cofty (and to all those who disagree with me)
According to dictionary anecdote is “a short amusing or interesting story about a real incident or person.” Why can’t this be a proof? Now it is proof for me. When you try, it becomes a proof for you. When the whole world tries, it becomes a proof for the world.
Try going into your inner self, and see whether what I did would work for you or not.
This is how I went about:
1. Relax your body.
2. Withdraw yourattention from everything around you, including your body.3. Create little space around you and your thinking, observe your thinking as you view traffic on the road.
4. Concentrate on the space between the thoughts, and you will find speed of the thoughts becoming less, and also number of thoughts coming decreased, and finally no thought will come.
5. This is the real silence—free of noises not only from the world outside, but also from the chattering of the mind!
6. Remain in this silence as long as possible, you will find your memory opening up from past indefinite
7. In this silence, you are in the same frequency as your creator, ask for a link and see for yourself what happens!
After this come back to this thread, and share your experience.
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Laika
Hey ExWTslave! I promise the brahma kumaris are closer to JWs then the average atheist.
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cofty
Mindfulness meditation in no way provides any evidence of anything outside your own body.
You can actually induce strange sensations through simple sensory deprivation. Tape half table-tennis balls to your eyes, use dim red lighting and tune a radio on AM frequency off-station so you can only hear white noise. Deprived on normal inputs your brain will begin to create sights and sounds after just 10 minutes or so.
Contrast this with the objective evidence that the god of theism is a human invention.
I was a christian for 9 years, I know exactly the sort of experiences that you find so compelling. You will work it out in your own time.
Exjwslave - do you practice celibacy?
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galaxie
Ex wt.... tinnitus sufferers may not agree!
Perhaps you have a cure, it must be less complex than the same frequency as the ' creator '.
Best wishes
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MadGiant
"According to dictionary anecdote is “a short amusing or interesting story about a real incident or person.” Why can’t this be a proof? Now it is proof for me. When you try, it becomes a proof for you. When the whole world tries, it becomes a proof for the world." - ex
Testimonials and vivid anecdotes are one of the most popular and convincing forms of evidence presented for beliefs in the supernatural, paranormal, and pseudoscientific. Nevertheless, testimonials and anecdotes in such matters are of little value in establishing the probability of the claims they are put forth to support. Sincere and vivid accounts of one’s encounter with an angel or the Virgin Mary, an alien, a ghost, a Bigfoot, a child claiming to have lived before, purple auras around dying patients, a miraculous dowser, a levitating guru, or a psychic surgeon are of little value in establishing the reasonableness of believing in such matters.
Anecdotes are unreliable for various reasons. Stories are prone to contamination by beliefs, later experiences, feedback, selective attention to details, and so on. Most stories get distorted in the telling and the retelling. Events get exaggerated. Time sequences get confused. Details get muddled. Memories are imperfect and selective; they are often filled in after the fact.
People misinterpret their experiences. Experiences are conditioned by biases, memories, and beliefs, so people's perceptions might not be accurate. Most people aren't expecting to be deceived, so they may not be aware of deceptions that others might engage in. Some people make up stories. Some stories are delusions. Sometimes events are inappropriately deemed psychic simply because they seem improbable when they might not be that improbable after all. In short, anecdotes are inherently problematic and are usually impossible to test for accuracy.
Ismael
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MadGiant
A logical fallacy is, fundamentally, an error in logic. This means that an argument that uses one certainly doesn't hold if you're using logic and reason as your source of decision making.