Topic: Athiest are the ultimate free thinker? - page 5. (Read 20690 times)

That's pretty well articulated, but it is lacking. It shows for example how someone can go into science and keep their religious faith. It is lacking because it focuses on one narrow style of religious faith. May I propose an alternate?

"....It is equally mistaken to suppose that our scientific understanding of the impersonal principles according to which the universe works makes it either unnecessary or impossible to believe in the existence of three thousand gods under the all powerful Zeus who working both alone and in concert designed, made, and upholds it."

Let's not obfuscate fairly simple things with big sentences and long winded arguments. Okay?

For the topic question, which I found a bit silly I would rather say not atheists are free thinkers but agnostics which take all possibilities into consideration.

(A)  You did not answer my rather simple question. Regarding my question, you must have an understanding of the scientific method before you can understand how a miracle may be falsified. Here is a brief explanation.

Reference https://explorable.com/falsifiability

Falsifiability is the assertion that for any hypothesis to have credence, it must be inherently disprovable before it can become accepted as a scientific hypothesis or theory.

For example, someone might claim "the earth is younger than many scientists state, and in fact was created to appear as though it was older through deceptive fossils etc.” This is a claim that is unfalsifiable because it is a theory that can never be shown to be false. If you were to present such a person with fossils, geological data or arguments about the nature of compounds in the ozone, they could refute the argument by saying that your evidence was fabricated to appeared that way, and isn’t valid.

Importantly, falsifiability doesn’t mean that there are currently arguments against a theory, only that it is possible to imagine some kind of argument which would invalidate it. Falsifiability says nothing about an argument's inherent validity or correctness. It is only the minimum trait required of a claim that allows it to be engaged with in a scientific manner – a dividing line between what is considered science and what isn’t. Another important point is that falsifiability is not any claim that has yet to be proven true. After all, a conjecture that hasn’t been proven yet is just a hypothesis.

(B) This is something (again) that you impute my having said that I did not say. In the previous case where I questioned whether you were lying, you responded "I'm not lying, this is just an analogy to the explanation you made trying to prove wrong the person doing the miracles." Is that the case here also?

Here is an example of a magician who as part of his act routinely performs "miracle healing."

https://www.secrets-explained.com/derren-brown/miracle

Through the power of God, Derren heals members of his audience from chronic pain, bad eyesight and other health problems.

Explanation:

This is done through a mixture of suggestion, social pressure, placebo effect, cold reading and magic. The most obvious example of using magic is his trickery with improving/impoverishing eyesight. For example, when Derren makes an audience member 'lose' his eyesight, he simply shows him a different page in the booklet than he showed to the camera and the audience. The words on that page are actually just gibberish and the participant reads them correctly, giving an illusion that he cannot read normally. With the lady who 'regains' her eyesight, Derren simply shows her really large letters.

Con artists doing miracle healing use the magician's tricks of "cold reading" and "hot reading" to put their scams over on the naive people in the audience.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_reading

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_reading

Do you have any questions?

I know what I say will make no difference, that's why I'm not gonna try to convince you of anything. Fanatics do not reach conclusions, they are drawn by enthusiasm, they have a lot of interest in the liking of a particular group that's why they are closed to do logical reasoning. I'm not lying, this is just an analogy to the explanation you made trying to prove wrong the person doing the miracles, my point was you can't make this type of claims based on the fact someone else was proven wrong. Since you stated you had to deconstruct the miracle to prove it as a scam, I gave you the opportunity to deconstruct what the pastor was doing and you still haven't said a word about it. You talk about the scientific method when you are basing your WHOLE believe system in a theory that you haven't proved to be true. You are just following the crowd, you believe whatever you are told when you yourself haven't done any experimentation, that's not difficult to do, you don't have to be very smart to do this. You can attempt to make me look foolish, I don't care, my arguments will do the job of proving you wrong, it's easy to make a fool of yourself when you have no arguments to win a discussion. And believe me I'm not trying to insult you, this is not my intention, I'm just trying to make you see your error.

I like Lennox's explanation for how God and science are perfectly compatible.

"The success of science sometimes leads people to think that because we can understand the mechanisms of the universe, then we can safely conclude that there was no God who designed and created the universe in the first place. This reasoning commits a logical error in that it confuses mechanism and agency.

Consider a Ford motor car. It is conceivable that someone who was seeing one for the first time and who knew no science might imagine that there is a god (Mr. Ford) inside the engine, making it go. Of course, if he were subsequently to study engineering and take apart the engine, he would discover that there is no Mr. Ford inside it. He would also see that he did not need to introduce Mr. Ford as an explanation for its working; his grasp of the impersonal principles of internal combustion would be enough to do that. However, if he then decided that his understanding of the principles of how the engine worked made it impossible to believe in the existence of a Mr. Ford who designed the engine in the first place, this would be patently false. Had there never been a Mr. Ford to design the mechanisms, none would exist for him to understand. It is equally mistaken to suppose that our scientific understanding of the impersonal principles according to which the universe works makes it either unnecessary or impossible to believe in the existence of a personal Creator who designed, made, and upholds it."

-John Lennox

It's not for you to say. It makes no difference to my what you try.

Pretty funny, actually, for you to say it is I that make the serious claim, when in fact it is the one purporting to do miracles that makes the serious claim.

When you assume the posture of the moral high ground, try not to engage in rampant lying. That is what you do when you impute to me, the phrase "every seller is a scammer." That's your words, made up in your fantasies. But then, perhaps you were simply in error.


Start with the basics, then. Are you familiar with the scientific method?

But carefully think this over before continuing, because you have already lost this argument, and I don't care to make you look foolish.

You are free to believe what you want, I won't bother to try to change your mind. Whatever you want to believe is fine.

You've made a serious claim, when you make such a claim you must have arguments to backup what you say. You must agree with me it's kind of foolish to say every seller is a scammer if you are scammed by one seller. That analogy is not smart. Second of all, please let us know how clue by clue you can reconstruct the "tricks" this pastor is performing, I'd love to read that. Specially when he has random people he approaches perform the miracles he performs by just repeating his words? Oftentimes friends of the person the healings are performed on? I wanna read your thoughts on it.

Yes, Atheism by its definition makes the claim that there is no God. This is a belief based on JUST AS MUCH empirical data on the belief that there is a God, that being no empirical data. It is not apples and oranges it is oranges and oranges.

That would be another irrefutable hypothesis...

However it remains that debunking the liars and the cheats who prey on the gullible in the name of religion, is a contribution that all the magical thinking and fantasy world religiosos should appreciate.

And it is as far as I am aware, always the work of athiests.

I know a guy that went right into the heart of darkness (A "miracle maker" well known, on stage) and debunked the scam and con game, in public, as the scam was being performed.

He did that at considerable personal risk.

Not impressed with your blabbing about miracles, dude. The way that progress is made is to look at the alleged "miracle" and ask how it could have been a scam. Then, clue by clue, reconstruct the way it was done. Then reveal it publicly, and call the people out as scammers, as appropriate.

Houdini debunked a lot of this crap, also. Many others have. But then, new suckers are born every minute.

I'm not here to convince any of you, you can make fun as much as you like. Maybe these videos above are kind of casual, you may say its a lie or whatever but anyone who is a critic would at least accept them as possible evidence, since miracles are performed in front of skeptical people, in front of people of diverging religions, in front of witnesses and its all recorded. I have experienced miracles myself, I'm 100% sure what I believe is real. I'm not so sure though you can say the same since you are stuck in believing in theories and stuff. I have seen scientists, smarter people than you accept for a fact the existence of God.

You are free to believe whatever you like.

People don't live in a vacuum in their thinking. The closest that anybody can come to non-belief about God is, when he hasn't had the thought about God at all. Once a person has a thought about God, only then might he not believe. But at the same time he is believing in the opposite direction.

There might be quite a large number of atheists out there... people who have never heard anything whatsoever about something called God. But as soon as they hear enough to think that they are an atheist, they hold beliefs as well as non-beliefs regarding God. Nobody lives in a vacuum regarding something in his thinking. Not even the vegetable.

Yeah, some argument we had lol

I never once argued with him. He is free to express himself however he wishes and whatever he believes, I respect them all.

But when I speak my opinions...

I thought this thread is proclaiming that atheists are "free thinkers" 

No to me right now...this is false. I could be wrong

Free thinking is sometimes subjective or objective depending on how smart you are and how motivated you are to find the truth.

Free thinking is obviously a choice .. be subjective or be objective. Or perhaps you believe you are being objective when you are being subjective....then again you could not be caring too much about being objective and be purely subjective and still reach the correct conclusion

Depending on your intelligence and access to information and motivation (drastic effect subconsciously) you can reach the opinion of NO god or there is a GOD as a free thinker... or even undecided

I mean that is accepting the OP definition of atheist anyway that there is no god.

I would guess that claiming to KNOW either way is kind of hard to prove hence the requirement of faith.

Faith to me can not exist in it's accepted form if there is no gap in your chain of facts leading to an observable truth.

Of course you can always go deeper and say you need faith in your own senses and reality.... but

For example I am crossing a road and I see a red car coming. I do not require faith that there is a red car coming.
However as a blind man crossing a road I would require faith in my best friend who just told me there is a red car coming.

I could be wrong but that is where I am at right now thinking about this stuff

No need to feel sorry; you lost that argument fair and square.

Translating to your grammatical constructs:

The atheist saw the tools of logic and reason that God gave him; the theist remained blind.

I am sorry you feel that way

You are so ignorant you don't even know.  Prosthetic legs were invented and designed by doctors and engineers.

Don't change the subject.  Show a video of an amputee growing a leg in real-time or shut the fuck forever about your imaginary friend.

You are just a troll, you have nothing concrete to add to the conversation, just your assumptions and conjectures.

We are done here.

Prosthetic legs are amazing tbf, I have seen amputees breakdancing and doing amazing things even people with both legs can't do. With the invention of prosthetic legs, amputees can now walk or move like any regular person.

This reminds me of the story where a person who was drowning asked God to save him.

God sent a rowboat, a motor boat, a helicopter, but the man did not see it as God's help, and consequently drowned.

Prosthetic legs, in my opinion, is God's way of giving legs to amputees.

You are dumb as fuck.

What miracles?

Post a video of an amputee growing a leg, then it will be a miracle.

Watch some miracles man:

https://www . y outube.c om/watch?v=S_0vnBhz-Co

You were one of the guys that asked to see a limb grow in previews threads if I can remember right so here you go:

https://www . y outube.c om/watch?v=_360JitiBA0

https://www . y outube.c om/watch?v=UbTy3Nr59WM
 
https://www . y outube.c om/watch?v=CSQVR5FWo2o