Yes, it really is that stupid

[Starmaker]

replying here because the thread in IMHO is moving on topic

Less than 2% of so called Christian country visit Easter Church Service,

When you live that close to Czech Republic, you have better things to do on Easter.

Anyway, for fighters that level up, I totally nominate Comrade Putin (we'll assume his KGB service happened, and later he gets the class feature "Replace all references to being a KGB man to just being that awesome").

Koumei,
Putin is not awesome. Like, not even a little bit. Srsly. He's not a communist, he's not particularly powerful. Russia is not going to be a threat to the world (or a crazyawesome enlightened power) beyond what's included in the package of being a threat to itself.
I will attempt your subsequent praise of Putin as you specifically trolling me and inflate my ego accordingly.

As for Passover (Easter for you heretics), nothing exciting happens. People greet each other with "Christ has risen! / Risen indeed!" which I dodge by replying "Congrats!", dye chicken eggs and bake traditional cakes. Cakes are to be baked on Fourthday (Thursday for you pagan worshippers), sanctified on Sabbath and eaten on Resurrection (Sunday) which means they're gone stale but the fundies who had been fasting since forever don't care. (After Passover, delicious shop-sold Italian cakes go on sale. Good times.)

Casual worshipers emphasize "sincerity" and improvise prayers (which fall into "ask the Lord for stuff" or "thank the Lord" categories). Fundies with prayerbooks are a common sight on public transport.

they know about Christ mostly from The Passion of the Christ movie

Absolutely not true. Nearly everyone believes in a higher power, and that higher power is the Lord/Jesus H. Christ by default. So kids learn about Christianity and the practice of prayer about the time they learn to not shit their pants. Christian-themed movies (especially Western movies) are usually regarded as heretical.

The understanding of Trinity is quite peculiar. People pray to The Lord implying Jesus and regard him as 100% god (stopping the thought process short of "fucked his own mum" squick). Casual worshipers, however, think that the third face in the Trinity is Virgin Mary the Godmother.

And then there are theology students who are taught extreme anti-Semitism up to and including "Jesus was Russian, the Old Testament is a Jewish lie".

The most crazy religious person I've ever seen was a very old smelly woman carrying around a dirty sign with a fake biblical quote that used long-since-gone-unfashionable junior school slang. Weaksauce translation follows:

A slacker before God is a nerd in Satans eyes! If you dont believe in Jesus your a dumb retarded idiot!!! --Paul 13:14

[cthulhu]

AGAIN you make the exact same fucking arrogant mistake that Kaelik makes. By declaring myself agnostic I'm not saying I'm holding out for Christianity to be proven right. The Null Hypothesis of the Judeo-Christian god is the nonexistence of the Judeo-Christian god, not all gods. And again some arrogant atheist who thinks they're smart enough to have their certainty about the nonexistence of Christ mean they're also certain about any possibility of god ever in any way and starts bringing up straw men like being "agnostic about Frodo" as if that's even relevant.

Jehovah or Allah obviously don't exist because the literature that belief in them is based on is fundamentally flawed. And the existence of evil precludes the existence of a kind and loving god. But nothing I've ever observed precludes the existence of an asshole god who doesn't want to be found.

The null hypothesis is that there is no god at all. Frank is asserting that beliving there may be a god of any sort is disregarding the null hypothesis.

[Akula]

AGAIN you make the exact same fucking arrogant mistake that Kaelik makes. By declaring myself agnostic I'm not saying I'm holding out for Christianity to be proven right. The Null Hypothesis of the Judeo-Christian god is the nonexistence of the Judeo-Christian god, not all gods. And again some arrogant atheist who thinks they're smart enough to have their certainty about the nonexistence of Christ mean they're also certain about any possibility of god ever in any way and starts bringing up straw men like being "agnostic about Frodo" as if that's even relevant.

Provide positive testable evidence for your claim, or stop calling it scientific. You don't have to falsify every possible god in order to say with reasonable certainty that god does not exist. You are seriously saying that we need to accept the possibility of some bullshit n+1 god you pulled out of your ass, because we haven't specifically shown it to be false. That is like saying that we should assume some kind of alchemy will work some point in the future. Or that homeopathy has some scientific grounding because it might just turn out to look like a observable and testable phenomena in the future.

[Zinegata]

Yeah. It's hilarious how the conversation basically goes:

<For Valor> I'm agnostic.
<Kaelik> Fuck you for being agnostic. You should be atheist because God does not exist.
<Sashi> Absence of proof is not proof of absence.
<Frank> Kaelik's right. We totally disproved the Judea-Christian God.
<Sashi> Being agnostic has NOTHING to do with the Judea-Christian God specifically!

Really, every time Frank talks, it invariably ends up going back to bashing the Judea-Christian faith and pointless bigotry.

[Zinegata]

Provide positive testable evidence for your claim, or stop calling it scientific.You don't have to falsify every possible god in order to say with reasonable certainty that god does not exist.

No Akula. You do, in fact, have to falsify every possible God if you want to prove that "God does not exist" from an agnostic point of view. By virtue of being agnostic, they're not hedging their bets that any particular God exists or not. They are hedging their bets one whether any or all Gods exist or not. There is no such thing as "Christian Agnostic".

Its roots stem from logic, not the scientific method. Absence of proof is not proof of absence. People used to believe no Black Swans existed until they travelled the world and found some. This is why this logical principle is important - as it acknowledges man's lack of omniscience.

Moreover, the scientific method is merely a way to test theories - by evaluating actual evidence. Therefore, anything you subject to scientific scrutiny is, by definition, rational.

However, just because something is irrational (i.e. Belief in God) doesn't also make it logically incorrect. In the past, people have never seen a Black Swan. So it was rational to believe they didn't exist. But in truth, they DO exist. Because we simply hadn't explored the world enough.

Sashi is right. Frank and Kaelik are wrong, and their thinking belongs to the Dark Ages. It's that simple.

[cthulhu]

Provide positive testable evidence for your claim, or stop calling it scientific.You don't have to falsify every possible god in order to say with reasonable certainty that god does not exist.

No Akula. You do, in fact, have to falsify every possible God if you want to prove that "God does not exist" from an agnostic point of view. By virtue of being agnostic, they're not hedging their bets that any particular God exists or not. They are hedging their bets one whether any or all Gods exist or not. There is no such thing as "Christian Agnostic".

Umm, sure, but an agnostic point of view is the same point of view that is being parodied here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_falling

The claims are not testable. Thus they are completely irrelevant.

[Koumei]

As for Passover (Easter for you heretics), nothing exciting happens.

Hence the comment about Czechia: you go there for Easter instead, and celebrate it in their "Pagan fertility thing before Catholics realised people were having fun and turned it into a BDSM thing, THAT will teach them!" way.

[Akula]

Provide positive testable evidence for your claim, or stop calling it scientific.You don't have to falsify every possible god in order to say with reasonable certainty that god does not exist.

No Akula. You do, in fact, have to falsify every possible God if you want to prove that "God does not exist".

Logic then, A) No god has been shown to exist. B) Therefore we can default to the null hypothesis that no god does exist. Obviously the way to disprove that is to show that a god does exist. So provide empirical or logical proof. I'd love to see what you come up with. Also, stop calling sasht right and after saying he is wrong throughout your entire post. It doesn't make sense. (If you look back, you can see that ashi has been calling his position scientific and not me. So sash thinks you can describe god with science and not logic.)

I just want you to show that there is a rational argument for the existence of god. And I just want sahi to show empirical evidence for his position. Just so you guys can meet your own standards.

[Zinegata]

The claims are not testable. Thus they are completely irrelevant.

Claims that aren't testable are called irrational. Whether or not they're irrelevant is up to the person.

A lot of claims could not be tested in the past. For instance - you can't really test what happens when atoms smash into one another. You need the Large Hadron Collider for that. Does this make particle physics totally irrelevant right until the moment the LHC went online? Of course not.

That's why logic gave us the concept of "The absence of proof is not the proof of absence". It basically tells us that until we exhaust every possibility and search every corner of the universe, you can't actually disprove something as general as the concept of God.

Is this practical? Not at the present day. That's why rationality was developed as a seperate concept from logic. Rationality tells us to test things that are practical. Logic tells us it's okay to reach for the stars.

Again, logic and rationality are NOT the same. You need both for critical thinking however. If you stick with logic, you'll be stuck with "There might be a God", "There might be unicorns", and other untestable crap. With rationality alone, you're stuck with the belief that "The Earth is flat until someone sails around it".

[Zinegata]

Logic then,

Nope dude. You're getting it wrong.

A) No god has been shown to exist.

Logic states that the absence of proof is NOT the proof of absence.

Just because you haven't found it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

B) Therefore we can default to the null hypothesis that no god does exist.

Nope. Your problem is this: You're ignoring the fact that a hypothesis must have something that it can evaluate. In fact, you're using the null hypothesis all wrong. See below.

Obviously the way to disprove that is to show that a god does exist. So provide empirical or logical proof. I'd love to see what you come up with.

Why?

I'm not out to prove that God exists. I'm out to prove that the agnostic position is based on logic and is actually scientifically sound.

That you think the proof of God is a yes/no thing just goes to show how little your understand logic, rationality, and the scientific method.

Also, stop calling sasht right and after saying he is wrong throughout your entire post. It doesn't make sense. (If you look back, you can see that ashi has been calling his position scientific and not me. So sash thinks you can describe god with science and not logic.)

Nope, Sashi's actually correct despite what you think.

The scientific view when faced with this conundrum isn't to say "God doesn't exist because we haven't found evidence of his existence."

The scientific view is to build a rocket ship and find out. To gain more data that can be evaluated. The scientific method isn't about repeating shit we already know. It's about testing new stuff to expand our knowledge.

And it's really shows because you're forgetting that a null hypothesis must be accompanied by an alternative hypothesis. And you actually test the alternative hypothesis, not the null hypothesis.

Remember, the null is your default hypothesis. This is your current state and knowledge base. Your alternative hypothesis is the one you test.

So...

Null Hypothesis: "The Judea-Christian God is not on Earth".

Alternative hypothesis: "God exists in the Center of the Universe."

So you build a rocket ship, go to the center of the universe. And check if God's there. If he's not, Null Hypothesis stands (but you can test more alternative hypothesis and search every corner of the universe. Remember - those two need not be mutually exclusive, nor are they required to negate each other).

I just want you to show that there is a rational argument for the existence of god. And I just want sahi to show empirical evidence for his position. Just so you guys can meet your own standards.

Given that I've been saying that belief in God is irrational, and yet you're asking me to provide a rational argument for the existence of God, it's clear you've no idea what my standards are.

If there's any hole in Sashi's belief system (and with agnostics in general) is that his concept of "God" is ill-defined. Sashi goes as far and say that he thinks God - if he exists - is a pretty angry and mean God. So if we encounter an alien race in the future with the power of immortality and other advanced stuff, agnostics may very well think those beings are God/s.

But that doesn't make it invalid from a logical sense. And from a scientific sense, it's a valid one to hold. Remember...

* Logic doesn't care how impractical proving/disproving something is. If you haven't searched every corner of the universe, you can't say "Leprechauns do not exist".

* The scientific method isn't about repeating existing stuff it already knows. It's about testing out new stuff. Want to know if God exists in the Center of the universe? Let's build a rocket and find out.

* Rationality was developed to let us keep functioning based on what we already know and what we can see. It's simply everyday common sense to keep us doing crazy shit based on things we can't see and we can't help.

Right now, rationality frowns upon belief in God. But science and logic? They're totally game to having an open-ended belief system like being an agnostic.

[tussock]

you can't actually disprove something as general as the concept of God.

Sure you can. The concept of god was invented by people. We have a pretty good understanding of how they went about doing it, over a very long period of time, starting from animism, and understand how that all interfaces with the structure of our mind. God was used as a placeholder for "explaining" things we held no real understanding of at the time. "Why are there birds?" "Goddidit." Etc.

Well, a good few centuries later, we've discovered the real explanation for pretty much everything you can see or touch, and a whole lot more besides, up and down to some unimaginably large and small scales, and it turns out god did nothing of the sort, not ever.

We've done a lot of tests to show that god still isn't doing anything, not answering prayers, not performing miracles, not favoring the faithful. Endorphins are not god, they're just a chemical in your brain. You might say god could exist and yet act in a way which is impossible to distinguish from not existing, but that's just the flying spaghetti monster in drag.

We know when, why, and how the flying spaghetti monster came to be too, and we know that it does nothing now, and never has, the same as we know those things are true for god. God is a real idea, a meme started long ago, but it does not exist outside our imaginations, and we have well and truly proven that.

[Zinegata]

Sure you can.

First of all, cutting off the first half of the sentence is generally bad form, particularly when the first half states that how you can actually disprove the notion of God.

My statement again, in full:

It basically tells us that until we exhaust every possibility and search every corner of the universe, you can't actually disprove something as general as the concept of God.

And it's no different from what you're saying - keep exploring until we've literally uncovered every nook and cranny and mystery of the universe. We're more or less done exploring the Earth and found he isn't here. Maybe he's in one of the billions of stars out there?

Which is why agnostic belief is totally okay. They're the guys waiting until we search every nook and cranny of the universe. And I don't think they really care one way or another what the answer is.

[cthulhu]

The claims are not testable. Thus they are completely irrelevant.

Claims that aren't testable are called irrational. Whether or not they're irrelevant is up to the person.

A lot of claims could not be tested in the past. For instance - you can't really test what happens when atoms smash into one another. You need the Large Hadron Collider for that. Does this make particle physics totally irrelevant right until the moment the LHC went online? Of course not.

Those hypothesis are testable. So is the earth is flat. Indeed, the fact they were testable is why we built the LHC.

That there is an otherwise undetectable ball of spaghetti that pushes things down or there is an asshole god that only uses its omnipotent power for the purposes of making itself undetectable is not testable

Which is why agnostic belief is totally okay. They're the guys waiting until we search every nook and cranny of the universe. And I don't think they really care one way or another what the answer is.

This is in no way different from believing in Allah.

[Kaelik]

I'm out to prove that the agnostic position is based on logic and is actually scientifically sound.

So your problem is that you don't understand the word "science"?

Seriously you dumbass.

Number of times that anyone has said "prove" other than you = 0.

We are talking about the scientific soundness of something, which has nothing at all to fucking do with deductive logic, because science is an inductive process.

It is not scientifically sound to declare existence and lack thereof equal when we have significant evidence that no such being exists.

If you have a room, and the room has no a camera in the middle that pans around looking at every part of the room, and the camera never sees a dresser, or any place a dresser might be placed out of view, then it is inductively true that there is no dresser in the room, despite the possibility that someone is just carrying it and moving ahead of the camera.

So take your strawman "Prove God doesn't exist deductively." and jump out a window, because everyone but you is talking about the inductive process of science applied to the real world.

[Username17]

AGAIN you make the exact same fucking arrogant mistake that Kaelik makes. By declaring myself agnostic I'm not saying I'm holding out for Christianity to be proven right. The Null Hypothesis of the Judeo-Christian god is the nonexistence of the Judeo-Christian god, not all gods. And again some arrogant atheist who thinks they're smart enough to have their certainty about the nonexistence of Christ mean they're also certain about any possibility of god ever in any way and starts bringing up straw men like being "agnostic about Frodo" as if that's even relevant.

Jehovah or Allah obviously don't exist because the literature that belief in them is based on is fundamentally flawed. And the existence of evil precludes the existence of a kind and loving god. But nothing I've ever observed precludes the existence of an asshole god who doesn't want to be found.

The Null Hypothesis is not "Jesus doesn't have magic powers" the Null Hypothesis is that there aren't any gods. That's the null hypothesis. And it is the foundation of science.

In order to challenge the Null Hypothesis you need to make a positive, testable claim for something else. You need to provide a statement that is falsifiable. That is, it would have to be possible to find something to prove you wrong. The Judeo-Christian hypothesis presents some solid, testable claims. Those claims are wrong, so the hypothesis is wrong. And what we default to is the Null Hypothesis. The Celestial Empire hypothesis makes some solid, testable claims. Those claims are also wrong, so we default again to the Null Hypothesis.

"There is an infinitely powerful thing that can't be found because it breaks and changes the laws of reality so that you can't ever find it." is not testable. There is nothing you could do to show that was wrong. Which means, it's unscientific to believe or even consider such an option.

The ancient religions are wrong. All of them. Without exception. And holding out hope that someone will make a new religion that will stand up to scrutiny is exactly as pointless as holding out hope that someone will make a unified theory of flogiston or enact the low energy transmutation of base metals into gold. For a hypothesis to be of any value it has to has a consequence if it is true, and a consequence if it is false.

It is not "arrogance" to dismiss the idle musings of theologists who are completely out of touch with actual physical reality. It is arrogant to assume that an imaginary friend you thought up has any bearing on the way the world should or does work. It is arrogance of the highest order to assume that people who are dismissing your pointless and idle musings are doing so because they are jerks rather than because your hypothesis has no conceivable value except as literary fiction.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

Sashi, do Leprechauns exist?

How about Garbaralalala-aasdfasdflkandsls?

Are you agnostic about Leprechauns? No, you know that Leprechauns don't exist. Just like you know Unicorns don't exist. Just like I know that God doesn't exist.

Haha, fuck you. I have high certainty that Leprechauns and Unicorns don't exist because they have actual fucking definitions. A leprechaun can't have a pot o' gold at the end of a rainbow because rainbows are a product of refraction through water droplets and don't physically have ends. There's not enough unexplored forest left to support a breeding population of horse-sized mammals we don't know about. And it's highly unlikely that tiny magical humanoids just decided to stop interacting with people after spending centuries making deals with them and stealing their babies.

So are you agnostic with respect to Garbaralalala-aasdfasdflkandsls or not?

Claiming that you are agnostic with respect to God because it doesn't have a definition is stupid.

God has lots of definitions, and I have a high certainty that all the definitions of God so far presented are false. A God can't be a man and not a man at the same time, because that violates the principle of non contradiction. A God probably didn't create human life, because we have significant evidence of how human life can to be.

If you want to present a definition of God that I don't have a high certainty does not exist, then go right ahead. But trying to claim that God doesn't have a definition at all just because all the definitions ever presented are false is exactly like trying to argue for agnosticism towards Leprechauns because maybe Leprechauns are actually space aliens who moved on from earth because they were riding an intergalactic space ship, and were only within "gate" range of earth for a small period of time 600 years ago.

Main Entry: 1god
Pronunciation: \&#712;gäd also &#712;g&#559;d\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English; akin to Old High German got god
Date: before 12th century
1
capitalized : the supreme or ultimate reality: as
a : the Being perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness who is worshipped as creator and ruler of the universe
b Christian Science : the incorporeal divine Principle ruling over all as eternal Spirit : infinite Mind
2
: a being or object believed to have more than natural attributes and powers and to require human worship; specifically : one controlling a particular aspect or part of reality
3
: a person or thing of supreme value

a) High certainty that it is false.
b) High certainty that it is false.
2) High certainty that it is false.
3) High certainty that it is false.

There, now you can't be agnostic about God because it doesn't have a definition, because it does have a definition, so you can either be agnostic about one of the actual definitions here, or you can propose an alternative definition, and be agnostic about that instead.

What you can't do is claim that because God isn't defined, it could be anything so it could exist. Because God is defined.

[Zinegata]

Those hypothesis are testable. So is the earth is flat. Indeed, the fact they were testable is why we built the LHC.

Nope. Those hypothesis were eventually testable. But before the development of sailing ships that could circumnavigate the world, such beliefs were in fact irrational.

That there is an otherwise undetectable ball of spaghetti that pushes things down or there is an asshole god that only uses its omnipotent power for the purposes of making itself undetectable is not testable

Nope. They're currently not testable. But they may be in the future. Until we have enough knowledge or tech to prove one way or the other, agnostics totally have a leg to stand on.

This is in no way different from believing in Allah.

Except of course Allah requires that you believe he exists. Agnostic belief doesn't require belief of existence. Agnostic belief is based on the acknowledge that humans are not omniscient.

"I don't know" is different from "I believe he exists.".

[Falgund]

So Sashi is using a variation of the No True Scotman for the definition of God ?
If some definition of god is disprouved, then "Nope, that was Not True definition of God, some other god may still exist".

[Zinegata]

So your problem is that you don't understand the word "science"?

*yawn* I ignore your feeble intimidation tactics. Anyone who doesn't subscribe to stupid anti-religious bigotry knows you're the one full of shit here.

And really, it becomes tempting to simply ignore your responses, since I've already repeated my points enough times to make it clear. And replying to you only gives you more chances to spew bigotry.

We are talking about the scientific soundness of something, which has nothing at all to fucking do with deductive logic, because science is an inductive process.

Really? Define "scientifically sound". Please cite a scholarly source. Because frankly, that term is highly ambiguous and I refuse to debate with you when you can easily switch the meaning of that term around.

Regardless of your attempt to cloud the issue however...

What people are talking about here is the scientific method. Otherwise, why bring up "hypothesis"? And one of the ways to derive an alternate hypothesis is in fact to use deductive logic. You just have to test the derived hypothesis to make it science and not just logical mumbo jumbo.

Again, null hypothesis (also known as "State of Nature") - God does not exist.

Alternate hypothesis - God can be found in the center of the universe.

Can this be tested? Yes it can. Send a rocket to the center of the universe. Can you gather results via observation? Absolutely. Attach a camera to the rocket and see if there are shining golden gates to Heaven with Jesus waving at you to say hi.

--------

Moreover... anyone who is really familiar with the scientific method knows it doesn't say that "God does not exist" is 100% true. What it instead says is that it's the current belief based on what we currently know (which is why "God does not exist" is the null hypothesis. Not "God does exist").

However, if an alternate hypothesis can ever be proven true, then the null hypothesis is overturned. Thus, claiming that "science proves that God does not exist" is actually factually false. Science is in fact trying "to determine if there is any possible way to over turn the accepted state that God does not exist."

This isn't wishful thinking on my part. This is really how the scientific works - the purpose of an experiment is to try and see if you can change current state.

Science will only prove that the current state cannot be overturned once it has pretty much tested every theory and possibility. That's why we're not stuck with only Newtonian physics.

And given that we live in a really big universe, and we've only really explored one planet, the scope of human knowledge is actually pretty small when viewed from the universal scale.

Again, the nice thing about logic is that it reminds us not to have bloated egos and think we're so great. We are still quite far from omniscience.

So take your strawman "Prove God doesn't exist deductively." and jump out a window, because everyone but you is talking about the inductive process of science applied to the real world.

Nope. You're just going boo-hoo because I'm taking away one of the most cherished ideas held by fake-atheists: Science proved them right.

It doesn't. Belief in God is irrational - nobody in this thread refutes this. Rationality is even accepted by theologians, because the very concept of rationality was in large part developed by a theologian.

But if science didn't test out what were formerly irrational beliefs we wouldn't have made progress in a lot of fields.

--------

Moreover, here is the single most hilarious part of the thread:

Sashi and I are mounting a defense for agnostics. We aren't trying to prove God exists. At all. We're just proving that a rationale exists to continue testing for his existence - and this rationale is supported by BOTH science and logic.

And yet people here keep going "But you haven't proven God exists!"

I don't need to. I'm not trying to prove that at all. Again, "The absence of proof is not the proof of absence." And nobody has ever disproven or even attempted to disprove it.

Now, Kaelik, you tried to sideline it, but I've shown that you're just trying to muddle the issue by using an ambiguous term like "scientifically sound", when we in fact were talking specifically about the scientific method.

And the scientific method doesn't give a shit about justifying your bigotry. Science subscribes to no ideology or religious belief. It's a means of gaining more knowledge by continually testing what we currently know, and nothing more.

So really Kaelik, I won't be bullied. You can keep trying, but again, it's really boiling down to you being full of shit.

[Zinegata]

So Sashi is using a variation of the No True Scotman for the definition of God ?
If some definition of god is disprouved, then "Nope, that was Not True definition of God, some other god may still exist".

That's a very real danger of agnostic belief, yes. But given Sashi's posts, I don't think he wants for God to be true. He's just wise enough to realize that there really may be greater powers in the universe that we just haven't met yet.

There are billions of stars and planets. We've mostly explored one. Let's not start pretending we know more than we actually do.

[mean_liar]

However, these fringe fanatics are held up as being "True Christians" in order to falsify generalities about what Christians believe and do. And yet, is there any doubt that if they were to hold a Jonestown or a Waco that they would instantaneously be just as much "not real Christians" as the People's Church and the Branch Davidians? Hell, these guys have theology that is more out there than these other ones.

They were specifically brought up to counter Kaelik's assertions about "all present day Christian Churches". And yes, they were brought up to falsify generalities about what Christians believe and do, because they do precisely that: to my knowledge, there are frightfully few universally-held dogmatic elements of Christians or any other major religion.

Kaelik's response was to No True Scotsmen them since they aren't Christians by their own admission, which is actually, demonstrably, explicitly wrong.

And Jewish Christians and Messianic Judaism were brought up to counter similar arguments about Jews' relationship to Christ-as-divine. He again discounted them as No True Scotsmen, despite the fact that Judaism is based on tribal and blood relationships.

That was the whole of the argument, and it still stands. Almost all sweeping statements about a faith's doctrine and its relationship to nominal adherents of that faith are necessarily too general, and necessarily need to be more specific if they're to mean anything.

That's pretty much it, but since it's a topic about religion you have to conflate it with this statement borne from a separate tangent:

Moderates do harm by providing active camouflage to extremists.

...as well as conflating it with "religious apologists" and general assumptions regarding noting actual, real doctrinal differences between sects of major religions is also the belief that somehow True(tm) religious groups cannot cause harm or act like loons.

This is also a great example of how the hostility to religion you and Kaelik have makes you think stupid things, because you just hate it so much.

You're allowed to think it's borne of silly things that are rationally unsound and untestable and to trumpet that, but your spectacular leaps of judgment are the sort of bigoted idiocy that can make something as easily-explainable and graspable as atheism and agnosticism into just another thing made obnoxious by it's overzealous adherents.

[Kaelik]

Moreover... anyone who is really familiar with the scientific method knows it doesn't say that "God does not exist" is 100% true. What it instead says is that it's the current belief based on what we currently know (which is why "God does not exist" is the null hypothesis. Not "God does exist").

This is... nearly identical to what we have been saying. Are you trying to paraphrase Frank and I? Because that's like, exactly what we've been saying. The point is that The Earth is a Sphere is also not 100% proved by science, because science cannot 100% prove anything. But no one gets all bigoted and starts calling people who say they know that the Earth is a Sphere "Just as bad as the Flat Earthers. Agnosticism regarding the shape of the Earth is the only truly scientifically sound position."

However, if an alternate hypothesis can ever be proven true, then the null hypothesis is overturned. Thus, claiming that "science proves that God does not exist" is actually factually false. Science is in fact trying "to determine if there is any possible way to over turn the accepted state that God does not exist."

Did you even read the part of my article about the knowledge that God does not exist being a retractable claim of knowledge, like the claim "I know my mother is still alive."

And given that we live in a really big universe, and we've only really explored one planet, the scope of human knowledge is actually pretty small when viewed from the universal scale.

That depends on the definition of God someone is using, since a common definition is "omnipresent" we don't have to explore the center of the universe, because any "God" that existed at the center of the universe, (or even existed physically at all) and was not also present here would not conform to many definitions of God.

So how about, you define God. Define it. Go ahead, you sure talk about it a lot, so you must have a definition.

Now, Kaelik, you tried to sideline it, but I've shown that you're just trying to muddle the issue by using an ambiguous term like "scientifically sound", when we in fact were talking specifically about the scientific method.

Go back and find out who first said "[My position] is the only scientifically sound position."

I'll wait. If I'm going to argue with someone about the truth of their claim, I have to actually argue about the claim they made. This usually involves using the same terms they do, Ooherwise I might slip up and start randomly strawmanning them with shit they have never claimed like you do:

And yet people here keep going "But you haven't proven God exists!"

Could you perhaps point to any instance of me saying that at all?

Nope. You're just going boo-hoo because I'm taking away one of the most cherished ideas held by fake-atheists: Science proved them right.

Ignoring for the moment the bigotry of talking about "fake-atheists" whatever the fuck that even means, as if they are one entity, is anyone here claiming that science has proved them right? No, great, you can shut up now.

[Psychic Robot]

the bigotry of talking about "fake-atheists"

Atheism is a cancer on society.

See, that's bigotry. And factually correct, to boot.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

the bigotry of talking about "fake-atheists"

Atheism is a cancer on society.

See, that's bigotry. And factually correct, to boot.

This should be fun.

/pops some popcorn

[Goldor]

the bigotry of talking about "fake-atheists"

Atheism is a cancer on society.

See, that's bigotry. And factually correct, to boot.

Yeah thats true.. If the society your talking about is that which is seen in the Vatican city, or medieval Europe