2d ago

This guy is clearly not right in the head

89 comments

Fine. Here we go:
God exists.
I cannot prove this claim, so it must be untrue.
There, I fixed it.

So the logic is that, whoever speaks first is the one who has to prove it? In that case we can go back to the earliest time these guys ever came up that there was this single deity named God. They never proved him back then, never did so now.
- no but see that was olden times so it doesn't count, only now once it's an established assumption does this rule go into effect and count.
  unless I think of a new thing I want you to believe. then it has a teensy weensy time-out while I say that, then it's back in effect again.

That's a triple negative. So Zenith there, having made the third strike, is out.
Wait, that's not what the three strikes rule means? Well I mean according to Zenith's logic it is. You can't tell me he's right and I'm wrong twice. My double negative cancels out to a positive.

More like zenithAIBot

That’s a well charged battery
- Well since you said it... I now need you to prove its well charged.
  
  Well since you said that you need to prove to me it's not well charged.

Simple: just deny his denial. Now he has to provide proof.

Oh shit, he said something in Latin. Saying something in Latin means it's always correct since it sounds so clever. Quod erat demonstrandum, the argument ends there.
- Wingardium leviosa mf
  
  Levi-oh-SAAAAAAAAAAAH you pleb
- Latin and Greek are like the Ornstein and Smough of Western prescriptivism.
- Everyone knows quiquid latine dictum sit altum videtur
  
  I just want to add Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet
  
  Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam

If we did away with organized religion, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now.
- Greed, fear, and ignorance are the causes of all our woes.
  Religion is just how the worst people look themselves in the mirror afterwards.
- You could say this at basically any point in hunan history and it would still be true
  
  Oh! I disagree! I think religion probably served an incredible useful purpose in our social development.
  Think about this: 500 years ago, or 1000, in some village somewhere, John hates Micheal. Or maybe John just wants Michael's cow or land or pants. What's stopping John from killing Micheal? Like, who's gonna even know it was him? Some magical man in the sky who sees all and knows all? And what would that guy even do! Does he have powers to send you to a horrible place? Or curse you?
  Oh....
  So does he have rules you gotta follow? What's the payoff?
  Oh....
  So how do I learn these rules, and stay on this guys good side?
  Guess John probably won't kill Micheal. Not yet anyways. Best keep sky daddy happy.
  Now did the "good" outweigh the bad? Did it ever? And at what point in human history did that ratio shift and the good no longer outweighed the bad? Are there reasons/situations/people where this is still a valuable tactic?
  Discuss.
- Why "organized"? We see sects spontaneously emerge from belief in magic, sometimes with deadly consequences. Do away with religion altogether, organized or not is irrelevant -- and the "organized" part sometimes helps keep the lunatics under control
- Capitalists would just find another way to divide the working class and oppress people. Religion isn’t the root cause of almost any conflict.
  
  Religion isn’t the root cause of almost any conflict.
  It isn't causing a genocide in Gaza. It wasn't the cause of the Crusades. It isn't why the Kurds were genocided. You're right. Religion never causes conflict. In fact, I'm listening to the Last Podcast on the Left series on the Lori Vallow / Chad Daybell murders where being ultra-rightwing Mormon nutjobs also didn't cause conflict.
  What the hell are you saying? Capitalism kills. Religion kills.

It has to be like the axiom said otherwise the axiom doesn't work.
Gee thanks pal.
"That's an awful nice axiom you have there. Would be down right awful if something should happen to it."

it's fairly easy to prove that no god exists.
jainism is a religion which negates the existence of god. islam is a religion that negates the existence of any god but their almighty.
if there did exist a god, s/he would not allow a situation where both these religions can co-exist. because any god except allah is excluded by islam, and allah themself is excluded by jainism.
ergo, god does not exist. quad erat demonstrandum.
- if there did exist a god, s/he would not allow a situation where both these religions can co-exist.
  All this proves is that he doesn't care about the intricacies of organised religion, not that he doesn't exist.
  
  ah. if she does not care about the intricacies of organised religion, can we then conclusively state that all organised religions proselytising the word of god are therefore bullshit?
  surely the all-powerful god, glory be in her name, would not allow false organised teligions to exist?!
- This reminds me of Ricky Gervais joke:
  So you believe in one God I assume... there about 3,000 to choose from. So basically you deny one less God than I do. You don't believe in 2,999 Gods, and I don't believe in just one more.
- Well it proves that any religion claiming to have the one true God that doesn't tolerate pretenders is wrong. There could absolutely be an unfathomable force setting stuff up in the universe.

The lack of omnipotence is tautological. Can a theorized seity make a rock so heavy, the deity cannot move it? If he cannot make it, he is not imnipotent. If he makes one he cannot move, then he is not omnipotent. Adding qualifications about logical consistent omnipotence is just dissembling and lame excuse making.
- I don’t know if I would view this as tautological. I think the premise that whipping out a latin phrase based upon an arbitrary determination that whoever speaks now has to provide proof - now placing the burden on any opposition - is just avoiding a good faith argument entirely. Refusal to qualify a statement with objective fact and reason. We already experience the results of this shitty logic in social media spaces where anyone can spew objectively false statements and the burden of disproving it falls on critics. Sealioning and butwhataboutism follow, while the original speaker avoids ceding anything.
  
  Whipping out Latin phrases is such a religious peepo thing. They eat that shit up without getting the message. It wouldn't be so tragic if the Latin phrase weren't an idea central to science being completely misunderstood. lol
  E: Need to clarify that the Burden of Proof itself isn't central to science, but its relationship to hypotheses testing is.
- I like that the answer, as far as I know growing up in a Catholic school, is that religious people are aware of this argument, but they think they have a foolproof answer that boils down to: "whoah, what a mysterious dude."

7 idiots need to leave Lemmy forever.

I think a better way of phrasing it is that I don't know that a god exists (as in, any god, I can be quite certain that the god of the Torah or Bible is too logically incoherent to exist). I admit I don't know. But that doesn't mean I should act as though one does, especially as I wouldn't know which mutually exclusive one it would be if it did exist.
The burden of proof is on one who makes a claim to knowledge, either that a thing does exist, or that it doesn't exist. The default state is agnosticism, or admitting that you don't know, not simply disbelief.
Edit: In fact, the OP's original statement seemed to be agnostic in nature, admitting that they couldn't prove that god didn't exist, but since they couldn't prove that god did exist either, that they shouldn't waste their time acting as though it did ('pretending').
It was only the believer who misunderstood them as seeming to claim that god definitely didn't exist, but then they got into a sidetrack discussion about the burden of proof, rather than just correcting the believer's assumption about OP's belief.
- An even easier way of saying it is "I'm not convinced god exists"
- Yeah, no. It isn't the claim that requires proof, only the claim of something existing that requires proof.
  Repeated attempt to verify whether something exists not supporting the thing's existence is strong evidence that it doesn't exist.
  
  It's the claim of knowledge that requires proof, whether that knowledge is about a thing existing or about it not existing, of about anything else, such as it being red. The only belief that doesn't need proof is a lack of knowledge.
  Edit: if I'd never seen a black swan, and therefore concluded that since I had no proof that black swans existed, to believe that black swans definitely don't exist, but then one day I was shown a black swan, my initial belief would have been proven incorrect.
  However, if I instead initially believed that I didn't know if black swans existed, and that I had no evidence to believe that they did, when I was shown one I could update my belief to that they did exist, without my previous belief being wrong - it was simply a lack of knowledge.
  
  My claim is "there is not a unicorn in my garage", and I can prove that.
  
  Yeah, no. Any claim has the burden of proof. If you say, "there is no god," then it is absolutely on you to show your work. If you say, "I do not accept the claim that there is a god," that requires no proof because it's not a claim. This is basic logic.

The technique used by many propagandists is to make a claim, then when someone says "that doesn't seem right..." immediately demand proof. See you can make any claim you want, then require others to prove you wrong, and then declare victory when they don't bother. The more of an ass you are, the less likely someone will want to make an effort to continue the conversation, so the propagandist will always "win" the conversation. Of course by "win" I mean the propagandist convinces everyone they're an insufferable asshole that's not worth talking to.
"God does not exist" is a claim. Declaring that your claim is unprovable, while also trying to demanding others to prove you wrong is a particularly malignant form of this technique. You're declaring that you're not required to prove your claim, while demanding others to prove you wrong.
Religion is about metaphysical concepts that are neither provable nor disprovable. Atheism is all about promoting fallacies, being insufferable assholes towards people that have different beliefs, and therefore "winning" the conversation.
- Actually, "God does not exist" is not a claim. "God exists" is a claim, though. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot and my other comment for clarity on this
- I prefer the more accurate "there is no evidence that God exists." What proof do I have there is no evidence? "Behold, my field of evidence of God's existence, and notice it is barren. To my knowledge, there is no evidence. If you have any non-anecdotal evidence of God's existence, I'd be happy to look at it, but absent that, there does not appear to be any evidence."
  If pressed, there's no evidence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, unicorns, or leprechauns either. Does that mean they don't exist? I guess that depends on who speaks first, right?
  The only reasonable way to think and live is to only believe in things that have evidence they exist. To, as a default, believe in something and then require proof of its non-existence doesn't make any sense. There is literally no end of things that "exist" if you just believe in things without evidence. Therefore, requesting "proof of non-existence" makes absolutely no sense in any context except when evidence of existence has already been established (e.g. someone declaring the moon landing was faked, where there is established evidence showing the moon landing having been real. A case would have to be made why that evidence was somehow illegitimate).

I mean he's got a point. You brought it up, why are you telling others to prove it?
Bro literally brought up logical fallacies that the first person was using
- The actual words here are, "I'm an atheist because I refuse to pretend to know there is one." That statement explicitly disclaims belief, and refers only to the speaker's individual state of mind. It doesn't ask or tell anybody else to prove anything. The speaker's own subjective state of mind is actually the one thing that the speaker is qualified to make definitive statements about. "I don't believe in God" needs no proof. Similarly, "I believe in God" also needs no proof, as it's a statement about the speaker's state of mind; "God exists" is a claim about the universe/reality that would require evidence.
  The user zenithoclock, as such, has misinterpreted the statement as a positive claim about the universe. As for why, I don't know for certain, but it does seem that quite a lot of people who believe in God can't abide and feel threatened when other people don't.
- No, the first person is using burden of proof correctly and the second person is incorrect about any logic fallacies. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot
  the burden of proof is not on whoever "speaks", like the second person incorrectly states, but whoever makes a specific type of claim. The first person is not making a claim of that type by saying "there is not a God" and therefore does not have any burden of proof, but someone who says "there is a God" is making a claim of that type and must prove it before it can be believed
  In the teapot example, if I say "there isn't a teapot floating orbiting the Sun somewhere between the Earth and Mars" I have no burden to prove this before it can be believed, because there is no evidence of the teapot existing. If you claimed the teapot did exist, you'd need to provide evidence of it
  Another way to think about it is, imagine someone says "God doesn't exist", someone else says "prove it!", and, for the purpose of the thought experiment, they actually somehow did produce hard evidence that objectively settles the dispute. Did they "prove that God doesn't exist" or did they "disprove the existence of God"? You can't prove a negative, so it is the latter. The existence of God is the actual "claim", so saying "God exists" requires burden of proof, but "God doesn't exist" is not a "claim"
- "A prayed for car gets better gas mileage", or alternatively "praying for a car does not effect gas mileage." Are either of these a true or a false statement? Well, at the very least there is no evidence to suggest a correlation. You could argue that you would need to collect data in order to prove or disprove either statement, but how could you even design an experiment let alone measure it? What is praying? Does it matter what time it is, or which direction you're facing? What if it only works on certain days, or with certain props? Which language? Does it only work on domestic cars? And besides, if at the end of the day you desire better gas mileage the most productive thing you could do is simply drive more conservatively.
  Now, is there a god? There is no way to determine what the evidence even looks like. A scale measures weight, but what is the unit which measures god? What can it even be measured against if we can't have a control? If at the end of the day you believe there is a god, and that good an evil are definable, and there will be a big performance review in the sky, then the most practical thing to do would be to live conservatively.
  But if we're talking evidence. It's, not, looking, particularly, promising.

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