"With that foolish logic, no one could cite evidence that they did not uncover or verify themselves."
Yep. Which is why logic is an utter failure as far as I'm concerned.
"Citing scientific facts is not an appeal to authority"
Completely incorrect.
"and I know exactly what I am talking about."
Not by your utter inability to think for yourself or know that there's more than one type of evidence so far you don't.
" Do not place your ignorance on me."
You are the one who is presenting another person's work, whom you do not know and have never checked, as your own. It isn't ignorance alone I am accusing you of, but rather ignorant plagiarism.
Since I don't trust the man himself (don't even know him) there is no reason whatsoever to take his work at face value or even examine it. I don't accept him as an authority on anything.
Partially. I now see a major fallacy in Marxism as well: If you assign all private property to the State, instead of solving the collectivist tendencies of crony capitalism (which tends toward all ownership by a tiny oligarchy) you've just intensified them (essentially giving the state a monopoly on ownership.
Thus I'm now drifting towards distributism, which insists on an absolute right to at least *enough property ownership to provide for each individual's needs* between conception and natural death.
Not a true Scotsman is an appeal to authority fallacy. It's pretty easy to prove that atheists don't believe in a God, and therefore have *NO* objective control for their morality.
Fact and logic are also appeals to authority. A fact isn't a fact unless it's been personally experienced, and logic is just a bunch of rules somebody made up for thinking.
Both are about as real as an unobserved guy who allegedly loves you, so I'm not surprised you believe in such things.
"It works just as well for any object one cannot imagine existing outside our observable range. Including (but not limited to) teapots, 8-track tape recorders and Natalie Portman's underwear. And non-tangible gods."
Doesn't matter- all human knowledge that is not gained in firsthand experience is an appeal to authority, and is therefore illogical.
No, I don't specifically have a problem with something that is falsifiable. I have a problem with appeals to authority by people who have no idea what the heck they're talking about.
What, exactly, is the difference between a spirit and a God? In Christianity, there is no difference. In Hinduism, there is no difference. In Shamanism, there is no difference. In science, which can't prove or disprove the existence of either, there is no difference.
""Burden of Proof" refers to the fact that the person who claims something for which he or she has no tangible evidence and said claim is well beyond common sense has to provide the proof. Other people don't have to proove shit."
Which is based on rules for logic, which is in turn based on a variety of philosophic theories from- Authorities in the field.
Those predictions are just models and are very fallible. It's like the problem with trying to convince a conservative that global warming is happening when you can't even predict the weather correctly.
But nothing in how science makes predictions assures you that those predictions will be correct- at all. A theory is just a model based on what has *already occurred*. Theories are remarkably good at predicting the past, but are very bad at predicting the future.
But did you know that atheists were full of shit before anybody told you? And how do you know, since your memory only goes back to age 3 or so, and you were told a lot of things before that?
"So, you believe in a lying god who would create an "old" earth?"
Not necessarily, but I don't have any evidence that I can point to. After all, I do believe in a God who seems to think Killing People Praying to Him in Church With an Earthquake is a Good Thing, so obviously his definition of what is a "lie" is different than mine.
" In that case, why do you believe he did it ~10,000 years ago vs just a few moments ago?"
"Isn't it troubling to you that your argument applies as well to Santa Claus, Superman and Waxanaman (whom I just now made up) as it does to God? "
No it doesn't- because *all of those exist*. Just in a different meaning of the word "existence" than you are used to.
"Then apply that to The Flying Spaghetti Monster (look it up). "
Which *also* exists. For a better understanding, please read _The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul_ by Douglas Adams (who incidentally, was an atheist who hit upon some very, very, very important truths about religion because he got over being mad at God and actually *listened to people*).
"By the same token, there are many other religions in the world whose ideas directly conflict with yours (and have precisely the same amount of evidence: an old book purported to be nonfiction and a group of people that have practiced that religion for a long time)"
Except my religion is Roman Catholicism, which WROTE THE BOOK and KNOWS IT TO BE A MERE WORK OF MAN and not the end of all knowledge (heck, we even put in there, at the end of the Gospel of John, that it isn't the end-all-be-all of knowledge; and STILL the fundamentalists came to pass!).
"Well sure, but what we have done, many thousands of times, is completely shred any and all myths of that magician's supposed tangible work."
Except you haven't- which is why believers outnumber atheists by the *billions*. Evangelical Atheism is such an absolute failure that it calls into question the predictive ability of destroying myth. See the Island of Bali Agricultural Revolution for a particularly striking example of why Evangelicalism, theist or atheist, is a failure (a very good example how the local Lake Goddess had better science than the scientists!)
"So no, you don't generally try to disprove the existence of something for which there is total lack of evidence for in the first place. But that doesn't mean science is entirely unsuitable for dealing with bizarre superstitions."
Except, of course, that it is not only unsuitable, but has been a spectacular FAILURE at it.
The mistake you've made is that you exclude the holy books from 'observable reality'. They wouldn't exist if somebody didn't observe, and make a conclusion, about *something*. The problem is, when you have an incomplete description of what that something is, it's pretty damn hard to recreate the experiment.
" I have a gut feeling that "apatheists" significantly outnumber those who specifically believe there is/are no god(s). "
Demographics easily proves you wrong on that one. In fact, if you add up the numbers of all believers in the world, you end up with roughly 6/7ths of the world's population. Don't forget the third world in your calculations, where local household gods are still prevalent.
Have you ever bothered to read any Buddhist scriptures? Like the Tibetan Book of the Dead, it's full of gods- it's just that they're all described as devils.
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"With that foolish logic, no one could cite evidence that they did not uncover or verify themselves."
Yep. Which is why logic is an utter failure as far as I'm concerned.
"Citing scientific facts is not an appeal to authority"
Completely incorrect.
"and I know exactly what I am talking about."
Not by your utter inability to think for yourself or know that there's more than one type of evidence so far you don't.
" Do not place your ignorance on me."
You are the one who is presenting another person's work, whom you do not know and have never checked, as your own. It isn't ignorance alone I am accusing you of, but rather ignorant plagiarism.
Since I don't trust the man himself (don't even know him) there is no reason whatsoever to take his work at face value or even examine it. I don't accept him as an authority on anything.
Partially. I now see a major fallacy in Marxism as well: If you assign all private property to the State, instead of solving the collectivist tendencies of crony capitalism (which tends toward all ownership by a tiny oligarchy) you've just intensified them (essentially giving the state a monopoly on ownership.
Thus I'm now drifting towards distributism, which insists on an absolute right to at least *enough property ownership to provide for each individual's needs* between conception and natural death.
Thus my sig line:
Not a true Scotsman is an appeal to authority fallacy. It's pretty easy to prove that atheists don't believe in a God, and therefore have *NO* objective control for their morality.
Fact and logic are also appeals to authority. A fact isn't a fact unless it's been personally experienced, and logic is just a bunch of rules somebody made up for thinking.
Both are about as real as an unobserved guy who allegedly loves you, so I'm not surprised you believe in such things.
"What authority does it appeal to, exactly?"
Russel, of course.
"It works just as well for any object one cannot imagine existing outside our observable range. Including (but not limited to) teapots, 8-track tape recorders and Natalie Portman's underwear.
And non-tangible gods."
Doesn't matter- all human knowledge that is not gained in firsthand experience is an appeal to authority, and is therefore illogical.
No, I don't specifically have a problem with something that is falsifiable. I have a problem with appeals to authority by people who have no idea what the heck they're talking about.
What, exactly, is the difference between a spirit and a God? In Christianity, there is no difference. In Hinduism, there is no difference. In Shamanism, there is no difference. In science, which can't prove or disprove the existence of either, there is no difference.
""Burden of Proof" refers to the fact that the person who claims something for which he or she has no tangible evidence and said claim is well beyond common sense has to provide the proof. Other people don't have to proove shit."
Which is based on rules for logic, which is in turn based on a variety of philosophic theories from- Authorities in the field.
Thus it is an appeal to authority.
Those predictions are just models and are very fallible. It's like the problem with trying to convince a conservative that global warming is happening when you can't even predict the weather correctly.
But nothing in how science makes predictions assures you that those predictions will be correct- at all. A theory is just a model based on what has *already occurred*. Theories are remarkably good at predicting the past, but are very bad at predicting the future.
"Science also observes time, and thus goes beyond "already"."
You have a way of measuring the future? Can you give me a link to it?
And without experimentation, you have no science.
The geological record is as flawed as a historical record is. Both are appeals to authority based on ideas that can be falsified.
But did you know that atheists were full of shit before anybody told you? And how do you know, since your memory only goes back to age 3 or so, and you were told a lot of things before that?
Russel's Teapot is an Appeal to Authority and therefore a logical fallacy.
"So, you believe in a lying god who would create an "old" earth?"
Not necessarily, but I don't have any evidence that I can point to. After all, I do believe in a God who seems to think Killing People Praying to Him in Church With an Earthquake is a Good Thing, so obviously his definition of what is a "lie" is different than mine.
" In that case, why do you believe he did it ~10,000 years ago vs just a few moments ago?"
I don't.
"Burden of Proof" is just another appeal to authority.
"Isn't it troubling to you that your argument applies as well to Santa Claus, Superman and Waxanaman (whom I just now made up) as it does to God? "
No it doesn't- because *all of those exist*. Just in a different meaning of the word "existence" than you are used to.
"Then apply that to The Flying Spaghetti Monster (look it up). "
Which *also* exists. For a better understanding, please read _The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul_ by Douglas Adams (who incidentally, was an atheist who hit upon some very, very, very important truths about religion because he got over being mad at God and actually *listened to people*).
"By the same token, there are many other religions in the world whose ideas directly conflict with yours (and have precisely the same amount of evidence: an old book purported to be nonfiction and a group of people that have practiced that religion for a long time)"
Except my religion is Roman Catholicism, which WROTE THE BOOK and KNOWS IT TO BE A MERE WORK OF MAN and not the end of all knowledge (heck, we even put in there, at the end of the Gospel of John, that it isn't the end-all-be-all of knowledge; and STILL the fundamentalists came to pass!).
"Well sure, but what we have done, many thousands of times, is completely shred any and all myths of that magician's supposed tangible work."
Except you haven't- which is why believers outnumber atheists by the *billions*. Evangelical Atheism is such an absolute failure that it calls into question the predictive ability of destroying myth. See the Island of Bali Agricultural Revolution for a particularly striking example of why Evangelicalism, theist or atheist, is a failure (a very good example how the local Lake Goddess had better science than the scientists!)
"So no, you don't generally try to disprove the existence of something for which there is total lack of evidence for in the first place. But that doesn't mean science is entirely unsuitable for dealing with bizarre superstitions."
Except, of course, that it is not only unsuitable, but has been a spectacular FAILURE at it.
Perhaps your problem is with the definition of loving.
The mistake you've made is that you exclude the holy books from 'observable reality'. They wouldn't exist if somebody didn't observe, and make a conclusion, about *something*. The problem is, when you have an incomplete description of what that something is, it's pretty damn hard to recreate the experiment.
" I have a gut feeling that "apatheists" significantly outnumber those who specifically believe there is/are no god(s). "
Demographics easily proves you wrong on that one. In fact, if you add up the numbers of all believers in the world, you end up with roughly 6/7ths of the world's population. Don't forget the third world in your calculations, where local household gods are still prevalent.
"I've never met a gnostic atheist that wouldn't accept a God that physically manifested before their eyes in an undeniable manner. "
Really? I've met ones who HAVE. In fact, most of the ones who aren't hermits have.
Have you ever bothered to read any Buddhist scriptures? Like the Tibetan Book of the Dead, it's full of gods- it's just that they're all described as devils.