The Burden of Proof

Sunday, December 25th, 2011

the US has few chritians? whaAaAat? let me show you a couple of figures, i took them off of wikipedia: a 2009 poll of more than 2000 US adults: 82% of them believe in (the christian) god, 76% believe in miracles, 75% in heaven, 73% that Jesus is the son of god, 72% in angels, 70% in the resurrection of Jesus. now for the scariest part: 45% believe in evolution, but more than 40% believe is creationism. i won’t bother with searching for figures from all around the world, but i
challenge you to find a more christian nation. hell, the official motto of your country has been “in god we trust” for like 50 years, and a couple of weeks ago your congress easily passed it AGAIN just to be extra-extra sure that it remains that way.

the burden of proof: as the teapot analogy shows (googled it: russel’s teapot), the burden of proof is on the one making a claim, because asserting that something exists just because the opposite cannot be proved is false. think about it. if i accuse someone of stealing something from me, he doesn’t become automatically guilty if he fails to prove his innocence, instead, it is me who have to prove that he is indeed guilty, which makes sense of course in the context of religions as well. if it didn’t, you would have no reason in the world to make fun of me for geniunely believing in santa claus, or even a magic penguin who has a donut factory in the middle of the earth, for there is noone who can conclusively disprove their existence. if you claim that something is the way it is, you are the one that has to prove it, not the one saying it is not that way, for obvious, practical reasons. this holds true to both philosophical and scientific arguments as well by the way.

“how come only positive arguments are subject to proving their point, and not negative ones?” it is this way because it is usable for anything humanity has ever dealt with. we’re using this model everywhere in our daily lives. this is the most sensible way to make sure that arbitrary claims do not get credit just because they are unfalsifiable, which, if you think about it, makes sense. suppose we used the opposite: if i accused you of something and you couldn’t prove that i’m wrong, you’d be automatically guilty. science would simply cease to exist, because all the absurd ideas would have to be accepted as plausible. enforcement of the law would become impossible; and so on. this is the most sensible way of reasoning, thus, we use this.

Christian Church Involvement in the U.S.

Sunday, December 25th, 2011

Well, so much for “ending” our discussion. Ha ha ha! Two things: first, you mentioned that the media is far from liberal and that America is full of Christians. Well, this lets me know how LITTLE you know about the U.S. Currently statistics show that any sort of Christian church involvement in the U.S. is at 4%. Unbelief is at an all-time high in this nation. Ah, yes, and we see the results of that now don’t we? (sorry, I just had to throw that in there….) Second, why should the burden of proof be on ME to prove the existence of God? why shouldn’t it be on YOU to disprove His existence?

Don’t judge others

Sunday, December 25th, 2011

Ok, addressing this: your cat: so if you take both the before and after diagnostics into the hospital and ask a non-religious medical professional, he will happily sign a paper that says “it is 100% sure that the cat was healed through a miracle by god, there is no other humanly possible explanation”? i highly doubt that. not having an explanation for something is not the same as having ready-made miracles. see, it is not enough to say “aha! you don’t know! it must be a miracle!”, but YOU are the one who should be able to prove it, because you’re making the claims. it’s called burden of proof.


You say that miracles have to be “proven”….why? You see, you have your very, very limited perspective on life. Everything has to fit into your small-minded boxed thinking. The very definition of a miracle is that it cannot be explained using scientific measures. That is a reality you refuse to accept because that’s outside your box. Whether you accept it or not, you have built a limited box that you can control and feel comfortable in, and anything that challenges that and doesn’t fit into YOUR definitions and YOUR parameters is wrong, stupid, foolish and those who live outside of your boxed-in way of thinking are too. You ask how you have judged…nearly everything you said in the most recent exchanges about others is a rash judgement. You, bottom line, call me stupid. That is making a judgement. You say I am foolish to believe in anything I cannot see. That is a judgement. A judgement says that this is right and this is wrong. You say belief in god is wrong, foolish and stupid. So, you have entered into the judgement room based on your reality which is anything that is not scientifically measurable is wrong and stupid. Your standard of truth is science, period. I know you will say that I have judged the muslim faith, now. You are right, I have. Does this mean I hate the people who adhere to this faith? Absolutely not. Do I believe they are stupid or foolish? Absolutely not. Do I believe you are stupid or foolish? Absolutely not. My deepest heart’s desire is to see them, you, and everyone through the eyes of the faith that my God put in my heart by His grace, and that is the eyes of love and mercy, seeing them as He sees them and loving them with the love of Jesus. I don’t judge you, Bence. I am looking at you objectively…this is what you think and believe and it is the man-centered, atheistic, naturalistic mind-set of so many who have shut-down the spiritual part of their beings. Personally, I love science and am completely fascinated by findings and discoveries…sometimes I wish I would have pursued medicine…and I’m excited when there are new discoveries because of MY starting point. I see it as the beautiful unfolding of God’s creation and creativity. You, on the other hand, are confronted with someone like me, who thinks a bit differently than you, and you judge me, calling me foolish and stupid for believing something that you don’t. I think it is fabulous that you have such a keen, astute mind; do I wish your spirit-man was more alive and awake and open to that which may never be scientifically explained? Sure, but I don’t call you foolish or stupid because you are not there.

Arbitrary claims

Sunday, December 25th, 2011

The mere existence of religion in our modern world baffles me so much that i cannot even begin to describe.

anyone who doesn’t think the way i do is wrong? where do i say that? i say anyone who believes in anything which is not supported by proof, and accepts it as fact is wrong, and that is not a stretch.

read this back: “you are clearly a very angry young man, which is evidenced by your discussion here of late, and you have been deeply hurt in life to have had to narrow your mind to the point of making rash judgements.”

me not being religious, or not having a relationship with god, and expressing that i strongly disagree with everything requiring faith is evidence that i’m deeply hurt? nope. my mind as i’ve said is totally open, but only for sensible arguments, devoid of any subjectivity. also, no rash judgements have been made on my part, but feel free to give an example of any judgements that i did not support with facts.

your cat: so if you take both the before and after diagnostics into the hospital and ask a non-religious medical professional, he will happily sign a paper that says “it is 100% sure that the cat was healed through a miracle by god, there is no other humanly possible explanation”? i highly doubt that. not having an explanation for something is not the same as having ready-made miracles. see, it is not enough to say “aha! you don’t know! it must be a miracle!”, but YOU are the one who should be able to prove it, because you’re making the claims. it’s called burden of proof.

example: (a widely-used example i might add) i believe that a teapot is orbiting the sun. will my belief become automatically validated if people cannot disprove it? of course not. it is me who should be able to prove it, because i’m the one making the claim. (needless to say, if i got many people to believe that the teapot was orbiting the sun, it would be called not delusion, but religion.)

bottom line: even if the doctors can’t tell why the cat’s kidney healed, it doesn’t automatically mean that it was a miracle. it should be proved that it was a miracle beyond the shadow of a doubt, because it is you who is saying that it is so.

limbs growing out: you couldn’t find medical evidence, because if it existed, medicine would be investigating those cases, and would finally come to some conclusion, which, yes, could be “miracle!”, but i have yet to see any of that, so the logical conclusion is that none of those cases you might find are sure to have been miracles, because they lack the needed objectivity for science to conclude that they were indeed that.

sorry for confusing religion with you relationship with god. still, it is you who makes arbitrary claims here. “[these deeds] were done by men under the influence of not God, even though they called it God…it was NOT of God” how. do. you. know? who told you? where is the evidence? anything of god bears good fruit? who told you that? it was either the bible, or you can feel it in yourself. neither of those are objective enough. it was the christian church, *the very representation of god on earth*, that did those things. you’re saying that the christian church is not following the true god, that it acted on behalf of some false one? so the christian church was simply wrong? elaborate on that please.

islam is a false religion. wow. just wow. millions believe in it, just as millions believe in christianity, or other religions. muslims think the same things about you as you think about them. they’re saying that people are turning away from other religions, and are starting to find the true one in allah. mohammed appears to christians in their dreams and commands them to follow him, for it is islam which is the true religion.
now i suppose you believe in the ten commandments of christianity. one of them is: you’re not supposed to have any gods other than me. you know what christians are supposed to do with people who don’t believe in god, according to the bible? oh yes, kill them. not even just kill, but STONE them to death. so christianity also has the “infidels must die” slogan, it just doesn’t call them infidels, and christians are not as keen on practicing it, but it is there.

now please pay close attention to the following bit:
i asked you the following question before, but i’ll ask it again, and if you stand by what you claim, you should have one hell of an answer in order not to contradict yourself.
can you name one experiment devoid of any subjectivity that will conclusively and objectively show that your religion is the true one, and the other ones are just lies and fabrications? a criteria: make it so that the experiment can be used towards proving the christian god and Jesus, but cannot be used towards proving other gods or prophets.

you can’t see it, can you. there is no such experiment. if there was, there would be no multiple religions. the very existence of multiple religions is the evidence (that’s the word i’m looking for in your arguments as well) that you simply cannot argue with religious people even with simple logic. believers will always, always come up with rationalizations to assure themselves that what they believe in is true, because if they didn’t, their decision of believing their own religion and not another one would make. no. sense. read that last sentence again, the logic is infallible. and that is not a selfish claim, it is *objectively* infallible.


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