Youtube Atheist Movement

[Kamakazie Sith]

Also, Richard Dawkins doesn't make that argument because he doesn't have to, and not because it can't be done.

[Superman]

Uh oh... Don't do it you guys! Don't do what I did! NOOOOO!!!!

I think you're not realizing, like I did, that he's not saying what you think he's saying. He's not saying anything that contradicts what you, molyneux, are saying. It's just that you think he's saying what he's not saying. See what I'm saying?

Look, just think of it this way. As atheists, do we go around saying "THERE IS NO GOD AND WE KNOW IT AS AN ABSOLUTE FACT?" No, not usually... We just make our case about why god is probably not real... They make all the 'but god is real' claims, and we offer evidence to refute them.

[Rye]

The argument should focus on how it's sensible to conclude tentatively that gods are imaginary; you cannot prove there are no gods due to most of them being unfalsifiable.

[Durandal]

You make the claim, you supply the evidence. If you can't, don't be surprised when people don't take you seriously. If you've tailored your claim in such a way that it's impossible to disprove, also, don't be surprised when people don't take you seriously.

[Keevan_Colton]

Yes, if you state you can prove there is no god it then falls to you to back up that statement.

Since it's impossible to prove a negative, and fallacious to expect someone to, anyone that claims they can clearly doesn't have a very good grasp on logic. That doesn't mean they have to prove a deity's non existence. The burden of proof still rests on the believer.

You can prove negatives, that's like logic 101, dude, proof by negation. If a binary switch is on 1, it is not on 0. You have proven it is not on 0 if it's on 1.

Except not everything can be proved by negation, since not everything has some other position that excludes it.

Though you can prove by negation most notions of god dont exist until you get to the one that is defined in terms that can never be tested. At which point it's bloody useless anyway.

You can prove by negation that there isnt an all powerful, all loving, all knowing god by simple examination of the world. Suffering, cruelty and so on exist, therefore that proposed god doesnt.

You can prove that Zeus doesnt live on mount olympus by going there and looking...it goes on like that.

Proof by negation only works when something is defined in such a way that there are definite things which would disprove it. That's why science needs things to be falsifiable, so that proof by negation can be done.

[Molyneux]

How about this:

There are a theoretically infinite number of gods.
Most of these are mutually exclusive; you can't have a universe with BOTH Valhalla and the Christian Heaven (unless some or all of the holy text lie, which would invalidate them).
Given the lack of real-world evidence, all of the possible gods are equally (im)probable.

Therefore, the probability of any given god existing is close enough to nil that we may state that it is functionally zero.

Good?

[mr friendly guy]

1. What the hell is possibly an atheist fundie?

Usually when we use the term fundie in describing religious people, we mean they adhere to the fundamentals of their religious dictates in their holy book. For the atheist equivalent, the only dictate is not to believe in God. By that definition all atheists are fundamentalists.

Some people are using the term to describe atheists who take it on faith. That description pretty crap, since atheism is a lack of belief, rather than a belief in a negative. Hence one does not need faith to take the default position to not believing, its simple logic. Moreover, its a dictate of most religions to trust their holy book on faith (hence its reasonable by definition to expect religious fundamentalists to have this characteristic). No such equivalent dictate can be found in atheism, so its unreasonable to expect an "atheist fundamentalist" to show that characteristic.

2. Prove that God doesn't exist.

In response I use as a joke Rye's magic dragon

Which essentially uses their own "reverse the burden of proof" fallacy against them. It simply goes, my magic dragon killed God and ate him for breakfast. Prove my magic dragon doesn't exist. You can't, therefore God doesn't exist.

[Surlethe]

If you can prove that there is no god, then you're WAAAAAAAY smarter than prominent atheists like Richard Dawkins and others. Even they (if they're honest) don't say they can definitively prove their is no god; they just say there's no evidence for one and the odds in his favor are astronomically small. I paraphrased Dawkins above - he's not even the most prominent atheist, but he's the most relevant at the moment given his recent book: The God Delusion.

In practice, there is no distinction between "very, very, very probably true" and "true". This is the entire basis of science: that we can discover to a very small percentage of error the nature of objective reality. There's always an error term in any applied calculation; by analogy, there's a small probability of error in the assessment that God doesn't exist. When, for example, someone says "That beam is five meters long", you could correct him and say, "That beam is 5±0.062 m long": you're technically right, but you're only being pedantic.

Dawkins is being technically correct, and I daresay that his (and your) version of the statement of atheism is pedagogically more useful, since it includes the sufficient conditions for the conclusion, but there's really no distinction between very probably true and actually true.

[Rye]

Except not everything can be proved by negation, since not everything has some other position that excludes it.

I know this, however, proof by negation disproves the notion that negatives can't be proven. Hell, the phrase "you can't prove a negative" is pretty undermining of its own position.

You can prove that Zeus doesnt live on mount olympus by going there and looking...it goes on like that.

No you can't, that'd be an equivocation of "prove," Zeus' residence on olympus being observable isn't required for it to exist. An observable residence has been disproven, sure, an imperceptible god concept is fine.

[Keevan_Colton]

You arent proving the negative though Rye, you're proving a different positive proposition that is mutually exclusive. You still dont prove the negative itself.

[Big Phil]

If you can prove that there is no god, then you're WAAAAAAAY smarter than prominent atheists like Richard Dawkins and others. Even they (if they're honest) don't say they can definitively prove their is no god; they just say there's no evidence for one and the odds in his favor are astronomically small. I paraphrased Dawkins above - he's not even the most prominent atheist, but he's the most relevant at the moment given his recent book: The God Delusion.

In practice, there is no distinction between "very, very, very probably true" and "true". This is the entire basis of science: that we can discover to a very small percentage of error the nature of objective reality. There's always an error term in any applied calculation; by analogy, there's a small probability of error in the assessment that God doesn't exist. When, for example, someone says "That beam is five meters long", you could correct him and say, "That beam is 5±0.062 m long": you're technically right, but you're only being pedantic.

Dawkins is being technically correct, and I daresay that his (and your) version of the statement of atheism is pedagogically more useful, since it includes the sufficient conditions for the conclusion, but there's really no distinction between very probably true and actually true.

You cannot disprove the existence of god any more than I can disprove the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster or Invisible Stalkers or Cha'ac, God of the Rain. You can state that god doesn't exist, you can state there is an extremely small probability that he exists (to the point that it's basically like saying he doesn't exist), but you cannot definitely say you can prove god doesn't exist with 100% certainty. It's a technicality, but it's an important technicality that a few people seem to have missed, and that's all I've been trying to point out. I myself don't believe in god, but I realize that I can neither prove his existence or non-existence absolutely.

[Keevan_Colton]

Yep, but it is not possible to disprove the existance of anything that isnt mutually exclusive with something else (ie. Zeus cant be on mount olympus because it's empty, the christian god described in the bible doesnt exist because it doesnt match the observed evidence, the all loving, all knowing, all powerful version of god doesnt exist either because the existence of evil is mutually exclusive with that model.)


Basically, once someone nails down some concrete properties of a god (other than the wonderful "beyond our ken" nonsense) then you can attempt to disprove it by showing something that is mutually exclusive exists. That's why the list of properties assigned to the pink unicorn usually include invisibility, intangability and general inability to be detected in any way, which means even if you were to be able to map out every single spec of mater and energy in the universe you wouldnt be able to use negation to disprove it, similarly you could never prove it either...although such a creature or entity would be completely unable to interact with the universe in any fashion and thus in a materialistic view would not exist.

[Rye]

You arent proving the negative though Rye, you're proving a different positive proposition that is mutually exclusive. You still dont prove the negative itself.

It's the exact opposite, it's inherently inclusive to the process of proving a positive statement. In any given positive proof, you create a tautological negative statement too that is just as proven.

[Keevan_Colton]

You arent proving the negative though Rye, you're proving a different positive proposition that is mutually exclusive. You still dont prove the negative itself.

It's the exact opposite, it's inherently inclusive to the process of proving a positive statement. In any given positive proof, you create a tautological negative statement too that is just as proven.

Yes, but only the positive half can provide the proof. There's that old chestnut about lack of evidence.

Lack of proof and the proof of something mutually exclusive are after all leagues apaprt.

[Darth Wong]

The argument should focus on how it's sensible to conclude tentatively that gods are imaginary; you cannot prove there are no gods due to most of them being unfalsifiable.

That's the dumbest fucking thing I've heard since the last time I talked to a fundie. This is like saying that we can only tentatively declare that Santa Claus doesn't exist. Or the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Except not everything can be proved by negation, since not everything has some other position that excludes it.

I know this, however, proof by negation disproves the notion that negatives can't be proven.

Only if you take the phrase too literally. The fact that you can create binary situations where you can prove something through negation has no bearing on the kinds of claims we're talking about.

[Keevan_Colton]

The argument should focus on how it's sensible to conclude tentatively that gods are imaginary; you cannot prove there are no gods due to most of them being unfalsifiable.

That's the dumbest fucking thing I've heard since the last time I talked to a fundie. This is like saying that we can only tentatively declare that Santa Claus doesn't exist. Or the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

As my father loves to point out, there's actually more logical reasons to believe in Santa and the Tooth Fairy than most other gods, after all when you're small there's tangible material evidence of them.

[Rye]

The argument should focus on how it's sensible to conclude tentatively that gods are imaginary; you cannot prove there are no gods due to most of them being unfalsifiable.

That's the dumbest fucking thing I've heard since the last time I talked to a fundie. This is like saying that we can only tentatively declare that Santa Claus doesn't exist. Or the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

I used the wrong word. The meaning I had in my head wasn't to imply any significant uncertainty with the conclusion (not beyond the normal for concluding imaginary things are probably imaginary), just the ability to change with new information. Same thing for Santa and spaghetti monsters, yes.

Only if you take the phrase too literally. The fact that you can create binary situations where you can prove something through negation has no bearing on the kinds of claims we're talking about.

I realise that. It's still a popular thing to claim that no negatives can be proven. Hell, last time this argument came up on here, Ender outright denied that binary switches could be proven to not be on 1.

[Ritterin Sophia]

I kind of admire some othe You tube Atheists, and I like the fact they are willing to speak up like that. Ill admit I find some videos like capn,o,awesome's and amazing atheist's a bit hard to stomache, but I enjoy them quite a bit.

I just like to watch CapnOAwesome for the Lawlz, The Amazing Atheist actually argues points abut things whilst giving you Lawlz.

[LeftWingExtremist]

I just like to watch CapnOAwesome for the Lawlz, The Amazing Atheist actually argues points abut things whilst giving you Lawlz.

I personally prefer people like angryatheist(ironic name to be honest), Nick Gisburne, and hardcaseowns. Their arguments seem to be a little more structured and a little easier to listen to. And I agree CapnOawesome is good for a laugh sometimes (the FSM preaching was hilarious). Ill admit I get a little annoyed by amazing atheists energeticness (and possibly his accent), but he can be funny and he makes a lot of good points.