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Originally Posted by photon
Why not believe in other Gods in the absence of contradicting proof? Why not believe in Zeus, there's no proof that Zeus doesn't exist.
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Why not indeed?
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Originally Posted by photon
You don't believe in God because there is no proof one way or the other, you believe in God for far different reasons (upbringing, influences in your life, personal experiences, etc).
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Wait... so the only way a person is able to believe in god is because of upbringing? Then how did we get in this mess in the first place? I think you're being a little too limiting in your argument here.
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Originally Posted by photon
They're just saying that you can't say "There's no proof there isn't a God so there must be"; that doesn't make sense logically. There's no proof there's an invisible dragon in my garage either, but no sane person would believe me if I tried to convince them of it without some proof.
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You're right, that doesn't make logical sense. But... I never said that. You're putting words in my mouth and then trying to shoot me down with them.
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Originally Posted by photon
You keep saying "beliefs", but it has nothing to do with belief. It's to do with what's proven. It is possible for something to be proven without having first hand experience of that proof. Or do you only ever trust a fact that you have personally proven??
So I take it that if your child had an infection then you wouldn't give them penicillin until you'd discovered it and done all the tests on it yourself?
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You don't understand what "belief" is then. The moment knowledge is transformed from physical sensation into cognitive thought, something has to be accepted blindly in order to "trust" the validity of the conclusion. So, I still insist that even scientific understanding requires a person to take a blind leap of acceptance at some point along the chain.
If my child has an infection, I'll take them to a doctor (one who is trained in human medicine) and consider their advice. If the advice is reasonable to me, I'll follow it. If not, I'll seek other recommendations. But I'm not sure what all this has to do with the topic at hand...
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Originally Posted by photon
Most atheists argue that there is no evidence for God, which is a very different thing than arguing against the existence of God. Most atheists would change their view if provided with evidence that there is a God.
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I don't see the difference. In arguing that there is no evidence for God, people are actively trying to deny the existence of god. I agree though that most atheists would change their mind with the presence of undeniable proof... but by the very concept of a god, that is impossible to attain.
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Originally Posted by photon
EDIT: And most would also agree that religion and science are describing two different things. The original topic of this thread was about people ignoring science and sticking with their religious views that they think contradict science.
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My point, again, was that atheists are nothing more then a different "religious" group trying to stake territory for their own belief system. Whether a person tries to justify their conception of reality using a religious text or scientific proofs makes no difference to the behavior of the people involved. A proper education involves exposure to any and all contradictory opinions and theories.
Atheists are just as guilty as any other group of trying to restrict knowledge to only that of which they approve.