How do you beat an atheist in a debate?

Exo000 said:
I also have a question about how to beat a theist in a debate... but i know im better off not asking so.... peace! no more debate

GrandTemplar said:


It will happen when BETA eat all mankinds.

Olwen said:


What a stupid thing to say. Is genocide, what God did in the Bible, good for humanity?

icirate said:

Left unchecked, most humans will outbreed themselves into a situation where they must either fight to the death or starve.
So, yes. It can be a good thing for God to do in the long run try not to mince my words. Now assume that God isn't real and tell me why it's necessarily wrong to kill a lot of people no matter what, including for such aims as defending your nation and/or people.

Olwen said:


God did genocide back when there was no danger of overpopulation, lol. Try again.

Olwen said:
God did genocide back when there was no danger of overpopulation, lol. Try again.

icirate said:

You realise that we're only able to exist in such vast numbers today because of insane improvements to agriculture, right? Overpopulation isn't a simple equation of people/space. It has other factors, one of primary importance being the availability of food and water. So yes, they in all likelihood were overpopulated regions.

damastah said:

Context: Numbers 31:16
"Behold, these caused the sons of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, so the plague was among the congregation of the LORD"
So people can utilize the death penalty on criminals but God can't on heathen?

icirate said:

You realise that we're only able to exist in such vast numbers today because of insane improvements to agriculture, right? Overpopulation isn't a simple equation of people/space. It has other factors, one of primary importance being the availability of food and water. So yes, they in all likelihood were overpopulated regions.

Olwen said:


God ordered them to kill the innocent women and children. Try again.

Zebezian said:


I'n not quite sure what you mean by "innocent," but all have fallen short of God through sin, whether it is Original or personal.

Romans 3:23 - all have sinned and are deprived of the glory of God.

Romans 6:23 - For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Jesus Christ had not come to Earth yet, but it still makes clear that the penalty for sin is death. That's plain as day in Genesis as well. Those are just the verses I found off-hand.

Even if you still tried to argue that "women and children are innocent," God is still the author of life, who has given each person their life completely as a gift. Nobody can say they are entitled to live a single second longer than they have already. Men are not the masters of how long they live. God is free to take anybody's life whenever and however he wills, including through other people. Besides, if people lived forever, they would not be able to pass on into eternity, which is the final calling for everybody.

God is still the author of life, who has given each person their life completely as a gift. Nobody can say they are entitled to live a single second longer than they have already. Men are not the masters of how long they live. God is free to take anybody's life whenever and however he wills, including through other people. Besides, if people lived forever, they would not be able to pass on into eternity, which is the final calling for everybody.

icirate said:

Every time a nation's people reject God and try to improve upon the morality of Christianity, that very nation slowly falls apart. That, for me, is an incredibly powerful piece of evidence that suggests that the Bible is worth taking seriously and believing. The reasons for my belief are plural, but that aspect of it is a very strong piece of evidence, and one that will slowly show itself to be a stronger piece of evidence as time passes on.


Shaky ground? It survived relentless persecution for hundreds of years and became an official religion of the state and has been such for many nations ever since.
The deterioration is the product of many many things: A consequence of millions of the most courageous men of these nations dying in several world wars; secondly from the following generations using the potential for sexual liberation thanks to the discovery of birth control as an excuse to turn their collective backs on the church; thirdly from the church turning away from its own values for the sake of modernisation (an unbelievably stupid idea that served only to alienate many of its own former devout believers); fourthly from the founding of many false Gods and religions which seek only to confirm their believer's selfish desires and delusions of persecution. These things don't have an official name that are agreed on. The still living Hitchens brother refers to them as 'Selfism', I think a more appropriate title for the irrational belief set that has inspired much of the misguided political activism around today is 'Equalism'.


You don't agree with them though. You think that they're archaic.


So according to you stealing is only wrong if it makes you feel bad to do so. No hard and fast rules.


Do you want me to find examples of Godless people that have killed for fun? Some humans lack empathy, others are empathetic at the wrong times and for the wrong reasons. As it is in Luke 19:10 - For the son of man is come to seek and save that which is lost.
People sometimes sin and hurt others without realising that they are doing so. Because of this, personal judgement alone isn't enough to lead a good life. Not everyone has the same sense of guilt, and not all people that feel guilty do so at the right times or for the right reasons.

Back to your quote, it's strange that you singled out 'killing for fun'. What about killing out of hatred? What about killing out of laziness or neglect? What about killing for justice or for revenge? I don't think it would be hard for you to explain away your own choice to murder someone after the fact if you had done so for whatever reason.

RedRoseFring said:
You keep on giving empty statements.
What makes causing unnecessary suffering to others fundamentally wrong? Because you feel so in your kokoro? The only thing I'm interested in is adequate reasoning from you, not empty platitudes. You go on to include a strawman that I won't even bother addressing.

No one is saying that you can't pretend you are acting morally, but having a legitimate basis to do so is a different thing. I can go around calling myself a cat because I can make purring noises, but that doesn't mean I'd have a legitimate basis to do so.

v8 said:
In a debate that involves the existence of god or of the supernatural, how do you convince the atheist of the existence of these concepts rather than have him deny them?


Edit: How do you prove god's existence to an atheist?

v8 said:
In a debate that involves the existence of god or of the supernatural, how do you convince the atheist of the existence of these concepts rather than have him deny them?


Edit: How do you prove god's existence to an atheist?

Altairius said:
I think unnecessary suffering is fundamentally wrong because all sentient life "agrees" with that, whether explicitly or not. Somehow that very easily seems like a more legitimate basis than a given ancient text (even a highly popular one).

Altairius said:
I don't adhere to Christianity, Selfism or Equalism. The closest would be Selfism, but to some degree everyone adheres to that.

Altairius said:
I never said I disagree with all morals espoused in the Bible. I just implied the Bible is an archaic basis for a worldview.

Altairius said:
Stealing is generally wrong and especially so when it harms the person who was stolen from more than it benefits others. People have to judge for themselves as to whether or not stealing is justified in a given situation. I think it's right that, in the current system, all thievery is against the law, so that it doesn't get out of hand and turn into anarchy, but a small amount of theft can be morally righteous.

Altairius said:
Even if personal judgment isn't always enough, that doesn't mean blindly adhering to ancient scripture is any better. Killing out of revenge [is] wrong. Killing for "justice" is a more vague, debatable idea.

Altairius said:
If the killing of someone will have a positive effect on the world, then it is justified.

Altairius said:
I think anyone in their right minds would agree with at least most of what I'm saying (and eventually all of it), and based on their own inherent sense of morality.

I don't know what "theist philosophers" you are referring to, but they do not sound like any such thing.

Most advocates of Divine Command Theory do not want to be stuck with the implication that cruelty could possibly be morally right, nor do they want to accept the implication that the foundations of morality are arbitrary.

The problem of evil remains a poor way to debate against god because it starts with the assumption that evil exists which automatically validates a standard that exists beyond humanity. There is no escaping that one, you are screwed in any argument either way.

The first being that God is only on the level of humans and is to be somehow judged as a human acting against another human. "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." All humans fail that qualification, only God then has the right to judge, and the judgement of any being who would dare call themselves perfect (or more aptly holy) will and must leave no room for sin or error.

But once we start taking into account God’s choices (e.g., to allow tsunamis, earthquakes, and starvation), then we are precisely where we began: we are forced to admit that we are incredibly ignorant about the ultimate good that results from any particular action, and we should be morally paralyzed. So, if God is commanding us to use our intuitions and moral reasoning ability, and if this is to be of any use in avoiding the arguments given in section 3, then the skeptical theist’s claim must be this: God tells us to use our intuitions and moral reasoning ability, except he also tells us that we are to ignore data that come from his own actions or inactions. But this position makes the general epistemological worry even more severe, for on what possible grounds can the skeptical theist claim to know that God has given us such a specific command?

The second problem is an epistemological worry that is more specific to skeptical theism. Whatever ordinary doubts we have concerning our ability to discern the word of God, skeptical theism multiplies those worries greatly. The skeptical theist’s official position is that we are like infants when it comes to understanding the vision of God. But if we can’t, in general, understand why God does what he does, then we should have no confidence in interpreting what we might otherwise take to be signs from him. In other words, skeptical theism gives us even more reason to doubt that we are correctly discerning the content of any message from God.

Altairius said:
Suffering is undesirable by definition. It's whatever a given sentient being does not want. That might take on different forms for different lifeforms, and I would not claim to know exactly what form another's suffering might take on. Yes, I think it's clear that everyone of sound mind acts in their own self-interest, or at least tries to.

Altairius said:
Killing for justice could be for a higher cause, not personal revenge. If killing a corrupt leader changes things for the better, then I see no reason it should not be done.

Altairius said:
There is a pretty big distance between that and killing at random for the sake of reducing overpopulation (though Yahweh kills for much less).

Altairius said:
Maybe that last part that you quoted was a bit arrogant, but the point was that people can reach these conclusions themselves and not need constant threat of divine punishment hanging over their heads.

Altairius said:


I think unnecessary suffering is fundamentally wrong because all sentient life "agrees" with that, whether explicitly or not. Somehow that very easily seems like a more legitimate basis than a given ancient text (even a highly popular one).

Olwen said:


Simply put, you don't know what you're talking about.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/divine-c/

Yes, most theist philosophers do not want to subscribe to Divine Command Theory, which is a horrible view.

Retarded counterargument. Religious people think morality exists. I don't believe good or evil actually exist, but I take for granted that religious people do, so I can still use the problem of evil argument. Assuming morality exists (like religious people do), I can show that God doesn't exist. Try again.

Scott Sehon (an atheist philosopher who defends the argument of evil) has a good response to this. He says that, if you accept that God has his own morality compared to human beings (because he's God), then human beings have absolutely no moral reason to take any action. It then becomes a great unknown if we should kill and cook our parents, for example. Do you think it's ethical to kill and cook our parents? I don't. But for God, it could be. We just don't know. So the ultimately ethical action might end up being to kill and cook our parents. How can we know what the right thing to do is, ever?

https://www.bowdoin.edu/faculty/s/ssehon/pdf/sehon-skeptical-theism.pdf

His reply is here:

Wut? Do you even read your own links? Right off the bat it states both classic and contemporary theist philosphers disagree with your statement: "The theory also has many defenders, both classic and contemporary, such as Thomas Aquinas, Robert Adams, and Philip Quinn."
I would be very well justified to say you don't know what you are talking about because even your own link disagrees with you.

Sharpen your reading comprehension. That statement is the view of the author that it carries those implications, but different people will see different implications because of their bias. It is clear this author has made the classic misunderstanding (disingenuous or otherwise) that punishing evil is evil itself.

You do realize the silliness of that statement? (Of course you don't). It can be very well turned around to say "I take for granted that God exists to conclude that God doesn't exist."

Bad response. It starts out with inexplicably declaring that God has his own morality. No one has made that claim, the claim is that the application of morality is different because of the inherent difference in state between God and humans. Just like punishment would not apply to an innocent person but a guilty one, but punishment itself is still part of morality.

icirate said:

You just classified altruism as insanity.


My point is that even if they can, most don't. It's not about a possible hypothetical, it's about reality. I'd argue that all don't, but we'll say most for the sake of argument.

RedRoseFring said:


So, the argument from majority/popularity? It was also majority belief of the Nazi party that killing non-Aryans was good, so did that legitimize that claim for Germany?
You'll have to come up with far better reasoning. It was also once majority opinion that conquering neighbouring tribes was "glorious".

Olwen said:

There are different versions of Divine Command Theory that don't fall pray to the objection that DCT justifies genocide. Those different versions are why it has so many defenders. Read the article in more detail, kay?

Bolded part: that's not what he said lol. Cruelty in general (towards anyone) can be justified as long as God does it. That's why DCT is so problematic.

If God exists, then God is evil and omnibenevolent. (take this for granted, I think this premise is true since I proved it in the problem of evil thread. Doesn't matter anyone since this is pure logic, and we're not arguing over the premises)

It's literally nonsense to say that the same morality applies differently to God and humans, because morality is universal: it applies equally to all living beings, lol. For example, if utilitarianism is true, then it's wrong to decrease the overall happiness in the world. If God can decrease the overall happiness in the world, and does so by allowing a natural disaster to happen, then what he did was wrong. Explain to me how utilitarianism can apply differently to God, such that his decreasing of the overall happiness in the world doesn't apply to him lol. Give me a good laugh will you?

Altairius said:


You're comparing the majority opinion of a specific (particularly screwed up) political regime with something categorically true of all life. It's not even a matter of majority. Also, you'll notice that the whole Nazi thing died off pretty quickly. That's because their views were wrong. Let me know when people start liking suffering (different from liking pain, but I probably don't need to say that).

ZA_WAYD said:


and u know this how exactly ??!!

SweetLoli said:
Just say "because faith" then reject everything they say, it makes them angry.

Altairius said:
I think unnecessary suffering is fundamentally wrong because all sentient life "agrees" with that, whether explicitly or not.(snip) something categorically true of all life.

A "different version" that contradicts the very nature of what is being discussed is not a different version at all, it is a different thing entirely.

That is still a disingenuous definition of cruelty. Is it cruelty to prevent the murderer from taking another victim? The murder certainly feels pain and dissatisfaction from being unable to carry out their plan, and if you use physical constraints, that's even more pain. That is the essence of what he was trying to espouse. cruelty to evil does not fall under the negative connotation the author was trying to suggest.

And that remains your main problem. You have proved no such thing and were actually countered by several different people that showed the absurdity in your conclusions. Now you pat yourself on the back when the only person you have convinced on anything is yourself, and you were already convinced of it even before entering any argument. Nothing could be more absurd.

Doesn't matter anyone since this is pure logic, and we're not arguing over the premises

I don't care about silly ideologies like utilitarianism which is just another facet of majority rule/ad populum.
It is silly in itself to think that morality does not apply differently to different classes of being. Should innocent people receive punishment which is a moral action? If not, you agree that morality by necessity must be different in application depending on the state of the person in question. It is moral to jail a criminal, but that morality does not apply to an innocent person. In the same way, humans err while God does not, so morality will obviously not apply to both in the same way.

Olwen said:


Lol HAHAHAH. There are different versions of Pokemon, but they're all still Pokemon games.

Irrelevant, because DCT can be used to justify cruelty to good as well.

I love how you bolded what I said and conveniently ignored the next sentence.

Different versions of utilitarianism (OMG NO THERES NO SUCH THING AS DIFFERENT VERSIONS) can account for this lol. For example, in desert-adjusted utilitarianism, it can be justified to punish someone who "deserves" it by doing a lot of actions to decrease overall utility in their lives. No problem at all.

I'm just going to ignore you after this post.

MorsPulchra said:


Because humans created religion and therefore created the concept of god, it's not all that really hard to disprove his existence if you have an inkling of knowledge about humankind's past.

Fuck I just disproved it only following a logical thought process, I didn't need some fancy scientific thesis to figure it out. That being said there is no point in arguing about ANYTHING with anybody, the headline should actually read;

"How do you convince a human that his opinion of something may be wrong?"

This isn't exclusive to the theist v. atheist debate, it's relevant to every facet of human nature to not want to admit faults in ourselves and our actions. It creates doubt of your identity which is extremely hard for some most people to deal with.

You can go ahead and argue with this post, but you're only wasting your time.

RedRoseFring said:


Don't be absurd. It doesn't apply to all life like you yourself have already exemplified with the nazis. Therefore, the only argument you are bringing here is it is true of most life which is still a failed argument from majority/popularity. That means that what the majority decides is right and the minority is wrong. At one time it was majority opinion that the Earth had corners, did that make it right?
At the same time, your argument defeats itself because it is majority opinion that God exists, therefore you are wrong to think otherwise. Try again and bring more adequate reasoning this time.

katsucats said:
Are you saying that all sentient creatures, even non-social species, even people with higher ideals (as most humans probably do) consciously agree that "unnecessary suffering" (what's necessary?) is wrong? For one, no true Christian could believe this because there is nothing unnecessary under God's creation.

Or are you saying that all sentient creatures somehow "agree" with this unconsciously, just from a biological/empathetic perspective? In this latter case, it is a naturalistic fallacy, wherein you are conflating an automatic, naturalistic, non-rational process with an understanding. If morality only applies to sentience, then it is contradictory to take this sentience out of the equation for what people "agree" with.

_Charl said:


Then, humans are god? You are amusing.

ibrahim2712 said:
But when you realize the ego for what it is, you realize that we are all interconnected, and we are all God.

Zebezian said:


Could you elaborate on this, especially the bolded part?

Altairius said:
I don't think acting in one's self-interest is incompatible with altruism, or rather (and I know this sounds like a cynical view, but I don't really think it is), no one acts altruistically unless they feel it to be in their self-interest.

Altairius said:
Is the white writing the voice of God?

Altairius said:
If they can [act for the sake of others out of enjoyment] then that means humanity itself can, and therefore it is possible that at some point, all will.

Altairius said:
It's a fact that some people follow a rigorous ethical code without believing in God. It's the ultimate in cynicism to say that no one could possibly be morally righteous without the threat of punishment.

Altairius said:
Anyway, is it wrong to kill because God says so?

icirate said:


Yes.

v8 said:

Edit: How do you prove god's existence to an atheist?

Yabai said:
How would you possibly go against your own volition?

Yabai said:
Retarded reply.
Self-sacrifice is of your own volition.
It doesn't address my question.