Re: "Intelligent" designer? Puh! Pathetic designer, more like.

For f*ck's sake.

What part of FALSIFIABLE CONCLUSION are you too stupid to understand?

Here's a clue: they're merely part of somebody else's religion.

No proof is needed. The normal approach to the world, an approach that has been successful for a long time, is to ignore all claims about the supernatural that cannot be supported by evidence. If you ever have evidence that some gods are real, we can reconsider the tentative conclusion that there are no gods because there is no evidence for gods.

If anyone were to prove that _their_ god exists, then this site would not be needed:

That's not good enough. The assertion is "God's aren't" (real). That is an assertion which we all know perfectly well cannot be proven thus should not be made.

Now, if the writer said, "I don't *believe* Gods are real" then that is statement of belief and needs no proof.

You see, I know at least one kind of thing that I call God *is* real and therefore the writer was mistaken and his logic flawed; especially since in this thread not much has been said about what *kind* of God is or is not real. My grandmother had a nice little collection of gods, some from Tahiti I think they were -- no, Fiji. She went to Fiji and brought home Tiki gods. They were very real. Handled them myself, don'tcha know.

I don't believe in gods. That's it.

I know there is no evidence for them. I will be happy to prove that God does not exist to your satisfaction as soon as you prove to your satisfaction that the tooth fairy does not exist.

Nope. The normal default position about all claims that cannot be supported is that the claim is invalid.

Wonderful. Meaningless in the context of this conversation, but I'm glad you got to touch them.

"Forgotten were the elementary rules of logic, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and that what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."

--Christopher Hitchens, Slate.com, 20 Oct 2003

Not good enough. Since gods are nothing but characters from mythologies, there is no more need to prove they do not exists than there is to prove that manticores do not exist. Gods aren't entities that might exist out there somewhere, they're myths.

Since I did not make the positive claim, I have no need to provide any proof. And, as said earlier, that which is presented without evidence, or proof, can be dismissed without evidence, or proof.

Your belief in gods, or your imagining gods, does not make them real.

You forget that in their minds it is real, absolutely obvious, unquestioned etc.

Not believing in it is orders of magnitude more unreasonable than not believing in the Sun or the planet Earth.

Because it is supposed to be orders of magnitude more self-evident, important etc than these.

In their minds "prove it doesn't exist" is like "prove the Sun doesn't exist". Only much, much more unreasonable.

And we're the village idiots because of that. Which is at the heart of much of their nastiness towards us.

When logic or anything else demonstrates the Sun isn't really there, it gets rejected. Like the logic that "proves" 1 + 1 = 1.

If it produces an obviously wrong conclusion. it gets thrown away.

Even when they can't understand why it is wrong. Because this understanding has also been thrown away.

Which is why they can't use the same tools, methods, rules etc they use for everything else, on God. And why they don't really trust them anywhere else. The tools are simply wrong when it comes to God.

So they are incapable of using the normal rules of logic, evidence etc.

Therefore nobody else can.

Good point. If they refuse to abide by the rules of logic, why should we?

For f*ck's sake. There is no symmetry. And it is your straw man.

There are hundreds of different religions each with its own god .

And a real world where all these are just religious beliefs.

Somebody else's religious beliefs.

Why not address that instead of inventing straw men about those outside your religion?

Why imagine that somebody's inside their-religion presumptions even apply to people outside it, to the point of inventing positions people outside it doin't even have?

There's as much symmetry inthe real world between believing it and not believing in th god of somebody else's religion, as there is between believing the Starship Enterprise is real and not believing it.

Every sane person knows the Starship enterprise is a construct of man - a fictional story.

Nobody "knows" except as a personal faith, which is not really acceptable as "knowledge" that any god is or is not real.

So what?

Is it really so hard to understand that this is what gods are to everybody else except their believers?

Whether they are Zeus, Odin, Mithras, God, Osiris or any of the thousands of others.

To everybody else apart from their believers there is no difference from the Star Trek analogy.

Was it really so far over your head?

Yes, it's impossibly hard. How can I look on someone's God as a work of fiction when I have no absolute knowledge of it/him/her. I can only say of their God that I don't know if the god is real or unreal.

You are limited in your consideration. Why do you even bother to have a negative opinion of others' gods? Do you deny a god's right to appear through the ages with a changing persona befitting their social, political and economic times?

No, your comments are considerably too low for me to completely fathom.

Lokk up "straw man" before embarrassing yourself again,

Why the personal lie instead of acknowledging the real world?

Translation: it was way over your head.

I don't need to lokk it up, I'm well aware of the meaning, which doesn't explain why you ask, unless you are now trying to extricate yourself from your posts by saying you didn't mean what you said, "it was just for effect."

What lie? Do you have first hand knowledge of what God may do or not do?

If it helps you feel better........

How do you "know" that? Have you spoken to every person on the Earth? Or are you omniscient?

Then why have you been attacking straw men?

Was it some other liar also called "Dan Bowey" who said "You are limited in your consideration. Why do you even bother to have a negative opinion of others' gods? Do you deny a god's right to appear through the ages with a changing persona befitting their social, political and economic times?"?

Another of your lies.

All because you haven't the courtesy to grasp that gods don't mean the same outside the religions of their believers that they do inside.

So you invent things they disn't say, and positionsa they don't have in order to attack them.

That may be suitable for you, but not me. The very concept of gods is squarely rooted in mythology. If you pull the god out of the mythology, it dies.

Why not? Humanity needs to wean itself from the security blankets of gods and start moving forward.

Since gods are only characters in a myth, they have no rights.

He knows what everybody's point of view is, better than they do themselves.

After all, he's a Christian.