Originally posted by Suzianne
This is a cop-out. You create rules for yourself and you claim that these rules deny you the ability to choose. But by creating the rules, you have already chosen. You claim there is no free will so that at the end of things, you can try to claim, "But I did not realistically have a choice!" You are trying to avoid the responsibility for your own decisi ...[text shortened]... hosen, despite your fervent wish that you really have no choice. And you have chosen... poorly.
This is a cop-out. You create rules for yourself and you claim that these rules deny you the ability to choose. But by creating the rules, you have already chosen. You claim there is no free will so that at the end of things, you can try to claim, "But I did not realistically have a choice!" You are trying to avoid the responsibility for your own decisions
It's really not a cop out. It's a perfectly valid logical argument refuting your position.
And no amount of stamping you foot and "screaming Nuh-uh!" will change that.
How about instead of trying to second guess my motives and failing miserably you actually deal with the substance of
my arguments. The discussion will be both much more civil and much more productive.
And that people consistently deny proven facts, is true. And I accounted for it. I said, "If His existence were proven, then we could not choose to not believe it, just as we cannot choose to believe that the Earth is flat, unless, of course, we are either stupid or just stubborn." Facts are facts, even if you try to play the game of denying facts, which, as I said, makes one either stupid or stubborn.
I fail to understand how it is that you cannot understand that this positively proves your position wrong.
IF it were true, that we did have free will but that free will was destroyed by being presented with irrefutable facts
that FORCED people to believe them then it would be IMPOSSIBLE for ANYONE to fail to believe facts that have
been sufficiently proven.
You yourself gave examples [and we gave more] where people clearly do fail to believe facts that have been sufficiently
proven. Thus proving that it cannot be the case that presenting people with proof removes their free will.
And please, when you talk to me about God and choice and belief, do not insult me with trivia about how many gods people have believed in over time. Neither you nor I believe in any of these supposed "gods". Mentioning them is just vanity. "Look how many gods I don't believe in!"
No, it's not vanity, it's at the very heart about what YOU do not understand about atheism.
You truly do not understand that as an atheist I am not defined with respect to Christianity and belief in an incorrectly
capitalised Christian "God" singular.
Atheism is about not believing in the existence of ANY god or gods.
I bring up those other religions and other gods because I really genuinely truthfully honestly and absolutely see no reason
at all to privilege YOUR religion and god [that I also don't believe in] over ANY other gods or religions from any period of
history.
For your argument to have any merit or weight you must give some VALID justification for selecting YOUR god and YOUR
religion out of the hundreds or thousands on offer to believe in 'based on faith'.
For you to claim that "of course we have a choice it says so here in the bible" you first have to give me some reason to
give a flying [fish] what it says in the bible. Because, and I will say this again and again until it sinks in,
I DO NOT BELIEVE
THAT YOUR GOD EXISTS OR THAT YOUR RELIGION IS REAL.
I thus have no reason at all to think that ANYTHING written in the bible is true because it is in the bible. [obviously not
everything in the bible is false, but that which is true is not true because it is in the bible]
............
Look.
I would like to carry this discussion forwards, not because I think I am going to change your mind about whether your god
exists because I don't.
But because you clearly do not understand my/our position or point of view and it's clearly causing conflict.
[And it's entirely probable that I don't understand your point of view as well as I could either].
However, coming to understand [if not agree with] each others position will never happen if every time someone makes an
argument the response is an attempt to guess the motivations behind the argument rather than dealing with the argument itself.
I do not know what your motivations are, and I am not trying to guess, which is why I am trying to deal with the arguments
you make to try to make your case. You however seem determined to second guess my motivations for posting and why I think what
I think and you are getting it wrong every single time.
Why not simply ASK what I/we think and why and try to understand what I/we say instead of making it up and arguing against
your own strawman.
You will find yourself feeling a lot less besieged if you do that, in addition to it being the right thing to do.