As long as the fight is remains with the "non-existent" God, I predict it will take a lot to bend those knees. We just happened to be in the line of fire between him and God is all I really see.
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Steve..did you raed this article?
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Existence exists--and the act of grasping that statement implies two corollary axioms: that something exists which one perceives and that one exists possessing consciousness, consciousness being the faculty of perceiving that which exists.
If nothing exists, there can be no consciousness: a consciousness with nothing to be conscious of is a contradiction in terms. A consciousness conscious of nothing but itself is a contradiction in terms: before it could identify itself as a consciousness, it had to be conscious of something. If that which you claim to perceive does not exist, what you possess is not consciousness.
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If something is arbitrary, it cannot exist.
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What would you say to the idea that since you started by saying that you have Three Proofs of the non-existence of God that the burden of proof in this context is in fact on you?
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It seems a very odd thing to now retreat behind the burden of proof after you have in fact made a positive assertion and claimed that you have proof.
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You state that you have responded to all arguments which you do not find to be fallacious, however, on the surface, it appears that you have only responded to those that you thought you could have some success against.
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Secondarily, as the person making a defending an assertion, which, in this context, you are, it is your duty to point out the fallacies in the counterarguments.
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I would specifically ask that you reply to the Librarian's arguments, which you have failed to deal with at all.
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What is the source of all true knowledge? Inductive conclusions that come directly from perceiving reality.
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Intrincisism: A claim about some aspect of reality put forth a priori, independent of any evidence.
(There two kinds: ethical and metaphysical. This is my own definition for the metaphysical.)
Faith: “Faith” designates blind acceptance of a certain ideational content, acceptance induced by feeling in the absence of evidence of proof. (Leonard Peikoff)
What Objectivism takes on faith: Nothing. “No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the sum of his knowledge.” (Ayn Rand)
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Argumentum ad ignorantiam, or argument from ignorance: “Arguments of this form assume that since something has not been proven false, it is therefore true. Conversely, such an argument may assume that since something has not been proven true, it is therefore false.” Examples: “Since you cannot prove that ghosts do not exist, they must exist.” “There is a pink elephant in my room.” Let’s develop this last one a bit:
“But I don’t see any pink elephant!”
“It’s invisible.”
“But elephants are not invisible!”
“This is a special elephant made in a lab.”
“But we don’t know how to make matter invisible.”
“This is a brand new technology developed in a top-secret lab.”
“But living matter can’t just be made invisible like that.”
“It can’t? Prove it.”
“OK, there is no particle with property X, etc, etc”
“This is a new particle….”
And so on and so on. You can see why you can never disprove an arbitrary assertion and must simply dismiss it.
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Before I go on to the arguments, let me remind you why the burden of proof must be on the theist. As the fallacy of the argument from ignorance shows, it is possible to make any number of arbitrary claims about pink elephants, gods, ghosts, etc. It’s impossible and unnecessary to disprove arbitrary claims because their proponent can continue to invent more arbitrary “proofs” backed up by yet more arbitrary “proofs” ad infinitum. In order to prove the existence of a thing, you must present positive evidence for it.
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To reiterate, there are two arguments I present: first and primary, I don’t have to disprove God, I simply have to show that he is arbitrary, just like ghost, and pink elephants. If something is arbitrary, it cannot exist. Second, we can know that no God is possible because a god by definition is a being with a consciousness, yet without a physical nature. This argument is more complex, and may be too abstract for this forum.