Discussing athiesm today, how do I address this?

[Mempho]

Why spend time trying to refute theists?

[Splendour]

Btw, here's the link to the math paper guy's credentials.

http://www.math.sfu.ca/~jrg/

This is a very important question by the op...I hope everyone is seeking truth with a truly open mind not just getting caught up in winning an argument.

[vhawk01]

[ QUOTE ]
Why spend time trying to refute theists?

[/ QUOTE ]

Its a lot of fun and interesting and educational? Why spend time trying to refute Packers fans?

[vhawk01]

[ QUOTE ]
Btw, here's the link to the math paper guy's credentials.

http://www.math.sfu.ca/~jrg/

This is a very important question by the op...I hope everyone is seeking truth with a truly open mind not just getting caught up in winning an argument.

[/ QUOTE ]

As long as you have honest tactics, doing everything you can to win an argument is a pretty decent approach to education and learning. I've learned many challenging and important things because I spent hours and hours trying to refute them and realized I could not. The "honest tactics" caveat is very important, however, and I try my best.

[plzleenowhammy]

what is 'god' to a person who does not believe that '1' exists without humans?

if there were no human beings would that mean that there was no god or that there were many?

[bunny]

Implicit in this guy's view seems to be the belief that God couldnt do arithmetic until we arrived to show him how.

[Splendour]

If there are no humans then these questions are irrelevant.

[tame_deuces]

To the OP:

Debating with theists shouldn't be about winning or losing, and also - 'winning' a debate against theist who knows how to debate is impossible.

Actually there is a fun exercise you can do, next time you meet a diehard atheist you can debate with him like you were a liberal theist. And I promise you - there is absolutely no way you can lose that discussion, I've done this on occasion just for fun and it is greatly recommended to anyone simply because of the extreme hilarity that ensues.

I can almost guarantee you this outcome: Your simple, yet absolute, standpoint will infuriate the atheist to a feeding-frenzy, and since you ofcourse take the liberal standpoint any attacks on scriptures can be easily explained, anything science-related you can agree with and then you can return to the big absolutes. If you appreciare debate, it will be the best half hour of your debating life.

[Alex-db]

[ QUOTE ]
To the OP:

Debating with theists shouldn't be about winning or losing, and also - 'winning' a debate against theist who knows how to debate is impossible.


[/ QUOTE ]

This obviously isn't true. You might mean that 'winning' is impossible against a debater, or with an audience, that considers blind contradiction a valid tool.

Or unless you wouldn't consider it an atheist 'win' to push the theist's position into an acceptance that he believes in premises that make no material case suitable for intelligent debate.

Both are clearly 'atheist wins' to intelligent observers.

(edit - or unless to win you require undeniable 100% certain proof of position - again not required by intelligent pragmatic observers.)

[luckyme]

[ QUOTE ]
I reply, "The beauty that you see is merely the result of the interaction of mathematics and matter.

[/ QUOTE ]

The beauty that we see has nothing to do with math or matter interacting and it derails the analysis to go into that topic. We see beauty because we have evolved to react to certain visual settings as good and others as bad. The fact we can easily screw up what we're looking at ( such as thinking a poisoned lake is good(beautiful) does not detract enough from what this beauty/ugly has contributed to our reaching this point in our evolution.

The beauty you see is because of our ability/tendency to view things in terms of beauty/indifferent/notbeauty. It's not a property of the setting we are viewing, which is the implication that needs to be avoided in the phrasing.

luckyme