Instigator / Pro
7
1488
rating
10
debates
40.0%
won
Topic
#1299

It Takes More Faith To Be An Atheist

Status
Finished

The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics
Better arguments
3
6
Better sources
2
4
Better legibility
2
2
Better conduct
0
2

After 2 votes and with 7 points ahead, the winner is...

Ramshutu
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
5
Time for argument
One week
Max argument characters
30,000
Voting period
Six months
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Contender / Con
14
1764
rating
43
debates
94.19%
won
Description

*Important Note* Ignore the title. It is simply thought provoking.

Rules:
1. BOTH sides have a burden to prove their positions. (I have noticed this kind of burden swinging in far too many debates. It is a tactic to merely win a debate, not to find truth.)
2. Sources are NOT everything. (Something that is also misunderstood is the nature of facts. Facts are NOT automatic guarantees that what you say is true. Facts can be: 1. Wrong 2. Misinterpreted 3. Misapplied to your argument. Lastly you can have a fallacious argument, which is one consisting of logical fallacies, such as contradictions, that are unable to be defended by mere facts)
3. Basic etiquette. (No character/ad hominum attacks,... etc)
In this debate we are debating Theism vs Atheism. No Agnostics may debate here, only those who claim, and will back up the claim, that God does not exist.
Here are the burdens outlined clearly:
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For side Pro (For Theism): To support (build evidence on) and defend the existence of the Theistic God.
For side Con (For Atheism): To support (build evidence on) and defend that the Theistic God does not exist.
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Please DO NOT pick up this debate if you are simply trying to debate as many of these as possible. The end goal is truth, not biting someone's tooth.

To Truth! -logicae

---RFD---
Interpreting the resolution:
As per the description, Theism vs Atheism shall be measured for some measurement of Faith.

Gist:
Con’s case that it takes less faith to believe in less complexity, won against the moving the goalpost and claims that we should believe in God, but not in gods, but we can’t define God if it’s inconvenient right now but should just believe unquestionably instead... (pro I am not trying to be as rude as that might seem, but you repeatedly hamstrung yourself)

1. There are no good reasons for Atheism
Pro offers something about magic and magicians.
Con offers that it’s fallacious to just declare knowledge of a prior cause and declare that it must not have in turned have a cause, and worse than assuming intent good will and all that takes more faith than to not assume any such traits to which there is no evidence. Con gives a like bullet point comparison, to which pro asserts that theism has zero assumptions at all (which is laughable... arguing both sets require faith is valid, as anyone sane puts a little faith in the ground under their feet; but to claim without support that theists have zero faith is just... weird fo

2. There is good reason for Theism
Pro offers something about today doesn’t exist, or only exists because of faith in a didit fallacy. And yes, I understand the paradox, but not how it is supposed to relate to reality or this debate. He next explains about the universe having a start due to the big bang, making the previous point useless, rendering this section something of a non-sequitur.
Con runs a Kritik on the KCA, to which Pro rejects defining God in any way outside the didit fallacy (on this I would have accepted his lack of definition were it atheism vs agnosticism, but not for theism).

3. Ramshutus Razor
(calling this out for high value...)
A very fun exploration of flawed design if there was a designer, thus giving reason to disbelieve in one (right down to showing that logically if God exists, God intentionally set things up to lead to the conclusion he does not exist).

4. Flat earth
LMAO! ... Okay was not going to include this, but it ended up re-explaining the ‘necessity’ angle pretty well.

---

Arguments: con
See above review of key points.

Sources: con
Broken links greatly hurt pro. I can’t imagine why he added random spaces in the middle of them. Pro further insisting it would be “illogical” to believe the word of 33 physicists, was one of the worst challenges to a source I have seen. ... Without those, I would leave sources tied.
Pro selected good enough sources they could be recycled between contentions; such as the LiveScience article already mentioned for the blunder against it, which was levered against the KCA and showed how weird the universe is even to those who understand it best, making a God require a greater faith quotient for having apparently decided to make things those ways.

Conduct: con
Pro missed two weeks of the debate...

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@logicae

the reason i do not find kalam and other original cause arguments persuasive is because their conclusion do not follow. You can't be a rule if there is an exception, and they all make god an exception. thus the answer remains unsatisfactory.

ultimately there cannot be a satisfactory answer is what i determined.
can we agree that an always was, an infinite regression, and an ex nihilo are all unsatisfactory answers? but it turns out those are the only logical options. and this applies regardless if you call that original existence god, the universe, multiverse, reality or anything else.
you say god always existed. someone else says the multiverse always existed. it sounds the same to me.

what does tilt the scale is that if i was forced to imagine something being the default existence, or coming from nothing, I would imagine it would be something simple, like dust or gas. not a fully formed and perfect all powerful sentience. that, imo, DEMANDS an explanation. thus i put my money on natural causes.

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@logicae

I should be less active :(

a flat earth describes a quality, there is no default, both are positive claims.
but if we were to stretch it, it is possible some time in the distant past someone powerful made a copy of the earth and moved it elsewhere where it found itself in a collision course between 2 large objects that flattened it into a disk. thus there may be a flat earth somewhere in existence. but until i get some evidence...
we do not assume everything exists until proven otherwise.
can you prove to me that unicorns dont exist on some distant planet?
or in a habitable pocket of area beneath the earth we never discovered.
or existed but simply died off.
I believe unicorns are or were real. please, prove me wrong.

we *assume* that some random thing does not exist until proven.
thus claims of nonexistence are the default, and claims of existence are the challenger. this goes for all things, not only god.

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@Nemiroff

Hey Nemiroff, nice to see you are active! (I certainly can't say the same)

("Saying something doesn't exist isn't a positive claim")

Why? You are positively asserting something's nonexistence. All a positive assertion is, is a claim to the truth. (God exists is a truth claim and God doesn't exist is also a truth claim)

("Proving that something doesn't exist is impossible")

That's not true, we do it all the time. For example, we can prove that a flat earth does not exist by showing that a round one does. The flying spaghetti monster and other tales (notice we know that they are tales) are positively false because we know they were made up.

God however is different. You cannot side step the evidence pointing toward God (The argument from Contingency, The Kalam Cosmological Argument, The necessity of a creator for fine tuned design...etc). Take the Kalam for example. What do you find wrong with it? We need to stop pretending like evidence for God does not exist, rather we need to evaluate if it is true or not.

To Truth!
-logicae

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@logicae

Proving that something doesnt exist is impossible.
For example, (and i dont mean to compare god to these nonexistent things, just the act of proving them.) Please prove that leprechauns dont exist. Or unicorns, or flying spaghetti monsters. Its impossible. You will have to literally and definitively make a list of all things that exist in existence to prove something does not exist.
Thats why burden of proof is ALWAYS on the positive claim. On the person claiming existence. Noone can prove the impossible.

Saying something doesnt exist isn't a positive claim, unless all things exist by default.

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@Nemiroff

Hello.

I would caution that you understand both Theist and Atheist make positive claims. The Theist states that God exists and the Atheist states that God does not exist. Both truth claims require evidence.

"None can prove the impossible"

Agreed. What is impossible and why? These bare assertions are positive claims themselves and require reason.

To Truth!
-logicae

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@logicae

The burden of proof point is bit some tactic to score wins. It is a logical law that negative points cannot be proven. The question of which takes more faith may be a burden neutral question (unsure), but in your description you asked con to prove that god does not exist. That is logically impossible.

For example, (and i dont mean to compare god to these nonexistent things, just the act of proving them.) Please prove that leprechauns dont exist. Or unicorns, or flying spaghetti monsters. Its impossible. You will have to literally and definitively make a list of all things that exist in existence to prove something does not exist
Thats preposterous. And thats why burden of proof is ALWAYS on the positive claim. On the person claiming existence. Noone can prove the impossible.

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@Athias

Why thank you! I sure hope it does.

To Truth!

-logicae

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@Ramshutu
@logicae

I'm interested in seeing how this debate pans out. Good luck to the both of you.

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@logicae

Great. I'll draw up a debate tomorrow.

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@semperfortis

I take it that you would like to be on the Con side of things?

If so, you may pick any of those resolutions. I would be happy to join one if you made it.

To Truth!
-logicae

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@logicae

I wouldn't mind debating the exact resolution, but since Ram accepted the debate, perhaps something along the lines of "is theism a sound position" or "is theism a likely position" or perhaps a specific argument, like "is the KCA a sound argument". I don't mind really.

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@semperfortis

I am.

What do you have in mind?

To Truth! -logicae

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@logicae

I'd be interested in this debate or a resolution similar if you're interested.

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@TheAtheist

Indeed,

my position on that title is that you must assume exponentially more in order to justify an Atheist world view. Take scientific truths and laws of the universe for example. The Atheist must assume everything just popped into being from nothing, giving no explanation for any of it. That to me takes more faith than to say that the universe has a source.

Hope that helps,

To Truth!

-logicae

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@logicae

Your title says that it takes more faith to be an atheist, but your description says something completely different. Maybe you would change the title to something more related, such as "Does the Theistic God Exist?"

Welcome all!

To Truth! -logicae