News Stephan Hawking Declares There is No God

So when you are born, you have knowledge of religion? Tell me, where you born Catholic, Mormon, Muslim or Baptist? Did you just happen to be the same religious belief as your parents? Do you think that is learned behavior or is it hereditary?

You didn't know about God, Allah, etc. until someone told you.

Atheism isn't disagreement with someone who is a believer. It's the lack of belief there is a god. The presence or absence of religious followers is not necessary for them to exist. Perhaps the label of "atheist" would not exist, but the concept stands on it's own and is not dependent upon others any more than "sanity" is dependent upon the existence of schizophrenia.

 

So you were born without belief? Were you born to an atheist family? Were you born with an extra sense that there was no creator? Of course not. Atheism is a learned behavior too; one that wouldn't exist without believers. You would have never known not to believe in any of it unless someone first believed in it.

All that Atheism is is disagreement with someone who is a believer. It's the lack of belief in something that would never require disbelief unless someone first stated their belief in it. Would you state your disbelief in X if no one ever stated their belief in it first? No, of course not, why would you? People might think you were schizophrenic.

 

The Atheist is no better than the Believer because they are both faith based and not fact based endeavors. The believer, without evidence, insists that God exists and does so because they have faith that God exists. The Atheist, without evidence, insists that God does not exist and does so because they have faith that God does not exist. The Atheist can no more provide evidence of God's non-existence than the Believer can provide evidence that God does exist and so they are both reduced to faith. In truth, Agnostics are the only ones who are fact based because they are honest enough to say that they do not know. If nothing else this allows them the freedom to accept emerging science without bias and not be hampered by the dogmas of definitive belief or definitive disbelief.

 

An Atheist need not profess their "faith" to have it, Red. The Atheist has no evidence that God does not exist and no way of proving that God does not exist. In fact all they have is the belief that God does not exist which equals faith. You can, therefore, not call his belief that God does not exist as anything other than faith. What else is it? You cannot call it logical because logic would require some factual basis and there is none, no more than the believer.

Secondly, the Atheist has just as much burden of proof on them as the believer. Believers are also quite entitled to demand proof from Atheists, of which they have none. If my statements contain the logical fallacies that you say, then your statements do as well. Assuming that a claim is true because it has not been or cannot be proven false is also the definition of what an Atheist is attempting to do, Red, not just the believers. Furthermore, you left out a key portion of the definition of Argumentum ad Ignorantiam. I FIFY.....

I. Argumentum ad Ignorantiam: (appeal to ignorance) the fallacy that a proposition is true simply on the basis that it has not been proved false or that it is false simply because it has not been proved true. This error in reasoning is often expressed with influential rhetoric.
A. The informal structure has two basic patterns:
Statement p is unproved.
Not-p is true.

Statement not-p is unproved.
p is true.

B. If one argues that God or telepathy, ghosts, or UFO's do not exist because their existence has not been proven beyond a shadow of doubt, then this fallacy occurs.
C. On the other hand, if one argues that God, telepathy, and so ondo exist because their non-existence has not been proved, then one argues fallaciously as well.

The very same could be said for Onus Probandi. The definition you provided was "I need not prove my claim, you must prove it false." Have the Atheists proved the Believers to be wrong yet? Didn't think so.

 

Yes.

I knew nothing about religion until someone put the idea there first. I lacked belief in a god. So did my daughter. Religious doctrine recognizes this in several schools of thought. The idea of being born with "original sin" is pretty much universal in all of the Christian Doctrines, however they all make room for the idea that children who have not yet reached the age of moral understanding and accountability will go to heaven in the event of premature death.

Only if you have been taught religion first. How can an absence of belief be a belief in something. It seems as if you have a fundamental misunderstanding of atheism.
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No. Atheism is the rejection of belief in gods which do not have evidence of existence. It does not need religion to exist. It, by definition is the absence of belief.

Atheism does not require you to state anything. If there was a parallel universe where never in the history of man the idea of a deity entered into the thoughts of mankind, atheism would still exist because there would be a lack of belief in a deity. People might not use the word atheism or even create the term, but if would exist.

Is someone is born in Sun-Saharan Africa and live there all their life without ever hearing an utterance about LSU, would they be anti-LSU? No. They would simply lack a belief in LSU, despite never hearing anything about it. They don't know they lack a belief in LSU, but they do. If I show up on their death bed wearing purple and gold, telling everyone I know about the wonders of Death Valley, the Golden Band from Tigerland and the crazy coach who eats grass, I will have then introduced the ideas of LSU into a previously ignorant and unbelieving person.

Such is us being born an atheist.

 

Let's remember the facts. Christians in Palestine and Asia Minor were being slaughtered. The Byzantine Emperor was under attack in Constantinople. He appealed for help from the West. The Turks were moving westward, and they cut off the Pilgrim trails. There was ample reason to use force. The first two crusades were defensive wars any way you look at them. Stating such is not revisionism. It is in line with the historical consensus.

 

I believe that both telepathy and some form of space travel does exists. Call it UFO's if you want.

First- Telepathy or some form of paranormal abilities. I don't know if any scientific proof has been established that it exists. Duke University has a Department of Paranormal Research that studies these kinds of phenomena but I don't know what they may have proven. But I believe that most of us have at least briefly and infrequently experience some form of telepathy or paranormal ability.

On October 8th, 1993 I was drinking beer and talking about football with some guys. It was the Friday before the next day's LSU game with Florida. One of the guys asked me what I thought the score of the game would be. Without even thinking I blurted out: Florida 58-3. Now you might argue that logic would tell me that given the relative stengths of the two teams and given the fact that the Old Ball Coach hated LSU and would run up the score if he could that the game was likely to be a blowout. And you would be right. I did feel that way. But by what score? The mathmatical possibilities of possible scores that would be considered a blowout must number in the thousands. 48-14, 62-7, 51-17, 49-10, 63-21, 55-13, ect. and on and on.

So how was I able to know the exact score instantly without even thinking about it? If I had thought about it for even a second or two surely I would have said some blowout score but not 58-3. I might have even said something like "I don't know but it won't be pretty.'

Final score on Saturday, Oct, 9th, 1993 - Florida 58- LSU 3 If I could do that when I wanted to I would be richer than Biff in Back to the Future II

UFOs - I don't believe the stories of all the UFO sightings and kidnappings by aliens and all that tabloid crap but there are billions and billions of stars just in our own galaxy alone. There are trillions of galaxies each containing who knows how many stars in the universe. It is impossible to conceive that many many life forms haven't developed. Some of those life forms would be far more advanced than the human race and surely would have come up with a way to travel between stars. Its only logical. Some of those beings would be so far above us we would consider them to be gods. They may consider us vermin or lower than amoeba.