You can’t prove anything to be definitively true. Materialism especially.

Your worldview is just as unporven.

Thank you for demonstrating you are not here for a rational conversation. Now everyone knows why you’re here.

Goodbye.

You can’t make anything true through argument. Spiritualism has a burden of proof that has never been met. There are no excuses for this, and until you can meet that burden, there is no further discussion to be had.

Much of the church’s insistence that there has to be a god to explain things is based on Aristotle. He gave them the tools to construct logical constructs in which faulty assumptions about reality are used to say “I want there to be a god, therefore this thought process is all the proof I need.” For example, Aquinas’ “Five Ways” are a classic demonstration of how to misuse Aristotlean physics to justify belief in a god.

I’m definitely not going to debate philosophy with you. It’s a waste of time.

I will continue to challenge the validity of spiritual thinking until such time as anyone can objectively demonstrate the existence of anything spiritual. I will follow the evidence, and complaints about how evidence doesn’t allow for spiritual answers just reaffirm the conclusion that it’s not based on reality. It’s just an irrational perspective with no basis beyond wishful or magical thinking.

How is a religious experience not a physical phenomenon? Define it for me, please, with sources where possible. How did you eliminate brain activity, such as with the god helmet?

The Greek tradition of physics that Christianity adopted was established by Aristotle, not Epicurus. If they’d chosen to follow the evidence instead of inference, the world would look very different today. You can’t think anything into existence the way Aristotle proposed. He had good ideas, but his approach to physics was completely wrong.

That’s because we’re conditioned to turn to religious explanations when we don’t understand, and that’s fallacious thinking. It’s called the argument from ignorance.

At no point at any time in all of history has a religious answer to physical phenomenon been validated as the correct answer. It has been accepted as the default assumption because of the dominance of religion in society, but that doesn’t make the answer true. No answer is true just because it’s popular or traditional.

I don’t have an account. I simply don’t believe theirs. You can’t use “I don’t know” to then say “therefore this is the answer.”

What miracles? What supernatural?

These are all things we don’t understand. They literally mean we don’t know how or why things happened the way they did. You can’t use “I don’t know” to claim you therefore know the answer.

When someone claims a god is responsible, the only appropriate response is “how do you know that?” When the answer comes back “what else could it be?” I respond with “literally anything else.” They must still meet their burden of proof before they can claim victory for their answer.

I was fortunate that my father was still agnostic at the time and wouldn’t allow my mother to force me to church after I decided I wasn’t going. He later converted after he was diagnosed with cancer, so had that happened earlier, I probably would have been shit out of luck.

As it was, my mother still harassed me for years after, until I finally cut contact.

They know. I stopped attending church in my teens, and my mother never stopped looking for opportunities to re-convert me. I no longer take her calls.

We ultimately have two choices: we can act, or we can react.

Online atheism has largely been about reaction. We react to events and discuss it with great fervor, building ourselves up as the only sober people in the car full of drunkards but nobody will let us drive. There’s been very little action to defend secularism and challenge the religious dominance of society. We seemed to think that words were enough to convince people that we were right, and the truth would set us free.

It turns out, we need more than that. So we left it to other people to create a better world, to implement public policies that would make people less dependent on the false hope religion offers. That turned out to be a mistake, because leadership in the US today is more interested in established norms and protecting the status quo. I can’t speak for other countries, but given how much of the Western world is threatened by the rise of the far-right, it doesn’t look like they’re doing much better. In fact, the US came closest to bucking the trend of punishing incumbents in recent elections, but almost avoided fascism doesn’t mean much.

If we want to see change in the world, we need to accept responsibility for creating it. We can’t leave it to others. We need to get involved and get new policies put in place that make religion less appealing, namely by raising the standard of living for everyone instead of our own insular tribal interests. We need to get involved in picking leaders who will serve those interests rather than the status quo, or we need to become those leaders ourselves.

That’s a lofty goal, and it’s not going to happen all at once. But then again, neither did the authoritarian coup we’re seeing right now in the US. What’s happening in our government is the product of a generation’s work beginning in the 1950s, and we’re seeing the rotten fruits of it today. If we’re going to fix it, we need to start working locally and building a foundation for the next generation to build on.

Assuming, of course, it isn’t already too late. If it is, then the solution will take other forms, and hopefully we don’t end up repeating the mistakes of France’s Reign of Terror. But at this point, I don’t have much faith in the ability of humanity to learn from history.

If you don’t have anything to offer, don’t waste my time. I’m not interested in someone else’s explanation, and I know the definition. I want to see how you justify the claim. I’ll bet a thousand dollars cash that you can’t back it up. I’m confident in making that bet because if you could, you’d be the first.

Okay, I’m listening. Show me the evidence. Explain the supernatural to me.

Why would I be interested in alien ghost stories? Cattle mutilation and alien abduction aren’t credible examples of the supernatural.

I’ll believe anything you tell me, including gods and magic, as long as you can present evidence appropriate to your claim. Anyone who wants me to believe what they’re saying about anything divine or supernatural had better be able to back it up, or else I’m going to laugh in their face.

To record their version of “truth.” There was no distinction between fact and fiction, they were written to establish the “official” history with the political and religious (again, no distinction) agenda they wanted people to follow. The idea that history should involve accurate facts of what actually happened is a relatively new phenomenon in human culture.

Did the people of the time understand that nuance? I honestly don’t know. I assume most of the uneducated masses didn’t, which is why the elites wrote that way.

What a bizarre thing to say.

Your trolling is tiresome. I’m done pretending you’re discussing anything with any integrity.

Biden is the one deciding US policy, and the responsibility for our foreign policy failures rest with him. There are two viable candidates running to replace him. One candidate promises a less conciliatory approach with Netanyahu, the other promises to help escalate the atrocities.

Which do you think will get you closer to your stated goals?

When you start engaging in good faith, you will get good faith in return.

No, your second point doesn’t make your case. Biden isn’t running now, or did you forget? Not to mention, it doesn’t change anything about what the author has to say about the political goals of evangelicals and how Trump would deliver for them, which is the topic of the article.

I hear Putin calling. You better check and see what he wants.

Nevermind that. He said he wanted to call out the military on anyone who didn’t vote for him on live television. Why isn’t the NYT reporting on that?

Oh, it’s just Trump!

At this point, I’m fairly convinced that the people trying to argue that we shouldn’t support Democrats because of a single issue, no matter how important that issue, are Russian assets.