First off, you're making a category error. Every decision is built on emotion - neuroscientists have proven that people incapable of emotion are incapable of making decisions, or only make arbitrary, bad decisions. Emotion is absolutely central to everyone's decision-making process. There are no solely "rational" decisions.
This is irrelevant to the point and expressly wrong.
Eating food is a rational decision. Hunger is not an emotion, it is a physiological state that if left untreated, will kill you. Non-human animals experience hunger and seek out food, not due to emotion, but due to the physiological state of hunger.
There ARE solely rational decisions. Deflection debunked.
Yes, my decision to believe in certain aspects of God is emotional, but its built on a rational framework. Just like your decision not to believe was also emotional. If you think otherwise, you're denying the scientific evidence.
Again, this is just wrong, and an appeal to authority fallacy, AND to an authority that has no evidence to even make said claim.
I became atheist due to my original dogma being unable to answer simple, logical questions. I questioned the Ark deluge story, for example, and Christians were unable to answer my questions. Logically, after many of these failures, it was a simple matter of flipping the off switch-- I no longer believe this because their are no answers for WHY we believe these things, meaning I no longer had reason TO believe those things.
That is entirely rational-- if you thought something was true and find out it doesn't have a leg to stand on, to no longer believe that thing is PRECISELY rational.
I was entirely unemotional in my decision making process-- I like evidence. I mean, I REALLY like evidence. I feel like I've shown that in my posts on this board. If they could provide evidence that stood up to scrutiny, I would still be a believer, it's as simple as that. I don't hate your god, or your dogma-- if it could be shown to be true, I would follow it, period.
You cannot possibly equate our decisions because mine was fact based, and you admitted yours was based on emotion. Like all believers, you attempt to equate your actions with those of atheists (i.e., the famous "atheism is a religion, too"), which is a way of admitting you know your position is hollow.
"You're just as bad as me"
I don't see how the space-time continuum would exist at all without being formed by something/someone that can exist outside of space and time. Why is material reality even here? Why would there even be physical dimensions or matter within which anything else can occur?
You see, this shyt is not a rational reason to believe in a god. You are making a leap in ASSUMING that because something exists, it must have a creator. You are also asking WHY reality exists because you are ASSUMING it has a purpose.
The first issue is your biggest problem, and something every believer takes an atheistic approach when shown their position doesn't make sense: if something existing means there is a creator, then who created that creator???
You either "solve" this problem with an argument from infinite regress, or you logically HAVE to come to the conclusion that your god has always existed without a creator, which is the same position atheists take when talking about the universe.
The only problem is, the universe actually exists. To make the claim that the universe has always existed in one form or another is rational, because it actually exists, and we have evidence it exists, and we have evidence that matter cannot be destroyed and is always present in one form or another. This is what rationality looks like.
You *don't* have evidence of a god, and you admit you *assume* his existence. To say he always existed is the opposite of rational because you don't even have evidence of that existence in the first place. The atheistic approach is the rational one.
The second question you ask is expressly irrelevant-- you still have the "WHY", if your god exists. You don't know WHY he would create a material reality (assuming he did), so that is not a rational reason you leaped to god.
Do you see my point? I could do this to every thing you brought up.
That's nonsense, but there's zero reason to engage further on you with this. Your argument is purely circular.
Well.
That's one way to admit you were wrong, but not actually admit it. I'll take it.
Breh, take a philosophy course. Or just talk to a philosophy professor, and ask if your definition is valid
Exactly what I said to you (and it's obvious you start replying before you've read my entire post, because I literally said you are trying to use philosophy, and I'm using science contexts).
Philosophy isn't concerned with what is accurate, it's concerned with arguing for the sake of arguing. This is why I'm acutely aware of what you apologists do, exactly when you'd do what you do, and how to defeat you.
Jordan Peterson does what you do all day, and it's fukking exhausting listening to you people talk in circles. I'm not interested in philosophy, or even the philosophy of science. I am interested in the practical application of scientific principles.
In that specific context, supernatural is the antithesis of nature (natural). They are opposing concepts. Philosophers use a COLLOQUIAL definition of this word, the same way they use the colloquial definition of THEORY.
Being a physicist, you know scientists use these words in different contexts, I have no idea who you're trying to fool here.
Yes, this is true that not everything can be examined by scientific observation. But that's not limited to religion. There is MUCH in human experience that cannot be examined by scientific observation, like morality, ethics, philosophy, etc. Much of our experience of consciousness is beyond any scientific tools, even though some try. The fact that something isn't scientifically observable only means that it is not materialistic, not that it is not true.
You're trying to shift the discussion.
We are NOT talking about what we do and do not know. That is not what supernatural means. We are talking about what is POSSIBLE to know.
Objectively, there are a finite amount of objects in the universe. We might not ever know what all these things are, but it is POSSIBLE to know.
This is the context of our discussion about your god, because the claims as presented in the bible (and other various religious texts and dogmas) are IMPOSSIBLE TO KNOW. They do not have basis in reality: snakes cannot talk, for example; we have detailed evolutionary records of snakes and evidence they once had legs, which means there was no snake in the garden to tempt Eve in Genesis 3, because snakes don't have the structures necessary to perform speech.
These are the types of supernatural claims the bible makes, and without any vagueness, this context is the context of the word supernatural-- do talking snakes exist, and have they ever existed?
Objectively, the answer is no. Therefore, the claim is supernatural, or beyond nature, and NOT "that which we don't know" because we DO know snakes could have never performed speech, nor do we have any evidence Genesis 3 ever occurred.
This is fairly simple to understand.
