bang on the money!
Bus Wars - The Christians Fight Back
- Thread starter DrDee
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bang on the money!
"Leave religion to the experts"
How does one become a religious expert? Join up? Study for a year? Ten? Fifty?
Are you an expert? In which religion?
Anywho, facetious arguments aside, surely the fact that the ASA ruled the Atheist Campaign legal because it's not claiming anything it can't prove means that this reprisal should be judged by the same rules? (Assuming it's real... I'm not convinced by that single picture and the fact that it's on the Daily Fail website doesn't really inspire me with confidence)
The ASA did not rule for or against the advert in those terms, it ruled that the advert was not likely to cause significant offence.
http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/news/news...ampaign+not+in+breach+of+advertising+code.htm
In other words, the ASA stated, clearly, that the ad was an expression of the advertisers opinion and therefore the verification issue does not matter. The same will apply to the Christian variant. They did not, at any point, make an investigation into false advertising, it never went that far.
To be fair the first line of that makes a very valid point. We cannot disprove anything until we falsify it. Just because something hasn't manifested itself, it does not mean that it does not exist. We cannot, at a respectable intellectual level, say that something does not exist until we prove it to be so.
Strictly speaking, we can't prove that something does not exist. What we can do is work out what test and testing method would reveal the subject and what data it should yield. If we are able to do this, then you can view absence of evidence to be equivilent to evidence of absence.
The problem is that there is no testable hypothesis to complete this process when talking about deities, and our primary method for gaining and evaluating observations about the world has assumptions that limit it's usefulness and it's results in ways that are not evidence driven, but assumption driven.
The reason you can't rationally discount the existance of god (without making some leaps of faith in assumptions to start with) isn't so much lack of evidence, as having no idea what the evidence would actually be.
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Im not sensitive to it whatsoever. I like people to have their own views and whats not and I listen to atheists, however that generally doesnt happen when when someone religious tries to counter an atheist argument. Ive had religious people at my door too, none of whom have ever shouted over the top of me that Im wrong for not converting. Thats just my personal experience though and yours is different
Google The Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Google Invisible Purple Unicorns.
This is a pointless argument - you can never prove the non-existence of anything.
I know...that was my point!
I disagree. You yourself argue fairly forcefully that accepting this form of scientific method to portray the world, as opposed to being merely a predictive tool, requires reliance on faith. Even if we did know what evidence we needed to "find" a deity, the most that we could do with this evidence would be to disprove that deity within the limitations of science.
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Not really, just having studied a religion properly would help. He seems to think all the wars in the world are a result of religion. Which is just ridiculous. If he knew anything about religion, and the positives it brings then he would eat his words.
I wouldn't call myself an expert no, I know quite a lot about religion, but I'm far from an expert.
Also it's nothing to do with not being able to prove anything. I don't think either add should be taken down for that reason. Since adverts always make unprovable claims. It's just both adverts totally put me off either side/position.
I never said the process invovled in evidence gathering or evaluation had to follow the scientific method. In fact I specifically highlighted the fact that the scientific method is unsuitable for evaluating the idea in my own post.
That doesn't negate the fact that you can't prove a negative. The closest you can get is disproving a positive via an appropriate and relevant evaluation method. In practice, this means you can disprove specific examples of a deity, but not the idea of a deity.
You should count yourself lucky that you didn't go to the same church that I went to as a child. The vicar was forever ramming things down my throat and plenty of the other choirboys' throats too. Funnily enough, the girls never got anything rammed down their throats.
He seemed like such a nice man to everyone else though.
Urm, we can't complain yet as we haven't seen them yet! The buses don't start rolling until Monday. If ASA have any sense they will bin any complaints that arrive before the adverts are actually run!
It's also rather stupid because the ASA have already ruled on the atheist bus ad in such a way that they cannot uphold complaints about the christian bus. Unfortunately, too many people completely failed to understand what the ASA actually ruled on, thinking that somehow the probably came into anything at all...
It is stupid to waste time with formal complaints (that will be dealt with at taxpayer's expense) when the answer is already in the public domain following a similar stunt by the group now complaining.
however, if the atheists want to paint themselves as more religiously intolerant than christians who didn't really complain, I guess that's their choice
Of course, we're free to judge the complaining atheists the same as people judged christian voice for making complaints about the atheist bus...
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Soldato
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theists vs 'atheists' shocker!
pointless arguments from both sides and it's odd that that 'atheist' bus advert really isn't atheistic and suggests that they don't value their beliefs. and i'm equally annoyed by the Christian advert, i thought we'd moved away from an eye for an eye?
pointless arguments from both sides and it's odd that that 'atheist' bus advert really isn't atheistic and suggests that they don't value their beliefs. and i'm equally annoyed by the Christian advert, i thought we'd moved away from an eye for an eye?
Surely science can only evaluate and prove something from within the (only) form it exists in - that of our 4 dimensions - time and space / matter. If the thing you're trying to prove exists outside of that realm it can't be scientifically observed / tested.
This is why atheists are running on blind faith just as much as believers. An intelligent sceptic is an agnostic, as suggested earlier in this thread. God can't be proved or disproved. And until someone breaks into a new dimension where God happens to be, he will never be scientifically proved or disproved.
Steven Hawkins goal (and other scientists in this filed) is to unite all the forces of our universe (strong nuclear, weak nuclear, electromagnetic and magnetism) and therefore 'see' what happened at the moment our universe was created. I don't know if they think they could see before this moment. If they do they will see the force that created the universe, what / whoever that may be.
The atheist ads should have said 'possibly', as there's no proof that God probably doesn't (or does) exist. But they couldn't use 'possibly' as that puts the likelihood back into the camp of 'probably' We can't have that!
The Christian ad is backed by faith and a belief that he does exist - so no scientific proof needed. Christians generally don't think that God probably exists. They simply believe it.
This is why atheists are running on blind faith just as much as believers. An intelligent sceptic is an agnostic, as suggested earlier in this thread. God can't be proved or disproved. And until someone breaks into a new dimension where God happens to be, he will never be scientifically proved or disproved.
Steven Hawkins goal (and other scientists in this filed) is to unite all the forces of our universe (strong nuclear, weak nuclear, electromagnetic and magnetism) and therefore 'see' what happened at the moment our universe was created. I don't know if they think they could see before this moment. If they do they will see the force that created the universe, what / whoever that may be.
The atheist ads should have said 'possibly', as there's no proof that God probably doesn't (or does) exist. But they couldn't use 'possibly' as that puts the likelihood back into the camp of 'probably'
We can't have that! The Christian ad is backed by faith and a belief that he does exist - so no scientific proof needed. Christians generally don't think that God probably exists. They simply believe it.
There probably is no flying spaghetti monster.
There definitely is a flying spaghetti monster.
Which one sounds misleading? Also even if almost certainly was the original intention, still sounds okay.
The first ad was a statement of opinion. The second is asserting fact. This ad will get shot down if the ASA isnt scared.
There definitely is a flying spaghetti monster.
Which one sounds misleading? Also even if almost certainly was the original intention, still sounds okay.
The first ad was a statement of opinion. The second is asserting fact. This ad will get shot down if the ASA isnt scared.
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