The Glade 4.0

That's a fundamental misunderstanding of atheism. Atheism is based on a complete lack of evidence in support of a deity. Atheism does not reject the possibility of changing it's stance in light of objective evidence. However, the evidence supporting the notion that there is no supreme being as put forth by any religion now or in the past is overwhelming. Most Atheists believe that such evidence is unlikely to ever present itself.

It is rational to then conclude that, until objective evidence presents itself to the contrary, there is no God.

Faith can only exist in spite of evidence to the contrary, or with a complete lack of evidence in support of the idea you are taking on faith. If you require proof, then you don't have faith. Atheists require proof. They do not take it on faith that no god exists, they rightly claim that there is no evidence to support the existence of such a being, and a mountain of evidence that contradicts the assertions of every religion we have ever known as a species. Faith is by it's very nature irrational. That doesn't make it a bad thing, in and of itself.

To put it another way -

Galileo observed that our presumptions about the world were incorrect. He went on to use the scientific process to prove his assertions. He was objectively correct.

Religion said "that cannot be. our holy book says otherwise". They murdered him. One of these two entities was rational. The other was not rational.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

1) Galileo was a very religious man.
2) Galileo died of natural causes at the age of 77.

You're right, he was not murdered. He was tried by the inquisition and forced to spend the rest of his days under house arrest. I was thinking of someone else.

Yes, he was a very religious man. That doesn't change the point I am making. I am not saying that to be religious you must be inherently irrational overall. I am saying that faith is by it's very nature irrational.

Galileo had a great deal less evidence on hand than we do regarding the existence of a deity. Were he alive today, he might be very different regarding that subject. We shall never know.

We do know that he was correct. We do know that the church that imprisoned him did so on the basis of irrational faith.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Haha. Is that an observable fact?

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Is our solar system heliocentric?

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Galileo felt the sun was the center of the Universe (the real meaning of Heliocentric). Is that correct?

Mu.

_________________
Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Wu is me.

Pretty sure his findings were related to the earth's rotation around the sun. Really, the movement of large bodies in space. In general, the conflict with the faithful was that their holy book said one thing, and Galileo's correct observation said quite another.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Some of them, yes, but his theological background couldn't separate the notion of Humans existing as anything other than the center of the universe, per the word of the Bible. That the earth orbited the sun, to him, only invalidated the notion that everything orbited the earth, but never changed his opinion about the relationship between man and God and our position as the prime reason for the existence of the Universe.... the center just shifted 1AU.

That, and I was correcting your selective modification to his position in support your argument.

What passage of the Bible states that the Sun revolves around the Earth?

Couple of psalms. Stuff about the earth being firmly rooted and the sun always going back to it's proper place. It's why he was eventually convicted of heresy.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Yeah, you're going to need to give some more info on that.

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

... *woosh*

What exactly is more correct about this theory than the theory that the sun orbits the earth?

_________________
Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Im confused by your question, Stathol. Do you have some other theory about our solar system? Is the earth at the center of it, or the Sun?


Wiki's got your answers about which Psalms and other biblical passages were used -

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

I haven't claimed anything. You've stated that the notion that the sun orbits the earth is wrong and that the idea that the earth orbits the sun is right. I'm asking you to explain how that can be rationally observed and proven.

But as you wish:

I've a theory that Pluto is the fixed center of the universe and that all else moves about it. Kindly disprove me.

_________________
Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Seriously? You read those, in context, and think what you think on the subject? Wow.

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

Dude, what? Give me a break. Physics and math as we know it, plus observations from telescopes, satellites and probes support Galileo's theory. What do you have?

Except that it wasn't like that at all. Galileo's theory was more complex than that, and included a lot of errors. The most notable was that there are twice as many tides every day as Galileo's theory said there should be.

Moreover, it was not a matter of what the Bible said because the Bible doesn't ever say the Sun moves around the earth. It was a matter of Ptolemy's theories saying that it did, and those theories meshed with an interpretation of some verses that the Sun moves around the Earth. Ptolemy's theories appeared correct because they accurately predicted how constellations appeared in the sky.

But, keep grinding your axe. Why look at what really happened when we can oversimplify things to slander the Catholic Church?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Did telescopes exist at the time those passages were written?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The hell?

Those biblical passages are what the Church based their heresy findings on in relation to Galileo.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

No, the Church based their heresy findings against Galieleo on the fact that he started teaching his theory as fact before he could offer proof, or address problems like the prediction of tides, and in doing so, he started making his own claims about how the Bible in general ought to be interpreted.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

...

Or, you know, we could believe that...or something.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Or you could start reading up on what actually happened. The Church told Galieleo in no undertain terms that they would accept his conclusions if he could prove them, but he couldn't, and until then they were'y changing horses on Biblical interpretations. The head of the inquisition said specifically that they would know they had not understood those passages correctly if his theories were shown.

The thing is, unless you can speed up the developement of the telescope so Galileo can have gotten his hands on a more powerful one before the trial, he simply didn't have proof for his theories. The technology just didn't exist yet.

It's amusing, though, that a lot of what you're saying is a re-hash of various Protestant propaganda from the last 400+ years intended to smear the Catholics.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Einstein?

One inertial frame is as good as another. Why not Pluto? Or Polaris? Or Des Moines, Iowa? I find it interesting that Montegue believes that "the earth orbits the sun" is an observable fact in light of modern cosmological theories.

But on a different note (rewinding the conversation a little):



There is no God, or there is no evidence of God? This is where you're crossing over from rational agnosticism to irrational atheism.

Consider this argument:

If the Bible is (literally) true, then God exists.

Whether or not we agree that the Bible is (literally) true, I think we can all agree that the above statement is accurate.

If P, then Q.

You argue that the Bible is not true, and that we can therefore conclude that God does not exist. In other words:

If P, then Q.
Not P.
Therefore not Q.

Denying the Antecedent

_________________
Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.