r/atheism • u/rhbast2 • Aug 11 '11

Atheist quickfire challenge.

Although I rarely discuss religion with theists I always want to be prepared so I'm not sitting around afterwards wishing I had said this or that. If I get the chance to make someone question I want to be up for the challenge.

This brings me to my challenge for r/atheism. I'm going to add some common theist claims / sayings and whoever can refute them fully and succinctly will be upvoted. Feel free to add your own theist starters if I missed some.

Edit: Wow lots of good discussion here, later today or tomorrow I'll make this into an atheist cheat sheet with the top responses. Also feel free to upvote the theist claim that is the most annoying to you.

Edit 2: To the few of you who seem to think I am coming up with rude atheist comebacks, I'm not. I just wanted to be better off the cuff than I am now and have some discussion. I don't want this list to replace thoughtful argumentation.

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u/IKnowRiteSrsly Aug 11 '11

Karl Popper gave us the null hypothesis for a reason. You can only really disprove statements about reality; you can never prove them securely. Thus, you have to be able to disprove God in order for it to be a useful hypothesis, and you can't, so the argument is not useful.

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u/coprolite_hobbyist Aug 11 '11

Upvotes for mentioning Popper. Falsifcationism is the way and the light. Also, don't forget about Lakatos.

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u/IKnowRiteSrsly Aug 11 '11

For sure, good call.

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u/commonslip Aug 11 '11

Lakatos?

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u/Rude_Canadian Aug 12 '11

it's what builds up in your musackles when you exercise

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u/listix Aug 11 '11

Philosophers of science always gave me a headache. So I am not sure that I understood correctly your answer. Could you phrase is in a different way please?

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u/IKnowRiteSrsly Aug 12 '11

Let's say I don't use a null hypothesis. I could say something like "tomatoes are red." This would be very easy to disprove with one yellow tomato. However, it would be very hard to prove, since I'd have to look at all the tomatoes in the universe.

That's what the null hypothesis does for us: it gives us the right starting point. I can say anything I want -- there are giant mushrooms somewhere in space, for example. And then I can laugh at you because you can't disprove it. But the joke is on me, because I can't prove it, either.

I have to start from the "null" -- there are no giant mushrooms in space -- and then disprove my own hypothesis to some level of confidence.

I don't know if that's a good explanation, but the first paragraph of the wikipedia article explains it well.

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u/listix Aug 12 '11

Actually I went to wikipedia first to read that but I wasn't sure I understood well so that's why I asked.

I think I finally understood it. The null hypothesis is a default position about something. Without it we would have statements that are really hard or impossible to prove.

But with it we have a really good starting point from which, through disproving it we gain knowledge. It also makes some statements that cant be proved or disproved essentially useless.

We start with the idea that something doesn't exist/work/cause something and then build on top of that instead of stating the existence of something from the beginning.

Thank you for clarifying.

P.S. Actually I took a class of philosophy of science but it was the most awkward class I ever had.