A great many people I have met assure me there are multiple proofs of the Divine, and have stated their proofs with specificity. Are their interpretations of certain phenomena necessarily accurate or correct? I do not know.
They're wrong.
The irony of this is that William of Occam articulated his principle as means of evaluating and critiquing the theological debates of his time (11th Century). William himself was an English monastic.
Yep. Don't ever discount the value of serendipity.
However, if you assert there is no God, then yes, you are required to prove your thesis if it is to be accepted as logical argument.
Then, no, I'm not. I'm required to review the evidence, note that it can all be explained without recourse to the magical, explain the flaws of assuming the magical as an explanation, and then stop.
That's been done repeatedly. The religious people assert their god is real. The religious people provide no evidence. Their job has not been done.
Given your admission above that such proof is impossible, your insistent denial of the possibility of a deity (or deities) is irrational on its face.
Wrong.
It's a valid working theory consistent with the format of scientific theories. It addresses the observed facts, it makes predictions, ie, that God doesn't exist so She's not showing up anytime in the near future...by which I mean never, and it's falsifiable, ie, if She does show up, the theory is false.
The "theory" religion operates under doesn't address observed fact, doesn't make sustainable predictions, and cannot be falsified. It's not a rational view of the universe, and therefore is not scientific in the least.
Yet the debate of the moment is not the reality or unreality of the deity, but of the necessity of religiosity that impels the assertion of the one or the other. The fervor and anger of your commentary speaks of a most passionate faith in the rightness of your position--of a religious conviction in this regard. The anger of your refutation merely demonstrates the necessity of religion that has been my thesis throughout.
What anger? Oh, you mean the reflections of the emotions you're feeling when you read a rational refutation of the silliness of religion? That's internal to you? I'm posting words here, you're not capturing any of my emotions from mere unadorned text.
Religion isn't necessary, not to any competently rational and emotionally balanced mind.
I have not made a positive assertion of a deity. I have made a positive assertion of the necessity of religion, and of the inevitability of religion.
Sure religion is inevitable. It's a manifestation of human instinct and all such manifestations have to be educated out of the individual, who needs to be trained to recognize the symptoms and who needs to be trained how to respond to those symptoms to minimize the onslaught of the emotional overload religion imposes to overthrow the rational mind.
Just like children have to learn to control their little temper tantrums, children should be taught to use their minds and not be deceived by adults using religion to cover their own ignorance and possible embarassment, depending on what the topic is.
Further, while religious authorities have often impeded scientific research, claiming that religion itself is a "millstone" is paradoxically yet another example of a religiously inclined position.
No it's not. It's an assessment of the damage religous behavior has done to human societies.
As for scientific progress leading to "enlightenment"--also a claim lacking in substantiation. (you should take note of the difference between pointing out the unproved nature of your assertions and a disputing of them.)
Right. Everyone I know runs to cower under their beds when the gods hurl their thunderbolts at the sinful and evil. Frankly, it's surprising, isn't it, how flawed the gods really are? They cast hundreds of thousands of those angry thunderbolts at America every year, and only very few people are actually hit. You think the gods are mad at the trees and the grass?
Then again, science enlightened us about what lightning really is.
I will only say that the clergy I have known explicitly reject the notion that faith must reject evidence.
They can't reject it. The evidence is that the clergy have it all wrong. And once they start babbling about metaphorical this and parable that in their bibles....they've taken away any reason to support the weird notion that Mary was a virgin.
This is a rather pathetic straw man argument. Nowhere have I asserted, claimed, or implied the inerrancy of any sacred text.
I don't care about you. Christianity at its heart has to insist on the inerrancy of it's ancient texts...and so does every other religion. If you want to pretend the logical inconsistencies you have to follow to be a christian while avoiding the logical inconsistencies you'd have to follow to be a gen-u-ine bible thumper, fine. You're still not being logically consistent, and thus deceiving yourself.
Your argument is its own refutation. There is considerable evidence of a catastrophic flood some 6,000 years ago covering at least a significant portion of the Tigris-Euphrates valley.
See what I mean?
The Bible says "the whole earth" was covered.
Specifically, here's some bible nonsense for ya:
Genesis 7:19-20
19 And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered.
20 Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.
So first we have all the high hilss under the whole heaven were drowned....but then again, those high hills were less than thirty feet all, since a cubit is roughly a foot and a half.
Then again, if the water was only thirty feet deep....that's not much of a flood....I mean if it rained for 960 hours straight....that's only 3/8 of an inch of rain per hour. Not very impressive, is it?....but if the water was only thirty feet deep, ain't no way it was a global flood, and ain't no way any thing resembling a species saving ark was required.
And that's just two sentences out of the whole bible. There's a thousand websited dedicated to showing the inconsistencies and irrationalities of the bible, I'm not going to chase them for you. If you want to see, find'em yourself.
But you don't want to see them, do you?
Also, the geological evidence today says that first off, no global flood EVER happened. Period. Didn't happen. Large local floods happen here, later large local floods happen there. Inbetween times some people here and there survive a disastrous flood that makes them feel their entire world is almost destroyed, and they start legends about them, not to mention the human psychological urge to invest in stories of catastrophic destruction and miraculous re-birth. The cult of Mithra promoted such a religion...when were they popular...oh yes...just before, during, and after the jesus mythology became so popular.
Additionally, one should not lose sight of the fact that the last Ice Age ended a mere 14,000 years ago; the Flood myth may merely be the murky remembrance of the ending of that period of glaciation.
The middle-eastern flood mythology is almost certainly both a cultural echo of the vast flood that filled the Black Sea and the reinforcement those legends had by the flood that washed "gilgamesh" out to the Red Sea from Mesopotamia. It's practically certain that the tale of Noah is blatant plagiarism from the Gilgamesh tale.
Thus, the statement the Bible "lies" about the Flood is simply not proven. If the Bible is not lying about the Flood, reversing your logic, the divine origin of Jesus is quite reasonable.
Nice song and dance. Doesn't work on anyone that's studied the matter with an open mind.
Yes you do. It's called atheism.
Atheism ain't a religion.
Next thing you'll be telling us socialism isn't a religion.