It’s easy.
Just explain that the other guy is SO terribly foolish and wrong.
There is no need to explain why he is wrong or even define the words you use.
The argument will automatically ensue.
While the OP claim is true, this thread started without a supporting argument and went down from there. Hence, I have relegated it to the Hall of Questions.
Theists claim that they have evidence of God and atheists claim that there is no valid evidence. Theists may claim to have personal experience of God and atheists claim that those are something like hallucinations.
There is lots of potential for argument.
Also, whenever you can talk someone into abandoning their beliefs and adopting yours, you get an ego boost. That’s a huge motivation to argue.
There’s a documented case of this actually happening on March 17, 1934 when Robert Glennson persuaded Elmer Dogstow that egg salad sandwiches are better than peanut butter on toast, and the later finally meekly agreed his original impression had been incorrect. No seriously, they’ve got it on film and everything.
We should definitely keep arguing, because this could happen again, at any time!
You’re not trying to tell me and everyone else that when something is true, it doesn’t count unless there is a supporting argument, are you? So when I die, I can come back to life if someone is found who has an excellent supporting argument that I’m still alive?
They believe they have facts about what constitutes evidence, what is objective and subjective and the nature of reality( whether it’s out there or just in your head). Besides, arguing is an entertaining game.
I understand. I once had a friend who I watched argue with another friend and I realized that they were “playing.” They were enjoyng themselves.
This is alien to my way of thinking and I will never understand the joy one gets from spouting nonsense. Of course I realize that jokes are nonsense and I enjoy THEM. But I don’t enjoy arguing. Maybe it’s time for me to get out of here?
I’ve already been told by the moderator that if I don’t “back up my claim” in my OP, it will be regulated to “The Hall of Questions where it will proably never be seen.” I guess that’s the message board’s rendition of Hell.
It’s interesting to me that I have done this with every (seven or eight) posts I started and it has never been a problem to the moderator from the “da bible belt” until I mentioned that nobody can prove or disprove the existence of God. I’m just saying
Is the claim controversial or not? It isn’t unequivocally a priori true like 2+2=4. I haven’t seen it done conclusively. But, i haven’t read everything published or heard everything argued on the subject. Have you? Maybe we should create a poll to see if we all agree. It is unequivocally conclusively true in the minds of everyone, than why bother starting a thread on it?
If you can give necessary and sufficient conditions for Godhood, then you can strictly speaking prove God can’t and doesn’t exist. In other words, if you can manage to show that you can’t call something a God if it’s not, let’s say, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, etc., then provided you show these conditions are inconsistent, you show the concept of God is impossible. It’s what Leibniz thought was wrong with the ontological proof, and why his efforts for a proof for God were directed toward showing God was possible.
Finally someone with answers! What are the necessary and sufficient conditions for another universe existing? If you can’t name them, does that prove conclusively that another universe does not exist? I mean I think time and space and matter are necessary, but are they sufficient? Could you have a universe that is just time and space with no matter? How many omni-characteristics must a being have to be recognized as God? Every conceivable one? Does God even have to be supernatural to be God? What if God is just superhuman? Not God? Does God have to be maximally transcendent to be God? What if a being is just minimally transcendent with respect to human consciousness? Not God? Any way, I thought the ontological proof failed on the basis that existence is not a property of an entity. No?