Original Sin?

Quote: FrGamble

You share a burden of proof

Sorry, it doesn't work that way. The burden
is always on the person making the claim.
Always. Look it up.

Quote:

You can show evidence that there is no Santa Claus or Unicorns. The story of Santa Claus doesn't work and is not reasonable. How does a finite not all powerful overweight man living at the North Pole deliver billions of gifts throughout the world on one night?.

But Santa is a supernatural being, the laws
of nature don't apply to him. You can't
disprove he exists under those parameters.
For every logical argument you present,
I have an illogical supernatural argument
that trumps it. Just like you do for your
religion. Neat, huh.

Quote: FrGamble

2. You can show evidence that there is no Santa Claus or Unicorns. The story of Santa Claus doesn't work and is not reasonable. How does a finite not all powerful overweight man living at the North Pole deliver billions of gifts throughout the world on one night?

How does a non-existent entity create the whole universe??

Quote: Evenbob

Sorry, it doesn't work that way. The burden
is always on the person making the claim.
Always. Look it up.

YOU ARE MAKING A CLAIM. You are saying there is no God. You are saying it with such force and conviction as to ridicule anyone who believes in God. You better have some evidence.

Quote:

But Santa is a supernatural being, the laws
of nature don't apply to him. You can't
disprove he exists under those parameters.
For every logical argument you present,
I have an illogical supernatural argument
that trumps it. Just like you do for your
religion. Neat, huh.

Santa is not a supernatural being and even if he was there is no evidence he exists. There has never been a single unexplained gift from Santa, no sightings of Santa, there is no historical record of the person, etc. The key phrase you used is that you "have an illogical supernatural argument that trumps it." The word illogical is important. You can't trump logic with lunacy or truth with falsity. There is no evidence that Santa exists and clear evidence he does not therefore we can say definitively there is no storybook character of Santa Claus (incidentally there is of course a historical person St. Nicholas, who was awesome). I go down this ridiculous argument only to instruct you at what you need to present to say there is no God. You have been presented with evidence that you ignore and you have given zero evidence that there is no God. At this point I would feel much better believing in Big Foot than I would becoming an atheist.

Quote: Nareed

How does a non-existent entity create the whole universe??

If you ignore your circular argument you can that you recognize the whole universe was created. This of course is obvious because of the impossibility of an actual infinite regress and that something cannot come from nothing. Therefore there is a non-contingent, eternal, spiritual, all-powerful creator of all that exists.

Quote: FrGamble

If you ignore your circular argument you can that you recognize the whole universe was created.

I don't think the universe was created, no.

But if it was, then it was created by something that exists, not by a non-existent being. It's self-evident.

Even if the universe had a creator, there is no way to prove that any of the gods that people invented had anything to do with it.

Quote: Nareed

But if it was, then it was created by something that exists, not by a non-existent being. It's self-evident.

Aha, finally you are making sense.

Quote: FrGamble

Aha, finally you are making sense.

That makes one of us.

Quote: FrGamble

YOU ARE MAKING A CLAIM. You are saying there is no God. .

I can't believe I have to post this, as
we've been down this road so many
times.

"When someone makes a claim of gods existence, it’s their responsibility (or burden) to prove their claim. It’s not the other persons burden to prove them wrong. When you talk about 'Is there any proof of non-existence of something “supernatural” or something like “spiritual power” that is often labeled as God' what you’re trying to do is switch the burden of proof from yourself, where it belongs, to the other person. It’s a dishonest tactic usually taught by preachers to their parishioners who simply don’t know any better."

It's an old trick I was taught in debate class.
It's very dishonest to put the burden of proof
where it doesn't belong, but you'd be surprised
how often it works to throw your opponent off
balance. As I'm sure you've experienced.

Quote:

Santa is not a supernatural being

Maybe not, but all you have is logic and
opinion, you can't really prove he doesn't
exist. Fantasies can't be disproven. But
neither can they be proven.

Let's see there are:

-things we know are rare to find like a giant squid, but do exist
-things we have never found so far.

The first category is limited. The second category is one of the those infinite categories.

Gods are still in the second category. I feel pretty confident that the ball is in the believer's court for those second items -- to show us something, not just pretend they are on equal footing with skeptics.