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No, it's based on modern theology and philosophy of religion. It's based on what the attributes mean. Observation of behaviour≠divine revelation Your comparison is an invalid analogy.

Gods most certainly are falsifiable. I have falsified a few gods on this very website. If you're talking about the modern western deity concept, then there is in fact evidence against His existence. Things like humans, horrific suffering, and reasonable nonbelief.

Nothing

No, they don't. They assume that God is not completely transcendent. That's a good assumption, because, if He were, we'd not be able to say ANYTHING about Him. They even say as little as possible about God's moral perfection. They merely say that by being morally perfect, God would maximize moral good and minimize moral evil. That says nothing about humanity's morals. That humans are not morally perfect is an assumption(one backed quite well by reality and even the Bible). Validity refers to the logical structure; soundness refers to truth of the assumptions. The arguments are both valid and sound.

The relevant brain structures are classical objects, not quantum.

As has already been pointed out to you, the billboards are not actually about religion. In fact, I've not seen or heard of one that is "about the easily manipulated Christians, or their lack of the cognizant capacity to think rationally". Again, this is a small subset and I think you're confusing the billboards with the 'preachers'. Because we all know that all theists are Mormons. Ad hom arguments? Horrific suffering is an ad hom argument? Divine Hiddenness is an ad hom argument? The Anthropic Argument is an ad hom argument? Or are you once again grouping atheists together in an invalid manner? Despite what you might think, not all theists are Mormons. Regardless, the whole billboard thing is entirely irrelevant to the thread.

What about "Yes. Infinite past with finite future." or "Undecided. The available evidence is inconclusive." or "Other. Explain in a post below."?

I vote false trichotomy.

We should also note current philosophy on causation. Normally, I'd post a link for the following quote, but I couldn't find it anywhere on the net, so I typed out the passage myself. From Freedom Evolves by Daniel Dennett: Many will feel a temptation to insist that there must be an answer to this question and others like it. It is certainly true that we can agree to legislate an answer if we feel we must, and some legislative proposals will no doubt be more attractive, more intuitive, than others, but it is not clear that there are any facts-about the way the world is, or about what we really mean, or even about what we really ought to mean-that would settle the issue. 2. These are fighting words to some philosophers, of course. Fine; we happily shift the burden of proof to them. If they can come up with some unproblematic, counter-example-free theory of the whole ordinary concept of causation, we will then compare our more modest, sketchy project to it and see whether we've left out anything important. Meanwhile, we can get on with our analysis using our partial account of what strikes us as most important aspects of the everyday concept. 3.A doubly elaborated version of the example due originally to McLaughlin (1925), first elaborated in Hart and Honoré (1959). The Hart and Honoré version has one less twist: "Suppose A is entering a desert. B secretly puts a fatal dose of poison in A's water keg. A takes the keg into the desert where C steals it; both A and C think it contains water. A dies of thirst. Who kills him?" Let's go through that wall of text. We shall assume for argument's sake that (2) of the Kalam argument is true; the universe began to exist. Does this mean it has a cause? I think not. 1)Causal necessity. The God hypothesis and an uncaused flat universe are on even ground here; just like the example of the king and the mayor, neither alone are causally necessary. 2)Causal sufficiency. The God hypothesis is causally sufficient, but, as odd as it sounds, so is an uncaused universe. 3)Temporal priority is irrelevant as it is nonsense to speak of 'before' time. So, barring further evidence, the God hypothesis and an uncaused flat universe are on equal ground as explanation for the origin of the universe......or are they? What about parsimony? Occam's razor seems to favor the uncaused flat universe. WAIT A MINUTE! EVERYTHING THAT BEGINS TO EXIST HAS A CAUSE! Does it? I see no justification for that statement.....at all. As I already said in this thread:

It seems I must have done something wrong whilst making the thread. I have since recreated it and ensured it worked. I'll get back on causality once I finish eating and go find my books.

It's like when WLC claims he can justify (1) of Kalam by inductive inference. Even given a valid method of induction(which is a HUGE given as no one has been able to find one thusfar), this is not the case. To take something from a specific case to a general case, one must have a specific case from which to generalize! We simply have no known instances of something being cause to exist ex nihilo. Any claim of induction on this matter is either ignorance or equivocation. Conservation laws combined with several cosmological models do infact suggest that the universe COULD have an infinite past. However, even if the universe began to exist ex nihilo, it does not imply it had a cause. If the total energy of universe is zero(which the cosmological background radiation data suggests), then the universe very well could have popped into existence causelessly. So, what he have here is that (1) is completely unsupported and (2) could go either way. Kalam isn't a scientific argument; it merely pretends to be. And that is why modus tollens and the scientific method are so important. We depend on falsification to eliminate what is NOT true! Those who say "You can't prove a negative!" don't know what they're talking about; science relies on proving negatives and eliminating them from the possible answers. p->q ~q ~p Cypress, since Kalam obviously isn't the scientific argument for theism that you claimed theists use, care to provide the one you claimed exists?

So the comparison isn't apt, then? Golly, I thought I already said that. For those who didn't click on the link, it's largely irrelevant. The only thing that even remotely looks relevant is the 'persuasive game' and we are given no indication that this subset is part of the popular gaming market. In fact, that article even says: Bolding is mine. So, if anyone thinks Pangloss has a point here, go click on the link he provided. Thank you, Pangloss, for refuting yourself. Again, I say the comparison is not valid. You're trying to equate an incredibly small subset of a subset of video games with video games in order to put video games on level ground with political rhetoric whose main purpose is changing minds and inciting action. I'll let you in on a secret: the purpose of popular music is to make money. They make what the people want to hear. That's why it's common to hear music snobs talking about the crap quality of popular music; like the comedian . They market the music to certain audiences( ); they don't want to change your mind, they want to feed you what you already want. Now, the song you mentioned, "Bodies" by Drowning Pool, is an example of popular music. In fact, it did really well on the charts. It is an example of a song written to a particular market. Sure some pop artists will write songs occasionally so they can make a political statement, but it is FAR FAR from purpose of the industry. Music is generally for entertainment and labels design their artists towards what people want. It's mostly about economics. That's right kids, blame capitalism for music sucking. Again, it's an invalid comparison.

Go on. Show me that the majority of video games are designed to have the same effect as political rhetoric. Political rhetoric is FOR changing minds and bringing about action whilst video games are for entertainment. Any subset of video games which have the same effect are marginal at best. Drowning Pool isn't rap.

o.O [citation needed] Even were that true, those would be isolated examples. Political rhetoric as a whole is designed for that. Generally video games are designed for entertainment. In fact, I can't think of a single example of a video game designed to change your mind or cause you to do something you wouldn't necessarily already do. Your comparison seems invalid.

Are video games designed to change people's minds and/or call them to action?

The difference is that the purpose of the rhetoric is to draw people to action. It's designed to change your mind or do something you wouldn't necessarily already do. It's not a large leap from violent rhetoric to violent thoughts/feelings. As we all know, thoughts/feelings are the basis for action.

Was that before or after she was shot?

One might even argue that 'cause and effect' is largely a human construct. Dennett breaks down the different aspects of causality in Freedom Evolves. One might be able to say speak of causal sufficiency retrospectively by observing interactions between systems, but I'm not sure particles behaving how they behave really coincides with 'cause and effect' as it is used by lay people. Events can have one cause, many causes, or no discernible cause.

What makes you think that cause and effect applies to the beginning of the universe? Must a canvas have the properties of the paints used on it? Indeed, it doesn't make much sense to speak of causes for actions of non-existent things. How can you cause something which does not exist to do anything, let alone begin to exist?

It's the basis for modern medicine. No, we will not do your homework for you.

That's what I was thinking.

I knew that she was able to follow commands upon waking up from surgery and I knew that it was 'through and through', but the last time I got info, it was unclear whether or not the bullet actually went through the brain.

Notice that I did no such thing. I clearly used the qualifier "unless you can provide a mechanism for breaking it."

That doesn't carry much weight coming from you. You seem to think EVERYTHING I post is done poorly and impertinently since you have taken to neg repping random posts of mine and even making spurious reports. Then again, you don't just do it to me anymore. So, since you seem to be the only one that didn't 'get it', it seems to be yet another example of you having an axe to grind. Have a nice day.

And saying organized religions are scams is an opinion.