About a year ago, I had a conversation with a theist on youtube. He seemed to be a sincere fellow and was extremely well-mannered and generally likeable. We didn't see eye to eye, but had a very spirited (but friendly) exchange, portions of which follow. Kudos and shout outs to infidels.org and atheists.org for the help in disposing of these arguments.
The set-up: We were discussing the concept of "eternal life" and whether or not it was a good thing. The conversation took off from there. His comments will be bolded. Mine will be in regular font. Any "after the fact" commentary by me will be italicized.
This first bit is an exchange over eternal life that bled into an exchange over the nature of evidence.
"survival is innately good."
not necessarily. survival which causes unnecessary suffering is not only not "innately good" but can be quite cruel. Let's break it down this way: if it is innately wrong to desire the power of a god because to do such would be to put one's self on a level of equality with a god, why then is it not equally wrong to desire the immortality of a god for the same reason?
Personally, I see it the desire to live forever as a deep-seeded case of psychological denial brought forth by the fear of death and religion as the enabler to that denial.
"It is strange for us to desire [eternal life] so intensely, if it doesn't exist."
That we desire it so intensely is not an indication that it exists...it is only an indication that we can conceive of the idea, the idea is attractive. Throw in the notion that the idea is impossible to disprove and you're going to have people trying to find it....with intensity.
"I won't grant that it's impossible to disprove"
How would one disprove eternal life after death?
"Simply by showing that materialism is true. That all that exists is the physical world so once the physical body is dead, nothing exists to move on to this eternal life."
So....in order to disprove that a realm beyond the physical world exists as you claim, I have to prove a negative? How do you propose I do that? Demonstrating non-existence is something I never learned how to do.
"You could at least prove that it is more probable than not."
How, exactly? By stating that we have no evidence of an existence beyond the natural world aside from wildly divergent "revelations" "out of body experiences" and such? It is impossible to provide you with evidence of "nothing," making your claim impossible to disprove.
"I for instance, don't want this to be true as badly as you seem to assume. I simply have no choice because it is true"
I will skip over your glaring self-contradiction (Eternal life must be real because it would be strange for us to want something that isn't real/I don't really want eternal life to be real, but it is) and will instead focus on this: You have no way of _knowing_ that because you have no way of _showing_ that. You have beliefs. You have arguments and reasoning upon which you base those beliefs. But you do not have positive knowledge, you have a declaration of faith. You don't have positive knowledge because you don't have evidence. You may have that which you accept as evidence which serves to reaffirm that faith, but if you had real evidence, any amount of faith would be completely unnecessary. I will gladly admit and proclaim that I have no evidence that eternal life or gods or fairies or invisible pink unicorns don't exist....but not having evidence of non-existence does not count as evidence of existence.
"Arguments are methods of presenting evidence"
But they are not evidence themselves.
"What do you mean by 'evidence'?"
That which is used to demonstrate the truth of an argument. If I argue that pink unicorns built the pyramids, I must show you evidence: which is a pink unicorn that either exists or existed at one time that can build pyramids and compelling evidence that their kind built the pyramids in question. (pink unicorn hoofprints or hair samples within the structure)
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