new

"I'm not quite sure why that merits a smiley face at the end of it"

Because you have bounced back and forth denying, then affirming, Premise 2.

"Your premises and conclusions don't line up the way you think they do."

How so? Here they are:

Premise 1: If there is no God, then objective moral values do not exist.

Premise 2: Objective moral values DO exist.

Conclusion: Therefore, God exists.

"Yeah. That's called empathy and human decency, and it requires no God. And you somehow never state why you think it does."

Empathy and human decency are subjective. When you are crying out to Someone or Something Objective, you are denying the worldview of the atheist. There is nothing objective to cry out to. It is a slow cold dark death with no memory of anything on this pale blue dot, on your view.

"Quote Dawkins until your face turns blue. Lots of atheists disagree with him about MANY things."

Oh sure, but the consensus on this subject is that objective moral values and duties do not exist. You need to tell me why they are wrong and why the 3 additional reasons that I provided are wrong. Thus far, you have failed to do so.

"Strange, because I'm living (an atheist life) just fine. Ever ask yourself why God won't heal amputees?"

Haha - I love it! Now you are getting desperate, Valri. Here is your "logic:"

Premise: I do not know of any amputees being healed (outside of human involvement, that is).

Conclusion: Therefore, God does not exist.

You could pretty much put anything into your premise along those lines (why hurricanes, tsunamis, etc? Why did my ice cream melt too fast today?) but the conclusion does not follow based on any rules of logic, that is.

"You act as though you're quoting from the Atheist Bible or something which doesn't exist."

No, but the Atheist Creed does exist:

I, the atheist, believe:

1. That the universe miraculously popped into existence out of nothing uncaused by anything.

2. That life magically sprang forth from non-life when lightning hit some mud.

3. That minds and morals evolved from molecules through monkeys.

4. That there is no God, and I hate Him.

"I'm free to disagree with Dawkins and I don't have to turn in my Atheist Club Card."

Sure, you can disagree with him all you want, but when you cannot provide any rational reason for your disagreement, then don't go around thinking you are the "rational" one.

"What you don't seem to get is that I have no problem with objective moral values and still don't see why they depend on a God, because they don't."

Take it up with your fellow atheists - over 200 years. And consider the future of the universe, in which no matter how you behave - Hitler or Ghandi - it will not matter one whit. On that view, your life cannot have any objective purpose or meaning or morality. Some people win, some lose - it's all the law of the jungle and nothing else.

"No God worth believing in would make permanent, eternal torture and burning conditional on anything."

How come? Sounds like you think, like (another poster) pointed out, that you would make a better "god?" :-)

Materialism is the belief that all of the universe may be reduced to physical materials. I am sure you know what scientific means. So the two together constitute a view that the only truths we can know are those verified by science on materials. I am not aware of atheists who argue against this.

Regardless, you have admitted above - because you believe these things represent reality, as a minimum, the following 3 beliefs on atheism (all I need is one):

1. There is no God.
2. Evolutionary naturalism is true.
3. Objective meaning or purposes to life do not exist.

Nice core doctrine - thank you!

"I did a search of how many times you have accused other people of confusing moral ontology (existence) with moral epistemology (knowledge). and the amount of times you say it is shocking."

Now, let me see if I understand you. You went through all the trouble to make a search to see how many times I have made this point (so many atheists, so little time :-)), yet, you could have spent that time educating yourself on this issue. But, I am supposed to be your teacher and feed you milk from a bottle, do I have that correct?!? And you guys are the "smart" and "rational" ones. smh

<sigh> Moral ontology deals with the existence or non-existence of objective moral values and duties. Do they even exist? (The overwhelming majority of scholarly atheists across two centuries say "no" if there is no God.) Moral epistemology deals with knowledge, how we can come to know these objective moral values and duties - if they exist. Like so many atheists, you divert to epistemology before you establish ontology, but that is, obviously, incorrect: you cannot talk about how we come to know "these things" if "these things" do not exist. Mere absurdism. And that leads into the ice cream flavors and the fact that atheism is unlivable and that atheists unwittingly acknowledge God's existence when they assert objective moral values and duties.

It's weird: atheists spend so much time talking about things they do not believe in. They claim to not believe in God, but they spend a lot of time talking about Him and how "evil" He and His followers are. They claim to not believe in objective moral values and duties (or the preponderance of scholarly atheists do anyway), then they use objective moral terms like "evil," "deranged," "moral monsters," etc to describe Christians and the God we follow but atheists do not believe in. Then, they shout how "rational" they are. Very strange indeed.