Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by leveni on February 23, 2011 at 6:23pm

@ Gila "In the scientific method, one always allows that one might be wrong in any facet of its knowledge. Future discoveries may cause us/science to modify our ideas. While acknowledging that, we still accept that our current state of knowledge is the best so far. Room for doubt is a rational attitude."

 

Agreed. 

But

Again, we are talking about God here. We have zero knowledge of God. How can we be wrong in our knowledge toward God? How can we modify our knowledge of God? What is our current state of knowledge in regards to god? How can we have a rational attitude in regards to God? 

 

We can't apply science to God.

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Permalink Reply by Park Bierbower on February 23, 2011 at 6:28pm

Being certain of something does not equate to a belief or refusal to be swayed.  If I were presented compelling evidence for god, and in some way eliminated the inherent contradictions in its common definition, I'd listen and accept it.  The point is, the current definition of "god," especially in the christian religion, is self refuting.  It is itself logically contradictory, and reality as we know it refutes its existence.  That refutation can be counted, in my mind, as evidence of its non existence.  Reality is evidence against the christian god, not some other watered definition that people may bring into this.  I will not state absolute certainty against a trickster god, a pantheist god, or a god whose existence bears no result on the universe~ there is no evidence to support such a position.  I will, however, state with absolute confidence that the god of the bible does not exist, and that the god of popular christianity, as well, does not exist~ because I have evidence to disprove it.

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Permalink Reply by paul babcock on February 24, 2011 at 6:07pm

I donot see anything in this post that I disagree w at all. If we were disagreeing elsewhere, then I can easily imagine that it was not over anything substantial.

In another post you made an issue of weather or not we could trust our senses. I think that w/in limits we can and in fact have to as that (and reason) is all we have. A trickster god by definition tho, would be able to fool our sences.

And like I stated earlier, Christian mythology actually does make room for trickster god type actions like w my theist relative believeing dinosaur bones were put there by Satan.

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Permalink Reply by Vince Watkins on February 23, 2011 at 8:58pm

"A logical impossibility for anyone to disprove a universal negative."

Bullshit. In spite of all the people littering the internet with such folky assertions that one cannot prove a negative, it just ain't so. Among professional logicians, please name one... just one... who believes this. Good luck.

I know, I know... you've been slippery enough to avoid the plain negative and properly quote "universal negative" as in proving that there are no gold shitting bears on Pluto or some such nonsense.

We're all supposed to pretend that the only way to prove this would be to send a team of thousands to Pluto and conduct a thorough survey of the planet. That being currently impossible, it should therefore be equally impossible to prove that there are no 24 karat bear turds on the Plutonian shore. We're supposed to pretend that some ursine breed might be able to metabolize whatever rocky ice one finds on Pluto into precious metal and survive in conditions that we know full well do not allow for bears whether or not they poop gold.

Save it for the 8 year olds.

Otherwise, posit a God. Define the word coherently.

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Permalink Reply by Park Bierbower on February 23, 2011 at 9:38pm

Pluto is now classified as a Dwarf Planet

pic related

your face when

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Permalink Reply by mvitaminx on February 24, 2011 at 2:35am

You are serious about not understanding how to disprove a god hiding as a negative?

 

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Permalink Reply by Matthew S on March 1, 2011 at 7:10am

The abrahamists don't have a monopoly on god. There are other ideas of what god is. I don't believe in them, but I leave the possibility that i'm wrong open with anything.

 

99.9999% for me is more short for 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999%

 

I just don't feel like typing all those 9's. besides, its 100% anyway.

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Permalink Reply by leveni on February 23, 2011 at 5:50pm

@ Paul "however one can't be 100% sure of any assertion based on any observed bit of evidence, as it is always possible to be wrong on our evidence"?

 

Paul you are 100% correct here and this is the basis of science.

But

The the topic of conversation here is God. And it is impossible to mix science with God. And the reason is nobody has ever observed God. 

 

I know as a fact, that is 100% true, nobody here has ever observed God. And until such time, science, by definition, can never be used to prove or disprove God.

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Permalink Reply by Mike Lee on February 23, 2011 at 7:10pm

To be 100 percent sure of an unprovable concept would likely make me as dogmatic as those I criticize. So I'd have to say I'm as certain as I can be, considering what my faculties can provide. Maybe the deists have it right, and the creator is an absentee landlord, but it hardly matters in the practical sense.

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Permalink Reply by Vince Watkins on February 23, 2011 at 8:19pm

As Christopher Hitchens said, "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."

However, note that serious scientists devote no time whatsoever to disproving the existence of a clone of Abraham Lincoln strumming a banjo on the dark side of the moon.

All this blather about scientific inquiry and leaving room for doubt about the existence of the Abrahamic God or Lincoln's lunar-living, banjo-strumming clone is to fail to understand science in the first place.

Check your premise.

If your premise is self-contradictory, insane, or otherwise does not warrant serious hyposthesis, let alone testing, experimentation, prediction, etc., and does not deserve to be given serious consideration, much less the stature of a theory with the rigors of scientific inquiry and a budget the size of NASA's expended upon it.

Again, if you can fathom a coherent God that you'd like to put forth as potentially real... go for it. Otherwise, that .01% of doubt is just you trying not to be an ass. For me, that's obviously not a good enough reason. :)

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Permalink Reply by Park Bierbower on February 23, 2011 at 8:35pm

not only that, but the saying that "the lack of evidence need not be construed as evidence against" is often misinterpreted to mean "having no evidence is not evidence against."  That is wrong.  The qualities of "gawd" that christians have are qualities that have been prescribed to god, they are not descriptive.  If they are qualities of a true entity, then reality should reflect those qualities (never mind the fact that they are self refuting and contradictory.)  Reality does not~ and thus can be evidence against the common god described.

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Permalink Reply by paul babcock on February 24, 2011 at 5:44pm

I concur that this is largely mastabatory hair splitting, and even that my fraction of a percent of doubt is maybe solopsistic. It is not however any attempt to hedge my bets. I have a fraction of a percent of doubt because doubt is t logical and reasonable default position until a convincing argument is made to remove doubt and I not only donot think that any argument has been presented that no god exists to 100% certainty, but I donot think that one can be made.

I can grant that it is reasonable to say that one can be 100% sure that Jehova, as he is described in his press release does not exist as he is described there. His bio is filled w numerous contradictions that one can be 100% sure cannot all be true. I imagine this can also be said about almost any particular god that has thus far been described in any detail.

And I totaly grant that our universe seems to operate as if there is no god. But for every bit of evidence that one can present showing that god isn't responsible or present or anything, there is always t counter argument that maybe gods wants it to appear that way. If there was a god who could do those things and had those desires, then how would we tell that world from this world.

I imagine this is extremely unlikely to t point of being mastabatory and solopsist. But I donot think that it is 100% imposible. There are plenty of definitions of "atheism" that donot require 100% certainty. And I really donot think that last fraction of a percent is that important.

What I think is important is that I live my life as if there is no god or afterlife, or miracles or any of that. And that I think it is actually wrong to do so; wrong both in that it is incorrect and wrong moraly. One of those things that theism does that, I think, is most wrong is that it teaches that faith is a virtue. Faith is claiming to know things that one doesn't and probably can't.

I think this brings me back to my start minus perhaps those bits about being mastabatory and solopsistic.

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