IS EVERYBODY 100% POSITIVE THERE IS NO GOD?

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Permalink Reply by Mark on March 26, 2012 at 3:51am

Why couldn't a god have an identity? Why does a god have to interfere with the nature of things? What if a highly evolved race became "gods" or "god" much before our time? Makes sense. Aliens could exist. Why not gods?

Your logic totally makes sense bro. Please contact the scientific community right away and collect your Nobel Prize and your photoshoot for Time magazine.

I'm waiting... 

Permalink Reply by Joan Denoo on March 26, 2012 at 12:18pm

"noncontradictory concrete identity"

noncontradictory: "The law of logic that it is not the case that (p & not-p). Contradiction is the final logical stopping point: if we can derive a contradiction from a set of premises, then at least one of them is false (see reductio ad absurdum). 

Concrete: "naming a real thing or class of things <the word poem is concrete, poetry is abstract>em>concrete evidence>

identity:  "the distinguishing character or personality of an individual"

"Faith is the absence of reason as god is the absence of noncontradictory concrete identity (which a thing needs to exist)."

OK, now what does that mean? 

Permalink Reply by Stuart Jeremy Oxley on March 25, 2012 at 8:13pm

Using all the sciences and human history I can be 100% sure that all religions and superstitions are made up! I can be 100% sure that there is no known evidence to support the existence of a god or gods. I therefore do not believe in them.
If there is some sort of higher power that created everything, its nothing more than a vague lucky guess on mans part and he or she is most definately NOT worthy of worship.
The problem might be that man simply overthinks things because he is constrained by what he can comprehend, particularly his own mortality. Perhaps matter, existence, time etc have no beginning or end they just simply, are!
PS: If you are an a***ly retentive, politically correct person, please insert he/she where appropriate!

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Permalink Reply by Mark on March 25, 2012 at 8:41pm

My favorite theory is that time is an anomaly that exists only in our universe.

Technically that could mean that matter in our universe has always existed in a sense. One day time/gravity will collapse and our universe will disappear from existence.

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Permalink Reply by MCT on March 26, 2012 at 8:53am

Mark,

God can have an identity. The same way the invisible pink unicorn or the flying spaghetti monster can. It is just invalid and contradictory or metaphorical. Faith is the absence of reason as god is the absence of noncontradictory concrete identity (which a thing needs to exist). What god that you know of possibly or can imagine has a valid identity that is not made up of contradiction or metaphor, that is not also simply just something else logical that we already have a name for, like 'alien'? To exist, a thing must have an identity in reality. If it does not interface with reality, then it does not exist, in reality. And there is nothing outside of reality. There is nothing outside of everything that exists. To exist, a thing must be some things and not others, lest it would have no meaning or substance to be validly called existent. It is impossible for a leaf to melt and freeze at the same time. Or a plant to grow backwards. Or to be all red or all green at the same time. These cannot happen because they violate the law of identity. If contradictions were able to manifest, our system of how we turn subjective perceptions into objective concepts and how we verify learned concepts by integrating them into a knowledge-base could not work.

No one is disputing the possibility of an powerful species of alien having sufficiently advanced technology as to appear as if it is god-like, but this is very different from actually being a god. Fancy technology, although cool, is not supernatural or contradictory to nature. And if you suddenly are faced with a bright light from above and suddenly find yourself transported to another planet or even local expansion of space-time, rest most assuredly, it cannot be a god, it's only an alien.

The local scientific community does not give out Nobel Peace Prizes. They do that in Stockholm and Oslo. And this is not a scientific issue, but an epistemological one. God violates more basic fundamental epistemological principles that you need for reason and science to work.

TIME magazine, please. Besides, on the subject, they likely only publish phantasmagorical new-age mumbo-jumbo of the eternal skeptic type. So that everyone can hold hands and talk about how tolerant of each others' cultures and mystical ideas they are. I find the reference section more interesting and enlightening.

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Permalink Reply by Joan Denoo on March 26, 2012 at 12:36pm

OK, let me see if I understand what you say.  

"To exist, a thing must have an identity in reality."

Is that true? For example, an atom, or a germ, or bacteria, did not have an identity until humans had the means to see it, even as they saw the effect of them. Is it the reality or the perception of reality that matters. Or, if we can see a reality, let us say lightning, it is a reality, but the energy cannot be used until humans have a perception of lightning as a source of electrical energy and learns how to control and predict its use.

"If it does not interface with reality, then it does not exist, in reality." 

If human beings, with their many senses, do not exist, then does water, soil, air, or fire exist? 

So, if the unseeable to humans, or no humans to see, exist, and god does exist, how can one know? 

or if god does not exist, how can one know? Therefore, it makes sense to know there is no god until and unless evidence presents itself.

Those who believe god exists give anecdotal evidence that cannot stand up to reason, but can and does stand up to emotion. Therefore, does emotion count in this reality?

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Permalink Reply by Dean Loring on March 27, 2012 at 2:18am

Replace 'identity' by 'information content' as from Shannon and Hawking. I think that's what he means. Might've meant something else.

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Permalink Reply by MCT on March 26, 2012 at 11:40am

Sure Dean,

But what about? We agree on gnostic atheism and for the same reason. The possibility of god is not reasonable.

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Permalink Reply by Dean Loring on March 26, 2012 at 11:51pm

On phrasing the existential argument against god to counter the abused "can't know the unknowable". Start by putting limits and boundaries on the unknown. The overall goal is to make impotent such 'beyond comprehension' arguments along the lines of how quantum physicists are reducing error due to Heisenberg by 'squeezing' the probability distribution, as predicted by the 'Heisenberg Compensator' of Star Trek:TNG.

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Permalink Reply by Joan Denoo on March 27, 2012 at 1:19pm

Do I understand what you wrote? "Beyond comprehension" is getting smaller and smaller because of quantum physics?

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Permalink Reply by Mick Ohrberg on March 27, 2012 at 1:34pm

Assuming the total amount of knowledge is a finite amount, and assuming quantum physics is in fact a correct theory, then yes - that makes perfect sense. However, I think right now we don't know what we don't know, and the more we learn, the more we realize how much we don't know. Which is a perfect place to be for scientists :)

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Permalink Reply by Joan Denoo on March 27, 2012 at 3:10pm

ABSOLUTELY! Living in the question is a whole lot more interesting than living in the answer. 

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