This I disagree with. I’d say that if you can reasonably expect that something’s existence would have produced observable evidence, then in the absence of that evidence it’s logical (or at least, more reasonable) to assume it doesn’t exist. For instance, I consider it unreasonable that some people believe the Loch Ness monster exists, despite the fact that people have been searching for it for a long time without (so far as I know) ever producing more than a blurry photo. On the other hand, I don’t see anything illogical in saying I believe there’s life on other planets. Sure, there’s no evidence, but why should there be? If we eventually develop interstellar travel and explore hundreds of worlds, and we still don’t find any signs of life, then perhaps it should be called an unreasonable belief.
So what you’re saying is that the claim that the universe has a purpose is not falsifiable, right? I agree with that, but all that means to me is that it’s not a scientific claim. I can’t expect to determine whether the universe has a purpose by examining scientific evidence. But that doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t believe it. Likewise, “killing is inherently wrong” isn’t a scientific claim, but I still believe it.
The impossible cannot exist, period. If you can prove it, then it isn’t impossible.
However, if by “the known laws of the universe” you mean the laws of physics, these govern a specific set of things, namely material entities. (I.e., things made of matter, and the forces between them). They don’t govern abstract concepts like justice. And yet, most people believe in justice. If God isn’t a material entity, I see no more reason to believe that he is governed by the laws of physics.
It’s different than postulating the existence of a wizard with omnipotent powers. Generally by “wizard” one means an actual material being, made out of flesh and blood. In that case, one would expect him to interact with other material entities via the known physical forces (since the evidence suggests that all material beings interact with each other in that way.) And none of those could reasonably be thought to provide a mechanism for controlling the universe. But again, there’s no reason to think God is such an entity.
Also, the laws of physics govern interactions that take place between objects in the universe. If God is external to the universe, there’s no reason to think his interactions are governed by the same laws. Likewise, a person living on a two-dimensional plane has no reason to assume objects out in the three-dimensional world obey the laws of two-dimensional geometry. (And it’s not unreasonable for us to speculate about some higher dimensional world that doesn’t obey the laws of geometry we’re used to.)
I don’t think there’s anything illogical about life arising on other planets either, in a general sense, and the fact that life has arisen on earth indicates is prove in itself that life can arise in the universe, and there is no reason to believe that the earth should be unique. So, in a general sense, there’s nothing unreasonable at saying life on other planets is possible because we already know that it’s happened at least once. However, it would NOT be reasonable to imagine that 20 foot purple snootches live on a hypothetical moon around an unknown planet orbiting an unnamed star in another galaxy and then state that this hypothesis deserves any kind of default status of specific plausibility which is equal to the possibility of the snootch’s non-existence.
Hiuh? That’s exactly what it is. It’s claiming a purpose for the universe which is unscientific (and so is claiming that there isn’t a purpose). How is it unscientific to say that a claim is not scientifically falsifiable?
Actually, it IS tehortetically possible to determine if it DOES have a purpose. Hypothetically, an observable, verifiable purpose could be revealed or discovered at any minute. It’s only the claim that there isn’t a purpose which can never be scientificaly proven.
I haven’t been talking about belief, just about knowledge and methods for acquiring it.
I could make a scientific argument as to why killing is “wrong” (as long as I’m allowed to give a non-supernatural definition for the word “wrong.”
Exactly. That’s why magic can be ruled out a priori and doesn’t need to be considered…at least not without an extremely good reason.
“Justice” is jut a human cultural construction. It’s governed by human thought, which is a product of biological evolution, which is a result of- and is governed by- physical laws and properties of the universe.
If God isn’t a material entity, he doesn’t exist. That which exists is, by definition, material. That which is not material, by definition, does not exist. What characteristic would distinguish non-materiality from nothingness?
Actually, a wizard would interact with magic, i.e. in ways which do not conform to known physical laws.
Why not?
I don’t get it. If something is external to the universe, than it’s not part of the universe and is insensible to the universe. If it’s insensible to the universe then it’s the same as if it doesn’t exist.
The argument that God can supercede physical laws is really just a tautological statement that God can do magic because God can do magic.
OK, but in that case we know of planets without purple snootches, and we don’t know of any with purple snootches, so we can make an inductive inference that there are no purple snootches on this particular planet. However, that inference is based on the idea that different planets are inherently similar. You seem to be saying it’s illogical to believe in God because he’d have to be “magical”, and we can inductively infer that he couldn’t be magical based on the fact that everything in the universe is non-magical. I’m saying if God is external to the universe, then he’s intrinsically different than things in the universe in such a way as to make that inference invalid.
You misunderstood me. I’m not saying your claim is unscientific, I’m saying the non-falsifiability of the claim “The universe has a purpose” (which you pointed out) makes the “the universe has a purpose” an unscientific claim. I think we’re agreeing with each other here. However, just because a claim isn’t scientific doesn’t mean it’s illogical to believe it to be true.
Right, but we can’t expect to determine it by science. Maybe it will turn out that to make such a determination is possible, but it might just as well be impossible. If someday we get lucky and discover proof that the universe has a purpose, great, but until then we’ll have to decide what to believe about that by non-scientific means.
I thought your contention was that people who believe in God are being illogical. Was I misunderstanding?
I’d be genuinely interested to see what that argument is.
[qupte=Diogenes the Cynic]“Justice” is just a human cultural construction. It’s governed by human thought, which is a product of biological evolution, which is a result of- and is governed by- physical laws and properties of the universe.
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Many people believe justice has real existence indpendent of human opinion – that certain outcomes are inherently more just than others, and not merely because we say so. I guess you’re in the group that doesn’t believe that. But at any rate, even if justice is just a product of beings who are governed by physical laws, justice itself isn’t governed by physical laws. There is no law of physics that applies directly to justice.
Things made of matter and/or which carry energy are material things. Things like concepts and ideas (for example) are not.
Well, in the example of an idea, its informational content distinguishes it from nothing. An idea is non-material. You could say it’s a set of neurons firing in my head, but a different set of neurons might fire in your head when you think that idea. And yet, it’s the same idea. The physical world just contains representations of it. Another representation would be writing on a page that states the idea. Again, a totally different physical representation of the exact same idea. So the idea itself is not a material thing.
My point is that if a wizard is “a material being who interacts with the world in ways that don’t conform to physical laws”, then it’s not sensible to believe in wizards. I’m agreeing with you with regard to wizards. However, I’m saying it’s different for God, because God is “an immaterial being who interacts with the world in ways that don’t conform to physical laws.”
I’m saying no material being could bend the whole world to his will through physical forces alone. For one thing, he couldn’t instantaneously affect distant objects, since those forces could only propagate from his position at the speed of light.
I don’t get it. If something is external to the universe, than it’s not part of the universe and is insensible to the universe. If it’s insensible to the universe then it’s the same as if it doesn’t exist.
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Let’s say I take out a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle. Then I draw a circle to the left of the line and a circle to the right. Now, every object on the plane obeys certain geometric laws, one of them being that it can’t touch both circles without touching the line. But I, as an object not on the plane, can easily break that law. In this example I’m external to the paper, I’m interacting with the objects on the paper, and I’m doing so in a way that violates the rules which hold for objects on the paper. Replace “I” with “God” and “paper” with “universe,” and I don’t see any reason why that sentence couldn’t still be true.
I’m not arguing that God can do “magic”, I’m saying there’s no compelling reason to think that he can’t. I don’t find “God can’t do magic because material entities existing in the universe can’t do magic” to be a compelling argument, for the reasons I gave above.
By the way, to get back to the point of the thread:
In order to make an agnostic believe in God, you’d probably at least have to provide a detailed message transmitted simultaneously to multiple people in different parts of the world, in such a way that it could only have come from a being of immense power or knowledge.
So there’s three elements to that:
(1) It must be a message. Why? Because any other display of power (making the sun suddenly turn purple and start blinking, for example) could be do to some unknown physical cause, but the formation of a comprehensible message due to anything other than intelligence is extroadinarily unlikely. (Claims about “a million monkeys” don’t hold up to closer scrutiny.)
(2) It must be transmitted simultaneously to multiple people in different parts of the world. This is to make it exceedingly unlikely that it’s some sort of hallucination, or that the people who claim to have received the message are just making it up.
(3) It must be done in such a way that it could only have been accomplished by a being of immense power. This is to minimize the possibility that it was faked by humans.
Believers might say that that’s requiring a ridiculous level of proof, but how could you expect any less? It has to be something that’s virtually impossible for any humans or group of humans to fake, and that couldn’t have happened if someone wasn’t behind it.
But why, you might ask, should one assume messages from God are faked until proven otherwise, when we don’t assume that scientists are faking their results? I’d answer that the numerous contradictory religions that exist are evidence that most religious founders are either lying or deluded, whereas there’s no such evidence about scientists. Sure, scientists may have contradictory theories, but they’re not saying they know for sure. And they may have contradictory experimental evidence, but they’re not generally insisting that they have 100% confidence that their experiment didn’t contain some unrecognized source of error.
At any rate, I’m not saying people shouldn’t believe in religion, only that it’s reasonable to hold a very high standard for proof. At this point, there doesn’t seem to be any convincing proof. Which isn’t evidence one way or the other, unless there’s some reason to think there should be proof.
The OP proposes a great question. I’m a bit stumped at the moment of what would convince me. It would probably take a number of things that would defy logic seen as by many people. Evidence would be nice.
I think however, that a difficulty regarding the question is that we may never be able to truly define what God is, should such an entity exist.
For instance, most religions ascribe to God a sort of omnipotence; essentially existing everywhere in the universe and knowing all that is to be known to some degree or another.
I have read where string theorists, among others, suggest that if there were a being that exists on a plane with 4 physical dimensional spaces (or more), time as we know it would be irrelevant to It. This being need not be subjected to the arrow of entropy that drags us, living in our three dimensional physical space, ever relentlessly forwards. Time, which to us is an unknowable direction that life moves in, would be simply another physical direction to such an entity the same as forwards-backwards, up-down, or right-left are physical directions to us. Moving or looking forward or backwards or sideways in time to It would the same as moving or looking in a specific direction is to us.
If such an entity could look or reach into our three dimensional space, it might also be able to look at a three dimensional object or person in directions we cannot imagine, so that it could see all things from several angles at once, including from the inside out. All physical things on our plane might be evident to it. And it could see how it affects them at all points in time. It may even be able to understand all consequences of an object randomly moving either left or right for ages to come before such a direction is chosen.
In other words, there is some theoretical basis by which an intelligent entity with God-like powers could physically exist in our universe, or pehaps many universes. And let’s assume that it can peer into or even reach into our 3 dimensional world.
How could we ever understand the mind or workings of a creature that exists in those higher dimensions? Most of us cannot even begin to visualize what a fourth physical dimension would look like. How alien would such a being’s thinking or purposes be to us?
Might it not also be incredibly difficult for such an entity to make itself understood by us? How would you make an ant be able to intellectually understand humanity on a level that would somewhat satisfy both the ant and the human? The ant might have a hint of our existence if it is crawling on your skin, but its comprehension of humans and their purposes would be extremely limited as far as we are concerned.
Perhaps over time, with thousands or millions of years of scientific advancement, and even a few more evolutionary steps, we might be able to relate to such an entity.
But it’s seemed the height of presumption to me that we might ever know the mind of God. It may be trying to reveal itself all the time to us, but we may not fathom what it is trying to show us.
In other words Priceguy, the ant will never have the intellectual capacity to really understand the definition of what a human is, so it’s understanding of you will never be anywhere close to complete. Even though it has pretty solid evidence that you exist. And you do exist in the same physical space as the ant.
Now try kicking it up a few levels to understanding an entity that may be as physically invisible to us and unknowable to us by nature as the future is. And it also understands far more information than any of us could possibly imagine. How do we comprehend its existence or purpose?
The problem with this position is that it equally applies to an infinite number of arbitrary statements that equally can’t be definitely proven nor unproven. So, regardless of the absurdity of any claim I could make, you would have then to admit that it’s not unreasonnable to believe it. But in practice, most likely, you’d actually state it is not reasonnable. People don’t apply the same standard to the “god” claim and to others arbitrary claims. “You can’t prove it’s true nor that it’s untrue” is good enough for them to state that it’s reasonnable to believe in god. But it isn’t good enough if I claim that the cabbages I grow in my garden are intelligent beings I can speak with, or that I’m an ET impersonnating a human being.
That’s why I’m an atheist, and not an agnostic. If I were an agnostic, I would have to apply the same “benefit of the doubt” to all possible claims. I state that I believe god does not exists for the same reason I state fairies do no exist. Because I’ve the same evidences for the existence of both : none. And despite the fact that I can’t prove the non-existence of either. Answering “I don’t know, it’s a reasonnable claim” to the “is there a god?” question would led me to answer the same to the “are there fairies?” question, to the “Is G.W. Bush an alien in disguise?” question and to essentially any other unproven claim you could come up with.
clair, we hold beliefs that have some utility. If a belief has had utility for us in our lives in the past, then we’ll hang on to it until it is disproven. Intelligent cabbages doesn’t have utility; for many god belief does.
For me personally, it would take some really amazing things to happen for me to believe in a god. I mean, besides world peace & all that stuff. For example if I were to win an indecent amount of money in tatslotto or a lottery…I would be a true believer. Especially considering that I dont play lottery & tend not to gamble at all.
Another thing that would instantly convert me would be if Brad Pitt began persuing me relentlessly as his new love interest. Mind you, my husband says if that ever happened it would really prove that there isnt a god!
Seriously, there is too much suffering here in our little world to make me believe in a god. (And a god that lets children die of hunger (and other nasties) isnt really worth having anyway imho).
True, but we don’t know that such an entity isn’t able to do more than to kick off creation, while the rest of our developement may be left up to natural processes. We could probably be cloning ants in a few years, we may be able to enhance them somewhat, but we may never be able to bring them to our level at the size of their brain capacity.
Likewise how do we know that such a Godlike entity was not once like us? Perhaps a million more years of technological advancement might give our decendents such new capabilities. Earning our stipes so to speak?
Lets see. A message from god deposited on to all forms of recordable media everywhere, proclaiming 3 miracles to be peformed. 1) Relocation of the milky way galaxy. 2) Reversing the earths rotation. 3) returning Michael Jackson to pre-thriller looks. That would do it for me. Oh, and the message is removed after 24 hours from my good CD’s/DVD’s, it can stay on the crappy ones.
