But it’s not. If there is no discernible difference between X and Y then they are the same. So if you postulate that there is a god that does not interact with our universe in any way then it is the same as the god not existing.
For example: let’s say that everything in the universe is being multiplied by 1 constantly. There is no difference between that happening and it not happening, so stating that “everything in the universe is being multiplied by 1 constantly” is not useful.
Let’s look at another example: suppose God laid out a set of moral principles, but there is no way for man to ever know what they are. That is just the same as there not being a set of moral principles.
Well oddly enough, it’s when I did start to see that there were other religions, and that their adherents were every bit as sure they were right, and that neither they nor me had any objective way to determine which of us were right, that things clicked.
Well, I am absolutely sure of my atheism due to my total absence of belief in any supernatural deity. The lack of evidence merely tells me that I am not crazy to be an atheist.
Maybe we’re talking at cross purposes. I’m fully willing to accept I’m wrong but I still don’t quite understand. The rational distinguishing point between the unicorn and god is that one exists within the confines of the known laws of earth and one exists outside of them. So comparing a unicorn to god doesn’t get you very far. You’re not comparing like for like.
I’m just saying it’s a bad metaphor.
Your dragon lives on earth though. So that’s two things you’re asking us to believe. First that you own an invisible fire breathing dragon and secondly that it lives in your garage. That’s two things - one that you own an impossible creature and two that it violates the laws of earth physics. Belief in god only requires one of them - impossible creature. It doesn’t have to violate the laws of physics here on earth.
I don’t really get the necessary connection between the existence of god and him interfering. Seems like two different questions. Maybe to us on earth the result is the same but cosmically who knows?
I’m not sure what you’re saying here. Are you saying that gods are more plausible than unicorns or Space Ninjas because a greater number of people believe in them?
So you think there might be a god that doesn’t interfere with our universe, is not observable in any way, and it makes no difference as to whether he exists or not, does not explain anything about our universe (except to add one more turtle), and provides no moral guidance. And you are going to waste time on this possibility despite the fact that you can not know the difference between you being 100% right and 100% wrong.
Why not consider the possibility that there is a pink dragon that is outside the universe, but might affect us “cosmically”. Who knows?
It’s not a metaphor at all. It is a hypothetical–and one that, I’ll point out, people seem to be taking the long way around not to address.
Even if it is harder to believe in the fire-breathing dragon than in god, the argument being rebutted doesn’t have anything to do with strength of evidence–it is the argument that we must keep an “open mind” where there is no evidence.
**The hypothetical asks if this is still true for things other than gods. **That’s not a difficult question, it doesn’t turn on the precise details of the unicorn or dragon, and I honestly don’t understand why people making the “open mind” argument aren’t even trying to rebut it–it just suggests they have nothing.
Sez you. How do you know where my garage is?
You may think garages are only on earth, just as I think “gods” are only supernatural beings that influence human affairs. You want to redefine “gods” in a way that makes them even harder to disprove, I’ll do the same for my dragon.
You may argue that being in my garage means it has to exist within the confines of the known laws of earth. That’s three assumptions by you: first, that you know the laws, second, that they apply to my dragon, and third, that my garage is on this planet. None, I contend, are accurate.
Well, fine. If you want me to be precise, my garage is actually in another dimension. It’s actually pretty cool. Problem solved.
This goes back to my earlier point about the assertion of a “god” that doesn’t affect the earth. I would contend that calling such a being a “god” goes against every single part of the meaning inherent in the term “god.”
More importantly, if that’s how you’re going to define “god”, I define my invisible incorporeal fire-breathing dragon to live in my garage in another dimension (not bound by the laws of earth).
That gets you back to the same problem–having to answer whether it’s rational to keep an open mind about god, and not about my dragon.
More broadly, you seem to be missing the point of the hypothetical. The point is that for any rational distinguishing point, I will just change my dragon to match. THERE IS NO RATIONAL DISTINGUISHING POINT. The dragon is a hypothetical I’m creating. Quibbling with its attributes is useless, since those attributes are whatever I say they are.
The point of the hypothetical is to point out that the “open mind” argument fails because there are so many things that one could, hypothetically, keep an open mind about the existence of. Nobody making the “open mind” argument seems willing to address the other things they’d have to keep an open mind about. Such as invisible fire-breathing dragons.
Well, let me take a crack at this. Let’s postulate a creature, who doesn’t exist in this reality, and doesn’t (and hasn’'t) interfered with or affected our reality in any way.
You seem to be happy to call that “god.” I question that belief. For example, how do we distinguish between “god” and “fred”, with fred being a creature who exists in some other plane of existence, and doesn’t affect this one in any way ?
It also makes it utterly irrelevant if you keep an open mind to that creature or not. It doesn’t (and can’t) affect our reality. (since if it did, it’d have to violate the rules of physics to do so).
Couple of things: There is no “supernatural” because nature is defined as “everything that exists” and science as its study. If God exists, it automatically becomes part of nature.
Sure, it would be pretty hard to apply any method to understand a being that can make up its own laws of physics if it feels like it, but that still wouldn’t make it outside science, just very complex.
Agnosticism is the complete and absolute belief in the principle of uncertainty, that God is unknowable. An atheist makes no such claim. To wit:
Theist: I believe in Santa Claus. He watches me and puts me in the “good” or “naughty” list and then brings me presents accordingly at Christmas.
Agnostic: The question of the existence of the being known as Santa Claus cannot be answered definitively, therefore I won’t even try.
Atheist: Sure, everything may be possible, I guess, but… COME. ON. You are both shitting me, right?
Interesting. So, where in prior threads (I’m talking about a year or so ago) you appeared to be a weak atheist, you now appear to be a weak theist. I doubt your position has changed, but I’m pretty sure you made no statement like this in the earlier threads, at least not those in which I participated.
What you have outlined here is basically the cosmological argument, the argument from design and/or the argument from wonder (or awe). Why atheists (as ordinarily defined) don’t find these persuasive is, I suspect, well known to you. If not, a little Google time would fill in the gaps fairly quickly.
In any event, to reiterate what was explained to you many times in the earlier threads and here, atheism (as ordinarily defined) isn’t about certainty or proof. It’s an epistemological system in which belief is premised on evidence. Without evidence, no belief. Depending on how one defines terms, this also could be called agnosticism, but that’s not general modern usage.
The difference is the conclusion you draw. An atheist looks at this dearth of evidence and says “Therefore God does not exist”, while an agnostic does the same and says “Therefore we don’t know anything about God”.
It’s the difference between concluding that invisible unicorns don’t exist, and concluding that we have no way of knowing whether they’re pink or blue.
This is the Argument from Ignorance. “I don’t understand how this happened, therefore God must have done it!”
No, it would not. The equivalent to atheism for these worms would be to assume that the soil extends infinitely in all directions. And they would not be wrong to do so, because (this is the important bit) picking the right answer by complete chance makes you no better than picking the wrong answer by complete chance. Only picking the answer that best complies with the existing evidence and Occam’s Razor is reasonable. If God descends from the heavens in a chariot of light tomorrow, that won’t change the fact that the religious were idiots to believe in Him before He presented Himself.
No it isn’t. Invisibility is trivial: photons in approximately equals photons out. How you achieve this is irrelevant.
Atheism does not by and large claim absolute certainty. Anyone who uses the scientific method as a standard of truth realizes that - at this time and unlikely to change - there is no any kind of deterministic universe at the most basic level of matter and energy. The scientific approach never expects to prove anything although mountains of certainty about a thing amount to the truth. Some things may be more likely to happen than other things, but the most outlandish improbability could happen once in a quadrillion times. Godel and Turing , demonstrated that some mathematical problems may not be solvable. Yet we have an awesome understanding of the basics of how the general laws of physics behave. Again, we have predictive math that sometimes is true out to 9 or 10 decimal places consistently.
Thus we have a very high confidence that nature works entirely on its own and it systematically does so without any outside help or interference. There is none to be seen. So the likelihood is that there are no gods, at least none that are willing to submit to testing and measurement. Sure some atheists will insist that they have perfect knowledge that there are no gods but those few are as wrong as anyone who claims perfect knowledge of anything including the existence of gods. The only real difference between atheists and agnostics is that atheists consider it possible that one day, science with the math to support it may bring about actual evidence that will demonstrate one way or the other. It may take 100 years, it might take 10,000 but who’s to say it isn’t possible? Frankly, I believe it would be much more likely that omniscient gods would be crossed off the list as we see nothing and it would require extraordinary evidence of a god to prove it. But I think it may be possible that some far off descendants might see a resolution to the question.
Agnostics don’t think it could ever be possible to know, despite holding some kind of certainty about uncertainty. Suspecting that we could never be sure of knowing anything, really, they suggest that we simply don’t know anything at all. They know about not knowing.
Why would I concede that any more than I would concede that there might be an invisible three headed alien following me around, watching everything I do? Of the two options, this is far far more likely. But for all practical purposes, if no one has ever been able to detect these aliens, has no theories about how one might be able to detect them, there’s no evidence that there was ever an alien on the planet, etc. then I’m no better to believe that there are invisible three-headed aliens following me than to believe that there are invisible four-headed aliens following me. I have no reason to think that I’m a computer simulation, that I’m the dream of some super-intelligent being, nor that our universe exists as one quark in the makeup of a giant multi-dimensional space rhinoceros.
All of these possibilities are still more likely than that a giant bearded man popped out of nothing, created the universe, and has been whispering to the occasional Wise Man that he particularly wants us to worship his greatness. But without any reason to believe any one of them and knowing that there are billions of possibilities to explain all of existence, I’m happy enough to say that what can be demonstrated to exist exists and what can’t be doesn’t. If you want to believe in invisible bearded men, space rhinoceros, or three-headed aliens, then that’s fine by me, but until it’s up to you to say how one might prove the existence and present evidence to that extent.
At the moment, the only evidence for religion is that people say that they “feel” something. But given that people who “feel” this something are 99% exclusively composed of those who were raised to do so, this isn’t terribly compelling. Once you consider human abilities at self-delusion and the existence of mental illness, drugs, and herd behavior not to mention that some people “feel” God whereas others “feel” an entire pantheon of gods, aliens, or spiritual rocks, that evidence becomes meaningless.
Agnosticism and atheism aren’t mutually exclusive it’s also worth noting. Admitting that something is theoretically possible makes one an agnostic, but not believing that it is the truth makes one an atheist. It is theoretically possible that there is a jolly fat man who wears all red living at the North Pole. I don’t believe there is, though.
Before I start my replies, I’d just like to point it out to people advocating the “atheists are people who positively assert that God could not possibly exist” viewpoint would disqualify Richard Dawkins from being an atheist. Are you cool with that?
It would be difficult for them to comprehend, but there must be some evidence that they’re witnessing that 3d elephant, right? Otherwise why create a belief to explain it? There is no equivelant evidence about god.
Of course. The fact that we equate popularity with plausibility is one of the big reasons religions exist. It’s also one of the reasons that pretty much every culture has sprung up with their own religion. You would expect, in the absense of an actual god, that people would form religion - and how does that look any different from our real world where even believers think there are 100 false religions and one real one?
People need religion. Death is unsettling. Not understanding how the world works is unsettling. In the old days when we didn’t understand how our solar system works, it was comforting to think of a sun god travelling across the sky. Now that we can explain that little mystery, it has dissapeared from religion.
But we’ll never have a satisfactory answer about death. “Uh, yep, you’re dead, sorry” will always be unsettling to most people and hence there will probably always be a need to find a way to alleviate it. Religion can still exist for that basic reason.
The fact that people have all the motivations in the world to create religions even if god doesn’t exist is further evidence of the case. Or, more accurately, it’s a way to argue against the premise of "billions of people are religious, and they can’t all be wrong!’
Yes, it’s a delusion. It’s a socially acceptable delusion because it’s so widespread and popular, but if you want to look at it logically there’s no reason to give it special priviledge in our society. We’re pretty hostile on this board to people who think 9/11 was an inside job, that magnetic bracelets will cure your cancer, etc. This is a board dedicated to the eradication of ignorance. While not being universally brilliant, it’s one of the smartest, most rational places on the interwebs. Why wouldn’t we be hostile to religion?
Yes. There’s no evidence that magnetic healing bracelets work, so I can hold the position both that they don’t work and that people who believe they do work are, at best, misguided.
You are essentially asking for special treatment for no reason. I think you understand why we would all dismiss people who believed in silly things, except your particular sacred cow silly thing. That we must treat with respect for some reason even though it has no more evidence or plausibility than any of the other things. Can you tell us why we should d othat?
The bible was written by people with an agenda long after the supposed events had taken place. It has been translated and interpreted dozens of times. It has explanations for how the world works which are obviously false. How could anyone reasonably regard it as proof of anything?
You can make specific claims about the world. God does this, God did that. We can test those things. Did God create the earth in its current shape spontaneously? No, the geological record shows us that the planet was gradually formed and changed a lot over billions of years. Did god create all life at the same time spontaneously? No, we have a very solid idea on the way life started and gradually developed. Does god interene in our world, say, to cure the diseases of his faithful? No, we could very much quantify if people who followed a certain religion had spontaneous recovery at a greater rate than everyone else.
Even if we didn’t understand how god worked, we could see his work in action.
Ok, so how do you think a world which was a natural phoenomina would work? Would mothers not love their children? Would there not be pools of liquid for us to sail? Would there not be scenic views from hilltops?
Tell us what you think a world resulting from natural forces would look like, and how you can tell therefore that our world is not the result of natural forces.
Unless you are advocating for a non-interventional god that has never interacted with our planet, then god does violate the laws of earth physics. When he parts the red sea. Or when he talks to people using a booming voice out of thin air - what is generating those sound waves? When he performs all the various miracles - that’s interacting with our world in a way that would violate the laws of physics on earth.
If you are supposing a non-interventional god that lives in another dimension that never has an effect on us on earth, of what possible use is that belief? What do we gain by believing in such an entity?
I really wish that religious people believed in this hypothetical non-intervenionist vague deist God that they always bring to these arguments. If they did, there’d be no “god orders you to do this” or “god wants you to kill these infidels because…” or “god thinks women should shut up and be your property” stuff, because this vague god they create for the pedantic, rhetorical sake doesn’t demand anything from his believers. He couldn’t.
For those of you who believe there is a god that set everything in motion, and is also a spiritual parent, has it ever occured to you that “he” might be sick of you clinging to his robes and might prefer you to go forth exploring on your own?
Atheism is a position on what you’re prepared to believe or accept as fact.
Agnosticism is a position on what you (can) know.
Practically all atheists here are agnostics. Most of them do accept that there might exist deities that we just don’t have enough/any evidence for. But practically; if there is “something ‘out there’” and we can’t/don’t know about it - especially if we’ve tried for thousands of years to find evidence for it - then it’s very reasonable to assume it has no influence in “the real world” and the correct behaviour is act as if it’s not there; including using the common short hand of asserting it ISN’T there. That’s atheism.
You forgot about the “evidence” bit. And the usual acceptance that logically inconsistent things can’t exist. In short, by far the majority of atheists are willing to reconsider, but you’ll have to come up with more than “but… but… there might be magical ice cream tomorrow”.
Agnosticism just says we can’t be/aren’t sure. What you’re describing is atheism (lack of belief).
Yeah. And we can’t be 100% certain about that. So what? There’s no evidence for it whatsoever.
Please tell my why all claims of cause and effect are in the one direction where we can’t test any of it? For all the stuff in the Bible about god speaking to people in burning bushes and stuff like that, he’s been awfully quiet last couple of thousand years.
IMHO you’d be better off believing in invisible pink unicorns (if only because they’re a lot more logically consistent than most deities). However, the actual point in these IPU arguments is that the evidence is exactly the same for them as for any deity. Most believers prefer to act insulted when you point that out, though.
Science tells us that a particle has some % chance of decaying within a certain time-frame, yet it also tells us that we will never be able to predict when exactly that will happen. Does that mean we can’t say anything about the existence of gods? Why should we address the god question last?
YES!
And so do the invisible pink unicorns. Hey, that was easy!
That would be me :o
Part of that IS because I can’t bear to think there’s really nothing else, I’m sure. But not all. I don’t get the basis for having specific beliefs about a god, because where do they come from? It just seems so arbitrary (and IS, obviously, since people have come up with so many different, conflicting specifics).
However, I don’t think it’s an irrational position to think that that it’s fairly likely that there is some kind of higher power. There are things about the universe that we don’t know now, but might one day know. But then there are things that we’ll NEVER be able to comprehend, like the idea of an infinite universe. Our minds are not capable of grasping the concept. So clearly there’s something going on that is going above all our heads, and always will. What it is, I have no idea.
So then you guys say, why does it matter then, if it’s that abstract and unknowable? Well, it doesn’t really make a difference in my daily life or my moral code or anything. But I do like to think there’s a possibility of some sort of afterlife. Maybe it’s something we can’t even imagine, like infinity. Maybe it’s pink unicorns. Maybe it’s nothing.
