For the purposes of this debate, I hereby define God to be the common 20th-century conception of the Christian God, who is defined to be triple-omni.
Looking up the Problem of Evil is left as an exercise for the reader.
Ergo, God isn’t.
When come back, bring more rigorous definition of God.
“There is no God”, like “there are no ghosts” is the logical default. I’m right unless and until someone comes up with evidence that I’m wrong. Or at the least, with evidence that I CAN be wrong, given that God is normally portrayed as also ignoring the laws of physics. God is so utterly implausible that if we can’t say we disbelieve in him, we can’t say we disbelieve in anything, and we intellectually cripple ourselves.
And, what **robertliguori ** said.
That’s the best you got? I’m disappointed.
It’s not like more is needed.
…OK, I’m missing something.
This is Internet Argument. This is Pit Internet Argument. This is not rigorous debate, this is not about heats and minds, and this is not about rigorous proof. This is about entertainment.
How the gibbering flooby can writing that be entertaining to anyone? How can you not cringe at the sheer elementary-school primitivism of your own writing?
The correct response, insomuch as Pit Internet Argument goes, would be to post a similarly-flippant response (preferably in my own mieter of random logical terminology mix-and-matched with random memage) that dismissed my argument and the style of my making it simultaneously. Claiming disappointment, which both sets you up as an implicit judge of quality-of-argument and implies that I am arguing for your benefit, is an extraordinarily basic tactic, and so utterly generic as to be effectively meaningless in this context. “Oh yeah? You fight like a cow!” would be an infinitely better response.
And since I’ve gone all meta, let me be clear on this. I am not arguing for your benefit. I do not care about your opinions and your beliefs, except insomuch as it amuses me to mock your defense of them. I care even less about your opinion of me, and even less than that about your opinion of my words.
In summation, your rebuttal fails to answer my post on its face (by lacking a either a rebuttal to the PoE or an alternate definition of God), does not maintain the expected level of cutting quip and parrying wit that is our ostensible reason for being in this thread, and was, as banter, stale for the vast majority of us since our ages were in the double-digits. I am honestly mystified as your reason for posting a statement of such truly obvious lack of purpose or quality, even given the extraordinarily questionable premise of this very thread.
On the other hand, you didn’t mangle the quote tags. In that, your post is flawless. Well done, sir or madam.
Actually, I didn’t respond to you at all. But if it makes you feel any better, let’s pretend I farted in your general direction AND taunted you a second time. You then riposted with something witty about Opal with a 1920s Style Death Ray once in the 60s for 20 minutes while listening to Rio by Duran Duran from orbit because you wanted to be sure, with pictures of kittens eating pie, but not buckeye cookies, tipping appropriately while circumsized and declawed, but not necesaarily in that order.
For the grand finale, you, me, Der Trihs, Hamster King, Senor Beef, and everbody that posted in this thread will all join hands and sing Always Look on the Bright Side of Life. We were gonna do The Inquisition but DT thought it painted too rosy a picture of Christians.
Have you found any gods on Earth yet?
There are very significant consequences to epistemology, though, even if the being in question is completely non-interfering, undetectable and inconsequential (if such a being then can be said to exist, however, is another question altogether). And science depends crucially on its epistemological groundwork – without it, the whole edifice, and along with it our ability to make reliable statements about reality at all, comes tumbling down. It’s not so much an issue whether or not we’re forming hypotheses about the world right now; the issue is that the ‘maybe’ stance you’re arguing from makes it impossible to form any hypotheses at all, ever, and expect them to meaningfully apply to the world through any means other than blind chance.
I think the fundamental thing to realise is perhaps that there always exist innumerable distinct hypotheses that explain any given dataset in accordance with all available evidence. What your stance now amounts to is that since all these hypotheses are equal regarding their explanatory power, all of them are equally reasonable. This is what you’re saying when you claim that if the existence of a being is not decidable through evidence, you can equally well believe or disbelieve its existence, just phrased somewhat differently.
Now, most (almost all) of these hypotheses generally will differ regarding the predictions they make – for example, the fairy-based theory of gravity might predict that there’s no gravity on Sundays, since fairies get the day off. So, well, that’s easy, then – predictions are testable, and we just throw out all the hypotheses whose predictions didn’t turn out right. This sounds swell at first, until you realize that even then, you still have innumerable possible and equally well evidenced hypotheses after each prediction you test. For instance, while fairy-gravity might be disproved by throwing rocks on Sundays, fairy/elf gravity, in which the elves take over the fairies’ duties on Sundays, isn’t. The consequence of this, then, is that at any given point, we have innumerable different hypotheses, all making different predictions – we couldn’t dare to try such things as, for instance, trying to send a rocket to the moon on a Sunday, since the moon-elves are at war with the Sunday-gravity-elves, and the rocket wouldn’t hit its intended target due to sudden gravitation failure. Or anything: we could simply not make predictions about the world with any confidence.
But, you’ve stipulated a non-interacting god, who wouldn’t do such silly things as having gravity just fail all of a sudden. So it would seem we’re safe then, since instead, he always acts in perfect accord with… what, exactly? The laws of nature? Scientific theory? Well, of all those innumerable hypotheses, which one would that be? How do you now decide whether or not a hypothesis is actually ‘scientific theory + a non-interacting god’ (or, if you will, 'the way the world would work if there were no god + a non-interacting god), if there’s no way to know which one is the ‘scientific theory’? This hypothesis would, along with all of the others, just swim around in this infinite pool of indistinguishable hypotheses, with no way for us to pick it out. So, if you wish to admit the ‘scientific theory + non-interacting god’ hypothesis, you have to admit, on the same footing, all of the others – fairy-elf gravity, the world being ruled by shape-shifting octopodes from Alpha Centauri, Lee Harvey Oswald being controlled by a secret cabal of invisible dwarves that lived in his brain, etc.; all hypotheses that conform to the evidence, and since every hypothesis can be made to conform to all possible evidence through the assumption of enough ad hoc elements, that is basically every hypothesis you can think of, and every other.
Thus, the only way to form reliable hypotheses at all is to form them on the basis of exclusively assuming that which is necessary to explain the evidence. This doesn’t mean that ‘scientific theory + non-interacting god’ is necessarily false, or even that there can’t be an interacting god (for it would be trivial for any omnipotent being to hide itself from us), or that fairy-elf gravity is wrong; and much less that you should unquestioningly believe in the truth of even the most parsimonious hypothesis (all hypotheses are always only provisional, after all), but it does mean that you can’t assume parsimony-violating hypotheses a priori and expect to be able to form reasonable statements about the world. The default hypothesis has to be the one lacking belief in any entity not necessitated by evidence; you can either form your hypotheses according to this maxim, or you can’t expect any hypothesis you come up with to bear any relation to reality (other than through pure chance). This is a rigorous dichotomy.
I hope I’ve made clear that the question whether or not an entity tampers is entirely beside the point, that the distinction between parsimonious and non-parsimonious hypotheses is an in-principle one.
Everything one can talk about has bearing on the real world, if only by virtue of being something one can talk about.
I know folks love to dump on Der Trihs, but if you think he’s being irrational, insensitive, dishonest, cruel or whatever in Post #322, you’re just addressing the poster, not the post. That post that makes perfect sense. What does it take for you to be “certain” anything does or does not exist?
Also, as DT seems to be the token “Asshole Atheist” that folks in this thread are complaining about, he still allows that his position may be proven wrong. Richard Dawkins himself says he’s just 99% certain about the non-existence of God (or a generic supernatural entity that CG seems to be harping on) and that he’d be perfectly capable of admitting he was wrong if faced with a shred of evidence…which is how rational people look at everything else in the world that’s not religious. On the flip side, how often do theists flip over to atheism based on evidence presented to them? How many weigh the facts and say “I guess I was wrong?” Many continue to believe in spite of the lack of evidence.
No right minded atheist is going to say there is no god if a god appears and proves his/her/it’s existence.
What atheists get upset about are religious beliefs that forcibly invade their (our) lives. From attempted conversions to not being able to buy booze on Sunday. Atheists do not do this to others the way theists do it, so there is a certain amount of anger. I don’t get mad at the gay couple denied rights, I get mad at those denying them.
So your Superior beings like to play hide-and-go-seek? Awfully cute – just like my Invisible Pink Unicorn.
No need to wait. It’s been ongoing since we’ve been keeping records.
And again, a deist is the first cousin of an atheist. Different terminology, same result. So points for sophistry, but the results are the same = zip/zilch/zero/nada.
If the threshold of determining truth was 100 percent ,there would be very little to discuss. Economics would not exist for example. Science was born through making observations and noticing patterns and trends. Then keeping track and seeing how it repeated . Then making predictions based on evidence.Then rules were formed, repeatable, observable rules.
The fact that there is zero evidence for the existence of spirits, ghosts, Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and god ,is very compelling. We have been aware creatures for thousands of years. The proof of god remains at zero. There has never been a scrap of proof . After a while you have to wonder why you are wasting so much of your time following such an absurd notion. Why would anyone put any time into such an obvious fabrication, I do not know. We are taught to believe when we are young and susceptible . We don’t question our parents and schools. Eventually it is deeply rooted and difficult to eradicate. It can be done though.
Just as it’s *possible *that we’re all wrong about ghosts, fairies, elves on the moon, etc.
I’m almost certain the Christian God doesn’t exist.
I’m actually *slightly *less certain that there are no elves on the moon.
After all, an omnipotent entity capable of violating everything we know about how the universe works is *really *unlikely. The idea of elves living on the moon isn’t nearly so bizarre and unexplainable. We’re still discovering unknown species on Earth, so it’s very slightly possible that there’s some form of heretofore undetected life on the moon that exists off solar energy or something.
Of course, for all practical purposes, I don’t believe there are elves on the moon. If someone told me there were, my first response would be “Oh really, pull the other one!” But I keep my mind open that some bit of extraordinary evidence might prove me wrong.
And, for all practical purposes, I don’t believe that the Christian God (or any other formulation of god that I’ve heard to date) exists. I keep an open mind about it, but I don’t expect any evidence that contradicts my position will ever be forthcoming.
None of us can ever prove ANYTHING absolutely about the nature of reality. Even something as obvious as the rising of the sun may in fact merely be an elaborate sensory illusion. The closest we can approach Truth is merely a high degree of confidence, never absolute certainty.
I have a high degree of confidence the sun rose this morning. And I have a high degree of confidence that there is no god. I am *certain *of neither.
I don’t see how ghosts are more disprovable than god. What rules of ghosts are you following?
And you seem to be agnostic over a omnipotent god that doesn’t want to be discovered or interact with the world in any conspicuous way. How is that effectively different from no god at all?
Theists’ arguments seem to be moving from “I’m right and you are wrong”, to “Well we don’t know for certain if either of us is right or wrong”, to “Don’t say I’m stupid for not agreeing with you”. All of which is better than the original “You’re wrong and we are going to disembowel you”.
Well, some theists have moved on. In many cases, though, progress is slow.
But how are we to know if the Taliban’s interpretation is right or wrong? The ways of God are unknowable and untestable.
The churches understood psychology long before Freud . They were able to provide answers to the questions that scare people in the core of their existence. people are terrified to face that this is all there is. There must be something else .Except there is not.
The church used an all powerful ,wrathful god to explain and scare people. Then it had a self sacrificing son who made it all possible for man to not get slaughtered periodically by a loving god. Then the virgin who is not the only woman in history to get preggars but claimed not to have done the deed. But then we have the devil, who is a nasty creature that only wants to destroy man and the kingdom of god. Great comfort food for the psyche.
I love how they still claim to be monotheistic. The trinity tap dance is unconvincing. Yet if the devil is strong enough to defeat god, how can he not be a god. And of course there and the spirit devils minions and gods angels. There are so many contradictions, that it requires blind belief to survive. All these concepts taught to vulnerable children. Inculcate it deep before they are able to ask the questions that make it all fall down.
No, I don’t need more time. Go ahead. You’re the one who made the sweeping unqualified statement. See if you can defend it. Of course you won’t: you’ll now say that what you meant was something far narrower than what you said.
Remind me again about that next time some idiot is basing his advocacy of a law that affects my rights upon what his imaginary friend told him.
But you could argue this about absolutely everything. I can say “I know that I am 30 years old”, I could produce a driver’s license and birth certificate, I could verify in numerous ways when I was born, and you could say “well, maybe we all just woke up today in a reality constructed by aliens and you were actually grown in a vat last week” or “well, you’re just a lunatic in an asylum hallucinating everything that you see and none of this is real”.
If we accept even the most remote, unlikely, and irrational possibilities to cast doubt on what is truth and what isn’t, then the idea of knowing the truth about anything becomes impossible. In common sense parlance, though, I feel comfortable saying “I know the truth about lavender sentient Peruvian unicorns: they don’t exist.”
Now, I wouldn’t say I “know the truth” as an atheist because it makes you sound like a smug bastard and an evangelizing loon. But that’s a whole different issue.
Have I posted anything in this thread that makes you think I’d actually do that? Your age is determinable to a reasonable degree of certainty by the documents you mention, along with testimony from your mother, the doctor, other family members, etc. God/No God is not subject to that type of verification.