The null hypothesis is fallacious? How so?
I’d prefer that you explain why I’m wrong.
What exactly do you mean by “nature” in this context?
It would have to be.
Why doesn’t it?
How about this - does Satan have free will?
The null hypothesis only applies in situations where you have a conspicuous lack of evidence. It DOES NOT apply to any and every situation. To apply it you need be able to show why the null hypothesis is more likely than the alternative hypothesis. It is not simply true by default.
The main problem is that all these discussions just boil down to you refusing to justify any of your statements, because the null hypothesis magically makes anything and everything you say is true. You then claim that whatever evidence or argument I bring is simply “not enough” and that you must be right by default. It is an incredibly easy debate tactic, but it proves precisely nothing. Debating is about showing why your case is more likely than the alternative case, not simply declaring yourself the winner and challenging your opponent to demonstrate that you have not in fact won. Unless you are willing to actually try and justify why the atheist view is more likely than the theist view there is really nothing to discuss with you.
Calculon.
There is a conspicuous lack of any shred of evidence for God.
His motive for doing this is education so I’m not sure how it does not follow, can you elaborate? Maybe I’m missing something. That you think it’s a pretty crappy way to educate people that a belief in magic crackers is ridiculous is beside the point.
There is no reliable evidence of a god or gods therefore atheism.
Magical thinkin as you state it) may help some people lead a better life. If they aren’t trying to push their beliefs on others what harm does it do?
Calculon,
Regarding the existence of God, here’s what (I believe) Myers, Dawkins, and probably Diogenes and CurtC are proposing: we see no convincing evidence for the existence of any God, whether it be the Christian one, Thor, Apollo, Horus, or any others. They (we) are not interested in proving the non-existence of God- can you prove the non-existence of Thor?- but we haven’t seen any evidence of the Christian God that goes beyond the evidence for any other deity.
That’s it. At least for me, anyway, and I think for the rest, too.
It’s possible I’m misinterpreting Dawkins’ position- I have read his Ancestor’s Tale, which was terrific, but I haven’t read The God Delusion, nor have I read any of Hitchens books.
A sad way to live or get pleasure is my opinion. The people that believe the bread when consecrated is truly the body and blood of Jesus,Because I don’t believe that doesn’t make me a better person by showing contempt or disrespect for another’s beliefs, It doesn’t build the critic up, nor does it make Catholics look bad in my opinion.
He sounds like the bully’s who get pleasure from taunting others!!
Calculon-
Why do you believe in God? Is it based on the historical record and other physical evidence? Or is it based on some personal experience you’ve had?
Most religious people I’ve talked to would answer the second option.
To A Catholic the Communion Wafer if Consecrated,is Jesus, they se the Last Supper words of Jesus from the Bible, when he is said to have broken the bread and Gave it to his Apostles saying," This is my body" The church uses the word is to mean it is truly then the Body of Jesus,so is no longer just Bread. My translation is different,but it is the Catholics right to translate as they wish. I don’t see why their belief should be scorned. I don’t see it harming any one else.
Why did he go up and receive it in the first place? What was his purpose in going? When I go to a Catholic funeral or wedding I sit near the back of the church, I do not take part in the ceremony and Just wait until it is over. Why go to a ceremony if it is not a funeral or wedding?
The Eucharist is the wafer, the ceremony is the consecrating of it! Catholic’s keep the Eucharist in a tabernacle for adoration. To them it is Now jesus once it is consecrated!
I do not think it is illegal to steal a consecrated wafer or a non- consecrated one, but to take one just to rile some people is an unkind and thoughtless act!!
I don’t think giving death threats were a good Christian thing to do either.
Hey, at least my teleporting to work story is first-hand. What about this - what if I never claimed to be teleported to work, but within 40 years or so after my death, there is a group of people who follow my teachings (my postings on the Interwebs), and they somehow have this notion that one day I teleported to work, even though none of them knew me personally, and then some of them get around to writing this idea down on paper? And what if these people were known to be of a pre-scientific, superstitious society?
That would be a good comparison to the resurrection. The idea that someone, 2000 years later, would think that my teleporting to work that one day was well-documented would be rightfully seen as ridiculous, even if those people believe there is a magic man in the sky.
This tangent started with the demonstration that an omnimax god is logically inconsistent with a world containing suffering. You tried to counter this with two points: that a world with free will is better than one without, and that suffering is an inevitable result of free will. But right here, you’re painted into a corner. You admit that it would be possible to have free will and no suffering, in heaven. Therefore, no omnimax God. I’m surprised I’m having to explain this basic point to you explicitly.
With the God question, there can be no evidence of its nonexistence. That’s a logical impossibility. Only one side of the hypothesis could possibly have evidence to support it. That’s the exact reason why there is such a thing as a null hypothesis, and why a lack of evidence in favor of a hypothesis means that you are compelled to accept the null hypothesis. With the God question, there is a lack of evidence, even though we’ve been searching for a long time. You have to accept the null hypothesis, that there is no God, tentatively and provisionally, until/unless more evidence comes to light.
And as I keep telling you, unless you con nominate SPECIFIC evidence that you would expect to necessarily see if God existed, then this statement is meaningless.
Think about for just a second what the statement “there is no evidence for the existence of God” could mean. One possible meaning is that you are claiming that there is absolutely no evidence anywere for the existence of God. Unless you are somehow omnicient I cannot see how you could support such a claim without first assuming that God does not exist. But of course if there is no evidence only because God does not exist then it is circular to argue that God does not exist because there is no evidence. If you want to claim that there is absolutely no evidence anywhere for God then I think that is a claim that needs to be justified before it can be taken seriously.
Another meaning could be that you have not personally seen any or enough evidence for the existence of God. That may be true, but it simply doesn’t follow from that statement that God does not exist. The statement “I have not seen enough evidence for God’s existence” is ultimately not a statement about the amount of evidence for God’s existence, but only what you have seen of the possible evidence. It is possible that there is a whole heap of evidence out there that you have not seen, or there is evidence right under your nose that you are missing. In either case it is a simple non sequitur to assert that because you personally have not seen what you would consider enough evidence that God must not exist.
In either case either the premise of your argument is dubious or your conclusion does not follow logically from your premise, depending on which sense of it you take.
Calculon.
Why don’t you read the linked wiki piece. He went up there to receive communion. He just wanted to take the wafer back to his seat first to show it to his friend before he ate it. That was his entire sordid motive. That’s what he got death threats for.
Nobody tried to stop them from believing this, and they are not victimized if someone else doesn’t take it seriously.
God is your hypothesis, so you have to define it before it can be tested. You (not us) have to be able to nominate some kind of falsifiable prediction. If your hypothesis makes no falsifiable predictions, it’s worthless, and “God” is just a nonsense word. It’s not up to us to define your hypothesis for you.
That’s a lot of words but no evidence, do you have any?
I think the heart of the problem here is that most atheists tend to think about the existence of God is a reasonably biased and somewhat irrational way. When faced with two contradictory statements the rational approach is to try and use arguments and evidence to try and work out which statement is the most likely. It is irrational to decide absent any evidence or reason that one is the most likely, and assert that one is true unless it can be absolutely proven that the other statement is true.
In philosophical thinking demanding proof of statements is really an impossible standard. There are virtually no interesting arguments that are known to be 100% irrefutablely proven true that could be used as proof of anything. So I may not be able to prove (in the mathematical, certainly true sense) that God exists. However by the same token I can’t even prove to that level of certainty that you and I even exist. Proof is an impossible standard. That is why we should consider not what is proven, but what is more likely.
When it comes to the existence of God, the real question is not whether or not we can prove that God exists, the questionis of all of the possible options that we are aware of, which is the most likely. Is it more likely than not that God exists, or in the case of multiple Gods it it more likely that one God exists than others and is the existence of that God more likely than there being no Gods existing. So I think asking me if I can disprove the existance of Thor is simply looking at it in the wrong way. I believe in Jesus and not Thor, not because I can disprove the existence of Thor, but because I believe the divinity of Jesus is much more likely than the existence of Thor, and Jesus divinity necessarily contradicts Thor’s existence. Likewise I believe in the divinity of Jesus because I think that is more likely than no Gods existing.
If someone wanted to advocate atheism I would not require that they prove that there is no God. All that one would need to show is that it is more likely that God or Gods do not exist than that they do. Unfortunately I have not seen in this entire thread one reason to believe that atheism is the most likely option. All I have seen is atheists continually insisting that there is no evidence for theism and therefore they are correct by default. Even is there exists no evidence for God, the best that one could say is there is a 50/50 chance of God existing or not. Without any reason to prefer the hypothesis that God does not exist over others I see no logical reason why I should adopt that position.
Calculon.