Would you mind quoting the post where it is even implied that anyone here is making that assumption?
I can’t figure out what you’re trying to say in the first sentence. To answer the second, I’m not ruling anything out. I just see gods pretty similar to how you see fire-breathing dragons, giants, and trolls, most likely.
Leaving earth is not necessary, when you quantify pink and invisible it can’t be both, and is no longer logical. One doesn’t need to search the whole universe as well with square circles, and 2+3=7, and married bachelors. Is there anything you’d consider a logical impossibility?
If it is a possibility that mythical/“mythical” creatures exist, then how can it be certain that no one has come across one? If they have come across one, then they would not be in a state of denial about thinking that the being exists.
That’s what my first sentence was saying.
Without any objective evidence that a particular creature exists - the default position “X does not exist” is considered true.
It is not being in denial if no objective evidence has been presented.
But since no such evidence exists, those who have seen them must have surely been eaten before getting the word out. Q.E.D. mythical creatures exists.
Who is certain? I’m not. Most atheists are not certain, I believe. Lacking belief does not imply certainty.
I’m pretty close to certain… (Grin!)
The chain of inference I like is this:
Koroastes, the Vyrellian god of fire, doesn’t exist. I know, because I just made him up.
J.R.R. Tolkien made up Elbereth.
H.P. Lovecraft made up Azathoth. (Not the SDMB member…)
Snorri Sturlsson made up several of the stories about Thor.
Virgil made up several of the stories about Zeus.
Hesiod made up bunches of stories about Zeus.
Why would the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Hindus, and others be included in this list of people who made up stories…
…but the ancient Hebrews, solely and only, be left off the list, and their made-up stories and fables suddenly make a quantum jump over to the “Revealed Truth” column of the ledger?
They’re all just made-up stories! God has no more claim to real existence than Koroastes does!
QuickSilver, Simster,
Just because there has been no objective evidence shown to you, doesn’t mean that it hasn’t been shown to someone else. I don’t know how many times I need to rewrite this…
and just because there could have been evidence at one time, it doesn’t mean that the evidence is still available though, maybe like seeing a UFO which disappears before you can get a picture of it. Or like the passage in the Bible where the light shown from the sky on Saul. Sure, its probable that a lot of people thought he was crazy using their own paradigm of what’s possible, it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
Andy, I’m not sure what we are in disagreement about.
I’m pretty close to certain too. But I leave a smidge of doubt for aliens, a great simulation, insanity, and the like.
Do you understand what objective evidence is?
We’re in disagreement about likelihoods, not certainty. Sure, it’s possible all these stories are true… but it’s extremely unlikely that most of them are anything but false. If a guy on the street comes up to you and tells you he spoke to God, the chances are not 50-50 he’s telling the truth… the chances are 49.99-49.99 that he’s lying vs insane, with the smidge left over for “other”. Same goes for most stories of supernatural claims.
Until I am provided with objective evidence , I am certain. And if such evidence is ever provided, I am 99.99999% sure it will not add up to the ‘Bible God’.
I suppose I did not. Still, you get what I am saying in my message, and my point is valid.
You’re trying to say that “people believe what they believe because they believe it” - doesn’t make it valid or true - it’s only special pleading when the individual doesn’t want to be rational about it - which is, in effect, denying reality in favor of a fantasy.
Exactly! With omniscience, he is constrained to perform preordained acts. Now, he could say that horse B wins unless he changes his mind, but he knows that horse B will win, so his statement, while logically correct, always evaluates to Horse B winning. If horse A wins then he knows that horse A wins from the beginning of time. And, as I mentioned in my response to cosmosdan, he is outside of time so I don’t know what is meant by him changing his mind, which implies ordering in time. You see, it is easy to say that he is outside of time, but the implications get a bit tricky.
So, as you say in your last sentence, if he is omniscient he is basically impotent since the moment at t = -infinity - epsilon where he decided how the universe was going to work. In fact, if he is truly eternal and timeless, when would this be? It would have to be before he knew how it was going to work through omniscience, but he knows that infinitely far in the past also.
Think of the implications of him really trying to change something. The more I think of it, the less logically coherent the whole thing gets.
There are a million things people claim. They claim they see angels, ghosts, UFOs. Adamski claimed he was given a ride to Venus.
Atheism means lacking belief in. How many of these things do you lack belief in? After all, Adamski could have been right, and the Venusians could have hacked the probes to make Venus seem uninhabitable, but is that the way to bet?
The point here is not to disprove God conclusively (which can only be done for a subset of possible Gods) but to show that you should not believe in any God for the same reason you don’t believe in ghosts or Venerian astronauts.
It seems far more probable that anyone seeing any of these things is lying or delusional. It may turn out otherwise, but the burden of proof is on them.
That’s where consciousness comes from, not what consciousness is.
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No, that is what consciousness is; a physical process that occurs in a brain.
Nonsense; it’s the assertion that a fantasy is true without evidence, or outright against evidence. That’s delusion.
You really love handwaving away all the obvious flaws & contradictions to your beliefs with “it’s a red herring”. Let me guess; the only claims that aren’t “red herrings” are those that agree with you.
And it certainly isn’t irrelevant; the fact that most of them must be wrong completely demolishes your attempt at argument from popularity. Which is a fallacy to begin with.
I understand it just fine; people’s fantasies are not significant. And if they were, that brings us right back to why God, and only God? Plenty of people have “subjective evidence” for all sorts of bizarre and impossible things; why should I take someone’s unsupported claims they have a personal relationship with God and not someone who claims to have one with Zeus, or fairies, or aliens?
Yeah, I know; <handwaves> “Red herring! Red herring!” :rolleyes:
Most people by definition are wrong about religion, since they contradict each other.
The laws of physics, the total lack of evidence that gods are even possible, the fact that it’s obviously nothing but a leftover ancient myth, logic. Same reasons I don’t believe in fairies and Santa Claus.
And such a “god” is indistinguishable from not existing, and the logical default is that there are no gods.
Nope. However it’s the most successful method we have be far, while religion is an utter failure. Religion is consistently wrong about every claim it makes; why should I buy that they are right about gods? And for that matter why are you going on about “God”? Why is the Abrahamic big-G God more plausible than any of the other gods of mythology?
There is no evidence that anyone has found. Which is why you don’t just settle the argument for your side by producing it.
You keep assuming that he would need to step out of this omniscient state of seeing all time past, present, and future to “change” something. God may have never changed anything from the original plan. He may have specifically interacted with people to set a certain chain of events into motion. Any perceived “changes” aren’t actually him changing his mind, but him setting a new(to us) chain of events into motion to a predetermined end.
I don’t think that would make him impotent since throughout the course of infinity, he would have accomplished every thinkable act to prove his omnipotence.
I can’t, however, explain how a being like this would ever come into existence. They would have just had to always exist along with everything else. Unless you think that the Big Bang was the t = -infinity- epsilon moment.