Former Atheists Who Are Now Theists: What Changed You?

[Calculon]

@Diogenes_the_Cynic

Atheism is just the absence of theistic belief. It doesn’t necessarily mean categorical denial of the existence of gods, and it’s a waste of everybody’s time to try to use that strawman definition. Most atheists are not strong atheists, and you aren’t going to convince them that they are by trying to insist on your own personal (and inaccurate) definition of “atheism,” so why bother?

Atheism is not a “denial” of anything. Atheism is not an assertion or a belief. It’s a null position. Anyone and everything that is not a theist is an atheist.

Note that I don’t define atheism as being able to prove that Gods do not exist, merely that one thinks that Gods not existing is the most likely position.

I think if atheists were really serious about insisting that atheism is merely a lack of belief in Gods, then they would be careful to distinguish between that position and positions that claim more. So for instance under that definition of atheism, as I said Richard Dawkins is not an atheist. He does not merely lack a belief in Gods, he positvely affirms that Gods almost certainly do not exist. So his belief is something of a post-atheism or a meta-atheism if you will. If one simply lacks a belief in Gods it does not follow from that position that theism is wrong (ie: that God does actually not exist) or any other number of positions that typically are argued by atheists. The claim that atheism is best defined as a simple “lack of belief” in God is quite simply undermined by atheists themselves refusing to stick to that definition.

@Diogenes_the_Cynic

No, it doesn’t work that way. The null hypothesis is automatically assumed to be true until it can be falsified. Non-existence is the logical default assumption. A hypothesis does not attain “undetermined” status just because you can imagine it. Evidence for negation is not required. negation is assumed from the outset. That’s how it works. If I say the univers was created by left-handed, cross-dressing orcs, that doesn’t mean that anyone now has to disprove that, or that my hypothesis is “undetermined” with both sides having equal value.

This is simply an irrational abuse of logic. There is no such thing in logic as a logical default or a null hypothesis. Either one has reasons to believe in a proposition and/or it’s negation or one doesn’t. Otherwise you place yourself in the position of saying that logical statements are inherently conditional and objectively meaningless. Take for instance the proposition that “I have a cup of coffee”. Right now you have no evidence for my cup of coffee, so by your criteria you must logically conclude that my cup of coffee does not exist. Then I take a photo of my cup of coffee and send it to you, thus providing you with evidence that my cup of coffee exists. You would then have to say that my cup of coffee exists. The intersting question though is did my cup of coffee exist in between my initial claim of it and my providing you with evidence? If we take your view seriously, that statements can only be true if there is evidence for them means that you would have to say that my cup of coffee literally did not exist until evidence for it was provided. And that at that point the cup of coffee came into existence because the truth value of the statement “my cup of coffee exists” changes for you at that moment.

Obviously such a view is absurd, and so I think so to is the idea of the “logical default”. I think you must be confusing confirmation theory with general logic. In conifmation theory one has a test hypothesis and a null hypothesis, but you also necessarily have a test that enables you to distinguish between the test hypothesis and the default hypothesis. Before the experiment is conducted it is not known whether the test or the default hypothesis is correct. After the test there is necessarily evidence that will confirm the test hypothesis, or the conspicuous lack of necessary evidence confirms the default hypothesis. Without the test the default hypthesis has no real meaning.

@Diogenes_the_Cynic

There is no evidence for gods, so the hypothesis is not entitled to any consideration at all until evdience can be produced. Until such a time, then the null wins (handily) by default, just like it holds for spaghetti monsters and smurfs.

This is circular reasoning. The problem is that evidence cannot be evaluated in an ideological vacuum. If you start off holding to a naturalist worldview then simply no evidence is possible for the existence of God because all evidence of God’s existence is necessarily fake. So what ends up happening is that you adopt an atheistic worldview as a kind of default. And then you judge evidence for other worldviews from that position and find it invalid, because it is inconsistent with your current worldview. So you end up in a position where you are an atheist because there is no evidence for God and there is no evidence for God because atheism is true.

I think it is one of the glaring philosophical mistakes of the “new atheists”. Evidence is not as objective as one would like it to be. Everyone requires a worldview as a basis to evaluate evidence, and that worldview affects the way in which we view evidence. This is, I think, one of the important contributions of post-modernism to the debate. I think we need to recognise that evidence is not entirely objective, and therefore refusing to consider different worldview positions until they are “proven” is simply a circular re-inforcement of your own worldview.

Calculon.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@Calculon

Note that I don’t define atheism as being able to prove that Gods do not exist, merely that one thinks that Gods not existing is the most likely position.

I think if atheists were really serious about insisting that atheism is merely a lack of belief in Gods, then they would be careful to distinguish between that position and positions that claim more. So for instance under that definition of atheism, as I said Richard Dawkins is not an atheist. He does not merely lack a belief in Gods, he positvely affirms that Gods almost certainly do not exist. So his belief is something of a post-atheism or a meta-atheism if you will. If one simply lacks a belief in Gods it does not follow from that position that theism is wrong (ie: that God does actually not exist) or any other number of positions that typically are argued by atheists. The claim that atheism is best defined as a simple “lack of belief” in God is quite simply undermined by atheists themselves refusing to stick to that definition.

Dawkins’ position is normal atheism. He lacks belief in gods. That is atheism. That does not preclude believing that gods are unlikely, nor is such a presumption unreasonable.

This is simply an irrational abuse of logic. There is no such thing in logic as a logical default or a null hypothesis.

“God exists” is a scientific hypotheis, not a logical one. The null hypothesis is the necessary scientific assumption. It’s also the logical default because “God exists” is a conclusion. Conclusions are not assumed a priori, you have to show a logical means of getting there.

Either one has reasons to believe in a proposition and/or it’s negation or one doesn’t.

Incorrect. No reason is required to accept the null. It is the necessary default assumption.

Otherwise you place yourself in the position of saying that logical statements are inherently conditional and objectively meaningless.

We’re talking about a scientific hypothesis. I don’t even know what a “logical statement” IS. Logic is a method for arriving at a conclusion. The phrase “logical statement,” in itself, doesn’t mean anything.

Take for instance the proposition that “I have a cup of coffee”. Right now you have no evidence for my cup of coffee, so by your criteria you must logically conclude that my cup of coffee does not exist.

That’s not a logical propsition, it’s just an assertion which may or may not be true. It is not analogous to the God Hypothesis which is a scientific hypothesis, not just a statement.

Obviously such a view is absurd, and so I think so to is the idea of the “logical default”. I think you must be confusing confirmation theory with general logic.

No, I’m talking about the assumptions that are necessary for any scientific hypothesis. The null is always assumed, and the null has never even been scratched for the God Hypothesis

This is circular reasoning. The problem is that evidence cannot be evaluated in an ideological vacuum. If you start off holding to a naturalist worldview then simply no evidence is possible for the existence of God because all evidence of God’s existence is necessarily fake.

This is lame. Empiricism is not an ideology and trying to pretend that it is doesn’t solve the problem that you can’tr produce a shred of evidence to support the God Hypothesis (and even more significantly, you can’t show necessity. There is nothing in the universe that can’t exist without gods, so why bother to hypothesize them?). All you’re doing is pleading for people to believe it without evidence. What makes your god any more plausible than Anubis or Kokopeli or Papa Smurf? They all have (so far) exactly the same demonstrated evidence and necessity. That’s not an ideological statement, that’s an objective statement of empirical fact.

[Calculon]

@Diogenes_the_Cynic

Dawkins’ position is normal atheism. He lacks belief in gods. That is atheism. That does not preclude believing that gods are unlikely, nor is such a presumption unreasonable.

Dawkins does not, by your definition, argue for atheism in “The God delusion”. His is not arguing that he lacks a belief in God. He argues that Gods almost certainly do not exist and that people who do believe in Gods are deluded. That is very different to just saying that he lacks a belief in God. It is what I would call a post-atheism position.

@Diogenes_the_Cynic

“God exists” is a scientific hypotheis, not a logical one. The null hypothesis is the necessary scientific assumption. It’s also the logical default because “God exists” is a conclusion. Conclusions are not assumed a priori, you have to show a logical means of getting there.

First of all the belief that all meaningful statements can be demonstrated by empirical means is basically logical positivism. That belief has been widely rejected by philosophers of all types since the 1940s. If you take that statement seriously not only does the number of things you can meaningfully assert become close to zero (since art, history, language, ect can’t be verified empirically) but it is literally self refuting. The scientific method cannot be verified by the scientific method. So if you believe that all true statements can be verified scientifically, you must conclude that the scientific method invalid, since it is not self-verifying. So your insistence on proving God scientifically is simply based on incoherent criteria.

Secondly you still don’t really get the idea of a null hypothesis. As I keep telling you, the idea of a null hypothesis only has meaning in the context of experiments designed to decide between a null hypothesis and some alternative hypothesis. Without the experimental data the idea of a null hypothesis has really no meaning.

@Diogenes_the_Cynic

Incorrect. No reason is required to accept the null. It is the necessary default assumption.

Again incorrect. One only accepts a null hypothesis when one has data that demonstrates that the null hypothesis is more likely than the default hypothesis. If one needed no reason to accept the null hypothesis, why do any experiments in the first place? If you already accept that the null hypothesis is true, then doing the experiment is merely a waste of time. Also, even if you data demonstrates that the alternative hypothesis is more likely, according to you I would be justified in ignoring any evidence for it and continuing to believe the null hypothesis. If no reason is required to accept it then no matter what the evidence I would be justified in accepting it. I think this is absurd.

@Diogenes_the_Cynic

We’re talking about a scientific hypothesis. I don’t even know what a “logical statement” IS. Logic is a method for arriving at a conclusion. The phrase “logical statement,” in itself, doesn’t mean anything.

A logical statement is simply a statement that has a definite true/false value. You don’t need to know the truth value of the statement, for it to be a logical statement, just that it does have a definite true/false value. That is a fairly common term. It surprises me that you would not know what it means.

@Diogenes_the_Cynic

That’s not a logical propsition, it’s just an assertion which may or may not be true. It is not analogous to the God Hypothesis which is a scientific hypothesis, not just a statement.

The statement “I have a cup of coffee at this moment” is a logical statement in that it is either true or false. So if I proposed that statement to you, would you say it is true or is it false? I assume, since you have no evidence of my cup of coffee, then you would have to say that it is false. And then if I produced some evidence you would then probably say that the statement is true. So where was the cup of coffee in between your denial of it’s existence and your acceptance of it? Did it not exist, or did your principle of the “null hypothesis” lead to to a wrong conclusion?

@Diogenes_the_Cynic

No, I’m talking about the assumptions that are necessary for any scientific hypothesis. The null is always assumed, and the null has never even been scratched for the God Hypothesis

The only way the scientific method could be used on the existence of God would be if God was an entirely material being. Since no-one seriously believes that God is entirely material then I think it is simply invalid to try to use the scientific method to determine the existence of God.

@Diogenes_the_Cynic

This is lame. Empiricism is not an ideology and trying to pretend that it is doesn’t solve the problem that you can’tr produce a shred of evidence to support the God Hypothesis (and even more significantly, you can’t show necessity. There is nothing in the universe that can’t exist without gods, so why bother to hypothesize them?). All you’re doing is pleading for people to believe it without evidence. What makes your god any more plausible than Anubis or Kokopeli or Papa Smurf? They all have (so far) exactly the same demonstrated evidence and necessity. That’s not an ideological statement, that’s an objective statement of empirical fact.

I have already given what evidence I find compelling in my first post in the thread.
Secondly your whole post displays a reasonable amount of circular logic. By insisting that the existence of God is a “scientific” hypothesis, you are bringing into the discussion the ideology that all true statements must be empirically verifiable. This criteria is not self evident (or even coherent IMO) and is not “necessary” in a neutral, non-ideological way. The only reason that you insist on this criteria is your pre-existing commitment to scientific naturalism. So you are judging whatever evidence people bring through the lens of your own ideology.

Calculon.

[AClockworkMelon]

@Calculon

I assume you see it as irony because Christians just take their morality from some book (ie: the bible) without really questioning it? And in that sense are doing the exact same thing as Richard Dawkins?

Atheists don’t, necessarily, get their morality from some book. I was going to say that they don’t do that, unlike Christians, but then I figured that Christians don’t, either. Unless they’re willing to admit that mauling-by-she-bear is a suitable punishment for a child calling someone a “bald-head”. They’d have whatever basic moral framework they have now regardless of which god they chose to worship (or not). The only difference is that now they have a book to try to shove their morality into. This often proves difficult- it’s like shoving a square block in a circle hole. But 1984 gave us a handy term for this: Doublethink.

Anyway, what’s ironic is that you, someone who presumably puts stock in the Bible, believes Dawkins’ morality, as presented in The God Delusion, to be arbitrary.

[Novelty_Bobble]

First of all, I think it incorrect to say that we are all born without belief in God. I think we are all born agnostic, in that we are all born not being sure what to believe.

No, it is quite correct. When we are born we do not believe in god, that is really quite simple. If you won’t even accept that I don’t see we can make much progress. And it is possible to be an atheist and an agnostic you know.

As we grow and learn we come to conclusions about what to believe. Babies don’t lack belief in God in any conscious way because babies don’t understand the concept of God. To meaningfully lack belief in something you have to understand the concepts involved in that belief.

Grow and learn…hmmmm… what do we learn from? who do we learn from? You mean we are exposed to concepts and explanations put forward by others and it is up to us to decide to accept them or not? If that is your point then I agree.
But I am, very confused as to what “meaningfully lack belief” even means?

Secondly I think your way of assessing atheism is fundamentally illogical. If someone lacks evidence for a claim it simply does not follow that the negation of that claim must be true. If there is no evidence for either a statement or its negation then the truth/falsity of the statement is undetermined. To take a simple example, say I claim that I am drinking coffee. The fact that you lack any evidence that I am drinking coffee does not mean that logically I cannot be drinking coffee. All that it means is that my coffee drinking state is undermined. Likewise even if there is no evidence for God, it does not logically follow that God does not exist. In that sense the definition of atheism as a lack of belief in God is simply based on poor logic.

No I can’t follow this at all. Everything you have said here is consistent with the definition of atheism as “lack of a belief in god” You are right when you say that the status is undetermined. As such, without good reason to do otherwise, I remain without a belief in god.

To take another example, how would you respond to a creationist claiming that creationism is simply the lack of belief in evolution? That we are all born lacking a belief in evolution, and then some choose to accept evolution. This creationist doesn’t say that they can disprove evolution, they just think there isn’t enough evidence to believe in evolution.
I think that is a fundamentally illogical way of arguing, but it is the same sort of argument that is happening here with respect to atheism.

They are right about us being born without a belief in evolution.In that case evolution is a positive claim on how the natural world works. There is evidence to put forward to back it up and someone can remain unconvinced. That is fine. (we need to make a stronger case for them) However, the analogy is flawed in that the creationist in this case doesn’t just have a lack of belief in evolution but they also have an alternative explanation that they also need to back up. Had you not called the person a creationist I would consider it a fair analogy. As I have said, being an atheist does not mean one necessarily has an alternate explanation whereas “creationist” does.

I simply reject the claim that Christians pick and choose the nice bits out of the bible and skip the nasty parts. The traditional view of Christianity is that the entire bible is the inspired word of God and that Christian morality is based on the entire bible. I don’t skip over passages because I find them “immoral” on my own view of morality.

Yes you do, you do not follow everything in the bible, nor do you believe it is all literally true therefore you must have a filter through which you make that judgement. You even mention “traditional view of Christianity” as though it has changed over time.
If it has changed, why? If it is the literal truth from god who are you to change the meaning or interpret it differently? If you delegate those interpretations to others then the same questions apply to them.
Ultimately either you, or someone else, looks at the bible through an interpretative lens of their own innate morality.
If the rest of us are lucky you or they are a good person anyway(as most of us are…it is the reason these apes survived and prospered).

Calculon, we can see from your posts that you take the concept of gods as the default. Atheists don’t. It is very simple but of course what theology and some branches of philosophy try to do is to muddy the waters. But all the special pleading, question begging an circular reasoning in the world won’t help you if you cannot accept that you are making the positive claim (gods exist) not me. If you want to convince me that the world makes more sense with your explanations then the burden is on you to provide evidence. Until you can, those without a belief in gods will remain unconvinced and will look at alternative hypothesis that do a better job.

[Novelty_Bobble]

@Calculon

By insisting that the existence of God is a “scientific” hypothesis, you are bringing into the discussion the ideology that all true statements must be empirically verifiable. This criteria is not self evident (or even coherent IMO) and is not “necessary” in a neutral, non-ideological way. The only reason that you insist on this criteria is your pre-existing commitment to scientific naturalism. So you are judging whatever evidence people bring through the lens of your own ideology.

Calculon.

It is the believers that insist on bringing gods into the realm of the scientific.

If you say that your god does not impact on the natural, physical world at all then fine. there is nothing to discuss and no argument to be had. (and by extension a god that is meaningless)
The problem with that is that many religions claim otherwise. e.g. Christians claim that god interacts with the world, that miracle occur and so on.
At that point we have a claim testable by science. You can’t have it both ways.

Either god is real and intervenes and is testable and evidential. Or not and can be considered an abstract concept that some find appealing but has little practical impact.

[Skammer]

I reject the idea that the existence of God is a scientific hypothesis, for many of the reasons Calculon brings up. It’s nothing of the kind.

Novelty Bobble claims that “It is the believers that insist on bringing gods into the realm of the scientific” but this is not true. Yes, believers usually claim that God has interacted with the natural universe, either in specific limited instances or in an ongoing, guiding way. But by definition, these interactions are supernatural. Untestable by the scientific method. Science is unequipped to measure or detect a god. It would be like using a tape measure to prove that Mozart wrote good music.

[Paranoid_Randroid]

@x-ray_vision

Having a label that means one does not believe in the existence of a deity says nothing about which set of beliefs one holds.

@Novelty_Bobble

Let me take the word “atheist” out of the equation here as it seems to confuse some people.

I’ll do you one better—let’s distance ourselves from the religion entirely for the moment; consider instead the question of which political party will hold the White House as of 20 January 2017. Examine three persons each with different a response:

1. I believe that a democrat will probably take office.
2. I believe that a republican will probably take office.
3. I don’t have a firm belief one way or the other.

Clearly persons (1) and (2) have actual beliefs about the outcome; person (3) does not. But we can say something about the beliefs of person (3), namely that he does not have the beliefs of (1) or (2). The statement of person (3) inconvertibly says something about the beliefs he holds. He has a set of beliefs concerning the election outcome—it’s merely empty. That doesn’t mean that he is wrong in some objective sense, but I am rather affirming that relative to some contexts/interpretations it is by no means incorrect or incoherent to call (3) wrong.

So there is one immediate sense in which “atheism is wrong” can be charitably interpreted: an atheist holds the wrong set of beliefs with respect to religion (i.e. the empty set as opposed to, say, {shinto is true}).

That is not the only sense. For example, I don’t hazard a guess as to the outcome of the 2016 election. If a time traveler popped out in front of me and said “Hah, you’re wrong, the libertarioscialist anarcho-fascists will take the White House in 2017”, I’d agree that he’s not really making sense. But if the time traveler feels that an extremely convincing case has already been made for the imminent ascendency of libertarioscialist anarcho-fascism, and I still refuse to make a prediction, it’s apropos to call me wrong.

This is the scenario that (most) religious people feel corresponds to theism v. atheism. No one is raised in a vacuum, reaching adulthood without ever coming into contact with theistic belief. A theist feels that religion is intuitively obvious/rationally justified/only denied on pain of contradiction/etc., and any atheist who would serve as her interlocutor is in a position of having judged whatever evidence he’s encountered as lacking. When someone says “atheism is incorrect”, this should be taken to mean (I would argue) that theism is not only true but the most reasonable conclusion, and the atheist has wrongly denied the evidence heretofore presented.

If there ends up being gods in the sky, being an atheist wasn’t incorrect.

What of gods in the ground, or gods in space, or gods in dancing on the head of a fountain pen? I feel you’re being insufficiently inclusive.

[AClockworkMelon]

@Skammer

I reject the idea that the existence of God is a scientific hypothesis, for many of the reasons Calculon brings up. It’s nothing of the kind.

Novelty Bobble claims that “It is the believers that insist on bringing gods into the realm of the scientific” but this is not true. Yes, believers usually claim that God has interacted with the natural universe, either in specific limited instances or in an ongoing, guiding way. But by definition, these interactions are supernatural. Untestable by the scientific method. Science is unequipped to measure or detect a god. It would be like using a tape measure to prove that Mozart wrote good music.

Except “science” isn’t a specific tool, like a tape measure, and, unlike Mozart’s music, there is no evidence that God exists. If something doesn’t exist within the “natural universe” then it really doesn’t exist at all. Not in a meaningful way. If something can’t be tested by science, then it sure as hell can’t interact with anything that can. The interaction itself would be testable or measurable, like measuring a black hole by how it affects the things around it.

Saying that God can’t be proven or disproven with science makes sense, of course, because if it could, then, well, that’d beg the question.

[Paranoid_Randroid]

@Skammer

Yes, believers usually claim that God has interacted with the natural universe, either in specific limited instances or in an ongoing, guiding way. But by definition, these interactions are supernatural. Untestable by the scientific method.

Why does that have to be the case? Science is just a practical method for acquiring knowledge (one which everyone seems to have drastically different views on, but never mind that); there is nothing about the broad conception of science that limits it to the natural (whatever that really means). To pick an example, some popular arguments for the existence of god rely on the witness and recording of miracles. The more sophisticated ones go something like this:

Take the probability that miracle A actually occurred, P(A), to be very low. Letting P(E | A) be the probability of encountering the evidence (recorded witness) when A actually occurred and P(E) the unconditional probability of encountering the evidence, we have:

P(A | E) = P(E | A) * P(A) / P(E).

Because P(E | A) is presumably very high and P(E) arguably low, the posterior probability P(A | E) is argued to be “high” even though P(A) is itself low. This is a scientific argument (even if it’s very fuzzy). The miracle occurring is the hypothesis; the testimony is the evidence; and the choices for P(E | A), P(A), and P(E) are part of the set of basic facts. The hypothesis is falsified when P(A | E) is suitably low.

Now, the argument is rubbish—P(A) is just obviously much lower than P(E) (AFAIAC). But that’s beside the point.

[JThunder]

@AClockworkMelon

If something doesn’t exist within the “natural universe” then it really doesn’t exist at all. Not in a meaningful way.

That’s an interesting claim to make. Is it scientifically testable, or are you simply contending that it’s true?

[Novelty_Bobble]

@Skammer

I reject the idea that the existence of God is a scientific hypothesis, for many of the reasons Calculon brings up. It’s nothing of the kind.

Novelty Bobble claims that “It is the believers that insist on bringing gods into the realm of the scientific” but this is not true. Yes, believers usually claim that God has interacted with the natural universe, either in specific limited instances or in an ongoing, guiding way. But by definition, these interactions are supernatural. Untestable by the scientific method.

And so the absurdity of an interventionist god is revealed.

He can intervene in a way that affects the natural world but not in a way that can ever be detected or proved.

Which is spookily enough exactly the way the world would look if there were no god at all.

[JThunder]

@Novelty_Bobble

[QUOTE=Skammer]
Novelty Bobble claims that “It is the believers that insist on bringing gods into the realm of the scientific” but this is not true. Yes, believers usually claim that God has interacted with the natural universe, either in specific limited instances or in an ongoing, guiding way. But by definition, these interactions are supernatural. Untestable by the scientific method.

And so the absurdity of an interventionist god is revealed.

He can intervene in a way that affects the natural world but not in a way that can ever be detected or proved.
[/QUOTE]

Only if you assume that the scientific method is the ONLY way by which something can be known. Do you believe this to be true? And if so, how did you determine this to be true?

[AClockworkMelon]

@JThunder

That’s an interesting claim to make. Is it scientifically testable, or are you simply contending that it’s true?

It’s logically testable. “Exists outside the natural universe” is a nonsensical statement.

@Novelty_Bobble

Which is spookily enough exactly the way the world would look if there were no god at all.

Hold me. I’m scared.

[Meatros]

@JThunder

Only if you assume that the scientific method is the ONLY way by which something can be known. Do you believe this to be true? And if so, how did you determine this to be true?

I’m not entirely sure that NB is saying the scientific method is or must be the only way that something can be known.

It is hard to see how something that can not be proved or detected could be ‘known’ though. How, theoretically, could such be possible?

Sure, it might be possible that this something could be known, but I don’t see any reason to suppose it actually is possible or probable.

[Skammer]

@AClockworkMelon

If something doesn’t exist within the “natural universe” then it really doesn’t exist at all. Not in a meaningful way.

But that’s exactly the claim that believers make: God exists outside the universe, like a director exists outside the play. Why do you insist that nothing exists outside the universe? Obviously you have no proof of that.

If something can’t be tested by science, then it sure as hell can’t interact with anything that can. The interaction itself would be testable or measurable, like measuring a black hole by how it affects the things around it.

And just exactly how would you go about proving that Jesus didn’t heal a blind man, or feed 5,000 people with a few fish?

@Paranoid_Randroid

Why does that have to be the case? Science is just a practical method for acquiring knowledge (one which everyone seems to have drastically different views on, but never mind that); there is nothing about the broad conception of science that limits it to the natural (whatever that really means). To pick an example, some popular arguments for the existence of god rely on the witness and recording of miracles. The more sophisticated ones go something like this:

Take the probability that miracle A actually occurred, P(A), to be very low. Letting P(E | A) be the probability of encountering the evidence (recorded witness) when A actually occurred and P(E) the unconditional probability of encountering the evidence, we have:

P(A | E) = P(E | A) * P(A) / P(E).

Because P(E | A) is presumably very high and P(E) arguably low, the posterior probability P(A | E) is argued to be “high” even though P(A) is itself low. This is a scientific argument (even if it’s very fuzzy). The miracle occurring is the hypothesis; the testimony is the evidence; and the choices for P(E | A), P(A), and P(E) are part of the set of basic facts. The hypothesis is falsified when P(A | E) is suitably low.

Now, the argument is rubbish—P(A) is just obviously much lower than P(E) (AFAIAC). But that’s beside the point.

That’s a logical argument (which I also find problematic), but not a scientific one. It doesn’t rely on observation, just induction based on some questionable assumptions.

@Novelty_Bobble

And so the absurdity of an interventionist god is revealed.

He can intervene in a way that affects the natural world but not in a way that can ever be detected or proved.

Which is spookily enough exactly the way the world would look if there were no god at all.

When you say God can’t be detected or observed, I would agree that’s true in the sense you mean, but I qualify that. I’ve observed God in my life. Billions of others could say the same. But you won’t be able to measure it empirically.

[Skammer]

@Meatros

I’m not entirely sure that NB is saying the scientific method is or must be the only way that something can be known.

It is hard to see how something that can not be proved or detected could be ‘known’ though. How, theoretically, could such be possible?

Theists believe in a thing called “revelation.” Which, obviously, is not something that is going to satisfy an unbeliever, but it is the answer to the question.

[AClockworkMelon]

@Skammer

But that’s exactly the claim that believers make: God exists outside the universe, like a director exists outside the play. Why do you insist that nothing exists outside the universe? Obviously you have no proof of that. And just exactly how would you go about proving that Jesus didn’t heal a blind man, or feed 5,000 people with a few fish?

How do you go about proving that there isn’t an invisible, intangible pink unicorn living under my bed? It’s not your job to. It’s my job to, because I’m the one saying it’s there.

Which it is.

[Skammer]

@AClockworkMelon

How do you go about proving that there isn’t an invisible, intangible pink unicorn living under my bed? It’s not your job to. It’s my job to, because I’m the one saying it’s there.

Which it is.

I doubt it, but admittedly I have no hard evidence to the contrary. Has it been life-changing for you?

[Lemur866]

You know, if you argue that without God to create morality, we’re left merely with personal preference you ignore the problem of how God creates morality.

Is something moral just because God says it is? Is something moral because God created the universe in such a way that it HAS to be moral? Is something moral because there is a set of objective moral rules that even God can’t change?

Human beings worship God because they believe that the moral rules created by God are good ones. Suppose we take this as stipulated. But how could we know? Imagine an evil God, let’s call him Sauron. He creates a race of always chaotic evil creatures, let’s call them Orcs. He gives them a set of moral rules: thou shalt kill, thou shalt steal, thou shalt dishonor thy father and mother, and so on. And because the Orcs are always chaotic evil, these rules seem good to them. Except, you know, Orcs are evil, and therefore are incapable of seeing that Sauron’s moral system is evil.

So if the moral framework handed down by God seems good to us, how do we know it really is good? What if humans are inherently evil creatures? And doesn’t Christianity hold that humans are, in fact, inherently evil creatures?

In other words, just because we agree with the moral rules handed down by this stipulated God, that doesn’t mean we’re right. We’re just expressing our personal approval of that moral system, because it comports with our nature. There’s nothing objective about it, because since we are not Gods ourselves, we might be told that such-and-such is objectively moral by God, but how would we know? Because we believe God? What justifies our trust in God? That he tells us what we already believed, and it seems good to us? And by good I mean evil, since we’re evil and therefore think evil is good.

And so we’re left at the same place as the shambling ape-man who first stands erect and has to figure out how to live on this planet with no guidance. Even if another ape-man says that the black monolith over there actually gave him guidance, how can we trust what that ape-man says? And even if we hear the monolith ourselves, how can we trust the monolith?