I think you’re missing Half Man Half Wit’s point. I’m not totally sure I understand it myself, but I think he’s trying to explain ways in which God/gods could interact with the world without leaving empirical evidence—not asserting positively that any of them are what does happen.
So what you’re doing is demanding evidence for the claim that God interacts with the world without leaving evidence.
Your request-You “Google” it. It was a simple request that you are doing your best not to comply with.
You: Do this
Me: Do that
If you don’t do this, I won’t do that.
edited to add: If you can’t tell me what it is and where it is, how could you possibly know if I have successfully disproved it or not?
There is no architecture on Mt. Olympus that corresponds to the supposed home of the gods described in mythology. Besides, half of my simple two-part request was to provide the current location of the god in question so that we would know where to look for it, not a former residence from thousands of years ago where she/he/it no longer resides.
BTW, how agnostic are you about the existence of Zeus? I’d hate to waste my time, then find out you were just trying to throw sand in the gears of the conversation.
Yes, that’s exactly it. Evidently (heh), not all of our knowledge is empirical in nature; thus, at least in principle, knowledge of god might likewise not have an empirical component. In which case all this talk about ‘evidence’ misses the point.
I assume nothing. I point out possibilities you missed.
How you spend your time is entirely up to you. I’m certainly not forcing you to read my posts.
I suggest you spend some time actually studying the ideas you dismiss. It’s no accident that they’ve been proposed by some of the most highly regarded thinkers in history, and even if they’re ultimately mistaken, they could teach you a lot.
And all bets are off if you claim that the god you describe is hiding in Never Never Land, Heaven, The Big Rock Candy Mountain, outside the universe, or Tahiti.
I have more faith than you do, as I have 3 dogs named Zeus that come to get groomed.
But, as far as gods go, I would say that I have as much faith in the existence of any god at all as you have in Zeus existing in the way described by Greek mythology.
perhaps bad construction on my part, not “you” as in you the poster but “you” the you that came up with that…whatever it was.
again, my reply is talking to the person who would be making that point, I appreciate fully that those aren’t your points. Of course “possibilities I missed” encompasses pretty much anything that the human imagination can conceive, including the examples of bullshit that you provided. Only in religion can such nonsense be given a free pass or be mistaken for deep thought or insight.
I’ve heard them all before and multiple variations thereof. There is nothing new in any of them. They are all variations on the same theme and are not enlightening in the slightest. They explain nothing. Zip, zero, nada evidence.
The fact that clever people came up with them means absolutely nothing. I give you Einstein and the cosmological constant. Newton and alchemy. I don’t know what you mean by “it’s no accident” other than to prove that clever people are capable of uttering nonsense. That’s just an appeal to authority on a grand scale which is, of course, what the concept of god is in the first place, the ultimate appeal to authority and ignorance.
So no, on the bases of the concepts you provided I don’t think I’ve missed anything of any importance and none of it provides any evidence or argues at all for the necessity or existence of god or gods.
Can someone assert that an intervening god leaves no empirical evidence? Yes, they can certainly string those words together into a viable sentence but “the trouser runs and leaves mice with constitutional dictator tendencies” is also a sentence, and as equally coherent.
Okay. Here is what misled me:
Accepted to be a true statement seems weak - it is a provably true statement within the axiomatic definition of arithmetic.
Unlike 2+2=4, the existence of god is a well, existential question. Proofs of god all have problems, especially in unstated assumptions and lack of considering all possibilities, as well as a fuzzy definition of god. In any case we know from a history of natural philosophy that attempting to prove existential questions - and scientific ones - almost always seems to fail. Experiments which cause us to be forced to confront our mistaken assumptions work much better.
Some versions of god don’t interact with us at all. They are clearly unfalsifiable, but clearly can’t give us any real guidance. They may be comforting, but so are teddy bears.
Versions of god which do interact with us can be examined. And found wanting. But trying to nail theists down on exactly how God interacted with us in order to predict the historical evidence we will found has been kind of tough.
So I agree with you that some varieties of god are not empirical, but they are kind of useless.
And you have the exact same view of all possible gods?
I’ve already pointed out I’m a god. I exist. I defy anyone to prove otherwise.
You’re tilting at windmills, buddy. There are virtually no atheists that are “strong” enough to claim that they can prove no imaginable god exists. What real-life “strong” atheists actually do is take shots at existing specific gods, like say El. They react to claims made by others and seek to tear those claims apart. They don’t unleash disproofs in all directions at every imaginable thing.
For example, I can disprove Zeus. From your link:
Part of Zeus’s definition is that “most likely” when lighting strikes, he literally threw it down from the heavens. However it has been repeatedly and consistently observed that lightning is not thrown down from the heavens. (It actually travels up.) All recent observation has utterly failed to find an entity that would be certainly found if it “most likely” was throwing down lighting from heaven whenever lightning strikes. Thus no such entity exists. QED.
That’s a specific disproof of a specific god, which is possible because one of the traits that the god is defined as having relates to interaction with observable things in the physical world. Gods that are defined to interact with the world can be disproven when their defining attributes are shown to not be true.
Gods that have no significant interaction with or effect on the world generally cannot be disproven, unless the believer goes nuts and makes silly claims like omnimaxness or somesuch. Gods like that, ones that don’t matter, can simply be disbelieved, because there is no reason to believe in them. Just like you don’t have any reason to believe in that giant orange elephant that is invisibly and intangibly breathing heavily into your left ear right now.
Even the Greeks knew that. The Celestial Mt Olympus, the home of the Greek Pantheon is reached thru the actual mountain.
Zeus lives in the Celestial Mt Olympus, where mortals cannot go and it cannot be seen by mortal eyes, unless the gods there want you to do so.
In no way does “There is no on Mt. Olympus that corresponds to the supposed home of the gods described in mythology” disprove that Zeus exists. It merely shows that they dont live on the physical mountain or can’t be detected.
Fail.
Umm, Gods do live in Heaven- (or a heaven) that’s the whole point. You just moved the goalposts hugely. Few claim their deity can be easily reached or seen by us mortals here on Earth. A celestial home is standard mythology.
The fact that mortals can’t just walk over and poke that Deity with a stick whenever they so choose does not in any way shape or form prove that Deity doesnt exist.
No, not in any way. That merely shows some editor at wiki got it wrong. The fact that Zeus can throw thunderbolts and the fact that currently observable thunderbolts dont match that doesn’t prove Zeus doesn’t exist, just that he didn’t throw that thunderbolt. Zeus is not worshiped much today, perhaps he has no need to throw lightning around.
Thinking you can prove a being doesnt exist by disproving a myth about that being is ludicrous.
George Washington did not chop down the cherry tree. His Dentures were not made out of wood. He did not throw a silver dollar across the Potomac. Look,there- I have disproved three myths about Geo Washington, so clearly he never existed.:rolleyes::rolleyes:
I disagree to some extent on two grounds.
Firstly, I think it’s wrong to say that atheists mainly ‘know’ that there are no gods. In my experience, a small minority of atheists take that position. They’re the ones who tend to get the most exposure, so it’s easy to over-estimate what proportion of atheists take that position.
Secondly, I think it’s wrong to distinguish agnosticism and atheism in that way. They’re positions on different subjects and not at all mutually exclusive. I’m an agnostic atheist. Many people are. You refer to agnostics who don’t believe in any gods - those people are agnostic atheists.
For the definition of ‘agnostic’, I think it’s most useful to stick with the original definition, the one used by the person who created the word ‘agnostic’ (Thomas Huxley):
“That it is wrong for a man to say he is certain of the objective truth of a proposition unless he can provide evidence which logically justifies that certainty. This is what agnosticism asserts and in my opinion, is all that is essential to agnosticism.”
(side note - it’s not sex-specific because it was written in 1889, when “man” still meant “person” as it had done for millenia.)
In essense, (a)gnosticsm is a principle about knowledge in general and (a)theism is about belief in gods. Different things, not different positions regarding the same thing.
Using the original (and very useful) definition of agnosticism gives four basic positions on religion:
Agnostic atheist: Does not claim knowledge of the existence or non-existence of gods because they can’t objectively prove either proposition. Does not believe in the existence of any gods.
Agnostic theist: Does not claim knowledge of the existence or non-existence of gods because they can’t objectively prove either proposition. Believes in the existence of a god or gods without claiming objective knowledge of that existence (i.e. they have faith).
Gnostic atheist: Claims to know that no gods exist. Objective proof doesn’t matter - they know.
Gnostic theist: Claims to know that their god or gods exist. Objective proof doesn’t matter - they know.
The only thing that bothers me about that use of the words is that ‘gnostic’ already has a different meaning in the context of Christianity. I think it’s the best use of the words overall, though.
I also have a slight niggle about the correct way to parse ‘atheism’. It has 3 roots and the meaning varies greatly depending on the order in which you apply them. “lack of ideology of gods” has a very different meaning to “ideology of lack of gods”. (a + (theos+ism)) or ((a+theos) + ism)?
I’m rambling. Time for bed.
A pretty good post. “…atheists mainly ‘know’ that there are no gods. In my experience, a small minority of atheists take that position. They’re the ones who tend to get the most exposure…” is a good point.
So the information that you provided is wrong?
FAIL
OK, apologies for the misunderstanding, then.
Again, constraining everything to be about evidence unnecessarily weakens your position by making too strong assumptions—namely, that all knowledge comes to us empirically. I’ve already given an example where that seems not to be the case—mathematics. In particular, if you’re a mathematical Platonist—which many working mathematicians these days are—you believe in a sort of abstract mathematical realm that the human mind participates in, discovering eternal, unchanging mathematical truths. It is not such a great step for the theist to suggest that the human mind similarly participates in the knowledge of god, which completely defeats the argument from lack of evidence.
Mathematics (and logic), by the way, isn’t the only domain in which knowledge doesn’t come to us by evidence. Think about the way subjective experiences are simply present to you: you don’t need evidence to conclude you have a headache, you simply have a headache. Knowledge of that fact is immediately and undeniably present to you; you can’t just refuse to believe you have a headache (or lots of pharmaceutical companies would be out of business).
There are no a priori grounds (that I know of) that knowledge of god should not be immediately present to you in the same way. Indeed, many religious traditions contain such a kind of ‘revealed’ knowledge. It’s easy to propose that those claiming to possess this knowledge are simply mistaken (or maybe lying), but the argument is surprisingly hard to make—after all, how would you be mistaken about having a headache? And of course, never having had a headache doesn’t yield grounds for claiming that headaches don’t exist.
Also, god isn’t necessarily posited as explanatory, but rather, as part of the experience of living in the world—that is, the usual argument is not, lightning hit that tree, somebody must have thrown that lightning, hence god (though it is often misunderstood and / or misconstrued as such), but rather, just as I see the lightning hitting the tree, I find faith, knowledge of god, within me. So saying that god isn’t explanatory, appealing to parsimony etc. also misses the point somewhat.
Well, suit yourself, of course. But the things I mentioned aren’t obscure; occasionalism, for instance, is a major Islamic doctrine (at least in Sunni Islam). The problem is just that you open yourself up for any sophisticated theist making an argument along the lines of: “Ah, you’ve nicely attacked the folk concept of god. You know, the bearded old man on a cloud? Yeah, I agree that’s nonsense. There may be people who believe in that, but there’s people who believe the Earth is flat. No, the concept of God I have in mind is nothing like that sky-wizard: he is beyond the created, gives existence to everything that exists, and what happens, does so by his will. You can’t find evidence of him anymore than you can find evidence of predicate logic.”
For a recent showing of this kind of argumentation, see GreenWyvern’s contributions in this thread.
It’s easy knocking down weak readings of an opponent’s arguments. But to see whether one’s own stance holds up, one should try it against the strongest possible version.
But mathematics also addresses existential questions—literally so, if you’re a (certain stripe of) mathematical Platonist.
That’s because the facts about the world are contingent—they could have been otherwise. (In fact, it’s only god’s will that makes them the way they are!) God, on the other hand, is not contingent, but necessary. (And well, experiments routinely find the effects they were designed to find—so much so that if they don’t, it often presages a revolution—, so we have at least some ability to make inferences about existential questions.)
Or take the example of subjective states I posited above: I can unequivocally tell you that my headache right now exists, yet I have no evidence of that except for having that headache (there are, of course, neuronal phenomena associated with having a headache—but one, I have no access to them without some complicated machinery, and two, the argument that these phenomena are the same thing as the headache—identity physicalism—is very hard to make). There’s no basic logical obstacle to things being that way with god: you participate in knowledge of god, just as you participate in knowledge of mathematics, or your own subjective states. Just as the latter need no evidence, so the former likewise wouldn’t. So the question of the existence of my headache is one I can definitely settle, sans any evidence.
Indeed, it would make more sense to view empirical evidence as secondary to such immediate knowledge: after all, I get to know the outcome of an experiment only through knowledge of the state of my mind, i.e. through the subjective experience of observing something. That’s why the former is fallible, susceptible to Cartesian hyperbolic doubt and evil demons, but nobody could ever convince me of having a headache when I do not, in fact, have a headache.