Absolutely true, if you take the idea of “proof” to its ultimate. But I’m a pragmatist - if a proof is good enough to be useful, it has meaning. If it’s not useful, then it’s wanking. I have no proof that gravity won’t reverse direction, but if someone wants to score rhetorical points off me about it then they bloody well better be anchoring themselves to the ground full time. Otherwise they are implicitly accepting my pragmatic standards of proof in their actions while denying them verbally.
If you’re going to claim the existence of invisible gorillas in the streets around us, then you should live your life as if such gorillas existed, i.e. take anti-invisible-gorilla precautions, carry a big gun and spraypaint, own a dog trained to sniff out invisible gorillas. If you don’t behave in this way, then you are accepting the evidence of your experience (that there are no invisible gorillas) while demanding that others do not do so (you can’t prove there aren’t, so ha!)
People who make these kinds of arguments are at least inconsistent and at worst hypocritical.
No, actually, that wouldn’t have happened. He did not offer a definition of God suitable for ontological examination. In fact, I’m not sure that it’s suitable for any sort of analytical examination.
Rift, you say it is possible to present a proof of either the existence or nonexistence of God. You also mention that you believe there is no God, so you must believe that a proof of the existence of god is impossible. I see no other way for you to prove your assertion, then, but to prove the nonexistence of God yourself.
No I don’t think you can prove or disprove the existance of God. My concept of God has changed over the years as I have continuied studying and searched for understanding. I’ve let go of certain ideas about God and the nature of God.
I don’t accept the stories of the Bible as literal so I don’t wonder why God isn’t doing some tricks for Voyager
Just as a point of interest, their is an idea being kicked around that God did not create the Universe, WE did. When seperation from God was concieved so was the Universe. God didn’t cast us out because we were naughty. We chose seperation , and now, as we can see in this thread and eleswhere, are haveing some trouble finding our way back. Interesting ain’t it?
Don’t forget the argument (which I support over the others, BTW) that the existance of a god cannot be proven because the concept of god is nothing more than product, packaged and sold by religions. An analysis of organized religions over time shows this to be the case.
I enjoyed the post you linked to. The question of life springing from non life has always been a major question for me since adolescense many moons ago.
What is your take on dreams? Its a common occurance but it’s always amazed me that while our physical bodies are at rest something within us, our mind and/or our subconscious, can create a world in which we interact with others in pleasent or not so pleasent ways. It has always seemed unlikely to me that phenomenon and wherever it comes from, goes to the grave with my physical body.
Hoodoo, if I had one you would have seen it already. What I do have, and what follows here, is the collection of conclusions that leads me to personally think that there is no god. The reason I also think that there is a proof of this is that I believe nothing is beyond the purview of reason. Anyway:
First, by reading in detail the main works of George Herbert Mead, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Weber, and Herbert Spencer, you can assemble the conclusion that any idea anyone on this planet has ever had about anything that could be called “god” is a social construction. I have outlined how this happens in earlier posts.
Second, Ockham’s Razor. Given that the Universe obeys a coherent mathematical model, even if us lowly humans can’t figure out what that model is, you don’t need a god.
Third, there is no such thing as omnipotence. Now, I realize that physical laws as we know them aren’t conclusively “proven” in the highfalutin sense of the word, but I think we can all agree that your average tabletop conservation of energy scenario is correct. That said, it is categorically impossible to make the ball go any higher than it was when you dropped it without putting more energy into the system. Which means that no agency, intelligent or otherwise, can ever do absolutely anything. Just to make sure I’m clear, if someone came up to me and said “I’m omnipotent,” I’d respond, “Ok. Drop this ball from 2 meters and make it bounce up to 3 meters without adding any more energy,” and then he couldn’t do it.
Certainly there are aspects of belief in God that are social. It seems to me thats why people cling so hard to doctrine that doesn’t make any sense. {such as God wrote the Bible} They want to remain a part of their religous “family” so they justify things they don’t really unedrstand and say, well , I just accept that on faith. It’s hard for some to concieve that thousands of people holding a certain belief might be incorrect. Especially since the belief has been accepted for generations. I call that traditions instead of truth.
You are correct that certain people and religions trade financially on God. I can’t agree with the “nothing more” There are thousands of individuals like myself who believe but don’t belong to any organized religion. No one is selling me anything. I choose to believe because of personnel experiences. My beliefs are my own and evolving. I follow no specific relgious discipline and I don’t believe any religion has it “right” They’re just trying to figure it out the same as me.
SentientMeat, I remember reading that post when that thread got started and agreeing with just about everything you said. My only addition would be to say that if the supernatural ever did enter the natural realm, it would have to obey its laws. “Yes,” you might say, “but being in Spain doesn’t mean I’m Spanish!” True, but being in Spain does mean you obey Spanish law.
It is my personal contention (and I will admit to being a bit of a positivist here) that if there is something we would call supernatural, it would have to be that which is defined as being beyond the purview of reason, and thus not subject to observation by controlled tests. That would mean we could never conclusively point to any evidence and say “that’s the supernatural,” so as far as I’m concerned it doesn’t exist.
Any time, firend. I know I could trust you to cover my back if you saw anyone build the “strong atheists are certain of God’s nonexistence” strawman.
We have memories and the cognitive ability to combine and permute those memories (ie. “imagination”) - this is the basis of dreams. Also note that dreams are only a bit like wakefulness, rather sketchy in the details. The reason we cannot read or feel like running properly is because the brain cannot itself create that vast amount of sensory data which the physical world provides so easily, such as thousands of ink-shapes on a page or the precise output of every nerve in your legs, skeleton and the inner ear upon each footstep’s impact with the ground. We tend experience only what the brain is tuned to remember or output, such as faces, spatial orientations and “raw” emotions from our amygdala and temporal lobes.
As for the crazy narrative of dreams, I find Daniel Dennett’s party game analogy quite compelling, wherein the brain’s hypothesis-confirmation mechanism behaves more randomly on its own than when immersed in the sensory jungle.
Oh, mine too, friend. But when addressing those who don’t share our worldview, I suggest you watch where you’re aiming those “bullshit!”s.
OK, let’s skip the semantics. How exactly do you disprove the existence of something? Not a gorilla behind you, but gorillas in general. What’s the method you use?
Reductio ad absurdum, a method used since Aristotle. See 5.3 here (PDF). Assume your premise is false. Derive an inference that contradicts it. That proves that the your premise is true.
Then what exactly are you saying? What is the meaningful difference between your position and “it’s impossible to conclusively disprove something’s existence”, which is my position?
What’s the problem with disproving something’s existence? Depending on how your word it, one thing’s nonexistence might be harder to prove than another. But then other things are trivially easy. For example, I can easily disprove the existence of a contradiction — any contradiction.
Mr. Meat has the essence of my position right here. It is my claim that if the Universe has a creator, this will necessitate observable properties. My guess as to what those would be is some inherent unexplainability about the beginning of the Universe (assuming it even has a beginning). Once cosmologists, and I’m confident they will do this, either explain the beginning or demonstrate there isn’t one, poof goes the creator.
Hoodoo, I said I can’t do it yet. It’s just a matter of obtaining a critical mass of evidence.
Interesting. I’m not sure I agree or understand what you mean by memories. It has often seemed to me that dreams are a tool of the mind to try and make something in the subconcious come to the conscious. Many I’ve never unerstood or even spent time wonedring about but some seemed obviouosly aimed at waking me up to something I wasn’t acknowledging.
That intrigues me in a the spiritual sense because the spiritual journey is often called an awakening, to the truth that allows us to make more conscious choices nstead of ignoreing unconscious motivations.
God has to be treated as an intangible. We’re unable to see him right now, so he has to be treated as a concept until our methods of observation improve.
Proving God exists therefore relies on the force of the body that believes him to be true. If enough people believe, and can attest to his existence enough to cajole non-believers into buying the concept, then he exists. Much like when the settlers during US Colonial times were trying to convince the Indians that they owned the land because the white men in government said so. Guns tended to back up their statements rather well.
God exists on paper, just like any other fictional character. The difference is, he’s got a really rabid fan following.
