There are obviously a vast number things that have a great deal of evidence and practically no one debates, so things are not just automatically debated despite the amount of evidence. You seem to think the existence of “God” would be debated regardless and I disagree. Your point about evolution is invalid, because as I demonstrated, both God and creationism are postulated despite no supporting data probably due to the same reason – the concept makes the person feel special, not because they fall into some automatic “always debated” category.
The person that indicated nothing would convince him that God existed most likely would not deny that something existed given strong evidence for it. Instead, they would probably challenge the notion that it qualified for the classical definition of “God”.
“You would not believe me if I showed you the proof so I will not show it to you.” How convenient.:rolleyes: This cop-out is used regularly by Muslims that I argue with on line. “You would not believe any proof I might give you because you have hardened your heart against Allah, so I will not waste proof on you.”
Funny how these people are never ready to produce their proof when you say “Try me!”
And I disputed the sufficiency of your “evidence”.
And I demonstrated at least one of reasons, which is so far one more than you.
Actually, I do say.
See, I can play the silly little throwaway retort game too. Wow, fun! And productive too!!
x-ray vision, I am trying hard to have an interesting discussion with you on this, but so far you are veering into non sequiturs which make it difficult. You think the existence of God would be debated despite the evidence, and I disagree. Obviously, nothing will resolve that until some actual hard evidence arrives supporting the existence of God, and I find it highly unlikely that it will happen anytime soon. So let’s at least agree there can be no firm resolution until such time, capiche?
But at a minimum I have shown there are a veritable smorgasbord of topics that are not disputed when the evidence is sufficient. You, on the other have have put forth only one that is – evolution. I see your argument as this:
Evolution is seriously debated despite overwhelming evidence
Someone stated nothing would ever convince them of God’s existence
Therefore, God would be endlessly debated despite overwhelming evidence.
Now let’s set aside for the moment the issue of whether or not evolution is really “seriously debated”, because I personally do not agree to this point. In my opinion, the only people who doubt evolution do so for religious reasons, or they are crackpots. As is often stated, there is no debate in the scientific community over the reality of evolution, only over the specific mechanisms.
I have indicated why I think you encounter evolution debates even though there is a wealth of evidence, and God debates despite the lack of it, and postulated they derive from the same source – a need to feel special. However, once actual hard data of the existence of God was ever to be delivered, I believe the scientific community would react the same way as it has for every other topic. Although there might be some dispute over the exact nature of the being in question (is it really “God”, or is it some super advanced alien?), there would no longer be any doubt in the scientific community to the actual existence of said entity. I base my conclusion on the consistency of the scientific community to date.
Since no one would need to hypothesize the existence of “God” any longer in order to feel special despite the lack of evidence, this source of debate would dry up. The only people left to deny existence would be the crackpots and the 9/11-conspiracy-theory, moon-landing-hoax crazies, and I leave them to you if they are the basis of your argument.
Then you just felt like stating “There are obviously a vast number things that have a great deal of evidence and practically no one debates, so things are not just automatically debated despite the amount of evidence”?
What’s the point if not to make it seem like you’ve rebutted me?
By saying “The person that indicated nothing would convince him that God existed most likely would not deny that something existed”? Sorry, that doesn’t cut it. When folks here and folks I know say “if I saw this great miracle or this other great miracle I still would not believe that God existed and no amount of evidence could convince me”, I believe them. You can attempt to dispute that all you want but words such as those speak loud enough. We’d still be debating God’s existence even if there was “any proof that god exists” .
You “demonstrated” why you believe people believe in God.
It isn’t one more than me. I really demonstrated that some people won’t be convinced God exists regardless of any miracles or other evidence.
Sorry you’re having difficulty; I’ll spell it out for you:
You said, “The person that indicated nothing would convince him that God existed most likely would not deny that something existed given strong evidence for it.”
So what if he wouldn’t deny that something existed? Of course he wouldn’t; he’d claim there are non-God reasons for whatever phenomenon occurred. How is that at all meaningful? Does the creationist deny that something exists? That the person would deny that God exists despite evidence is what I claimed and you seemed to agree.
I really have no desire to argue further about taking others at their word regarding their claims that “any proof that god exists” won’t be enough and there probably couldn’t be enough proof for them to believe. The amount of effort being put in to arguing this point is making me feel silly for being part of. I left a rather benign opinion about my belief that debates would continue if there were “any proof that god exists” and you’d like to make a debate out of that. I’m done.
Why would I be rebutting you? You never said it, right? Or did you?
You need to pick a position and stick with it.
Now you’ve really gone off the ranch. You have invented imaginary people in your head and vested them with quotes to support your position. I defy you to produce one person in this thread that would deny the very existence of the being in question given scientific evidence. Not just challenge the being’s definition as “God”, but dispute its very existence. You really need to support your claim instead of concocting fairy tales.
You’ve claimed to demonstrate it, no doubt, but now let’s see exactly who it is that you think supports your position. Besides the imaginary people in your head, of course.
I’ll try this one more time – if scientific evidence actually existed for the existence of a being that perhaps you would call “God”, no one but the crackpots would deny the existence of said being. Thus far, no one has stated anything at odds with my statement, except for your assertions. Since you are claiming these people exist, I suggest you produce a cite.
I most certainly have never agreed to this. If this is an example of how you are interpreting what others have written, I can see how you might get confused.
If you don’t want to debate the opinions you state, I recommend that you stay out of a forum entitled Great Debates. Perhaps you didn’t realize that the In My Humble Opinion and **Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share **boards are over there ===>
dehacker and x-ray vision, I’m not sure what points either of you think you are making, but it looks to me as though your exchange has degenerated into personal sniping with no serious point beyond getting the last word.
If I understand him correctly, his point was that issues can continue to be seriously debated regardless of the evidence at hand. You say that people only doubt evolution for religious reasons, even if they claim to have scientific grounds for doing so. It seems to me that a theist would counter-argue (as this fellow does) that there is more than enough reason to accept God’s existence, and that people who reject him do so out of an unwillingness to accept his reality.
Now, one might say “Well, they’re wrong!” but that’s irrelevant to the topic at hand. The point is that it’s foolish to say that if there truly were strong evidence for God (indeed, for any thesis), then mankind would cease debating this issue. That’s simply not how mankind works. Heck, a great many people loudly proclaimed OJ’s innocence, even after it became clear that the evidence was overwhelmingly against him.
“First, is God complex? According to much classical theology (Thomas Aquinas, for example) God is simple, and simple in a very strong sense, so that in him there is no distinction of thing and property, actuality and potentiality, essence and existence, and the like. Some of the discussions of divine simplicity get pretty complicated, not to say arcane… So first, according to classical theology, God is simple, not complex. More remarkable, perhaps, is that according to Dawkins’ own definition of complexity, God is not complex. According to his definition (set out in The Blind Watchmaker), something is complex if it has parts that are “arranged in a way that is unlikely to have arisen by chance alone.” But of course God is a spirit, not a material object at all, and hence has no parts. A fortiori (as philosophers like to say) God doesn’t have parts arranged in ways unlikely to have arisen by chance. Therefore, given the definition of complexity Dawkins himself proposes, God is not complex.” (Emphasis added.)
JThunder, you aren’t seriously putting forth anything on that website as scientific evidence for God, are you? If so, let me know any part you consider convincing and we can debate it. Nothing on it (e.g. fine tuning, creativity, veracity of scripture, personal experience) remotely supports the thesis of a deity. You can’t logically say that because people reject bad evidence, they would therefore also reject good evidence if it existed.
You say it is foolish to state that if strong evidence exists for something, mankind would cease to debate it , yet I offer I great many things (the existence of mountains, oceans, trees, dogs, cats, Obama, Bush, New York, etc.) that man does not seriously debate at all. Certainly there are a small number of events that people consistently debate despite solid evidence (moon landing, 9/11, JFK, OJ, etc.). But no one seriously debates the existence of the moon, or 9/11, or JFK or OJ. So it seems to me that if strong evidence points to the continued existence of some object, no one seriously doubts it. Events that happen in a point in time might be debated, but honestly, very few people argue against the preponderance of the evidence even in these few cases, and I would investigate the similarities in those before automatically lumping the existence of “God” into this category.
So are you seriously asserting that God not only exists, but is likely to arise by chance? Why aren’t there millions of competing Gods then, all duking it out for supremacy?
Who knows? Maybe they’re all dancing on pinheads playing ‘king of the hill’. Or something.
The fact is, anything that can create our universe and oversee not only its continued operation but the lives of billions of individual people is pretty freaking complicated. I’m really baffled that anyone would argue otherwise.
This is definition by fiat, and completely irrational. ‘We said it is, so it is.’ How does he know god is spirit? What evidence exists that this is so? What is spirit? How was this spirit detected? etc.
Dawkins’ definition obviously doesn’t apply to something with no parts. Even if something existed which was spiritual, we’d have to get another definition, unless we can define spiritual parts.
One that comes to mind would be to measure the input/output behavior, god as a black box. A black box that produced a “1” for all inputs would be the simplest. One that inverted all inputs would be slightly more complex. The God black box produces outputs that are unpredictable, and include inputs from the future, and from every piece of the universe, including the state of every sparrow. I’d say that while we can’t see inside this black box, we could reasonably call it extremely complex.
Unless of course it was fooling us and was throwing away all inputs and producing a random output. Seems that way sometimes, doesn’t it?
I don’t see how Dawkins’ informal criteria for biological complexity can be applied to the concept of a deity. Platinga seems to be trying to be a theologian in such ridiculous statements.
I would like to see a study like this because as the gap between understand how the brain works and doesn’t work narrows then the probability of synthesizing human thought (and by extention, behavior) increases.
If the mechanics, physical and chemical reactions of the brain exclusively determine thought, then why couldn’t they be replicated?
Once replicated, why couldn’t my memory, my experience, my preferences all be uploaded into the replicated format and the original replaced?
If it is all bio-chemical and there are no non-physical causes, why couldn’t the bio-chemical machine be maintained to last indefinitely?
I agree that an immenent change to our current understanding of how the brain works is unlikely to occur on the metaphysical side. But I’m not so sure that “strictly bio-chemical” is the safest bet either.
I agree with pessemist. Even bringing God into the discussion allows all elements of the religious argument, that makes the person discussing it in need of expert opinion.
JThunder, are you a pope? a priest? consulting one on this? Your complexity argument is unsustainable.