Ok, I was taking this to be a single god thread, my mistake. However, in the case of a single god, that god’s properties would not differ from one religeon to another in the way and means by which he would exist.
If you don’t care about atheists’ lack of belief, why the burning need to hijack a thread that was simply asking atheists and theists alike what arguments from those they disagree with they nonetheless find most nearly convincing?
No, I’m waiting for his proof. I don’t know what he meant any more than you do.
First of all - not God, god. God is a force, not a person. Though some people may have tried to be clever and named their dog God, I can’t be sure.
Second of all - of course not. God helps me feel spiritual peace, happiness, sadness, and bliss. It doesn’t protecet me when I drive my car or help me win the lottery. It focuses my energy and my emotion into myself.
I don’t recall hijacking diddly squat. I merely said that the arguments I had heard were that there was no proof for god, to which Marley replied that that was because I wasn’t willing to hear it, to which I asked to hear it… well, you know the rest.
That’s usually measureable. It has degrees of exertion, and usually doesn’t have a plan, per se…
I was wrong. You need to define what you’re talking about.
::sigh::
God is a spiritual, metaphysical force, a type of energy. Like, kinetic energy, for emotion. It can’t be explained, or visualized - only felt. Men have tried, and obviously failed, to visualize and personify the forces.
And many atheists would merely respond to that by saying that you haven’t convinced them of the existence of this “spiritual metaphysical force”.
How do you convince someone of something that they can’t see? I can wrote postcards detailing the most marvelous feats of nature, but if you can’t see them, they don’t exist to you. I could be lying through my teeth. You need to be in the right place, at the right time, and have your eyes open.
I can’t convince anyone to feel it, and I wouldn’t if I could.
Scientifically speaking, this is still a worthless definition as it only describes hypothetical abilities and does not offer and tangible description or definition for what God is.It’s differentiated from leprecuans and unicorns, horrible examples from the great debates crowd BTW, in that God is not considered a physical animal or being that we can directly interact with, as his nature as creator and controller would make him seperate from and not constrained by the laws of space and time which we are, thereby making him scientifically non-observable and non-falsifiable as is everything else that exists outside of those boundaries, if anything.
God in the singular is unique in human history in this regard and cannot be compared to mythological creatures.
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Again, nothing but meaningless psychobabble and misses the point besides. The point we make in bringing up other mythical/supernatural entities is not to make a physical comparison but an evidentiary one. There is no more evidence for your God- however you define it- than there is for the leprechauns, therefore there is no more reason to believe it.
And frankly, the endless qualifiers about “non-observabilty,” “non-falsifiability” and Non-physicality are just valueless tautologies, not properties. Frankly saying something an entity is “non-physical” is semantically the same as saying it doesn’t exist.
You have this statement backwards. There is no evidence that the universe requires a God. That is the default presumption. Saying the evidence is “in question” is silly. In point of fact, the default presumption (that no God is required) is, so far, not in question.
No, it’s on the believer, period. The assertion that “X exists” places no burden on anyone except the person making the assertion.
Nothing Hawking has ever written presumes any necessity for a deity or places any burden on atheists.
I would also add that the phrase “spiritual, metaphysical force” is still scientifically meaningless and contains no information.
The phrase “craberry juice tastes good” is also (next to) scientifically meaningless, and contains the information that it is cranberry juice. Doesn’t me that I can’t enjoy it.
Now we’re getting somewhere.
We now have another property of god: it has an affect on you. In particular, an emotional one. We’ve also been informed that god is not a person.
It’s not exactly a definition, but at least it’s a little more fleshed-out.
Would you accept as god anything that met these properties? If there were two things that were both non-physical and both affected you emotionally, would they both be god in your eyes? Or is there some other property by which you can distinquish god from not-god?
If god is non-physical, how can it affect physical things?
I think you are misreading that other thread, Zagadka. They are saying that there is no proof or even evidence of god. What you are asking for is for them to try and prove a negative…impossible. Its like the ‘if god is all powerful, can he create a rock so big even he can’t lift it’ bullshit.
Here’s what was said:
Basically he’s saying he’s never heard a good arguement in FAVOR of theism (or to extrapolate I suppose you could say ‘god’). I.e. there is absolutely no scientific proof or evidence at all that god exists. There is no theory that requires a god at all in fact. This doesn’t PROVE that god does NOT exist…it merely states that there is no proof or evidence that he/she/it DOES. Get it?
Marley32 is agreeing with Mr. Blue Sky…i.e. that there is no evidence/proof that there IS a god. Ok, he could have frased it better, but thats all he’s saying here.
I can see your confusion…this isn’t exactly a modle of clarity here. But again, going back to his earlier statements its pretty clear that Marley32 ISN’T saying there is proof that god does not exist…merely saying there is no proof that he/she/it do. Hopefully Marley32 will put in an appearence to clarify him/herself.
To answer your OP (which has actually already been answered), there simply is no way to prove a negative. If you never read it, read Carl Sagons Demon Haunted World, where he talks about the Invisible Pink Unicorns and you’ll understand several of the previous posters examples and why they made them.
So, there is no scientific proof that god does not exist. However, there is absolutely zero proof or evidence from a scientific perspective that he/she/it DOES exist, no reason that he/she/it has to exist…so we can draw some tenitive conclusions from that (IMO). My conclusion is that either god does not exist at all (highest probability to me), or that he/she/it exists but has no noticable, measurable or detectable effect on the observed Universe…and therefore is irrelevant, or he/she/it does have a measureable effect but our science simply hasn’t progressed enough to get even a hint of it (least probable IMO). YRMV.
-XT
Fair enough. Marley still said that I “don’t accept proof at all” - MEB suggested we make another thread. As a refute of me “not accepting proof at all,” here I am, accepting proof.
All we’ve established is that we’re all talking about different things, and that one person’s experience is never the same as another person’s.
How can we even begin to talk about “scientific proof” that God doesn’t exist when pointing out the difference between proof and evidence is referred to as “nitpicking”? Science is extraordinarily nitpicky by its nature. Proof is usually a math concept or at least a logical process.
Further, definitions of God don’t quite jell either. Are we talking about The Great Cosmic Glue or The Oblong Blur or The Singularity or Satan’s nemisis who smites people? The first three would be impossible to disprove or prove and the fourth one is not worth the time.
I once had within my brain the right word that would forever put the debate to rest. It would reveal to all a full understanding of and peace with the Concept of The Great Blurry Cosmic Glue Singularity of the Light. But then my husband sighed in his sleep and tugged at the covers and the word escaped forever.
Thank you for your explanation though, xtisme
[QUOTE=Shaolinrabbit]
If one takes Hawkings new tack that the universe has always and will always exist, IIRC, then the burden is with the believer. QUOTE]
Sorry for the hijack, but could you shoot me a cite for that? It sounds interesting and I’d like to read more…
Wrong. Lack of evidence is perfectly enough to assume nonexistence. Until you get that, there are no good answers for you.
This is a myth. I can prove beyond reasonable doubt that there is not an enormous silverback gorilla in the room with me right now. I think the phrase “you can’t prove a negative” should be replaced by “you can’t provide physical evidence for or against non-physical entities”.
All this talk of “evidence” solely concerns epistemic modalities, ie. physical demonstrations of existence. By saying that “no physical evidence exists for God’s existence”, one is simply reiterating the near-tautology that God is not physical.
Exploring the existence of metaphysical entities falls within the purview of ontology. One can, as I do, contend that everything supervenes on the physical and refuse any ontological commitment, but this cannot by any means be considered a ‘default’ belief system given the number of bullets one must bite and logical hoops one must jump through in order to present a convincing explanation of traditionally metaphysical entities (eg. truth, mathematics, creativity etc) in solely physical terms.
All an atheist can do is provide a feasible explanation for the universe and everything in it, including human thought. This does not disprove or provide evidence against God - it merely makes him unnecessary according to the principle of Ockham’s Razor:
In explaining a thing, no more assumptions should be made than are necessary.
(Similarly, one might adopt a pan-theistic position that everything is God and that the physical is an Ockhamly unnecessary ‘illusion’.)
John’s comment is more than a nitpick; your basic premise is fundamentally flawed; nobody can prove the non-existence of a supernatural force, but the lack of proof of its existence does not automatically mean it must exist.
‘There exists a supernatural force’ is the affirmative assertion, for which supporting evidence should be presented; lack of evidence, as you say, means nothing much one way or the other, but “There exists a supernatural force *because you can’t prove otherwise”, or “If there is no supernatural force, it should be possible to prove it” is just an Appeal To Ignorance