That reasoning doesn’t work. Say there is a lottery in which the lottery runners print one million tickets, one of which has the winning number rest of which do not. Now say my friend has a ticket. I can be quite sure he doesn’t have the red ticket–the chances are against him by a very wide margin. My ow ticket, also, I can be very sure is not the winner. Each individual ticket I come across, by the same reasoning, is almost certainly not the winner. Yet, it is guaranteed that if I encounter 1,000,000 tickets, one of the ones I encountered must be the winner. This is true even though in each individual case I can be quite certain that the ticket I’m looking at isn’t the winner.
In other words,Humans fear of death and the desire to have some other being take care ,and comfort them, created a desire for a Higher Being and an after life? Like many childern when loney etc, creat an invisible friend.
Did you notice you said you asserted that you, and only you, ascribe what your sensing to be God? There are many people in mental hospitals who ascribe the same things. Because you or some person thousands of years ago ascribed their inner thoughts to God people believed them but it doesn’t doesn’t prove any thing either. I still will ask the question of who created the place for God to be? Any thing or being that exists must first have a place to exist and that place is existence.
Belife in a god can only be just faith. Not proof.
Not true. Based on what we do know - on what we can verify experimentally - we can say that the evidence is very strongly in favor of a physical/naturalistic model (the details of which we need not discuss in this thread). There is no experimentally verifiable evidence for a deity or other non-physical “first cause.”
Fair enough if taken literally – my fault for capitalizing – but I am not arguing for the cosmological argument which, frankly, is BS. So call it “origins” of the Universe of what have you. ISFAI – and I hasten to add that I only have a passing understanding of it; possibly due to lack of interest and/or understanding – the Big Bang posits a “finite time” from said origins and develops the theory from there. I am simply saying that doesn’t compute with me. The “something from nothing” bit. And that’s where I’d like to see some empirical evidence that I can understand. So is the Big Bang right or wrong? I’d be the wrong person to answer that – and I strongly suspect that so would the great majority of people.
I am giving “god beliefs” and out of sorts. Nope, not really. Read what I wrote about that.
All I am saying that a non-believer when it comes to man-made religions and their deities. Beyond that I don’t think anyone can produce any definite answers. Once we do find out – very much doubt I’ll be around to see the day – sentient or not makes no difference to me. Why? Easy. Look around you: I can’t imagine a more random existence that our own. And since I’ve already made it clear that I don’t buy into any religions, it’ll make no practical difference in the way I think or live my life: in the very finite here and now with no hopes/delusions whatsoever about an afterlife.
Still my point stands. When we speak about origins, I don’t know for certain and neither do you. And anyone who says differently is adopting some sort of dogmatic stand based on faith – be it on religion or science. And I say this as a logical empiricist.
It would be plenty good for a god. But with the evidence available, and with the large number of suspects with equally good evidence, no fair jury would ever find that there is a god. Not even close. Fox had a great case against Franken compared to the case for god.
The important thing about origins is not that we know everything, which we don’t but that every single religion with a claimed access to the creator got it wrong.
Even if there was some reason to think the universe was created, which there isn’t, why couldn’t the creator be some grad student and not a deity. If it was a deity, he was a piss-poor designer - look at all this wasted space.
Clearly no one who buys a ticket is sure the ticket can’t be a winner, because only a blockhead would do that. You might even have a lottery where the expected value of a $1 ticket is over $1.
There were a bunch of extreme skeptics in the class, who basically said all term “but we don’t know that!” This was well before The Matrix - today they’d be all wearing long trenchcoats. It was a highjacked class.
What about the red-letter interpretation of the God of the Bible? (I’m referring to Jefferson, who was a theist, but who took the care to strip out the parts of the bible he considered superstitious or suspect). What’s the proof that Metaphorical God (or metaphorical FSM) doesn’t exist?
A:
While there are conceptual similarities, the difference between FSM and Yahweh is that Yahweh has tradition behind Him. That may be sufficient to modify one’s actions at the margins. For example, tradition provides us with a conceptual infrastructure, so that the moral sentiments preferred by somebody can be couched in the terms of the prevailing religion. I trust there are others.
Fredrico The Uber-Power Ranger, as typically described, exists outside of our supposed universe. In fact, he exists outside of wherever God is supposed to exist too. So, not only do physical laws not apply, but God-laws do not apply either. Fredrico can do whatever he wants because he is the only thing inside (or outside) of any conceivable (or inconceivable) existence that is more powerful than God. WAY more powerful (little Goddy don’t even come close, y’all). He is neither ruled by the “laws” known to us humans or by the laws known (or even unknown) to God. After all, those “laws” are only hypotheses that we and God have constructed to explain that which was created by Fredrico.
Suppose I assert that, daily, Fredrico talks to me, and he has told me that truly, you, everyone else in this thread, Jesus, Mohammad, Rush Limbaugh and God himself are all full of shit? That everything you tried to prove in your post is not only wrong, but also mere gibberish. That you are therefore, indeed, proven quite wrong. In that case, you have been proven wrong. QED. Prove that I am wrong.
And, suppose that I assert that I, and only I, have observed otherwise unexplainable phenomena that I ascribe to Fredrico that, just to fuck with your puny human brain, prove that you are wrong all over again. In that case, you are proven wrong–again. Prove that I am wrong.
I wrote as much. Again, if need be, I can be fairly labeled a “strong atheist” when it comes to religion.
I can’t answer that which I don’t know – and neither does anyone else. Which is the sole point I am making. For the third time now.
However, if forced to make an educated guess, I’d agree with you with the caveats stated. So for the most part I think the ‘difference’ between us is one of degrees of certainty – you appear to be [certain] and I am not. As far as I am concerned I don’t see a problem with that, however what prompted my original post, is. And that’s Der Trish’s militant dissemination of a strict dogmatic interpretation of non-belief. He simply doesn’t speak for me. Hell I read George H Smith’s Atheism: The Case Against God when you’d only find it on Prometheus or some obscure library (mid eighties) and went about making my case for strong atheism as the only “logical” conclusion to non-belief. An atheist bible of sorts at the time and somewhat reminiscent of the poster I alluded to in its rigidity. But as the years passed I came to realize I was holding on to my own dogmatic ways and thus becoming what I criticized.
No, not that it “can’t” be the winner, you’re right. But what I said is that they should be sure it isn’t the winner. This is trivially true. The odds are about a million to one against. It’s a sure bet the ticket’s not the winner.
Expected value’s not relevant here. The expected value can be over a dollar, and at the same time, the almost certain outcome be that the ticket will lose.
It’s too bad the prof couldn’t steer things better.