The argument becomes valid if P has not been observed in an experiment in which the theory predicts that P must occur. No experiment can be devised to prove either theory in the case of god = P and so both are fallacious hypothesis.
Again with the “prove”! When we talk about the real world the concept of “prove” is meaningless! No theory about any real-world entity can ever be proved.
Good answer. One more example of why I like your posts so much.
No matter how desperate your opponents are to either reverse burden-of-proof or make the burden “equitable” they have yet to make a solid argument for the situation to change.
You caught the red herring thrown at you into a garbage can with the grace and style of a martial arts master. A truly poetic choice of words.
Carry on!
TBJ
The problem isn’t if someone believes in Santa. The problem is when they dress up as a representative of Santa and bother me about giving money when I’m on the way to do some shopping.
In the real world, it’s the behaviors and actions that people should care about and not the beliefs.
You can’t prove it to me. However, there is ample objective evidence of dreams. And more than likely ample objective evidence that where you work exists. And I’m certain we can dig up a fair bit of anecdotal evidence that people have dreams about where they work.
So given the supporting evidence, I’ll be willing to accept that you dreamt about work last night.
At least, that’s how my non-religious thought process goes.
Or, she could kill herself to be reunited with her child in Heaven. Or she could have killed her child to send it to Heaven. Or she could kill someone else, because she’s just sending them to Heaven if they deserve it so it’s no big deal. Or, any number of other destructive or outright evil behaviors, just because she is basing her actions on a delusion.
You don’t. But it’s a reasonable claim, consistant with observed reality. God isn’t. God is an evidence free assertion - you can’t even demonstrate God is possible, without handwaving about how he’s beyond physical laws and/or logic and anything else that might puncture your fantasy.
And if I think they are lying, telling them that they have false memories requires that I lie myself, which I refuse to do.
:rolleyes: Don’t be obtuse. I live in a world full of proof that science works, including the computer I’m using.
Once again, you and others demonstrate just how weak the religious position is. In order to defend it, you have to deny that objective reality matters. You have to deny that there’s anything to choose between different beliefs, that evidence and logic don’t matter. You have to claim that your completelty baseless assertion is just as good as a claim backed up by fact. Religion is intellectually bankrupt, and all it’s defenders ever do is prove it, over and over.
As for the contribution to the Logic is NOT persuasive thread… it read like a reading assignment. You had a lot of links to differing sites, asserted a “spiritual truth” without really defending the non sequitur…
And the thread was pittering out anyhow.
Seriously guys, haven’t we already done this one? What’s next? Pascal’s bloody wager?
It’s unclear how what you observe assists you in determining what I dream about. It’s also unclear why the claim is reasonable. After all, if I am willing to lie about a subject as large as God why would you believe me about something so trivial as a dream?
Well, calling us liars really isn’t a good argument. You would do your peers a favor by abandoning it.
And I live in a world full of proof that God exists, including the computer I’m using. The only difference between us is that you’re trusting sources you don’t know and don’t understand, while I am not.
I certainly have never denied that objective reality matters. After all, I am an objectivist. And I’ve used logic before that you’ve never refuted except by the most extreme and irrational tactics, including insults and simply the refusal or inability to engage with suitable counterlogic. To be objectively real, a thing must meet three criteria: (1) it must be necessary (unable to not be real); (2) it must be essential (it must give meaning to reality); and (3) it must be eternal (a temporal state is a temporary state). No amount of scientific investigation will examine any of that. You simply don’t understand, as I see it, what is the right epistemological tool for examining what questions.
Pray tell, elucidate! How does your computer prove the existence of God?
You’ve just shifted the goal posts. You first asked him to prove that he exists. Now you appear to be asking him to prove that he both exists and is a human.
I wouldn’t, actually. I said that it would be a matter of your word, not that I believed you.
No, the difference is that you have a ridiculous idea of what qualifies as proof. Computers in no way prove God.
Nothing is necessary, nothing is essential, nothing is eternal, using your definition of the terms. And none of those things have anything to do with something being objectively real. Scientific examination won’t “examine any of that”, because it doesn’t exist. It’s just a personal definition of yours with no relevance to the real world.
First of all, I notice that you never responded to post #9. That blows your notion of equivalence out of the water.
Second, I recommend you search for threads discussing what atheism really is all about. Hint - it has nothing to do with claims of being able to prove god doesn’t exist. The first problem is: which god?
Third, what does “God must occur” even mean? We can in fact set up predictions about certain religious claims. If the Flood occurred, we should see evidence. If the Exodus occurred, we should find campsites and Hebrew poop. The lack of evidence for these claims falsifies them. Some theists deny the evidence, some say that anything that is found to be wrong was just a parable anyway.
In any case, the only negative proof I know of is proof by contradiction, and it is a standard tool of mathematics. Assume A, show a contradiction, and thus prove ~A. If Liberal weren’t so busy yelling at DT, he would educate you on this fact.
I’m pretty sure the flood was invented to explain why there are shells encased in rock on mountain tops, and I’d be willing to accept that at one time there really was a bunch of Jewish slaves that escaped from Egypt. Hell, as an Atheist I’d be willing to admit there probably was a guy from Nazareth named Jesus, but saying he’s the son of god doesn’t make it so.
You would? There’s no evidence for it, and a resounding lack of evidence where you would expect to find lots of it.
Except that Nazareth apparently didn’t exist until around 100 CE.
You’d expect to find lots of evidence of a bunch of people walking across a desert thousands of years ago? Stone tablet sign posts every few miles? I can’t imagine why the Egyptians didn’t chronicle such a thing in their tombs.
Wow, bold claims require bold cites. Wiki says theres pottery dating from 2200 BC and silos and grinding mills at around 1500 BC to 585 BC. So…
Such is the insidious nature of religious education and the religious environment. Long after I became an atheist, and knew that the Adam and Eve and Flood stories were crocks, I accepted the Davidic Empire and the Exodus as being historically factual. I saw data about the Exodus, but reading that there was no Davidic Empire was actually upsetting. We’ve all got so much invested in these stories, even atheists, that it is hard to accept the truth sometimes, and see that the playing with history that we accept for the Greeks and Babylonians influenced our Bible also.
It’s a desert, remember, and would preserve campsites very well. If a significant number of people wandered there for 40 years, they’d leave some traces. We’ve found campsites much older than that.
I never thought, even when I believed in the story, that there were as many people as the Bible said. But there would have to be enough to make up an army. There are also no records or indications of the conquest of Canaan. Jericho was destroyed several times, but not when the Exodus was supposed to have happened. There is also no record of a mass of Hebrew slaves, or their departure, or the economic impact that would have caused.
It’s clearly a story to first, lay a claim on the land, and second, make a weak nation feel good.
As for Jesus, the operative thing is that he wasn’t born in Bethlehem, a requirement for the Messiah. That bogus story clearly got added to build his case. Maybe when he lived he was called Jesus of Podunk, and the name changed when Podunk was renamed Nazareth.
Whatever. I was only saying the details in the stories of the Bible having some factual basis in reality PROVES NOTHING about the validity of supernatural claims.
I would say that I don’t accept your experiences as evidence not because they are yours and not mine but because I believe the experiences of any one person is never satisfactory. I mean, look at all the things humans believe based on their experiences! That they’re often highly contradictory pretty much proves that we can’t rely on the fact we have them as evidence. Of course, we can’t either go as far to say that having them has any affect on the truth or falseness of them, either, or at least that’s so for most mainstream religions. So I would consider your experiences (which i’m certainly willing to accept you have) which have convinced you of what you believe (and likewise, i’m convinced you’re convinced), or my experiences, or Der Trih’s experiences, or whoever, to not just be poor evidence but entirely proof-neutral.
So it would be true for me to say, in regards to you offering your experiences as evidence, that I would consider you to have offered none. If I simply disagreed with your experiences, or felt that they had a kernel of truth altered by something else, then certainly I would call it evidence, but poor evidence. But I don’t; I think personal experience is entirely meaningless in this regard, and hence, not evidence. That you have is only true using your perspective on matters.