It’s classification as green is sufficient evidence to make the assumption. The science of determining the color of invisible things is complicated.
OK, it seems like for the most part we’ve gotten wrangled into a mess of personal annoyances, hangups, and pet peeves in this conversation. As I think about it, I think what I’m getting at could be better asked through posing a scenario similar to that posed by Left Hand of Dorkness above:
Several people are herded into a room and are shown an opaque wall. The question is asked, is there a light bulb on behind that wall?
Person A: Yes, there’s a light bulb on behind the wall. I can tell because there’s a ray of light visible from around the edge of the wall.
Person B: No, there’s no light bulb on. The light that Person A saw is definitely from another source, a hidden window.
Person C: No, there’s no light bulb on. It’s just an optical illusion.
Person D: There’s no reason for me to think there’s a light bulb on, but I can’t be sure.
Person E: Someone I respect told me that there was a light bulb on, so I’m sure there is one.
Person F: Someone I respect told me that there was not a light bulb on, so I’m sure there is no light bulb on.
Person G: I just know there’s a light on. I don’t know why or how I know it, but I know it.
Person H: I just know there’s no light on. I don’t know why or how I know it, but I know it.
Person I: I don’t really care about light bulbs.
Person J: From our vantage point, it’s impossible to get a conclusive answer on this.
Which of these people has a belief?
Well, is there a visible light around the edge of the wall or not?
From the situation posed, at least two people see one.
For the purpose of this conversation, please tell us which definition of “belief” is in play here.
But that makes it unlike theism, since again there’s no evidence that God is even possible. Lightbulbs and light are both things known to be possible.
Person A: Yes, there’s a bleen grob on behind the wall. I can tell because there’s a ray of bleen visible from around the edge of the wall.
Person B: No, there’s no bleen grob on. The bleen that Person A saw is definitely from another source, a hidden window.
Person C: No, there’s no bleen grob on. It’s just an optical illusion.
Person D: There’s no reason for me to think there’s a bleen grob on, but I can’t be sure.
Person E: Someone I respect told me that there was a bleen grob on, so I’m sure there is one.
Person F: Someone I respect told me that there was not a bleen grob on, so I’m sure there is no bleen grob on.
Person G: I just know there’s a bleen on. I don’t know why or how I know it, but I know it.
Person H: I just know there’s no bleen on. I don’t know why or how I know it, but I know it.
Person I: I don’t really care about bleen grobs.
Person J: From our vantage point, it’s impossible to get a conclusive answer on this.
Person K: What’s bleen? What’s a grob?
Everyone else: I hate militant agrobists!
Arriving at a consensus regarding the definition of that word is what I’m trying to get at, because I’m starting to think that we’re all using different definitions of the word.
If a piece of exposed film was left in the room, would it react in the manner film normally does to light? Is there any objective way to verify the existence of a light source (which may or may not specifically be a light bulb)?
I don’t want to harp on this point, but the scenario sounds somewhat loaded, i.e. Person A sees a light (and I’m not sure who else does… C?) and nobody else bothers to independently verify this and instead draws up various hypotheses on irrelevant and evidence-free grounds. As it stands, it sounds vaguely like you’re hinting evidence exists and Person A draws a correct conclusion but Persons B-J are determinedly ignoring or are indifferent to this evidence.
What specifically about the idea of a God necessarily violates our understanding of the world?
Well, if said God is eternal and unchanging and active, I daresay the laws of Thermodynamics are being challenged.
After all this you’re starting to think? Until you give us a working definition of “God” and “belief” for the purposes of this thread, debate is pretty much useless.
Not intentional. I’m trying to pose a scenario where everyone has some kind of phenomenological experience that leads to an interpretation of the situation, but no one has any real facts about the topics.
The standard claims of omnipotence and omniscience - or even anything remotely close to them - violate numerous physical laws. In the case of omnipotence all of them, by definition. There are other violations depending on which particular god-fantasy you are speaking of. As Czarcasm says, you really need to come out and define which “God” you are referring to; we can’t really get into all the details of why a claim is wrong until someone actually makes the claim.
But the fact of the matter is, a “god” constrained by physical laws is just an advanced alien. Few people would actually consider such a creature “God”.
Well, then there’s no reason to believe whoever first came up with the “there’s a light bulb behind that wall” idea, much as there’s no reason to believe whoever first came up with the “universe was created in six days by God” idea. Without evidence, these ideas are purely arbitrary and can be readily traded for other equally arbitrary ideas, like there’s a player piano behind that wall, or the universe was created in four minutes by Jeff.
I was pointing out that there’s a flaw in applying different epistemological standards to God than we do to other hypothetical entities.
We know nothing with absolute certainty. For example, there is a very slim chance that I am mistaken in my belief that I am sitting as a desk in Santa Monica typing these words. Despite the massive amount of evidence that supports the correctness of that belief, it’s certainly possible that I’m not really typing these words. Rather I’m dreaming or hallucinating or immersed in a Matrix-like simulation.
And yet, as we go about our day-to-day lives, we ignore this inherent uncertainty about the true state of things. We regularly make claims about the nature of reality and act upon them. To do otherwise would be to remain forever trapped in indecision. We’d be unable to even walk across the street, let alone debate the existence of God.
So I have no trouble making blunt statements about reality like “I’m a citizen of the United States.” or “That traffic light is red.” or “Unicorns are imaginary.” even though I understand from an epistemological perspective I don’t have absolute proof that any of these statements are true.
When it comes to God, however, suddenly the rules change. Now the standards of knowing that we use to establish our beliefs about reality for every other aspect of existence get thrown out the window. Now our lack of absolute proof requires that we defer judgment indefinitely. The argument you were making is that this special standard is justified because of the importance of the question.
I disagree. And that’s where the universe-destroying trolls come in. My point is that it’s easy to construct other hypothetical entities who, if they existed, would be just as important to human life as a creator God. So if the question of God deserves a special epistemology, so does the question of the universe-destroying trolls. In fact, the question of whether a traffic light is red or green is of far greater importance for my immediate survival than the question of whether God exists or not. So the justification for adopting a different epistemological standard for the “God question” really doesn’t hold up under close scrutiny.
Which means that notions such as “hard vs. soft atheism” or “agnosticism” really don’t have any justification either. They’re merely forms of theistic special pleading designed to carve out a privileged epistemological niche for notions that are unsupportable under our normal standards of knowledge construction.
If any supernatural god were found to exist, don’t you think this would fundamentally change science?
This is what I call a failure of nerve, and it is often seen in movies. In Ghostbusters, a supernatural entity marches down Broadway. In the sequel, everyone seems to have forgotten this. In reality, every physicist and his brother would be working on ways of measuring spirits and finding rules for them. Similarly, proof or even strong evidence for a god would change everything. That god’s influence retreats as we understand more about the world is very strong evidence against god.
The problem here is the word *belief *has some nuance to it. I believe that I exist. I believe that my desk is made of matter. I believe that I need air to survive. These are things that I have come to accept based on my senses and understanding about the world. These beliefs are based on evidence.
Is Der Trihs a robot from the future? No, because that’s silly and we have no evidence that robots from the future are possible. Is Czarcasm a ghost? No, because that’s silly and we have no evidence that ghosts exist or are able to (formerly) moderate message boards. Does the slavering psycho known as Jehova exist? No, because that’s silly and we have no evidence to support any god at all, much less the drunk stepdad illustrated in the bible.
I am willing to modify these beliefs depending on evidence. If my desk is actually composed on high energy force fields covered by a hologram and you show me evidence of such, great.
I *believe *that there is no God. But that isn’t at all like a religion. People believe religions without evidence and input from their senses. Religions are fantasies and everyone who believes in one isn’t doing it from a position of accepting evidence. Unless they’re too uneducated or stupid to understand what real evidence is. Religious people on this board have used the argument to popularity as if it was solid reasoning.
A belief that something isn’t real because there isn’t any evidence for it and it defies the understanding of the universe we do have evidence for isn’t a blind and stupid faith. It’s reasoning.
A belief that working class Jews occasionally rise from the dead to convince themselves to stop torturing us after death isn’t the same.
An atheist has reasonable skepticism. God defies physical law and there is no evidence for his existence. So it’s safe to say God doesn’t exist.
A theist has unreasonable subversion of intellect and reason. God exists because their culture says God exists. He doesn’t do anything. He doesn’t answer prayers. He doesn’t perform miracles. He doesn’t provide any evidence he exists. A theist is innately performing an act based on blind, ignorant faith.
Hardly the same thing as what the atheist is doing.
Sure–I believe that there is an objective, logical, reasonable universe that can be apprehended through our senses. That’s why I used those terms. However, I have to accept that I have no evidence for these beliefs, for exactly the reasons you give: any evidence that I know of would assume the veracity of the beliefs and would therefore not be valid evidence.
I’m cool with that. I own these beliefs as axioms.
“of interest” and “any point” aren’t objective terms; they’re your own value statements. If the universe is subjective, I find that pretty interesting. I agree that if the universe is irrational then we can’t say anything useful about it–but that’s not proof that the universe is rational, but rather is reason to really really really hope that it’s rational.
My working definition of “belief” is pretty simple: it’s a conclusion regarding the truth value of a factual statement. I think it’d be very helpful to distinguish between basic beliefs and faith-based beliefs and axiomatic beliefs.
A basic belief is very broad: your factual statement can be anything from “my cat’s breath smells like cat food” to “on the third day, God created spinach.”
A faith-based belief is something I have a lot of trouble with: to me it comes across as a belief that you don’t really believe, but you act like you believe it until you can’t tell the difference, out of a sense that such an act is virtuous. I know that’s a terribly uncharitable description, and maybe someone who holds a faith-based belief can provide a better description. As a good liberal, for example, I might not actually believe that school vouchers are a terrible idea, but I might hold it on faith out of a sense that it’s virtuous to believe school vouchers are a terrible idea.
An axiomatic belief is something that you’ve concluded without having satisfactory (to you) reasons for reaching the conclusion, but that you can’t help but conclude anyway. Note that this is different from faith, in my taxonomy. If someone thinks, “I can’t explain why, but I know there’s a God, I just KNOW it,” that’s axiomatic. If someone says, “I sometimes find myself doubting in God’s existence, but I hold to it as an article of faith,” that’s a faith-based belief.
Plenty of atheists hold atheism as axiomatic, I think. Plenty hold atheism as a straightforward belief. Very few hold it as a faith-based belief. Maybe that’s the major difference between the belief in atheism and the belief in theism?
This post nicely sums up my opinion.
Here’s my point: There are now (and have been throughout history) many intelligent people, with high “levels of ability in terms of logical reasoning”, who have believed in God/gods. This does not mean that God exists. But, I suggest that it means that the existence of God cannot be dismissed as easily as some people suggest.
And theists aren’t the only people who believe in things because of emotions. I’ve seem atheists get very emotional when defending their viewpoint. And I’ve seen theists who are very rational even when defending theirs.
Just because it has been mentioned, doesn’t make it true. 
I said nothing about a “pre-ordained” role, just a role. People do have roles in life, right? Son, father, teacher, leader, follower, etc.
It seems that you are addressing someone else’s points.