Absence of evidence *is* evidence of absence. (was: Atheism versus Theism)
Dianelos Georgoudis
Donald E. Flood wrote:
[snip]
> The late Carl Sagan laid down two fundamental postulates that have been
> widely quoted by a number of other authors:
>
> 1) Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Actually absence of evidence does count as evidence of absence,
provided one has reasonably searched for evidence of presence and could
not find any. Suppose, for example, I claim there is no butter in my
fridge. How do I justify this belief? Well by carefully looking in my
fridge and finding no butter there. So the absence of evidence of
butter in my fridge is evidence of absence of butter in my fridge.
That "absence of evidence is evidence of absence" is one of the basic
atheistic premises. I think it's very sound as long as one can
demonstrate due diligence. Clearly, the absence of evidence for the
existence of unicorns after centuries of cataloguing the species is
evidence for the absence of such a big animal. Similarly, after a lot
of searching for it there is no evidence of God in the physical
universe. This indeed does count as evidence that there is no God in
the physical universe. And if one believes that there is nothing more
but the physical universe one is then justified in believing that there
is no God.
Here is positive atheism's basic syllogism:
1. If after much looking there is no evidence for the existence of X
then it is reasonable to believe that X does not exist. (premise)
2. After much looking there is no evidence for the existence of God in
the physical universe. (premise)
3. Therefore it is reasonable to believe that there is no God in the
physical universe. (from 1 and 2)
4. There is nothing outside the physical universe. (premise)
5. Therefore it is reasonable to believe that there is no God. (from 3
and 4)
The logic is sound so the theist can only attack the premises.
As I explained above I think premise #1 is very solid. It's the only
way (outside of formal systems) to justify one's belief in the
absence of something. If the theist tries to attack this premise, the
atheist will immediately ask the theist why they don't believe in the
existence of unicorns.
Many theists attack premise #2, using for example the recent ideas of
intelligent design and irreducible complexity, etc. Others may point
out that the theory of evolution does not explain how life started on
Earth. But these are all arguments of the type "God of the gaps", and I
think they are a loser's game. The argument of "irreducible complexity"
used to justify intelligent design is itself sound, but the proponents
of this theory have not succeeded in presenting one solid example of
such irreducible complexity in some biological organism. There are many
gaps in scientific knowledge, but history shows that science is very
effective in closing them, and the idea that the God hypothesis will in
the end be found to be necessary to explain anything we observe in the
physical universe goes against the grain of centuries of scientific
success.
The remaining premise that the theist can attack is #4 (the physicalist
assumption). The strongest counterexample is to point out that our
consciousness (both that we have the capacity of conscious experience
and our actual conscious experiences) appears to be completely
different in nature and unconnected to all physical things, and does
not therefore form part of the physical universe. At the very least the
theist can argue that until #4 is justified its inclusion as a premise
is not warranted. The atheist will insist that consciousness is part of
the physical universe and is somehow produced by the physical processes
in our brain, a claim that directly leads to the so-called Hard Problem
of consciousness. The atheist will claim that there is a lot of
evidence that our brain produces consciousness, and that the Hard
Problem only refers to the fact that science has not yet explained how
the brain does it. The theist will respond that our brain certainly
affects our conscious experience, but that this is irrelevant because
so does switching on the lights in the room, and that the rest of the
evidence presented only shows that the brain produces intelligent
behavior, which in fact is what distinguishes the Hard Problem from the
Easy Problem (see: http://consc.net/papers/facing.html).
The atheist may argue that this is one more "God of the gaps" argument.
The theist will respond that most scientists do not consider the
problem of consciousness to be a scientific problem at all, because a)
conscious experience is not objectively observable, and b) nothing that
is objectively observable requires the consciousness hypothesis. So
this is a gap not for science to close, because as far as science is
concerned the only thing that exists is sophisticated brains and the
behavior they produce. The atheist may retort that the absence of a
scientific explanation (even if in fact such explanation should be
impossible) does not imply the necessity of a supernatural explanation,
to which the theist will answer that reason requires explanations, and
that if science is fundamentally incapable of explaining something
there is nothing in reason that implies that one should not look
elsewhere.
In short the evidence game is not so obviously stacked in favor of
atheism as many rationalists believe. In fact the theist can turn the
table around and claim that our consciousness is incontrovertible
evidence for the existence of God because only by positing God can we
explain it. The theist can also point out that our consciousness is
overwhelming evidence that stares us in the face every single second of
our waking lives, precisely the kind of evidence that one would expect
God to give us for her existence.
Ron Baker, Pluralitas!
"Dianelos Georgoudis" <dian...@tecapro.com> wrote in message
news:1147023994.5...@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
>
> Donald E. Flood wrote:
> [snip]
>> The late Carl Sagan laid down two fundamental postulates that have been
>> widely quoted by a number of other authors:
>>
>> 1) Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
>
> Actually absence of evidence does count as evidence of absence,
I agree with that.
<snip>
>
> Here is positive atheism's basic syllogism:
>
> 1. If after much looking there is no evidence for the existence of X
> then it is reasonable to believe that X does not exist. (premise)
> 2. After much looking there is no evidence for the existence of God in
> the physical universe. (premise)
> 3. Therefore it is reasonable to believe that there is no God in the
> physical universe. (from 1 and 2)
> 4. There is nothing outside the physical universe. (premise)
> 5. Therefore it is reasonable to believe that there is no God. (from 3
> and 4)
<snip>
>
> The remaining premise that the theist can attack is #4 (the physicalist
> assumption). The strongest counterexample is to point out that our
> consciousness (both that we have the capacity of conscious experience
> and our actual conscious experiences) appears to be completely
> different in nature and unconnected to all physical things,
Totally wrong. What would make you think that?
<snip>
> evidence presented only shows that the brain produces intelligent
> behavior, which in fact is what distinguishes the Hard Problem from the
> Easy Problem (see: http://consc.net/papers/facing.html).
Scanning that paper I only see a vague, equivocal statement of
what the "Hard Problem" is.
The "Hard Problem" looks like one man's nonsensical fabrication.
<snip>
>
> In short the evidence game is not so obviously stacked in favor of
> atheism as many rationalists believe. In fact the theist can turn the
> table around and claim that our consciousness is incontrovertible
> evidence for the existence of God because only by positing God can we
Nonsense. Demonstrate how conscionsness is not
physical.
And welcome back. So did you theists all agree on
one theology yet?
--
rb #2187
quibbler
dian...@tecapro.com says...
>
> Donald E. Flood wrote:
> [snip]
> > The late Carl Sagan laid down two fundamental postulates that have been
> > widely quoted by a number of other authors:
> >
> > 1) Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
>
> Actually absence of evidence does count as evidence of absence,
Specifically, it is evidence that the evidence is absent. Since a
positive claimant has to produce evidence to overcome the null
hypothesis, absense of evidence is scientifically sufficient to retain
the null hypothesis.
Now presuming that sagan really was the first person to say this, of
which I am not convinced, the glib mantra is meant in an absolute,
logically deductive sense. Absence of evidence for a phenomena is not
*proof* that the phenomena does not exist. However, scientists don't
obtain absolute proof for anything. They look as hard as they can and if
they can't find support for a given assertion, they make the reasonable
assumption that the claim in question is probably not true. Even
religious people do this all the time in their mundane affairs. It's
only in religion that they are expected to maintain this extreme level of
cognitive dissonance. As opposed to traditional, deductive logic,
science makes use of inductive and abductive logic approaches which do
not require absolute certainty.
--
Quibbler (quibbler247atyahoo.com)
"It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the
threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, 'mad cow'
disease, and many others, but I think a case can be
made that faith is one of the world's great evils,
comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to
eradicate." -- Richard Dawkins
Jim07D6
That is positive physicalist atheism. Atheism does not entail
physicalism. The entire argument needs reworking.
>
>The logic is sound so the theist can only attack the premises.
>
>As I explained above I think premise #1 is very solid. It's the only
>way (outside of formal systems) to justify one's belief in the
>absence of something. If the theist tries to attack this premise, the
>atheist will immediately ask the theist why they don't believe in the
>existence of unicorns.
I'd restate premise 1 to say that the more one unbiasedly searches a
*finite* searchable domain and finds no evidence that P, where the
domain is one in which, if P, evidence that P would be found, the
greater the confidence is justified that not-P. P must specify the
domain. The domain can be, depending on P, a refrigerator, a text,
one's memory, a finite set of numbers, etc. (Infinite and unlimited
domains can be "examined" by other means, in some cases, for example,
it can be shown that there is no largest prime number in the real
numbers, but not by "searching". But for contrast, it cannot be shown
that there is or is not a largest twin pair of primes, by any method.)
P must specify the domain. That is for the theist to do, in the case
of God. If the theist brings physicalism in, so be it.
>
>Many theists attack premise #2, using for example the recent ideas of
>intelligent design and irreducible complexity, etc. Others may point
>out that the theory of evolution does not explain how life started on
>Earth. But these are all arguments of the type "God of the gaps", and I
>think they are a loser's game. The argument of "irreducible complexity"
>used to justify intelligent design is itself sound, but the proponents
>of this theory have not succeeded in presenting one solid example of
>such irreducible complexity in some biological organism. There are many
>gaps in scientific knowledge, but history shows that science is very
>effective in closing them, and the idea that the God hypothesis will in
>the end be found to be necessary to explain anything we observe in the
>physical universe goes against the grain of centuries of scientific
>success.
It has first to be shown that the God hypothesis, with all it entails,
qualifies as a scientific hypothesis. It cannot entail non-naturalism,
and be scientific, since the domain of science is the natural world.
>
>The remaining premise that the theist can attack is #4 (the physicalist
>assumption). The strongest counterexample is to point out that our
>consciousness (both that we have the capacity of conscious experience
>and our actual conscious experiences) appears to be completely
>different in nature and unconnected to all physical things, and does
>not therefore form part of the physical universe. At the very least the
>theist can argue that until #4 is justified its inclusion as a premise
>is not warranted. The atheist will insist that consciousness is part of
>the physical universe and is somehow produced by the physical processes
>in our brain, a claim that directly leads to the so-called Hard Problem
>of consciousness. The atheist will claim that there is a lot of
>evidence that our brain produces consciousness, and that the Hard
>Problem only refers to the fact that science has not yet explained how
>the brain does it. The theist will respond that our brain certainly
>affects our conscious experience, but that this is irrelevant because
>so does switching on the lights in the room, and that the rest of the
>evidence presented only shows that the brain produces intelligent
>behavior, which in fact is what distinguishes the Hard Problem from the
>Easy Problem (see: http://consc.net/papers/facing.html).
But the physicalist premise is not entailed by atheism.
>
>The atheist may argue that this is one more "God of the gaps" argument.
>The theist will respond that most scientists do not consider the
>problem of consciousness to be a scientific problem at all, because a)
>conscious experience is not objectively observable, and b) nothing that
>is objectively observable requires the consciousness hypothesis. So
>this is a gap not for science to close, because as far as science is
>concerned the only thing that exists is sophisticated brains and the
>behavior they produce. The atheist may retort that the absence of a
>scientific explanation (even if in fact such explanation should be
>impossible) does not imply the necessity of a supernatural explanation,
>to which the theist will answer that reason requires explanations, and
>that if science is fundamentally incapable of explaining something
>there is nothing in reason that implies that one should not look
>elsewhere.
>
>In short the evidence game is not so obviously stacked in favor of
>atheism as many rationalists believe. In fact the theist can turn the
>table around and claim that our consciousness is incontrovertible
>evidence for the existence of God because only by positing God can we
>explain it. The theist can also point out that our consciousness is
>overwhelming evidence that stares us in the face every single second of
>our waking lives, precisely the kind of evidence that one would expect
>God to give us for her existence.
I fear that this flavor of the argument has built in confusions about
what atheism and theism entail.
--- Jim07D6
Virgil
Jim07D6 <Jim...@nospam.net> wrote:
> I'd restate premise 1 to say that the more one unbiasedly searches a
> *finite* searchable domain and finds no evidence that P, where the
> domain is one in which, if P, evidence that P would be found, the
> greater the confidence is justified that not-P. P must specify the
> domain. The domain can be, depending on P, a refrigerator, a text,
> one's memory, a finite set of numbers, etc. (Infinite and unlimited
> domains can be "examined" by other means, in some cases, for example,
> it can be shown that there is no largest prime number in the real
> numbers, but not by "searching". But for contrast, it cannot be shown
> that there is or is not a largest twin pair of primes, by any method.)
There may be a method to decide the issue of twin primes that has just
not yet been discovered.
One should never be too cavalier about what is or is not provable in
mathematics. After all, it took over 350 years to prove "Fermat's last
theorem" true.
wbarwell
There is a corrollary here. If you have no evidence, you only have
assertions to inspect. But if the basic claims create impossible
contradictions, they cannot be true. Thus not only do you
know they cannot be true, now you can have understanding why
there is no evidence. That that cannot exist cannot leave evidence.
So you can indeed prove that lack of evidence is consistant
with the facts that such a being is as described, impossible.
This is also done to a degree in science. If a given hypothesis
contradicts well known facts, it cannot be true on logical grounds.
In physics, daily, many hypotheses fail for that very reason.
> As I explained above I think premise #1 is very solid. It's the only
> way (outside of formal systems) to justify one's belief in the
> absence of something. If the theist tries to attack this premise, the
> atheist will immediately ask the theist why they don't believe in the
> existence of unicorns.
>
> Many theists attack premise #2, using for example the recent ideas of
> intelligent design and irreducible complexity, etc. Others may point
> out that the theory of evolution does not explain how life started on
> Earth. But these are all arguments of the type "God of the gaps", and I
> think they are a loser's game. The argument of "irreducible complexity"
> used to justify intelligent design is itself sound, but the proponents
> of this theory have not succeeded in presenting one solid example of
> such irreducible complexity in some biological organism. There are many
> gaps in scientific knowledge, but history shows that science is very
> effective in closing them, and the idea that the God hypothesis will in
> the end be found to be necessary to explain anything we observe in the
> physical universe goes against the grain of centuries of scientific
> success.
Part of the problem with ID is that it claims that some things cannot be
explained by evolution.
The problem with that is that cannot be proven, so the IDiots are hoist
with their own petard. You can't explain is by maybe.
>
> The remaining premise that the theist can attack is #4 (the physicalist
> assumption). The strongest counterexample is to point out that our
> consciousness (both that we have the capacity of conscious experience
> and our actual conscious experiences) appears to be completely
> different in nature and unconnected to all physical things, and does
> not therefore form part of the physical universe. At the very least the
> theist can argue that until #4 is justified its inclusion as a premise
> is not warranted. The atheist will insist that consciousness is part of
> the physical universe and is somehow produced by the physical processes
> in our brain, a claim that directly leads to the so-called Hard Problem
> of consciousness. The atheist will claim that there is a lot of
> evidence that our brain produces consciousness, and that the Hard
> Problem only refers to the fact that science has not yet explained how
> the brain does it. The theist will respond that our brain certainly
> affects our conscious experience, but that this is irrelevant because
> so does switching on the lights in the room, and that the rest of the
> evidence presented only shows that the brain produces intelligent
> behavior, which in fact is what distinguishes the Hard Problem from the
> Easy Problem (see: http://consc.net/papers/facing.html).
But if I can prove god as hypothesized is impossible, then that god cannot
exist and cannot be the explanation of anything. Thus any possible
explanation for conciousness is divorced from god and becomes merely
a physicalist process again. It is now divorced from theist claims.
Souls are another problem. Without god, it is a solution looking for a
problem. And again, there are many definitions of souls, but without
god there is no theist solution to what is a soul. The ancient Greek
Stoics believed that matter came in gradiations, finer kinds of matter made
up souls and things like deities. The problem is, of the many ideas about
souls, there is no evidence any of them are right. Knock out theist
claims that god cannot exist and its pointless for the theist to continue.
Unless the theist can prove there is some sort of supernatural world
that provides evidence of such things without god, there is no reason
to take theist hypotheses seriously in the least.
> The atheist may argue that this is one more "God of the gaps" argument.
If ther eis no evidence for god, only assertions, and a small subset of
assertions chosen carefully allow god to be shown to be impossible due
to fatal contradictions of basic assertions, then god is impossible in
principle and cannot be used as a god of the gaps.
> The theist will respond that most scientists do not consider the
> problem of consciousness to be a scientific problem at all, because a)
> conscious experience is not objectively observable, and b) nothing that
> is objectively observable requires the consciousness hypothesis. So
> this is a gap not for science to close, because as far as science is
> concerned the only thing that exists is sophisticated brains and the
> behavior they produce. The atheist may retort that the absence of a
> scientific explanation (even if in fact such explanation should be
> impossible) does not imply the necessity of a supernatural explanation,
> to which the theist will answer that reason requires explanations, and
> that if science is fundamentally incapable of explaining something
> there is nothing in reason that implies that one should not look
> elsewhere.
>
Conciousness exists. It is based on brains, matter, biology.
It is thus a scientific problem that in fact, science does study.
But god, readily proven non-existant, cannot thus have anything
to do with it.
Claiming that there might be states of existancescience does not know of is
merely a scientific problem again, and burden of proof is on proponents
to prove any assertions about it.
In science we have the null hypothesis. If you cannot show something exists
it cannot count for anything, maybeism is not allowed in science.
> In short the evidence game is not so obviously stacked in favor of
> atheism as many rationalists believe. In fact the theist can turn the
> table around and claim that our consciousness is incontrovertible
> evidence for the existence of God because only by positing God can we
> explain it.
But god can be shown to not exist so that is not true.
1. God is personal, god has conciousness and will
2. God is intelligent
3. God has free will
4. God created all
5. God is omnipotent
6. God is omniscient
7. God is omnibenevolent
8. God is that which is so great, nothing greater
can be imagined.
These are all I need to show god cannot exist.
None of these are new or controversial claims, they are
basic dogmas of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Brahmanism.
Omniscience vs creatorhood of all gives us a god
who rules out all forms of free will and thus morality.
Free wil cannot help then with the problem of evil, and more.
overlapping contradictions of this sort doom god as impossible.
All evil that exists is directly god's doing thus contradicting claims god
is supreme good.
Thus god, being impossible, cannot be explanation of anything.
Nor can any ttempt to patch up god be achieved by abandoning
claims above, which also do violence to dogmatic religions
that make these claims.
> The theist can also point out that our consciousness is
> overwhelming evidence that stares us in the face every single second of
> our waking lives, precisely the kind of evidence that one would expect
> God to give us for her existence.
But since god is easily debunked, god cannot explain anything physical at
all.
-------
IS THERE A GOD?
Strong Atheism's answer.
A BASIC DEFINITION OF GOD.
The general overarching definition of god as per
the major religions of the world is:
A. God is personal, God has will and consciousness.
B. God has free will.
C. God is the creator of all.
D. God is omnipotent.
E. God is omnibenevolent.
F. God is omniscient.
G. God is that which nothing more powerful
can be imagined.
These are the basic attributes that can be claimed
for the god of orthodox Judaism, Christianity,
Islam, and Hinduism.
Omnibenevolence and omniscience are actually
logically derivable from the claimed attribute of
omnipotence and so aren't not truly independent
attributes, and may be considered special aspects
of omnipotence.
There are other attributes of god, that he is the
only such god, that he is is immortal and that
god has always existed that are not important
for this discussion and for now, can be ignored.
They are secondary arguments and are for the most
part not foundational or truly necessary, except
those that can be logically derived from the
attributes listed above.
A CLASS OF GODS
It is important to note here that this is a
definition not for a particular god, but an
entire class of gods.
Sub-theories about god are not important here.
Christianity claims one may attain salvation
only through Jesus, Islam claims the Christian
dogma that Jesus was the son of god is
blasphemous.
Ideas like this though, are of little importance
to the overarching and general claims made for a
personal, creator, omni-everything god. I have
coined a term, The Grand God of Grand Theologies
for this sort of god, this sort of theological
system of expansive claims for god.
Grand theologies are those theologies that have
adopted this class of god as their basic
attributes concerning the nature of god. But it
is important to remember here that what is being
discussed here is a class of gods, not particular
gods or specific gods.
THE FOUR GREAT THEOLOGICAL TRADITIONS
Again, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism hold
to this basic Grand God and are typical Grand
Theologies holding to this basic class of god as
their basic definitions of what god is at god's
most basic level.
A big problem with this class of gods is, it
collapses rather easily into internal self-
contradiction.
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL.
The problem of evil was first written down by
Epicurus in about the third century BCE.
Today's formulation is:
A. God is defined as omnipotent;
B. and as omnibenevolent.
C. Evil exists.
D. God therefore, is not omnipotent as claimed.
E. Or God is not omnibenevolent as claimed.
F. Or god is neither omnipotent or
omnibenevolent.
G. Or god is not existant.
THE FREE WILL DEFENSE
The free will defense of the problem of evil goes
back to St. Augustine who popularized it. It is
still popular, and is championed most notably
today by Alvin Plantinga, but also by other
theologians.
God gave man free will. Man freely chooses to do
evil. Ability to do evil is less evil than
lacking free will.
THE FREE WILL DEFENSE DEBUNKED.
God has free will.
God is omnibenevolent, he has a good nature
incapable of doing evil.
A. If god can have free will, and a good nature,
this good nature is not allowed to count
against god's free will.
B. Nor is god's lack of ability to do evil
allowed to count against god's omnipotence.
C. Likewise, man could easily have a god like
free will and a god like good nature.
D. Inabilty then to do evil would no more count
against man's free will than it does for god's
free will.
E. If so, it also counts against god's free will
and god does not have free will as claimed.
F. If god does not have absolute and total free
will, thus free will is not a true necessity
at all.
F. If god is omnipotent and omnibenevolent, and
can give man a god like free will and a
god-like good nature incapable of moral evil,
god must do so or god is not moral, not
omnibenevolent.
G. Evil exists because he allows it to.
So free will does not exist, or it does and we can
have a god like free will and a god like good
nature. Either way, free will cannot explain away
the existence of evil. This free will defense
then, is a failed argument.
OMNISCIENCE VERSUS CREATORHOOD OF GOD
God is defined as creator of all in most
religions.
And god is claimed to be omniscient, all knowing.
A. God created the Universe and all in it.
B. God is omniscient, all knowing, he knows all
in the Universe and he knows the future of the
Universe and its contents.
C. If god creates a Universe, he will know that
in 13 billion years this Universe will have a
man named John Smith in it.
D. If John Smith is good and saved, or evil and
damned, God will know that.
E. As he knows that the Universe in its present
state will have a John Smith, god may then
contemplate the future state of Smith and
decide if he will tolerate an evil Smith.
F. If yes, Smith will be evil only because of a
specific personal and will choice made solely
by god.
G. If Smith is evil, then evil exists solely
because of a choice made by god. In fact all
moral evil done by creations of god will be
evil and do evil only because of personal and
willful creations of god allowing evil acts
to be done, by direct decision of god.
H. If evil exists in a world with an omniscient
creator god, it is solely and only because
god allows evil.
I. If evil exists solely because of personal
choices of god, god then is not as defined,
omnibenevolent.
J. Man and any other sentient being in such a
Universe cannot have any free will, not even
in principle. A Universe with a god that
creates all and knows all precludes free will
for all beings god creates in the strongest
possible manner.
The Grand God of Grand
Theology is thus self destroying, it is
incoherent and contradictory as a theory
and such a god is impossible.
THE SITUATION SO FAR.
1. A minimalistic class of gods is defined, this
Grand God has been defined here with as few
terms as possible.
2. The problem of evil dooms such a claimed god.
3. The attempted defense, free will is fatally
flawed. God's good nature and free will doom
claims free will makes evil necessary for man
to have free will.
4. Omniscience and creatorhood of god further
doom claims of god's omnibenevolence and
man's free will free will cannot exist for
man. All evil is the direct and knowing
creation of god contradicting claims of
omnibenevolence.
5. Since Free will for man is totally impossible,
free will cannot be a good quality, much less
necessary.
Here, the Grand God of Grand Theology has
collapsed. As has Grand Theology. As pointed out,
this destroys the claims and viability of an
entire class of possible gods, all secondary and
tertiary claims for such a god of this class also
fail, as do dogmas or secondary or tertiary
claims.
If a these Grand Gods cannot exist as defined,
specific gods cannot, nor can claims such as this
or that Grand God sent this or that revelation to
man or some prophet or did this or that.
God is thus disproven and is utter irrelevant
to anything real and existant.
***********
--
"Just because you don't take an interest in politics
doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you."
- Pericles
Cheerful Charlie
wbarwell
On the other hand, the old Greek puzzle of squaring the circle was proven
impossible since the rules meant creating a line segment that
represented an irrational number and you cannot do that with irrational
numbers
There is no hard evidence for god's existance. Where do you look?
In the best theoology and philosophy textbooks as used by the finest
universities. Why is that?
Because simple assertions about god based on claims of
major theological systems are contradictory and so god cannot exist.
Not even in principle. Which explains why there is no evidence
for god despite 2600 years of looking for evidence.
Here then is your equivalent to showing that proving god is
trying to create a line segment representing an irrational number.
You can't square the circle and you will never be able to
prove god exists, much less show evidence god exists.
The entire class of possible creator, omni-everything gods is impossible.
Anything relying on that sort of god also falls.
Kurt Nicklas
Absence of noncontradictory evidence does not imply that such evidence
does not exist, Billy.
Your inability to find such evidence is not evidence does not mean it
does not
exist.
Again, your argument fails on it's premises.
Don Kresch
<kurtn...@aport2000.ru> let us all know that:
>
>wbarwell wrote:
>> There is a corrollary here. If you have no evidence, you only have
>> assertions to inspect. But if the basic claims create impossible
>> contradictions, they cannot be true. Thus not only do you
>> know they cannot be true, now you can have understanding why
>> there is no evidence. That that cannot exist cannot leave evidence.
>
>Absence of noncontradictory evidence does not imply that such evidence
>does not exist, Billy.
>
>Your inability to find such evidence is not evidence does not mean it
>does not exist.
Thousands upon thousands of years without evidence where
evidence is to be expected does, though.
Don
---
aa #51, Knight of BAAWA, DNRC o-, Member of the [H]orde
Atheist Minister for St. Dogbert.
"No being is so important that he can usurp the rights of another"
Picard to Data/Graves "The Schizoid Man"
Kurt Nicklas
Don Kresch wrote:
> In alt.atheism On 7 May 2006 16:50:57 -0700, "Kurt Nicklas"
> <kurtn...@aport2000.ru> let us all know that:
>
> >
> >wbarwell wrote:
>
> >> There is a corrollary here. If you have no evidence, you only have
> >> assertions to inspect. But if the basic claims create impossible
> >> contradictions, they cannot be true. Thus not only do you
> >> know they cannot be true, now you can have understanding why
> >> there is no evidence. That that cannot exist cannot leave evidence.
> >
> >Absence of noncontradictory evidence does not imply that such evidence
> >does not exist, Billy.
> >
> >Your inability to find such evidence is not evidence does not mean it
> >does not exist.
>
> Thousands upon thousands of years without evidence where
> evidence is to be expected does, though.
No, Don, it simply means YOU have never seen any that would convince
you.
I'll bet you won't even acknowledge that you may be wrong in your
beliefs.
Would you?
Don Kresch
<kurtn...@aport2000.ru> let us all know that:
>
>Don Kresch wrote:
>> In alt.atheism On 7 May 2006 16:50:57 -0700, "Kurt Nicklas"
>> <kurtn...@aport2000.ru> let us all know that:
>>
>> >
>> >wbarwell wrote:
>>
>> >> There is a corrollary here. If you have no evidence, you only have
>> >> assertions to inspect. But if the basic claims create impossible
>> >> contradictions, they cannot be true. Thus not only do you
>> >> know they cannot be true, now you can have understanding why
>> >> there is no evidence. That that cannot exist cannot leave evidence.
>> >
>> >Absence of noncontradictory evidence does not imply that such evidence
>> >does not exist, Billy.
>> >
>> >Your inability to find such evidence is not evidence does not mean it
>> >does not exist.
>>
>> Thousands upon thousands of years without evidence where
>> evidence is to be expected does, though.
>
>No,
Yes, liar.
Jim07D6
>Virgil wrote:
>
>> In article <bgos52hfbson5lk9e...@4ax.com>,
>> Jim07D6 <Jim...@nospam.net> wrote:
>>
>>> I'd restate premise 1 to say that the more one unbiasedly searches a
>>> *finite* searchable domain and finds no evidence that P, where the
>>> domain is one in which, if P, evidence that P would be found, the
>>> greater the confidence is justified that not-P. P must specify the
>>> domain. The domain can be, depending on P, a refrigerator, a text,
>>> one's memory, a finite set of numbers, etc. (Infinite and unlimited
>>> domains can be "examined" by other means, in some cases, for example,
>>> it can be shown that there is no largest prime number in the real
>>> numbers, but not by "searching". But for contrast, it cannot be shown
>>> that there is or is not a largest twin pair of primes, by any method.)
>>
>> There may be a method to decide the issue of twin primes that has just
>> not yet been discovered.
Be that as it may, my restatement of premise 1 stands.
>> One should never be too cavalier about what is or is not provable in
>> mathematics. After all, it took over 350 years to prove "Fermat's last
>> theorem" true.
It does not imply being cavalier, to conclude that conjectures are
false.
>
>On the other hand, the old Greek puzzle of squaring the circle was proven
>impossible since the rules meant creating a line segment that
>represented an irrational number and you cannot do that with irrational
>numbers.
A good example.
--- Jim07D6
Dianelos Georgoudis
Ron Baker, Pluralitas! wrote:
> "Dianelos Georgoudis" <dian...@tecapro.com> wrote in message
> news:1147023994.5...@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> >
> > Donald E. Flood wrote:
> > [snip]
> >> The late Carl Sagan laid down two fundamental postulates that have been
> >> widely quoted by a number of other authors:
> >>
> >> 1) Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
> >
> > Actually absence of evidence does count as evidence of absence,
>
> I agree with that.
But observe that the part you sniped is important: one must have looked
for evidence before. If one hasn't then Sagan is correct, because
"Absence of evidence is evidence of absence" becomes an argument from
ignorance, such as: "I haven't got any evidence that there is butter in
my fridge (I didn't even look there) therefore there is no butter in my
fridge."
> <snip>
>
> >
> > Here is positive atheism's basic syllogism:
> >
> > 1. If after much looking there is no evidence for the existence of X
> > then it is reasonable to believe that X does not exist. (premise)
> > 2. After much looking there is no evidence for the existence of God in
> > the physical universe. (premise)
> > 3. Therefore it is reasonable to believe that there is no God in the
> > physical universe. (from 1 and 2)
> > 4. There is nothing outside the physical universe. (premise)
> > 5. Therefore it is reasonable to believe that there is no God. (from 3
> > and 4)
>
> <snip>
>
> >
> > The remaining premise that the theist can attack is #4 (the physicalist
> > assumption). The strongest counterexample is to point out that our
> > consciousness (both that we have the capacity of conscious experience
> > and our actual conscious experiences) appears to be completely
> > different in nature and unconnected to all physical things,
>
> Totally wrong. What would make you think that?
Because, from the materialistic point of view, consciousness appears to
be completely superfluous. That's why some materialist thinkers go as
far as to claim that consciousness does not exist, or does not really
exist and is only an illusion. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliminative_materialism
> <snip>
>
> > evidence presented only shows that the brain produces intelligent
> > behavior, which in fact is what distinguishes the Hard Problem from the
> > Easy Problem (see: http://consc.net/papers/facing.html).
>
> Scanning that paper I only see a vague, equivocal statement of
> what the "Hard Problem" is.
> The "Hard Problem" looks like one man's nonsensical fabrication.
David Chalmers is one of the best known thinkers in this field. He is
the one who coined the phrase "Hard problem of consciousness" which has
become the subject matter of dozens if not hundreds of academic papers.
If you google "hard problem" and consciousness you get 91,000 hits. If
this is a "nonsensical fabrication" it is strange that so many
materialist thinkers take it so seriously.
> <snip>
>
> >
> > In short the evidence game is not so obviously stacked in favor of
> > atheism as many rationalists believe. In fact the theist can turn the
> > table around and claim that our consciousness is incontrovertible
> > evidence for the existence of God because only by positing God can we
>
> Nonsense. Demonstrate how conscionsness is not
> physical.
Everything that is physical is either objectively observable, or else
is posited for explaining something that is objectively observable. (If
you don't agree with this, can you suggest a counterexample?) Some
examples: Apples and lightning are physical because they are
objectively observable. Gravitational forces are physical because they
explain the falling of apples, and electrons are physical because they
explain lightning. Now let's consider consciousness. It's not
objectively observable and, significantly, it's not useful for
explaining anything that is objectively necessary. Therefore it can't
be physical.
> And welcome back. So did you theists all agree on
> one theology yet?
Not really. The closest we have come to agreeing is that "God is the
perfect being", and therefore perfect in goodness, perfect in beauty,
perfect in power, perfect in knowledge, and so on.
By the way, have you materialists agreed on one description of physical
reality yet? Last time I looked some of you claimed that physical
reality is deterministic and some that it is certainly not, some that
it consists of one physical universe and some that it consists of a
furiously growing number of parallel universes, some argue that the
universe is a two-dimensional hologram and its three-dimensional
appearence is only a sophisticated illusion created by our brain, some
point out that the Matrix is possible, some argue that there is a good
possibility that we all live in a computer simulation and that nothing
we see is actually real (see: www.simulation-argument.com), and some
agree with Kant that we cannot know anything about the external reality
except that it exists. What makes this disagreement truly remarkable is
that at the same time materialists claim that theirs is an *objective*
field :-)
Materialists also beat theists in the "way too fantastic to believe"
category. Nothing concocted by a religious mind comes even close to the
really and truly fantastic many-worlds interpretation of quantum
mechanics. So much for materialism being down to earth.
Dianelos Georgoudis
Jim07D6 wrote:
> "Dianelos Georgoudis" <dian...@tecapro.com> said:
[snip]
> >Here is positive atheism's basic syllogism:
> >
> >1. If after much looking there is no evidence for the existence of X
> >then it is reasonable to believe that X does not exist. (premise)
> >2. After much looking there is no evidence for the existence of God in
> >the physical universe. (premise)
> >3. Therefore it is reasonable to believe that there is no God in the
> >physical universe. (from 1 and 2)
> >4. There is nothing outside the physical universe. (premise)
> >5. Therefore it is reasonable to believe that there is no God. (from 3
> >and 4)
>
> That is positive physicalist atheism. Atheism does not entail
> physicalism. The entire argument needs reworking.
Well, the vast majority of positive atheists are physicalists, and I
thought that positive atheism always entail physicalism. Here is
roughly why: Nature is normally identified with the physical universe.
If one believes that the physical universe is not all there is then one
believes in the super-natural, and no atheism is compatible with the
supernatural. It's quite possible I am wrong in this, so I would very
much like to know what kind of atheism does not entail physicalism. Can
you explain this kind of atheism yourself, or maybe quote some useful
link? A quick web search for "atheism does not entail physicalism" did
not return any hits.
> >The logic is sound so the theist can only attack the premises.
> >
> >As I explained above I think premise #1 is very solid. It's the only
> >way (outside of formal systems) to justify one's belief in the
> >absence of something. If the theist tries to attack this premise, the
> >atheist will immediately ask the theist why they don't believe in the
> >existence of unicorns.
>
> I'd restate premise 1 to say that the more one unbiasedly searches a
> *finite* searchable domain and finds no evidence that P, where the
> domain is one in which, if P, evidence that P would be found, the
> greater the confidence is justified that not-P. P must specify the
> domain. The domain can be, depending on P, a refrigerator, a text,
> one's memory, a finite set of numbers, etc. (Infinite and unlimited
> domains can be "examined" by other means, in some cases, for example,
> it can be shown that there is no largest prime number in the real
> numbers, but not by "searching". But for contrast, it cannot be shown
> that there is or is not a largest twin pair of primes, by any method.)
>
> P must specify the domain. That is for the theist to do, in the case
> of God. If the theist brings physicalism in, so be it.
Fair enough. P is the field of our conscious experience. I claim that
one cannot understand the fact that one is a conscious being and
neither the qualities of one's consciousness (i.e. how it is to be a
human conscious being) without recourse to God. Conversely I find that
the God hypothesis perfectly explains both my being conscious and the
qualities of my conscious experience, e.g. how it feels to hurt, hot it
feels to love, how it feels to be stricken by beauty, how it feels to
make a decision, etc.
> >Many theists attack premise #2, using for example the recent ideas of
> >intelligent design and irreducible complexity, etc. Others may point
> >out that the theory of evolution does not explain how life started on
> >Earth. But these are all arguments of the type "God of the gaps", and I
> >think they are a loser's game. The argument of "irreducible complexity"
> >used to justify intelligent design is itself sound, but the proponents
> >of this theory have not succeeded in presenting one solid example of
> >such irreducible complexity in some biological organism. There are many
> >gaps in scientific knowledge, but history shows that science is very
> >effective in closing them, and the idea that the God hypothesis will in
> >the end be found to be necessary to explain anything we observe in the
> >physical universe goes against the grain of centuries of scientific
> >success.
>
> It has first to be shown that the God hypothesis, with all it entails,
> qualifies as a scientific hypothesis. It cannot entail non-naturalism,
> and be scientific, since the domain of science is the natural world.
Correct. And all evidence points to the fact that the God hypothesis is
not necessary for understanding any physical phenomenon, and therefore
is not a scientific one. For exactly the same reason the consciousness
hypothesis is not a scientific one. Even so we know that consciousness
is real. Which proves that a correct hypothesis need not necessarily be
scientific.
Sirius
> Here is positive atheism's basic syllogism:
>
> 1. If after much looking there is no evidence for the existence of X then
> it is reasonable to believe that X does not exist. (premise) 2. After much
> looking there is no evidence for the existence of God in the physical
> universe. (premise)
> 3. Therefore it is reasonable to believe that there is no God in the
> physical universe. (from 1 and 2)
> 4. There is nothing outside the physical universe. (premise) 5. Therefore
> it is reasonable to believe that there is no God. (from 3 and 4)
Which god do you want to prove the existence ? There are hundreds or
thousands of religions and religions variants and individuals that have
each one a distinct definition of god. So a great number, if not all are
wrong.
If I say there is no wadaya nor gulliguch in my fridge, it is because I
know nobody living now as ever seen some wadaya nor gulliguch and it is
very likely that if I look in my fridge, I will conclude that the absence
of evidence of wadaya is a very close approximation of evidence of
absence.
Until somebody exhibits me some wadaya, or gives me an operationnal
description so I can identify it when I see it, I have no need to
try to know if it exists or not and nobody has to prove it exits or not,
except the one who wants to prove it.
So what is your operationnal definition of god, and what are the elements
that prove that at least one occurence of it exists ?
Sirius
Dianelos Georgoudis
wbarwell wrote:
> Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:
> > In short the evidence game is not so obviously stacked in favor of
> > atheism as many rationalists believe. In fact the theist can turn the
> > table around and claim that our consciousness is incontrovertible
> > evidence for the existence of God because only by positing God can we
> > explain it.
>
> But god can be shown to not exist so that is not true.
>
> 1. God is personal, god has conciousness and will
> 2. God is intelligent
> 3. God has free will
> 4. God created all
> 5. God is omnipotent
> 6. God is omniscient
> 7. God is omnibenevolent
> 8. God is that which is so great, nothing greater
> can be imagined.
>
> These are all I need to show god cannot exist.
> None of these are new or controversial claims, they are
> basic dogmas of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Brahmanism.
It's not controversial either that various materialists make even more
obviously and wildly contradictory claims about the basic properties of
physical reality:
1. Physical reality is deterministic.
2. Physical reality is not deterministic.
3. Physical reality consists of one physical universe.
4. Physical reality consists of a huge and ever growing number of
parallel physical universes.
5. Physical realty is more or less as we see it.
6. Physical reality is a two-dimensional hologram.
So, according to your logic, that's all I need in order to show that
physical reality does not exist, yes?
Now you may recognize that different materialists hold contradictory
views about physical reality, but point out that their individual views
taken one by one are not self-contradictory. Maybe you think that
individual theistic views must be self-contradictory. The idea that any
theistic view is necessarily incoherent and not merely false is known
as logical positivism's attack on theism and was popular in the
beginning of the 20th century. It has been roundly discounted and is
not used anymore as an argument by knowledgeable atheists. After all,
it's very easy to present a theistic view that is entirely coherent as
a logical possibility. For example: There is no physical reality out
there but only God directly feeding us conscious experience according
to what is finally best for us and which we shall be able to completely
comprehend only in the afterlife.
Julian Baggini, the editor of The Philosophers' Magazine, has written
a very good introduction to atheism published in 2003 by Oxford
University Press. It's an easy read of only 100 pages and you will
find atheism's modern and sophisticated stance there. Highly
recommended.
Dianelos Georgoudis
Sirius wrote:
> On Sun, 07 May 2006 10:46:34 -0700, Dianelos Georgoudis wrote :
>
>
> > Here is positive atheism's basic syllogism:
> >
> > 1. If after much looking there is no evidence for the existence of X then
> > it is reasonable to believe that X does not exist. (premise) 2. After much
> > looking there is no evidence for the existence of God in the physical
> > universe. (premise)
> > 3. Therefore it is reasonable to believe that there is no God in the
> > physical universe. (from 1 and 2)
> > 4. There is nothing outside the physical universe. (premise) 5. Therefore
> > it is reasonable to believe that there is no God. (from 3 and 4)
>
> Which god do you want to prove the existence ?
I can't prove the existence of God. I can't even prove the existence of
my own consciousness (can you prove the existence of yours?). So trying
to prove the existence of God is a fool's errand.
What I can do is define what I mean by "God". I mean what explains the
fact that I am a conscious being, and also explains the facts of how it
is to be a conscious human being. Pretty much then what explains
everything that is really important.
Materialists hypothesize that what explains the above are the physical
processes in the brain, but they wildly disagree between themselves.
They don't even agree whether there is a meaningful question to
answer in the first place. Those who accept the question as valid are
not able to even suggest how an answer may look like. Some of them
propose that consciousness is a fundamental principle of reality just
like matter is. Others that there are fundamental limits to our
intelligence that will keep consciousness forever a mystery. Most agree
though that no perceptible advance has materialized after decades of
intensive study beyond cataloguing the various paradoxes implicit in
the thesis that the brain produces consciousness. It's a mess. Quite
objectively speaking this does not look good at all. It's true that
there are questions that took a long time to answer, for example
Fermat's last theorem took 350 years, but mathematicians never
disagreed about whether the question itself was meaningful and were
from the first moment quite capable of describing how an answer might
look like.
In any case I think that until materialists recognize that the question
is meaningful and come up with a plausible answer I think reason
requires that every one of us take a second look at the God hypothesis.
> There are hundreds or
> thousands of religions and religions variants and individuals that have
> each one a distinct definition of god. So a great number, if not all are
> wrong.
>
> If I say there is no wadaya nor gulliguch in my fridge, it is because I
> know nobody living now as ever seen some wadaya nor gulliguch and it is
> very likely that if I look in my fridge, I will conclude that the absence
> of evidence of wadaya is a very close approximation of evidence of
> absence.
Well, many people claim to see wadaya in the quality of their conscious
experience. Have you actually looked?
> Until somebody exhibits me some wadaya, or gives me an operationnal
> description so I can identify it when I see it, I have no need to
> try to know if it exists or not and nobody has to prove it exits or not,
> except the one who wants to prove it.
Exactly right. Above I gave you a description of God you can use to
make a positive identification. Good luck with your quest, because I
cannot help you look into your fridge - only you have access to it.
Kurt Nicklas
Don Kresch wrote:
> In alt.atheism On 7 May 2006 17:13:16 -0700, "Kurt Nicklas"
> <kurtn...@aport2000.ru> let us all know that:
>
> >
> >Don Kresch wrote:
> >> In alt.atheism On 7 May 2006 16:50:57 -0700, "Kurt Nicklas"
> >> <kurtn...@aport2000.ru> let us all know that:
> >>
> >> >
> >> >wbarwell wrote:
> >>
> >> >> There is a corrollary here. If you have no evidence, you only have
> >> >> assertions to inspect. But if the basic claims create impossible
> >> >> contradictions, they cannot be true. Thus not only do you
> >> >> know they cannot be true, now you can have understanding why
> >> >> there is no evidence. That that cannot exist cannot leave evidence.
> >> >
> >> >Absence of noncontradictory evidence does not imply that such evidence
> >> >does not exist, Billy.
> >> >
> >> >Your inability to find such evidence is not evidence does not mean it
> >> >does not exist.
> >>
> >> Thousands upon thousands of years without evidence where
> >> evidence is to be expected does, though.
> >
> >No,
>
> Yes, liar.
Jim07D6
My point is not that there are positive atheists who are not
physicalists, my point is that positive atheism does not entail
physicalism.
>
<...>
>> P must specify the domain. That is for the theist to do, in the case
>> of God. If the theist brings physicalism in, so be it.
>
>Fair enough. P is the field of our conscious experience. I claim that
>one cannot understand the fact that one is a conscious being and
>neither the qualities of one's consciousness (i.e. how it is to be a
>human conscious being) without recourse to God. Conversely I find that
>the God hypothesis perfectly explains both my being conscious and the
>qualities of my conscious experience, e.g. how it feels to hurt, hot it
>feels to love, how it feels to be stricken by beauty, how it feels to
>make a decision, etc.
I'm not being clear enough. What is the domain in which God exists?
Does God's existence entail that there is a non-physical domain, in
the same way that the existence of the number 2.5 entails the
existence of a domain of non-integers? Is the domain in which God
exists entirely searchable? Can we draw any conclusions about the
nature of that domain, including whether God can exist in it? By
analogy, we can conclude that there is no largest prime even though we
cannot do so by searching the entire domain of natural numbers.
It seems to me that your being conscious could lead you to conclude
that you exist at least partly in a nonphysical domain, but I fail to
see how this entails that God exists there.
>
<...>
>> It has first to be shown that the God hypothesis, with all it entails,
>> qualifies as a scientific hypothesis. It cannot entail non-naturalism,
>> and be scientific, since the domain of science is the natural world.
>
>Correct. And all evidence points to the fact that the God hypothesis is
>not necessary for understanding any physical phenomenon, and therefore
>is not a scientific one. For exactly the same reason the consciousness
>hypothesis is not a scientific one. Even so we know that consciousness
>is real. Which proves that a correct hypothesis need not necessarily be
>scientific.
Right. But the God and conscious experience hypotheses are only
analogous, unless God is (only) a particular conscious experience or
is somehow taken to be (only) the domain and aggregate of conscious
experiences. Which is an interesting idea, but requires departure from
conventional definitions and concepts.
What you say above is that "one cannot understand the fact that one is
a conscious being and neither the qualities of one's consciousness
(i.e. how it is to be a human conscious being) without recourse to
God." That may be true of you. I disagree, but because your conscious
experience is not my conscious experience, I do not and cannot know
what is required, by you, to understand this about yourself. It is
obviously overreaching of you to generalize beyond yourself. I'd
suggest that conscious experience points to a particular kind of
non-physical domain, but not to the kind of domain that contains God..
In any event, revealing a weakness in physicalism does not ipso facto
reveal a weakness in positive atheism. There is more to it than that.
No matter what domains of existence we agree to posit as existent, the
positive atheist can say there is no God in any of them, with equal
vigor.
--- Jim07D6
Don Kresch
<kurtn...@aport2000.ru> let us all know that:
>
>Don Kresch wrote:
>> In alt.atheism On 7 May 2006 17:13:16 -0700, "Kurt Nicklas"
>> <kurtn...@aport2000.ru> let us all know that:
>>
>> >
>> >Don Kresch wrote:
>> >> In alt.atheism On 7 May 2006 16:50:57 -0700, "Kurt Nicklas"
>> >> <kurtn...@aport2000.ru> let us all know that:
>> >>
>> >> >
>> >> >wbarwell wrote:
>> >>
>> >> >> There is a corrollary here. If you have no evidence, you only have
>> >> >> assertions to inspect. But if the basic claims create impossible
>> >> >> contradictions, they cannot be true. Thus not only do you
>> >> >> know they cannot be true, now you can have understanding why
>> >> >> there is no evidence. That that cannot exist cannot leave evidence.
>> >> >
>> >> >Absence of noncontradictory evidence does not imply that such evidence
>> >> >does not exist, Billy.
>> >> >
>> >> >Your inability to find such evidence is not evidence does not mean it
>> >> >does not exist.
>> >>
>> >> Thousands upon thousands of years without evidence where
>> >> evidence is to be expected does, though.
>> >
>> >No,
>> Yes, liar.
>
>I'll bet you won't even acknowledge that you may be wrong in your
>beliefs.
Not with respect to that. If I'm wrong, then 2 + 2 != 4.
quibbler
kurtn...@aport2000.ru says...
> Absence of noncontradictory evidence does not imply that such evidence
> does not exist, Billy.
It doesn't absolutely guarantee it, but it is evidence of
absence according to standard abductive and inductive logical procedures.
Just as the original example showed, if you find no butter in the icebox
that is evidence that butter does not exist in there. Now a theologian
would counter that there could still be an invisible, undetectable
essence of butter in the refrigerator, but no scientist takes such
metaphysical nonsense seriously. In any event, the scientific standard
is that evidence is required to overcome the null hypothesis and
therefore, in the absence of evidence we are left with the null
hypothesis that there is no butter, or god, for that matter.
>
> Your inability to find such evidence is not evidence does not mean it
> does not
> exist.
As I said in a previous reply, it is evidence that the evidence is
absent. Evidence can be positive or negative. Video camera footage of
an empty room is evidence that nobody entered that particular room.
Likewise, thousands of years of no reliable footage or consistent,
objective documentation of god is strong evidence that no such god
exists, or at least can't be justifiably supported as a belief.
>
> Again, your argument fails on it's premises.
Incorect. You're just ignorant of the standard types of argument used in
science and philosophy for that matter. You seem to be stuck on the very
outdated notion that we must have absolute proof of everything, before we
can say anything. You need to catch up on improvements to classical
Aristotlean approaches made in the last 2300 years.
quibbler
dian...@tecapro.com says...
>
> It's not controversial either that various materialists make even more
> obviously and wildly contradictory claims about the basic properties of
> physical reality:
>
> 1. Physical reality is deterministic.
> 2. Physical reality is not deterministic.
That's easily resolved since some parts of reality might be deterministic
and other parts my not be. That is, on the quantum level, things might
be non-deterministic, whereas macroscale events might be more easily
determined by clear physical laws. Now, I think that it's possible that
even quantum events may be deterministic, albeit in a more complicated
fashion. When we say that something is non-deterministic or "random"
what we may really mean is that we find the phenomena unpredictable.
> 3. Physical reality consists of one physical universe.
> 4. Physical reality consists of a huge and ever growing number of
> parallel physical universes.
It depends on your definition of universe. If the universe is all that
is, then there is only one universe that subsumes all the multiverses.
Multiverses are often distinguished only in the sense that they contain
physical laws different than the ones with which we are familiar, among
other things.
> 5. Physical realty is more or less as we see it.
> 6. Physical reality is a two-dimensional hologram.
Holographic universe theory is a fringe suggestion at best. You're
attempting assert widespread disagreement where there is not. Your
strawman attempts to undermine the comparative certainty in modern
physics is almost certainly due to the fact that you have some kooky pet
theory of your own to advance.
>
> So, according to your logic, that's all I need in order to show that
> physical reality does not exist, yes?
Theories of god and theories of physics are not equivalent. There is
precisely zero evidence that there was ever any kind of god. Evidence
for physics is overwhelming. What you don't seem to understand is that
physics works by successively approximating reality, so even if current
theories about physics are inaccurate, new theories will simply replace
the existing models with closer approximations. In the case of god, the
assertions made are far more absolutist and therefore, inconsistencies
are far more problematic.
>
> Now you may recognize that different materialists hold contradictory
> views about physical reality, but point out that their individual views
> taken one by one are not self-contradictory. Maybe you think that
> individual theistic views must be self-contradictory. The idea that any
> theistic view is necessarily incoherent and not merely false is known
> as logical positivism's attack
Actually, logical positivism was about verification, not about the self-
contradictory nature of many religious beliefs. What you seem to be
describing is a linguistic analysis of theism.
> on theism and was popular in the
> beginning of the 20th century. It has been roundly discounted
Yes, it has, and to some extent, logical negativism is a bit more robust.
But the main replacement for logical positivism has been the far worse
and far more incoherent view called post-modernism.
> and is
> not used anymore as an argument by knowledgeable atheists.
That would be fine, but what you're describing is not logical positivism.
Furthermore, while people criticize the verification principle in favor
of things like a falsification principle, there are still many elements
of neo-positivist thought that remain quite respectable and accepted in
philosophical circles.
> Julian Baggini, the editor of The Philosophers' Magazine, has written
> a very good introduction to atheism published in 2003 by Oxford
> University Press. It's an easy read of only 100 pages and you will
> find atheism's modern and sophisticated stance there. Highly
> recommended.
Yeah, I think it was the basis of some of the arguments and examples that
have already been advanced in this thread.
Gandalf Grey
"quibbler" <quibb...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.1ec91dd89...@news.readfreenews.net...
> In article <1147045857.3...@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
> kurtn...@aport2000.ru says...
>
>> Absence of noncontradictory evidence does not imply that such evidence
>> does not exist, Billy.
>
>
> It doesn't absolutely guarantee it, but it is evidence of
> absence according to standard abductive and inductive logical procedures.
> Just as the original example showed, if you find no butter in the icebox
> that is evidence that butter does not exist in there. Now a theologian
> would counter that there could still be an invisible, undetectable
> essence of butter in the refrigerator, but no scientist takes such
> metaphysical nonsense seriously.
Not that I enjoy being on KKKurt's side in any argument, but you've chosen a
bad example.
1. The fact that you can't see butter in the refrigerator is positive
evidence that there is no butter in the refrigerator
2. It isn't "metaphysical nonsense" to insist that "abscence of evidence
does not imply abscence of evidence." It's a given truism of logical and
scientific thought.
>> Your inability to find such evidence is not evidence does not mean it
>> does not
>> exist.
>
> As I said in a previous reply, it is evidence that the evidence is
> absent. Evidence can be positive or negative.
Negative evidence is poor evidence when it comes to any scientific theory.
Scientifc explanation seeks to expain the natural world in terms of the
natural world. Positive evidence can support theories of what the world is
really like and how the world really works. Negative evidence is always
dangerous because it doesn't really explain how anything works. Hence, the
existence or non-existence of God is not a part of Functional Realism
because it explains nothing one way or the other. If God exists as God is
perceived by Judeo-Christian believe, God is super or extra-natural. Since
Science deals with nature, God cannot be formalized within natural
explanations. If God does not exist, the same applies. Hence, science,
cannot really say anything about God other than the fact that God is [to
date] unnecessary as an explanation of how things work.
> Video camera footage of
> an empty room is evidence that nobody entered that particular room.
Again. Bad example. Video footage of an empty room is positive evidence
that nobody entered that particular room.
> Likewise, thousands of years of no reliable footage or consistent,
> objective documentation of god is strong evidence that no such god
> exists, or at least can't be justifiably supported as a belief.
Inductive empirical evidence such as you describe will leave many with the
conclusion that God cannot exist. Yet, millions of years of seeing the sun
come up in the morning does NOT explain WHY the sun comes up in the morning.
Hume proved long ago that inductive logic is NOT rational in the same sense
as a deductive argument. A strong likelihood is not the same thing as a
certainty. Up until the moment of its discovery Western European Scientists
had no good inductive reason to believe in the existence of a pygmy
hippopatamus, yet it exists and was discovered.
>
>
>>
>> Again, your argument fails on it's premises.
>
>
> Incorect. You're just ignorant of the standard types of argument used in
> science and philosophy for that matter. You seem to be stuck on the very
> outdated notion that we must have absolute proof of everything, before we
> can say anything. You need to catch up on improvements to classical
> Aristotlean approaches made in the last 2300 years.
You're undoubtedly correct concerning KKKurt's ignorance, and it's true that
we need not have "absolute proof" in order to make statements. But it's
also true that we cannot definitively deny the existence of what we have no
proof of. The best we can say is that we have no proof of any kind one way
or the other, and by having no proof, the subject is not open to scientific
analysis.
Emmanual Kann
> Materialists also beat theists in the "way too fantastic to believe"
> category. Nothing concocted by a religious mind comes even close to the
> really and truly fantastic many-worlds interpretation of quantum
> mechanics. So much for materialism being down to earth.
Einstein believed in determinism. He explained all the non-deterministic
theories of the Copenhagen school as the result of an absence of
knowledge. The probabilistic predictive theories being merely the best
approximation model for the deterministic real phenomenon given the
available evidence.
Do you see a similarity with religion? I do, but I also see a fundamental
difference. In science, when the predictive hypothesis encounters
evidence of its irrelevance, it is purged from the theory. Religion
sticks to its dogma long after relevance is lost. I think there's a book
title in there somewhere.
Emmanual Kann
> Not with respect to that. If I'm wrong, then 2 + 2 != 4.
I say there is no 4; 2 + 2 = 11.
Emmanual Kann
> what explains the
> fact that I am a conscious being, and also explains the facts of how it
> is to be a conscious human being. Pretty much then what explains
> everything that is really important.
It isn't entirely clear to me what question you want materialists to ask.
It seems to me you could have just asked the simple question: what is
consciousness?
You wrote a pretty long paragraph indicating that materialists are working
on answering that question. So where's the beef? Do you really think we
should divert all the funding from cognitive theory and brain chemistry
research in to cultural mythology?
Ron Baker, Pluralitas!
Replying through my post because your post didn't show
on my main reader:
"Dianelos Georgoudis" <diane...@tecapro.com> wrote in message
> Ron Baker, Pluralitas! wrote:
> > "Dianelos Georgoudis" <diane...@tecapro.com> wrote in message
> > news:1147023994.5...@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
>
> > > Donald E. Flood wrote: [snip]
> > >> The late Carl Sagan laid down two fundamental postulates that have
> > >> been widely quoted by a number of other authors:
>
>
> > >> 1) Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
>
>
> > > Actually absence of evidence does count as evidence of absence,
>
>
> > I agree with that.
>
> But observe that the part you sniped is important: one must have looked
> for evidence before. If one hasn't then Sagan is correct, because "Absence
> of evidence is evidence of absence" becomes an argument from ignorance,
> such as: "I haven't got any evidence that there is butter in my fridge (I
> didn't even look there) therefore there is no butter in my fridge."
I agree with that too.
<snip>
> > > The remaining premise that the theist can attack is #4 (the
> > > physicalist assumption). The strongest counterexample is to point out
> > > that our consciousness (both that we have the capacity of conscious
> > > experience and our actual conscious experiences) appears to be
> > > completely different in nature and unconnected to all physical things,
>
> > Totally wrong. What would make you think that?
>
> Because, from the materialistic point of view, consciousness appears to be
> completely superfluous. That's why some materialist thinkers go as far as
> to claim that consciousness does not exist, or does not really exist and
> is only an illusion. See:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliminative_materialism
So you cite something that says the consciousness doesn't
exist to support your view that it is unconnected to the
physical?
OK. I'll agree that if consciousness doesn't exit then
it is not connected to the physical.
>
> > <snip>
>
> > > evidence presented only shows that the brain produces intelligent
> > > behavior, which in fact is what distinguishes the Hard Problem from
> > > the Easy Problem (see: http://consc.net/papers/facing.html).
>
>
> > Scanning that paper I only see a vague, equivocal statement of what the
> > "Hard Problem" is. The "Hard Problem" looks like one man's nonsensical
> > fabrication.
>
> David Chalmers is one of the best known thinkers in this field. He is the
> one who coined the phrase "Hard problem of consciousness" which has become
> the subject matter of dozens if not hundreds of academic papers. If you
> google "hard problem" and consciousness you get 91,000 hits. If this is a
> "nonsensical fabrication" it is strange that so many materialist thinkers
> take it so seriously.
Multiple fallacies. Search hits on "hard problem" are not necessarily
references to the concept in this discussion. Hits do not indicate
the number of materialist thinkers that take it seriously.
Of those that taking it seriously, it does not mean they believe it.
"one of the best known" is an unsupported assertion.
"best known" does not necessarily mean relevant.
And the statement of the "Hard Problem" remains
vague and equivocal.
>
> > > In short the evidence game is not so obviously stacked in favor of
> > > atheism as many rationalists believe. In fact the theist can turn the
> > > table around and claim that our consciousness is incontrovertible
> > > evidence for the existence of God because only by positing God can we
>
>
> > Nonsense. Demonstrate how conscionsness is not physical.
>
> Everything that is physical is either objectively observable, or else is
> posited for explaining something that is objectively observable. (If you
> don't agree with this, can you suggest a counterexample?) Some examples:
> Apples and lightning are physical because they are objectively observable.
> Gravitational forces are physical because they explain the falling of
> apples, and electrons are physical because they explain lightning. Now
> let's consider consciousness. It's not objectively observable and,
> significantly, it's not useful for explaining anything that is objectively
> necessary. Therefore it can't be physical.
Nonsense. Consciousness is observable.
Ask any doctor or anesthesiologist.
>
>
> > And welcome back. So did you theists all agree on one theology yet?
>
>
> Not really. The closest we have come to agreeing is that "God is the
> perfect being",
No you haven't. For one thing not all theists believe
in God.
> and therefore perfect in goodness, perfect in beauty, perfect in power,
> perfect in knowledge, and so on.
Equivocation. Theists will define 'perfect' to mean
different things.
>
> By the way, have you materialists agreed on one description of physical
> reality yet? Last time I looked some of you claimed that physical reality
> is deterministic and some that it is certainly not, some that it consists
> of one physical universe and some that it consists of a furiously growing
> number of parallel universes, some argue that the universe is a
> two-dimensional hologram and its three-dimensional appearence is only a
> sophisticated illusion created by our brain, some point out that the
> Matrix is possible, some argue that there is a good possibility that we
> all live in a computer simulation and that nothing we see is actually real
> (see: www.simulation-argument.com), and some agree with Kant that we
> cannot know anything about the external reality except that it exists.
> What makes this disagreement truly remarkable is that at the same time
> materialists claim that theirs is an *objective* field :-)
Straw men.
>
> Materialists also beat theists in the "way too fantastic to believe"
> category. Nothing concocted by a religious mind comes even close to the
> really and truly fantastic many-worlds interpretation of quantum
> mechanics. So much for materialism being down to earth.
Straw man.
--
rb #2187
duke
>> Absence of noncontradictory evidence does not imply that such evidence
>> does not exist, Billy.
>It doesn't absolutely guarantee it, but it is evidence of
>absence according to standard abductive and inductive logical procedures.
Whoa, quib. You can't use those big words. You don't know what they mean.
>Just as the original example showed, if you find no butter in the icebox
>that is evidence that butter does not exist in there.
Except that evidence galore for the existence of God is found everwhere.
You need to stick with twinkies and milk, quibby.
duke, American-American
*****
"The Mass is the most perfect form of Prayer."
Pope Paul VI
*****
Kurt Nicklas
Actually, disproving 2 + 2 != 4 can be done on the fingers of one
hand, Don.
Try it.
To disprove God, all you can say is that you've never seen convincing
proof.
But that's not good enough for you, is it?
Kurt Nicklas
Being a programmer I would have to put it this way:
00000010 + 00000010 = 00000100
Kurt Nicklas
quibbler wrote:
> In article <1147045857.3...@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
> kurtn...@aport2000.ru says...
>
> > Absence of noncontradictory evidence does not imply that such evidence
> > does not exist, Billy.
>
>
> It doesn't absolutely guarantee it, but it is evidence of
> absence according to standard abductive and inductive logical procedures.
> Just as the original example showed, if you find no butter in the icebox
> that is evidence that butter does not exist in there. Now a theologian
> would counter that there could still be an invisible, undetectable
> essence of butter in the refrigerator, but no scientist takes such
> metaphysical nonsense seriously. In any event, the scientific standard
> is that evidence is required to overcome the null hypothesis and
> therefore, in the absence of evidence we are left with the null
> hypothesis that there is no butter, or god, for that matter.
The universe is not a refrigerator.
>
> >
> > Your inability to find such evidence is not evidence does not mean it
> > does not
> > exist.
>
> As I said in a previous reply, it is evidence that the evidence is
> absent. Evidence can be positive or negative. Video camera footage of
> an empty room is evidence that nobody entered that particular room.
> Likewise, thousands of years of no reliable footage or consistent,
> objective documentation of god is strong evidence that no such god
> exists, or at least can't be justifiably supported as a belief.
See above.
>
> >
> > Again, your argument fails on it's premises.
>
>
> Incorect. You're just ignorant of the standard types of argument used in
> science and philosophy for that matter. You seem to be stuck on the very
> outdated notion that we must have absolute proof of everything, before we
> can say anything.
You can say you've never seen evidence of God or that you've never seen
any convincing evidence but you can't say no evidence exists.
See above.
Chris Johnson
Representation is independent of the concept. It is still "four"
(pronunciation/spelling varies according to locality), regardless of
the string used to represent it.
wbarwell
Physicist speculations and hypotheses are irrelevant to theological
assertions that contradict each other and destroy theology's basic claim,
god exists.
This has nothing to do with theology.
Few physicist claim the world is a holograph.
stuff like that is irrelevant, just as is cult leaders like Rev. Moon who
makes claims about being the Messiah few theologians agree with.
And again, science is not dogmatic like theology, basing its claims on a
priori dogmatic assertions.
Some of your nonsense is .... well ... nonsense.
No physicist claims reality is as we see it.
3, the is one Universe. Universe is derived from
the word unum, meaning unity. All that exists
is indeed the Universe, by definition.
Indeed Laplace's demon is impossible, the
Universe is not strictly determinable.
>
> So, according to your logic, that's all I need in order to show that
> physical reality does not exist, yes?
>
No. Physical reality obviously exists, if you say no it does not, obviously
you didn't understand the question.
Again, there is no evidence for god.
Again, all that are left are assertions.
again, a small subset of assertions serve to
show, by the contradictions they create, that god, as
based on these assertions cannot exist.
Again, the destroys the class of omni-everything
creator gods entirely.
Tossing out a handful of strawman irrelevancies
doesn't make that work.
It does not address the contradictions.
You cannot wave them away with non sequitors.
> Now you may recognize that different materialists hold contradictory
> views about physical reality,
This is not an argument about anything but the
existance of god.
Non sequitors gain nothing.
> but point out that their individual views
> taken one by one are not self-contradictory. Maybe you think that
> individual theistic views must be self-contradictory.
I have shown you indeed core, basic, dogmatic claims underlying
the major religious traditions are.
> The idea that any
> theistic view is necessarily incoherent and not merely false is known
> as logical positivism's attack on theism and was popular in the
> beginning of the 20th century.
I am not a positivist. I am both an empiricist and a rational thinker.
Empirically speaking, no evidence for god exists so that is moot.
Rationally, if a set of basic assertions create contradictions,
the conclusions drawn from these assertions show that these
assertions are false. That is why there is no evidence.
That that does not and cannot existcan leave no evidence.
Reason and logic tell us these 8 claims about god must be false.
Anything else is highly irrelevant, especially not well thought out
strawmen.
> It has been roundly discounted and is
> not used anymore as an argument by knowledgeable atheists. After all,
> it's very easy to present a theistic view that is entirely coherent as
> a logical possibility. For example: There is no physical reality out
> there but only God directly feeding us conscious experience according
> to what is finally best for us and which we shall be able to completely
> comprehend only in the afterlife.
Since a god that is omni-everything and creator of all fails
because these claims are contraditory, it matters not if the omni-everything
god is a transcedent god, a maya god or immanent god, all fail
as they are class of omni-everything creator gods.
Secondary attributes like these simply don't do anything for
a debunked class of creator, omni-everything gods.
There are many other attributes and claims that are likewise
irrelevant to my disproof.
> Julian Baggini, the editor of The Philosophers' Magazine, has written
> a very good introduction to atheism published in 2003 by Oxford
> University Press. It's an easy read of only 100 pages and you will
> find atheism's modern and sophisticated stance there. Highly
> recommended.
I have dozens of books supposedly explaining Atheism.
Baginni most assuredly has not seen my set of arguments.
I am not writing a very short introduction to Atheism, I am writing a strong
atheist argument why god is illogical and impossible based on assertions
made about god by all the larger and greater religious traditions.
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/reviewsprint.php?id=6
"He explains our reliance on induction and arguments to the best explanation
in our everyday lives, and why both types of reasoning support atheism. In
doing so, Baggini explains why atheism is not a faith position as so many
people suppose."
I suppose nothing, and like Baggin do not rely on faith but logic
applied to a foundational set of theological assertions that serve
to disprove the entire class of creator omni-everything gods.
Since no evidence can be found for gods, this is the only path left.
That god is so easily debunked shows why there is no evidence
and cannot be any evidence for this class of gods.
--
"Just because you don't take an interest in politics
doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you."
- Pericles
Cheerful Charlie
wbarwell
> In article <1147079900.9...@j73g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
> dian...@tecapro.com says...
>>
>> It's not controversial either that various materialists make even more
>> obviously and wildly contradictory claims about the basic properties of
>> physical reality:
>>
>> 1. Physical reality is deterministic.
>> 2. Physical reality is not deterministic.
>
>
> That's easily resolved since some parts of reality might be deterministic
> and other parts my not be. That is, on the quantum level, things might
> be non-deterministic, whereas macroscale events might be more easily
> determined by clear physical laws. Now, I think that it's possible that
> even quantum events may be deterministic, albeit in a more complicated
> fashion. When we say that something is non-deterministic or "random"
> what we may really mean is that we find the phenomena unpredictable.
John Bell's inequality theorum was disproven showing that hidden variables
cannot account for quantum physics' apparent lack of cause and effect on
the quantum scale. This allows for "spooky action at a distance" for
example. The quantum world is thus not strictly determinstic at the cause
and effect level. and you can't explain it with hidden variables.
So it is not deterministic in the strong sense of that word.
--
"Just because you don't take an interest in politics
wbarwell
>
> Jim07D6 wrote:
>> "Dianelos Georgoudis" <dian...@tecapro.com> said:
> [snip]
>> >Here is positive atheism's basic syllogism:
>> >
>> >1. If after much looking there is no evidence for the existence of X
>> >then it is reasonable to believe that X does not exist. (premise)
>> >2. After much looking there is no evidence for the existence of God in
>> >the physical universe. (premise)
>> >3. Therefore it is reasonable to believe that there is no God in the
>> >physical universe. (from 1 and 2)
>> >4. There is nothing outside the physical universe. (premise)
>> >5. Therefore it is reasonable to believe that there is no God. (from 3
>> >and 4)
>>
>> That is positive physicalist atheism. Atheism does not entail
>> physicalism. The entire argument needs reworking.
>
> Well, the vast majority of positive atheists are physicalists, and I
> thought that positive atheism always entail physicalism.
No. Physicalism is a seperate issue. Most atheists are physicalists
because evidence points to that.
It could well be that the Universe is somehow based on some
supernatural system. But that does not necessarily mean god
must exist either. It is simply the view of most Atheists that
physicalism is reasonable and there is no evidence for
anything else.
One could make claims otherwise but they tend to be like
solipicist claims, unprovable and pointless.
Science takes it that the Universe is real, and physical.
It works well as a system.
--
wbarwell
> On Sun, 07 May 2006 10:46:34 -0700, Dianelos Georgoudis wrote :
>
>
>> Here is positive atheism's basic syllogism:
>>
>> 1. If after much looking there is no evidence for the existence of X then
>> it is reasonable to believe that X does not exist. (premise) 2. After
>> much looking there is no evidence for the existence of God in the
>> physical universe. (premise)
>> 3. Therefore it is reasonable to believe that there is no God in the
>> physical universe. (from 1 and 2)
>> 4. There is nothing outside the physical universe. (premise) 5. Therefore
>> it is reasonable to believe that there is no God. (from 3 and 4)
>
> Which god do you want to prove the existence ? There are hundreds or
> thousands of religions and religions variants and individuals that have
> each one a distinct definition of god. So a great number, if not all are
> wrong.
>
> If I say there is no wadaya nor gulliguch in my fridge, it is because I
> know nobody living now as ever seen some wadaya nor gulliguch and it is
> very likely that if I look in my fridge, I will conclude that the absence
> of evidence of wadaya is a very close approximation of evidence of
> absence.
What I have been doing is looking at gods as classes.
If I can disprove the class of creator, omni-everything gods
cannot exist, it does it matter then if we speak about Allah or Lord
almighty, or Jesus of the trinity, or Brahman.
And as a corollary, if I can do this using a small subset of assertions made
about god, I do not need to deal with issues beyond these as they
cannot save this class of gods. It does not matter if I talk of immanent
giods vs transcedent gods, or the simplicity of god or other theological
assertions. And all tertiary assertions are swept away, if I can show this
class of gods cannot exist, then god did not have Jesus as his son, nor
sent the Quran to Mohammed.
Taking out gods by classes is so much more efficient.
And there are not many classes of gods either.
Once you take out omni-everything, creator gods, you can
have nature gods, pantheism, etc.
Many gods overlap creator, omni-everything gods.
Maya gods, transcedent, immanent gods. They fall
to disproof of omni-everything creator gods, as do deist
gods and others.
> Until somebody exhibits me some wadaya, or gives me an operationnal
> description so I can identify it when I see it, I have no need to
> try to know if it exists or not and nobody has to prove it exits or not,
> except the one who wants to prove it.
>
> So what is your operationnal definition of god, and what are the elements
> that prove that at least one occurence of it exists ?
-----------
IS THERE A GOD?
Strong Atheism's answer.
A BASIC DEFINITION OF GOD.
The general overarching definition of god as per
the major religions of the world is:
A. God is personal, God has will and consciousness.
B. God has free will.
C. God is the creator of all.
D. God is omnipotent.
E. God is omnibenevolent.
F. God is omniscient.
G. God is that which nothing more powerful
can be imagined.
These are the basic attributes that can be claimed
for the god of orthodox Judaism, Christianity,
Islam, and Hinduism.
Omnibenevolence and omniscience are actually
logically derivable from the claimed attribute of
omnipotence and so aren't not truly independent
attributes, and may be considered special aspects
of omnipotence.
There are other attributes of god, that he is the
only such god, that he is is immortal and that
god has always existed that are not important
for this discussion and for now, can be ignored.
They are secondary arguments and are for the most
part not foundational or truly necessary, except
those that can be logically derived from the
attributes listed above.
A CLASS OF GODS
It is important to note here that this is a
definition not for a particular god, but an
entire class of gods.
Sub-theories about god are not important here.
Christianity claims one may attain salvation
only through Jesus, Islam claims the Christian
dogma that Jesus was the son of god is
blasphemous.
Ideas like this though, are of little importance
to the overarching and general claims made for a
personal, creator, omni-everything god. I have
coined a term, The Grand God of Grand Theologies
for this sort of god, this sort of theological
system of expansive claims for god.
Grand theologies are those theologies that have
adopted this class of god as their basic
attributes concerning the nature of god. But it
is important to remember here that what is being
discussed here is a class of gods, not particular
gods or specific gods.
THE FOUR GREAT THEOLOGICAL TRADITIONS
Again, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism hold
to this basic Grand God and are typical Grand
Theologies holding to this basic class of god as
their basic definitions of what god is at god's
most basic level.
A big problem with this class of gods is, it
collapses rather easily into internal self-
contradiction.
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL.
The problem of evil was first written down by
Epicurus in about the third century BCE.
Today's formulation is:
A. God is defined as omnipotent;
B. and as omnibenevolent.
C. Evil exists.
D. God therefore, is not omnipotent as claimed.
E. Or God is not omnibenevolent as claimed.
F. Or god is neither omnipotent or
omnibenevolent.
G. Or god is not existant.
THE FREE WILL DEFENSE
The free will defense of the problem of evil goes
back to St. Augustine who popularized it. It is
still popular, and is championed most notably
today by Alvin Plantinga, but also by other
theologians.
God gave man free will. Man freely chooses to do
evil. Ability to do evil is less evil than
lacking free will.
THE FREE WILL DEFENSE DEBUNKED.
God has free will.
God is omnibenevolent, he has a good nature
incapable of doing evil.
A. If god can have free will, and a good nature,
this good nature is not allowed to count
against god's free will.
B. Nor is god's lack of ability to do evil
allowed to count against god's omnipotence.
C. Likewise, man could easily have a god like
free will and a god like good nature.
D. Inabilty then to do evil would no more count
against man's free will than it does for god's
free will.
E. If so, it also counts against god's free will
and god does not have free will as claimed.
F. If god does not have absolute and total free
will, thus free will is not a true necessity
at all.
F. If god is omnipotent and omnibenevolent, and
can give man a god like free will and a
god-like good nature incapable of moral evil,
god must do so or god is not moral, not
omnibenevolent.
G. Evil exists because he allows it to.
So free will does not exist, or it does and we can
have a god like free will and a god like good
nature. Either way, free will cannot explain away
the existence of evil. This free will defense
then, is a failed argument.
OMNISCIENCE VERSUS CREATORHOOD OF GOD
God is defined as creator of all in most
religions.
And god is claimed to be omniscient, all knowing.
A. God created the Universe and all in it.
B. God is omniscient, all knowing, he knows all
in the Universe and he knows the future of the
Universe and its contents.
C. If god creates a Universe, he will know that
in 13 billion years this Universe will have a
man named John Smith in it.
D. If John Smith is good and saved, or evil and
damned, God will know that.
E. As he knows that the Universe in its present
state will have a John Smith, god may then
contemplate the future state of Smith and
decide if he will tolerate an evil Smith.
F. If yes, Smith will be evil only because of a
specific personal and will choice made solely
by god.
G. If Smith is evil, then evil exists solely
because of a choice made by god. In fact all
moral evil done by creations of god will be
evil and do evil only because of personal and
willful creations of god allowing evil acts
to be done, by direct decision of god.
H. If evil exists in a world with an omniscient
creator god, it is solely and only because
god allows evil.
I. If evil exists solely because of personal
choices of god, god then is not as defined,
omnibenevolent.
J. Man and any other sentient being in such a
Universe cannot have any free will, not even
in principle. A Universe with a god that
creates all and knows all precludes free will
for all beings god creates in the strongest
possible manner.
The Grand God of Grand
Theology is thus self destroying, it is
incoherent and contradictory as a theory
and such a god is impossible.
THE SITUATION SO FAR.
1. A minimalistic class of gods is defined, this
Grand God has been defined here with as few
terms as possible.
2. The problem of evil dooms such a claimed god.
3. The attempted defense, free will is fatally
flawed. God's good nature and free will doom
claims free will makes evil necessary for man
to have free will.
4. Omniscience and creatorhood of god further
doom claims of god's omnibenevolence and
man's free will free will cannot exist for
man. All evil is the direct and knowing
creation of god contradicting claims of
omnibenevolence.
5. Since Free will for man is totally impossible,
free will cannot be a good quality, much less
necessary.
Here, the Grand God of Grand Theology has
collapsed. As has Grand Theology. As pointed out,
this destroys the claims and viability of an
entire class of possible gods, all secondary and
tertiary claims for such a god of this class also
fail, as do dogmas or secondary or tertiary
claims.
If a these Grand Gods cannot exist as defined,
specific gods cannot, nor can claims such as this
or that Grand God sent this or that revelation to
man or some prophet or did this or that.
God is thus disproven and is utter irrelevant
to anything real and existant.
***********
pyjamarama
CL...@KNICKLAS.COM wrote:
> On Sun, 07 May 2006 20:48:44 -0500, Don Kresch
> <ROT13....@jv.ee.pbz.com> wrote:
>
> > Yes, liar.
>
> Just ask knickkkers why he left the usenet for over a
> year.
And then he can ask YOU about all your racist, terror-threatening,
murder-advocating, Al-Queda praising, pro presidential assassination,
homophobic swill you've written over the years, eh fuckwit?
Oh look, here's some of it already collected for his quick perusal....
Gary RACIST Roselles' ever growing litany of vileness, courtesy of the
google archives:
"because they (blacks) talk in rap speech"
They talk "using broken english"
"(Condaleeza) Rice never worked a day in her life"
"The word faggot just describes a gay person"
"Hinckley TRIED to do a good thing"
"The Soviet Union should've kept Afghanistan"
"I call Kathering[sic] Harris a nazi/fascist right wing ideologue
whore. What did we do to German nazis right wing whores"
"I consider hating RIGHT WING nazi/fascist fucks like you a God
inspired emotion."
"Killing Nazi's is GOOD"
"Hating RIGHT WINGERS is doing God's work, Dumbapropyl"
"I was threatened by Harris, Nazi slut she is."
"She should be at least shot. All Nazi partisan's should be."
"My wanting Harris dead isn't a threat -- it's advocacy"
"That slut Barbara Olsen (9/11 victim) is dead? GOOD!"
"I can make it (blowing up Mt. Rushmore) look like a mining accident"
"Who gives a shit what these nuts (religious groups) want or don't want
-- KORESH THEM ALL!"
"Your well-used asshole has been worn smooth from my constantly fucking
you"
Wow! After reading all that, he'd HAVE to conclude that you're one
sick fucker, wouldn't he, Roselles?
Hmmmm???
__________________________________________________________________
"Please die" -- Poster Adi Ron's command to Gary "laffed at" Roselles
after reading his litany of archived vileness
Don Kresch
<ka...@keinspam.de> let us all know that:
>An Mon, 08 May 2006 08:38:54 -0500, Don Kresch hat geschreibt:
>
>> Not with respect to that. If I'm wrong, then 2 + 2 != 4.
>
>I say there is no 4; 2 + 2 = 11.
11base2 = 4base10.
Don Kresch
Is just the same as demonstrating there is no god.
Now try to provide the evidence for god, and provide the
coherent, specific, objective, concrete, non self-contradictory, non
fallacy-laden definition of god.
Emmanual Kann
>
> Which god do you want to prove the existence ? There are hundreds or
> thousands of religions and religions variants and individuals that have
> each one a distinct definition of god. So a great number, if not all are
> wrong.
Certainly at most one of the many monotheistic religions can be right,
How many monotheistic religions are there? Hmmm, lets make a conservative
estimate, because that's all that's required and say there are two.
Pg = probability god exists.
How many outcomes are there.
1. God exists and I believe in him. = P1
2. God exists and I believe in wrong God. = P2 = 2P1
3. God does not exist and I believe in Him.= P3 = 1 - 3P1
4. God does not exist and I don't believe = P4 = 1 - (1-3P1)
God exists: P1 + P2 = 3P1
God doesnt: 1 - 1 +3P1
Belief in the correct god is 1/N as likely as the non-existence of God.
Non existence of God is N times more likely than belief in the one true
god. As the number of one true religions, N, increases the advantage of
being an atheist increases. I'm betting that the jealous god of the one
true religion will be more forgiving if I'm not worshiping one of his
rivals.
Virgil
Don Kresch <ROT13....@jv.ee.pbz.com> wrote:
> In alt.atheism On Mon, 08 May 2006 18:38:09 GMT, Emmanual Kann
> <ka...@keinspam.de> let us all know that:
>
> >An Mon, 08 May 2006 08:38:54 -0500, Don Kresch hat geschreibt:
> >
> >> Not with respect to that. If I'm wrong, then 2 + 2 != 4.
> >
> >I say there is no 4; 2 + 2 = 11.
>
> 11base2 = 4base10.
100_base_two = 4_base_ten, at least to those who understand basal
representations of natural numbers.
Jim07D6
>
>"quibbler" <quibb...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>news:MPG.1ec91dd89...@news.readfreenews.net...
>> In article <1147045857.3...@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
>> kurtn...@aport2000.ru says...
>>
>>> Absence of noncontradictory evidence does not imply that such evidence
>>> does not exist, Billy.
>>
>>
>> It doesn't absolutely guarantee it, but it is evidence of
>> absence according to standard abductive and inductive logical procedures.
>> Just as the original example showed, if you find no butter in the icebox
>> that is evidence that butter does not exist in there. Now a theologian
>> would counter that there could still be an invisible, undetectable
>> essence of butter in the refrigerator, but no scientist takes such
>> metaphysical nonsense seriously.
>
>Not that I enjoy being on KKKurt's side in any argument, but you've chosen a
>bad example.
>
>1. The fact that you can't see butter in the refrigerator is positive
>evidence that there is no butter in the refrigerator
>2. It isn't "metaphysical nonsense" to insist that "abscence of evidence
>does not imply abscence of evidence." It's a given truism of logical and
>scientific thought.
But it has to be applied judiciously. Some domains are entirely
searchable, in which case the absence of evidence is evidence of
absence. A careful theist will be sure that the domain in which his
god is to be found is not entirely searchable.
--- Jim07D6
Gandalf Grey
"Jim07D6" <Jim...@nospam.net> wrote in message
news:3e60625ljt4o7pb0f...@4ax.com...
Oh, I agree. In the case of the domain that is searchable, positive
evidence of absence is just that. Careful theists trying to argue for the
"god of the gaps" theorum should be making an attempt that the 'gaps' are
fairly murky. And they used to do that in the past. Nowdays, there's a
certain desperation sinking in to the extent that every gap in the fossil
record becomes the holy of holies.
>
> --- Jim07D6
quibbler
Ganda...@infectedmail.com says...
> Not that I enjoy being on KKKurt's side in any argument, but you've chosen a
> bad example.
>
> 1. The fact that you can't see butter in the refrigerator is positive
> evidence that there is no butter in the refrigerator
The fact that we didn't see butter is negative evidence, beccause it is
something that we did not see. The fact that that we might have seen an
empty refrigerator is positive of other things, but it is certainly not
positive evidence of butter.
> 2. It isn't "metaphysical nonsense" to insist that "abscence of evidence
> does not imply abscence of evidence." It's a given truism of logical and
> scientific thought.
What I said was metaphysical nonsense was the leap that since we found no
evidence of god, (or any other object that you please) that we are
justified in saying that the object in question exists in some invisible,
undetectable realm. As to the whole "absense of evidence is not evidence
of absense" bit, I thought that I clearly stated that it does not
guarantee it. However, it does count as evidence in an abductive or
deductive sense. That is, failing to find confirmatory data after
diligent and meticulous searching tells you something. It either says
that the phenomena in question is far more elusive than you thought, or
that the entity in question isn't there. It is a probabilistic, rather
than an absolute conclusion. But science often is satisfied with
probabilities.
>
> >> Your inability to find such evidence is not evidence does not mean it
> >> does not
> >> exist.
> >
> > As I said in a previous reply, it is evidence that the evidence is
> > absent. Evidence can be positive or negative.
>
>
> Negative evidence is poor evidence when it comes to any scientific theory.
> Scientifc explanation seeks to expain the natural world in terms of the
> natural world. Positive evidence can support theories of what the world is
> really like and how the world really works.
Still, it may be the only kind you can readily obtain. If you expect to
see certain kinds of things and you don't see them, then this can still
be a valuable bit of information to collect. It is not as direct as
positive evidence, but it can help to disconfirm a variety of
questionable notions from one's theories.
Negative evidence is always
> dangerous because it doesn't really explain how anything works. Hence, the
> existence or non-existence of God is not a part of Functional Realism
> because it explains nothing one way or the other. If God exists as God is
> perceived by Judeo-Christian believe, God is super or extra-natural. Since
> Science deals with nature, God cannot be formalized within natural
> explanations. If God does not exist, the same applies. Hence, science,
> cannot really say anything about God other than the fact that God is [to
> date] unnecessary as an explanation of how things work.
>
> > Video camera footage of
> > an empty room is evidence that nobody entered that particular room.
>
> Again. Bad example. Video footage of an empty room is positive evidence
It's positive evidence of the room, but since it doesn't contain people,
it is negative evidence of people. Now it could be that a cat burlar was
able to sneak in using special skills, so that he avoided showing up on
camera. Maybe he erased himself from the tape. We can't be certain.
But science is not about certainty. It is about playing the odds. The
odds say that if the tape showed no people, and the camera was
relatively well positioned to record events, that nobody entered the
room. Occasionally we are wrong and then we install better security
systems. However, a scientist would be quite justified in saying, based
upon the evidence, it appears that nobody entered the room.
> that nobody entered that particular room.
>
> > Likewise, thousands of years of no reliable footage or consistent,
> > objective documentation of god is strong evidence that no such god
> > exists, or at least can't be justifiably supported as a belief.
>
> Inductive empirical evidence such as you describe will leave many with the
> conclusion that God cannot exist. Yet, millions of years of seeing the sun
> come up in the morning does NOT explain WHY the sun comes up in the morning.
While it might be better to explain why god does not exist, I was
focusing on one particular type of approach, which was to look
specifically at negative evidence. That's what the thread was about.
> Hume proved long ago that inductive logic is NOT rational in the same sense
> as a deductive argument. A strong likelihood is not the same thing as a
> certainty. Up until the moment of its discovery Western European Scientists
> had no good inductive reason to believe in the existence of a pygmy
> hippopatamus, yet it exists and was discovered.
Yep, and that shouldn't bother anyone. It would still be perfectly
justifiable, until the very instant that evidence is produced, to say
that belief in a pygmy hippopatamus was unwarranted.
> The best we can say is that we have no proof of any kind one way
> or the other, and by having no proof, the subject is not open to scientific
> analysis.
But I think that science can still provide a probabilistic answer which
is good enough. Lacking clear confirmatory evidence and in the presence
of strong negative evidence, we can say that it's likely that the
phenomenon in question is not true, as per the null hypothesis.
Dianelos Georgoudis
Ron Baker, Pluralitas! wrote:
> Replying through my post because your post didn't show
> on my main reader:
>
> "Dianelos Georgoudis" <diane...@tecapro.com> wrote in message
> > Because, from the materialistic point of view, consciousness appears to be
> > completely superfluous. That's why some materialist thinkers go as far as
> > to claim that consciousness does not exist, or does not really exist and
> > is only an illusion. See:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliminative_materialism
>
> So you cite something that says the consciousness doesn't
> exist to support your view that it is unconnected to the
> physical?
> OK. I'll agree that if consciousness doesn't exit then
> it is not connected to the physical.
Again: From the *materialist* point of view consciousness appears to be
completely superfluous. There is no objective evidence that it exists.
It's not objectively observable. It's not required as a hypothesis for
explaining anything that is objectively observable. Therefore the
(strict) materialist is moved to conclude that consciousness does not
really exist. But it does, as you and I know. And as according to
materialism only what is objectively observable or is used to explain
what is objectively observable can be called "physical" the
existence of consciousness implies that it is not a physical thing.
[snip]
> > Everything that is physical is either objectively observable, or else is
> > posited for explaining something that is objectively observable. (If you
> > don't agree with this, can you suggest a counterexample?) Some examples:
> > Apples and lightning are physical because they are objectively observable.
> > Gravitational forces are physical because they explain the falling of
> > apples, and electrons are physical because they explain lightning. Now
> > let's consider consciousness. It's not objectively observable and,
> > significantly, it's not useful for explaining anything that is objectively
> > necessary. Therefore it can't be physical.
>
> Nonsense. Consciousness is observable.
> Ask any doctor or anesthesiologist.
Here you are not speaking about consciousness but about wakefulness.
It's true that we often use "conscious" as synonymous to "awake", but
this is not the sense "conscious" is used in the philosophy of mind.
> > > And welcome back. So did you theists all agree on one theology yet?
> >
> >
> > Not really. The closest we have come to agreeing is that "God is the
> > perfect being",
>
> No you haven't. For one thing not all theists believe
> in God.
See: http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/theism
> > and therefore perfect in goodness, perfect in beauty, perfect in power,
> > perfect in knowledge, and so on.
>
> Equivocation. Theists will define 'perfect' to mean
> different things.
It's easy to define "perfect": That which has no defects, or that which
nothing better is conceivable.
> > By the way, have you materialists agreed on one description of physical
> > reality yet? Last time I looked some of you claimed that physical reality
> > is deterministic and some that it is certainly not, some that it consists
> > of one physical universe and some that it consists of a furiously growing
> > number of parallel universes, some argue that the universe is a
> > two-dimensional hologram and its three-dimensional appearence is only a
> > sophisticated illusion created by our brain, some point out that the
> > Matrix is possible, some argue that there is a good possibility that we
> > all live in a computer simulation and that nothing we see is actually real
> > (see: www.simulation-argument.com), and some agree with Kant that we
> > cannot know anything about the external reality except that it exists.
> > What makes this disagreement truly remarkable is that at the same time
> > materialists claim that theirs is an *objective* field :-)
>
> Straw men.
>
> >
> > Materialists also beat theists in the "way too fantastic to believe"
> > category. Nothing concocted by a religious mind comes even close to the
> > really and truly fantastic many-worlds interpretation of quantum
> > mechanics. So much for materialism being down to earth.
>
> Straw man.
Materialism is having a very hard time explaining the most fundamental
fact of all: that we are conscious beings. Even in relation to its
natural subject matter the fact is that different materialists are
suggesting increasingly disparate (and fantastic) descriptions of the
basic properties of physical reality. Materialists eternally argue
between themselves about what objectively exists and does not only
exist as a mental concept (for example: do gravitational force fields
objectively exist?) - evidencing that materialism does not offer any
objective means for deciding between the two. For all these reasons
materialism is found today to be very shaky as a discipline of thought.
You can choose to face up to this fact or you can choose not to - but a
freethinker certainly would. You seem to be convinced that materialism
is very solid, but holding on to one's convictions and refusing to face
up to the facts that contradict them is what makes mythologies
possible.
Dianelos Georgoudis
Jim07D6 wrote:
> "Dianelos Georgoudis" <dian...@tecapro.com> said:
>
> >
> >Jim07D6 wrote:
> >> "Dianelos Georgoudis" <dian...@tecapro.com> said:
> >[snip]
> >> >
> >> >1. If after much looking there is no evidence for the existence of X
> >> >then it is reasonable to believe that X does not exist. (premise)
> >> >2. After much looking there is no evidence for the existence of God in
> >> >the physical universe. (premise)
> >> >3. Therefore it is reasonable to believe that there is no God in the
> >> >physical universe. (from 1 and 2)
> >> >4. There is nothing outside the physical universe. (premise)
> >> >5. Therefore it is reasonable to believe that there is no God. (from 3
> >> >and 4)
> >>
> >> physicalism. The entire argument needs reworking.
> >
> >Well, the vast majority of positive atheists are physicalists, and I
> >roughly why: Nature is normally identified with the physical universe.
> >If one believes that the physical universe is not all there is then one
> >believes in the super-natural, and no atheism is compatible with the
> >supernatural. It's quite possible I am wrong in this, so I would very
> >much like to know what kind of atheism does not entail physicalism. Can
> >you explain this kind of atheism yourself, or maybe quote some useful
> >link? A quick web search for "atheism does not entail physicalism" did
> >not return any hits.
>
> physicalists, my point is that positive atheism does not entail
> physicalism.
Can you describe this version of positive atheism? I.e. a positive
atheism that is not based on the principles of physicalism and
justified by the observation that no evidence for God is to be found in
physical phenomena?
> >> P must specify the domain. That is for the theist to do, in the case
> >> of God. If the theist brings physicalism in, so be it.
> >
> >Fair enough. P is the field of our conscious experience. I claim that
> >one cannot understand the fact that one is a conscious being and
> >neither the qualities of one's consciousness (i.e. how it is to be a
> >human conscious being) without recourse to God. Conversely I find that
> >the God hypothesis perfectly explains both my being conscious and the
> >qualities of my conscious experience, e.g. how it feels to hurt, hot it
> >feels to love, how it feels to be stricken by beauty, how it feels to
> >make a decision, etc.
>
> I'm not being clear enough. What is the domain in which God exists?
> Does God's existence entail that there is a non-physical domain, in
> the same way that the existence of the number 2.5 entails the
> existence of a domain of non-integers? Is the domain in which God
> exists entirely searchable? Can we draw any conclusions about the
> nature of that domain, including whether God can exist in it? By
> analogy, we can conclude that there is no largest prime even though we
> cannot do so by searching the entire domain of natural numbers.
I am not sure what your point with the analogy of math is.
You are asking about the domain in which one is supposed to look to see
if there is evidence for the existence of God, correct? I claim that
this domain is our conscious experience, both the fact of its existence
and how it is to be conscious as a human being. One is to search what
explains them, what the internal logic in them is. If one finds this,
this is God. Is there something not clear in this?
You ask "Is the domain in which God is to exist entirely searchable?" I
can't answer this question because I don't know exactly what you mean
by "entirely searchable". And I need not to: you know the quality of
human conscious experience as well as I do, so you can answer this
question for yourself.
> It seems to me that your being conscious could lead you to conclude
> that you exist at least partly in a nonphysical domain, but I fail to
> see how this entails that God exists there.
That's where I claim that God is to be found. It does not entail that
God will be found there. If you do make a diligent search and find no
evidence for God there then you are justified to say that, as far as
you are concerned, there is no evidence for the existence of God and
that this justifies your belief that no God exists.
And it's not really only me who claims that God is to be found there.
Some of the oldest, most authentic and best known dictums of the
Christian tradition is that "God is inside of you", so I am not really
coming up with something new here.
> >
> <...>
> >> It has first to be shown that the God hypothesis, with all it entails,
> >> qualifies as a scientific hypothesis. It cannot entail non-naturalism,
> >> and be scientific, since the domain of science is the natural world.
> >
> >Correct. And all evidence points to the fact that the God hypothesis is
> >not necessary for understanding any physical phenomenon, and therefore
> >is not a scientific one. For exactly the same reason the consciousness
> >hypothesis is not a scientific one. Even so we know that consciousness
> >is real. Which proves that a correct hypothesis need not necessarily be
> >scientific.
>
> Right. But the God and conscious experience hypotheses are only
> analogous, unless God is (only) a particular conscious experience or
> is somehow taken to be (only) the domain and aggregate of conscious
> experiences. Which is an interesting idea, but requires departure from
> conventional definitions and concepts.
>
> What you say above is that "one cannot understand the fact that one is
> a conscious being and neither the qualities of one's consciousness
> (i.e. how it is to be a human conscious being) without recourse to
> God." That may be true of you. I disagree, but because your conscious
> experience is not my conscious experience, I do not and cannot know
> what is required, by you, to understand this about yourself. It is
> obviously overreaching of you to generalize beyond yourself.
I am not doing that. I am only saying where to look. I did look and
found something. I am not making any claims about what you will find if
you look, or even that you will find anything. But if you don't find
anything that explains the presence and the quality of your conscious
experience then reality will remain incoherent for you.
> I'd
> suggest that conscious experience points to a particular kind of
> non-physical domain, but not to the kind of domain that contains God..
Ah, I think here you are implicitly using some external description of
God, probably some Christian dogmatic views. If so I fully agree with
you. The path is to find what explains your conscious experience and
then, if you wish, compare it to what others say about God. This is a
point I completely disagree with traditional religion: not only do I
not see any value in blind faith but I think it's contrary to God's way
- as I understand it. You can only know God directly. Actually all
knowledge is direct knowledge. For example if one doesn't oneself make
the effort to understand physics then one doesn't know physics, no
matter how well or how often one repeats scientific dictums one has
memorized.
And if you care to know my own opinion about Christianity I think that
most of it is mythology, empty dogma, and convention. But what is not
any of that is deeply meaningful and brightly beautiful. I wish people
would not confuse the bathwater with the baby.
> In any event, revealing a weakness in physicalism does not ipso facto
> reveal a weakness in positive atheism. There is more to it than that.
> No matter what domains of existence we agree to posit as existent, the
> positive atheist can say there is no God in any of them, with equal
> vigor.
Sure they can :-)
Dianelos Georgoudis
wbarwell wrote:
> John Bell's inequality theorum was disproven showing that hidden variables
> cannot account for quantum physics' apparent lack of cause and effect on
> the quantum scale. This allows for "spooky action at a distance" for
> example. The quantum world is thus not strictly determinstic at the cause
> and effect level. and you can't explain it with hidden variables.
>
> So it is not deterministic in the strong sense of that word.
My understanding is different. Here is the story: Einstein disliked
quantum mechanics' inability to predict phenomena deterministically
(which does not mean that quantum mechanics claims that physical
reality is indeterminstic; quantum mechanics as all physics describes
physical phenomena and does not make any claims about physical reality
per se). So Einstein tried to find a way to show that quantum mechanics
must be an incomplete theory, and that there must be local variables
that particles possess which when known would allow us to predict
phenomena deterministically. These hypothesized variables were unknown
to quantum mechanics, hence they were called "hidden variables".
To strengthen this view Einstein Podolsky and Rose devised a thought
experiment called the EPR paradox. It showed that quantum mechanics
makes predictions that imply that far away particles instantly affect
each other, something that violates the intuitive notion that reality
must be local and that no such effects are possible, hence their sneer
about "spooky actions at a distance". Again, they were not saying that
quantum mechanics was wrong - as quantum mechanic's predictions were
all experimentally confirmed. What they were saying was: "The only way
to describe physical reality is based on scientific theories. QM
appears to imply that physical reality is non-local allowing for spooky
effects at a distance, which is of course absurd and tantamount to
suggesting some kind of magic. Therefore QM cannot be a complete theory
and should not be used for describing reality. In particular one should
not assume that reality is not deterministic just because QM's
predictions are non-deterministic. On the contrary reality is
deterministic because of local hidden variables that QM does not know
about".
For many years the EPR paradox remained a thought experiment until John
Bell showed that there are predictions of QM that are different than
the predictions of any theory based on local hidden variables (the
so-called Bell inequality). So Bell's theorem says that either QM is
wrong or any theory based on local hidden variables (the only theories
that avoid the need to accept the reality of spooky actions at a
distance) is wrong. So suddenly the EPR thought experiment could in
principle be carried out as a real experiment, and when people found a
way to carry it out, lo and behold, it was proven that the predictions
of the local hidden variables' theories was wrong. Which is the
opposite of what Einstein thought obvious. What was experimentally
proven by that? That no description of physical reality consistent with
experimentally confirmed scientific theory can be local. Any
description of physical reality must say that there are spooky actions
at a distance.
But all of this does not say anything about whether reality is
deterministic or non-deterministic. You are confusing Einstein's
motivation for proposing the EPR paradox (which was to show that QM
must be incomplete and therefore its non-deterministic predictions
should not be taken at face value) with the experimental falsification
of the EPR paradox. Einstein failed to prove that QM is incomplete and
helped prove that any description of physical reality consistent with
QM and experimental evidence must be non-local, contrary to what he
thought obvious. So today nobody proposes local descriptions of
physical reality. But there are still both deterministic and
indeterministic descriptions of physical reality that are consistent
with QM and experimental evidence. In fact two popular interpretations
of quantum mechanics (according to polls taken in conventions of
physicists) are both deterministic: Bohm's interpretation and Everett's
many worlds interpretation. (Incidentally Bohm's is based on non-local
intrinsically hidden variables.) They are both wildly fantastic. For
example, Bohm's implies that it is possible for particles to travel
back in time, and Everett's that it is physically impossible for us to
commit suicide.
Dianelos Georgoudis
wbarwell wrote:
[snip]
> Science takes it that the Universe is real, and physical.
If we live in the Matrix, or in a computer simulation, or if God is
directly feeding us conscious experience, we wouldn't notice it, would
we? Even though the physical universe would not be real? So why should
science care about the reality of the physical universe? After all its
objective observations, experiments and theories would pan out exactly
the same even if it isn't. So, how do you justify your claim that
"science takes it that the universe is real"?
The view that the universe is real and that science describes it is not
a scientific view but a philosophical one, called "scientific realism".
The fact that there is an increasing number of wildly differing and
rather fantastic descriptions of physical reality (and all consistent
with scientific theory) spells trouble for scientific realism. But
those who believe that anything that has "scientific" in its name must
automatically be correct have trouble realizing that.
> It works well as a system.
You imagine. A system is supposed to be coherent - scientific
realists' present claims are anything but.
Dianelos Georgoudis
Don Kresch wrote:
[snip]
> Now try to provide the evidence for god, and provide the
> coherent, specific, objective, concrete, non self-contradictory, non
> fallacy-laden definition of god.
Now try to provide the evidence that you are a conscious being, and
provide the coherent, specific, objective, concrete, non
self-contradictory, non fallacy-laden definition of conscious being.
Kurt Nicklas
Try it.
> Now try to provide the evidence for god, and provide the
> coherent, specific, objective, concrete, non self-contradictory, non
> fallacy-laden definition of god.
You've already stated that you believe such evidence CAN NOT exist,
Don.
Are you now saying it MIGHT exist and that I MIGHT have some?
William Wingstedt
<dian...@tecapro.com> wrote:
It seems to me that you find your god in a thing that we do not
understand. There have been many such things that have not been
understood and were attributed to gods. As knowledge advanced, gods
receded into the gaps of our understanding. Are we to suppose that
conciousness is indeed the domain of gods only because we do not, as
of yet, excercise masterful dominion over it? If and when we do, and
are able to endow conciousness, will we finally be gods? If we become
gods, is the notion of gods diminished? Or is a god only that which we
cannot become?
Don Kresch
<dian...@tecapro.com> let us all know that:
>
>Don Kresch wrote:
>[snip]
>
>> Now try to provide the evidence for god, and provide the
>> coherent, specific, objective, concrete, non self-contradictory, non
>> fallacy-laden definition of god.
>
>Now try to provide the evidence that you are a conscious being,
You're responding.
QED
Now try some tactic that isn't stupid.
Don Kresch
Already did.
>
>> Now try to provide the evidence for god, and provide the
>> coherent, specific, objective, concrete, non self-contradictory, non
>> fallacy-laden definition of god.
>
>You've already stated that you believe such evidence CAN NOT exist,
IOW: you can't do it. Thank you for conceding that you have no
idea what god is, and that god cannot exist.
wbarwell
>
> quibbler wrote:
>> In article <1147045857.3...@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
>> kurtn...@aport2000.ru says...
>>
>> > Absence of noncontradictory evidence does not imply that such evidence
>> > does not exist, Billy.
>>
>>
>> It doesn't absolutely guarantee it, but it is evidence of
>> absence according to standard abductive and inductive logical procedures.
>> Just as the original example showed, if you find no butter in the icebox
>> that is evidence that butter does not exist in there. Now a theologian
>> would counter that there could still be an invisible, undetectable
>> essence of butter in the refrigerator, but no scientist takes such
>> metaphysical nonsense seriously. In any event, the scientific standard
>> is that evidence is required to overcome the null hypothesis and
>> therefore, in the absence of evidence we are left with the null
>> hypothesis that there is no butter, or god, for that matter.
>
> The universe is not a refrigerator.
God is not a thing.
There is no evidence for god.
Only theological assertions.
Since the assertions made for god contradict each other
wildly and fatally, with overlapping contradictions, that
god as hyposthsized, and that is all these assertions are,
cannot exist. That explains why there is and can be no
evidence for the creator of all omni-everything class of gods.
This is as hard as debunking as anything in the Universe
ever gets.
God is as impossible as it gets.
The problem now is not that god is not debunked, god is
impossible and that is a proven fact. The problem now is
what to do about people who faced with these simple facts
whose minds shut down and stop thinking. People like
you, McMartin, Gandalf, Duke and many other AA trolls
who come in here utterly unwilling to reason, use logic
or accept obvious, uncontrovertible facts.
As Dr. Drew Westen has shown, extreme partisan's brains
shut down as demonstrated by MRI scanning. The question is,
how do we stop extreme partisans from doing that?
>> > Your inability to find such evidence is not evidence does not mean it
>> > does not
>> > exist.
>>
>> As I said in a previous reply, it is evidence that the evidence is
>> absent. Evidence can be positive or negative. Video camera footage of
>> an empty room is evidence that nobody entered that particular room.
>> Likewise, thousands of years of no reliable footage or consistent,
>> objective documentation of god is strong evidence that no such god
>> exists, or at least can't be justifiably supported as a belief.
>
> See above.
Again, since the defined omni-everything god logically self
destructs, it cannot exist, which is a good explanation why
such a grand and great thing leaves not a single bit of
evidence in its wake.
This is a great realization which you will not honestly
admit to.
>> > Again, your argument fails on it's premises.
>>
>>
>> Incorect. You're just ignorant of the standard types of argument used in
>> science and philosophy for that matter. You seem to be stuck on the very
>> outdated notion that we must have absolute proof of everything, before we
>> can say anything.
>
> You can say you've never seen evidence of God or that you've never seen
> any convincing evidence but you can't say no evidence exists.
>
> See above.
Yes, such a defined omni-everything god cannot exist because the
defined attributes of such a thing create impossible contradictions.
Since it cannot logically exist, it obviously cannot leave evidence,
so no evidence wil ever be possible for something that logically cannot
exist.
How do we kick-start your non-operating brain?
wbarwell
But we have a domain where people have been seaching for 2600
years since Greek philosophers started the search in earnest.
And no evidence has been found, and that must be explained.
We have several possibilities, one of which is, that thing does
not exist.
And if there is no evidence, the theist should be honest enough
to admit that there is no evidence and note that there very well
be because god does not exist.
By seeing that such a being's definitions creates impossible
contradictions, its easy to see why there is no such being and that
there will of course then be no evidence of such a being.
Since this is not hard, the question then becomes, how did
everybody miss this for 2600 years? Obviously the philosophical/theological
model of investigation has sadly been lacking.
wbarwell
We could be the collective imaginary beings in the minds
of giant space bunnies.
Maybeism is not a good way to deal with such issues.
God is just a case of such maybeism. Maybe there is a god, who created all
of this, maybe many gods did, maybe as Hesiod, there was no creation, god
emanante from the primal chaos, maybe, maybe not.
All this maybeism is ludicrous and unproductive and useless.
The simplest ideas, realism, that something real exists, (as opposed
to idealism), and the physicalist idea that matter and energy are real
and all that are needed to expalin the world (no hidden supernaturalism)
works. Maybeism does not, neither do ideas like god
explain anything, religion has a perfect record on explanation of
natural phenomenon, totally wrong for 2000 years.
Maybeism of the theooogical variety has thus been a proven bust for at least
2000 years and thus need not be considered except as an example of why
maybeism does not work.
The idea that what exists is real, that its physics al teh way down and not
any sort of supernaturalism underlying teh real world is a system that has
a proven track record.
This strongly suggests that this is the correct view of the Universe as it
works whereas religion/theology's perfect record of utter failure suggest
that that is wrong and useless.
Science talks, theology walks. The realist underpinning of science
are poart of why science in fact does work.
Maybeism is useless and proven to be a way to be wrong about everything.
Again, god as defined by theology, the popular god that is omni-everything,
creator of all, is contradictory and thus impossible as a class of possible
gods.
Maybeism here cannot save that class of impossible gods.
You are left with Easter Bunnies, leprechauns and unicorns, but not gods
that are creator of all and omni-everything.
Obviously then, something is wrong with maybeism.
The Fool
Kurt Nicklas wrote:
> Don Kresch wrote:
> > In alt.atheism On 7 May 2006 16:50:57 -0700, "Kurt Nicklas"
> > <kurtn...@aport2000.ru> let us all know that:
> >
> > >
> > >wbarwell wrote:
> >
> > >> There is a corrollary here. If you have no evidence, you only have
> > >> assertions to inspect. But if the basic claims create impossible
> > >> contradictions, they cannot be true. Thus not only do you
> > >> know they cannot be true, now you can have understanding why
> > >> there is no evidence. That that cannot exist cannot leave evidence.
> > >
> > >does not exist, Billy.
> > >
> > >does not exist.
> >
> > evidence is to be expected does, though.
>
> you.
>
> I'll bet you won't even acknowledge that you may be wrong in your
> beliefs.
>
How about you?
For the record, I am absolutely convinced that all of us may be wrong
in our beliefs, I like the line from Billy Joel's "Shades of Gray,"
"Now with the wisdom of years I try to reason things out
And the only people I fear are those who never have doubts
Save us all from arrogant men, and all the causes they're for
I won't be righteous again
I'm not that sure anymore"
The Fool
wbarwell wrote:
> Kurt Nicklas wrote:
>
> >
> > quibbler wrote:
> >> In article <1147045857.3...@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
> >> kurtn...@aport2000.ru says...
> >>
> >> > Absence of noncontradictory evidence does not imply that such evidence
> >> > does not exist, Billy.
> >>
> >>
> >> It doesn't absolutely guarantee it, but it is evidence of
> >> absence according to standard abductive and inductive logical procedures.
> >> Just as the original example showed, if you find no butter in the icebox
> >> that is evidence that butter does not exist in there. Now a theologian
> >> would counter that there could still be an invisible, undetectable
> >> essence of butter in the refrigerator, but no scientist takes such
> >> metaphysical nonsense seriously. In any event, the scientific standard
> >> is that evidence is required to overcome the null hypothesis and
> >> therefore, in the absence of evidence we are left with the null
> >> hypothesis that there is no butter, or god, for that matter.
> >
> > The universe is not a refrigerator.
>
> God is not a thing.
> There is no evidence for god.
> Only theological assertions.
If you would actually engage arguments made to you by some of us who
are not arguing for Christianity or one of the mythic religions, rather
than simply respond with assertions and your stock argument (which
really doesn't accomplish what you claim it does), you'd be more
persuasive. As it looks, you seem to be arguing a faith yourself --
you avoid the tough questions.
-The Fool
Christopher A. Lee
<ROT13....@jv.ee.pbz.com> wrote:
>In alt.atheism On 9 May 2006 02:18:56 -0700, "Dianelos Georgoudis"
><dian...@tecapro.com> let us all know that:
>>
>>Don Kresch wrote:
>>[snip]
>>
>>> Now try to provide the evidence for god, and provide the
>>> coherent, specific, objective, concrete, non self-contradictory, non
>>> fallacy-laden definition of god.
>>
>>Now try to provide the evidence that you are a conscious being,
>
> You're responding.
>
> QED
>
> Now try some tactic that isn't stupid.
I don't think they understand the dishonesty of the lapse into
solipsism. The bait'n'switch from something in dispute to something
that isn't. From something without evidence to something in evidence.
Moving the goalposts from a thing to an attribute of something else,
the equivalent would be you, not your attribute of consciousness.
Or perhaps they do understand it. I'm not sure which is worse.
If they do understand it, do they really expect us to think it's a
satisfactory answer? Or is it just meant to obstruct discussion?
I certainly don't understand why they expect it to fool a thinking
mind, let alone satisfy their burden of proof when they talk about it
as though it were real.
>Don
Christopher A. Lee
wrote:
>But we have a domain where people have been seaching for 2600
>years since Greek philosophers started the search in earnest.
>And no evidence has been found, and that must be explained.
>
>We have several possibilities, one of which is, that thing does
>not exist.
>
>And if there is no evidence, the theist should be honest enough
>to admit that there is no evidence and note that there very well
>be because god does not exist.
I'd prefer they admitted it was on their faith, acknowledged that this
is subjective not objective, and didn't expect us to take their word
for it merely on their faith.
Jim07D6
It would be irrational to hold those two positions simultaneously. But
it is rational to hold to a positive atheism that is not based on the
principles of physicalism, and observe that no evidence for God is to
be found in nature.
I for one, am not a physicalist, and believe there is no being called
God. I do not justify my belief that there is no God, by any appeal to
physicalism.
>
>> >> P must specify the domain. That is for the theist to do, in the case
>> >> of God. If the theist brings physicalism in, so be it.
>> >
>> >Fair enough. P is the field of our conscious experience. I claim that
>> >one cannot understand the fact that one is a conscious being and
>> >neither the qualities of one's consciousness (i.e. how it is to be a
>> >human conscious being) without recourse to God. Conversely I find that
>> >the God hypothesis perfectly explains both my being conscious and the
>> >qualities of my conscious experience, e.g. how it feels to hurt, hot it
>> >feels to love, how it feels to be stricken by beauty, how it feels to
>> >make a decision, etc.
>>
>> I'm not being clear enough. What is the domain in which God exists?
>> Does God's existence entail that there is a non-physical domain, in
>> the same way that the existence of the number 2.5 entails the
>> existence of a domain of non-integers? Is the domain in which God
>> exists entirely searchable? Can we draw any conclusions about the
>> nature of that domain, including whether God can exist in it? By
>> analogy, we can conclude that there is no largest prime even though we
>> cannot do so by searching the entire domain of natural numbers.
>
>I am not sure what your point with the analogy of math is.
It's not important.
>
>You are asking about the domain in which one is supposed to look to see
>if there is evidence for the existence of God, correct? I claim that
>this domain is our conscious experience, both the fact of its existence
>and how it is to be conscious as a human being. One is to search what
>explains them, what the internal logic in them is. If one finds this,
>this is God. Is there something not clear in this?
It appears then that the word-sound "God" is *defined* by you as
"whatever is found to explain, to my satisfaction, my conscious
experience".
>
>You ask "Is the domain in which God is to exist entirely searchable?" I
>can't answer this question because I don't know exactly what you mean
>by "entirely searchable". And I need not to: you know the quality of
>human conscious experience as well as I do, so you can answer this
>question for yourself.
I think the domain of conscious experience is personal, is searchable
only by the person who has it, and the search is not completed until
his last conscious experience occurs -- whenever that is.
>
>> It seems to me that your being conscious could lead you to conclude
>> that you exist at least partly in a nonphysical domain, but I fail to
>> see how this entails that God exists there.
>
>That's where I claim that God is to be found. It does not entail that
>God will be found there. If you do make a diligent search and find no
>evidence for God there then you are justified to say that, as far as
>you are concerned, there is no evidence for the existence of God and
>that this justifies your belief that no God exists.
I see no reason to specify that this "God" is either physical or
non-physical. I think that can be left open.
>
>And it's not really only me who claims that God is to be found there.
>Some of the oldest, most authentic and best known dictums of the
>Christian tradition is that "God is inside of you", so I am not really
>coming up with something new here.
True. But as you know, I object to the idea that positive atheism
entails physicalism.
<...>
>> What you say above is that "one cannot understand the fact that one is
>> a conscious being and neither the qualities of one's consciousness
>> (i.e. how it is to be a human conscious being) without recourse to
>> God." That may be true of you. I disagree, but because your conscious
>> experience is not my conscious experience, I do not and cannot know
>> what is required, by you, to understand this about yourself. It is
>> obviously overreaching of you to generalize beyond yourself.
>
>I am not doing that. I am only saying where to look. I did look and
>found something. I am not making any claims about what you will find if
>you look, or even that you will find anything. But if you don't find
>anything that explains the presence and the quality of your conscious
>experience then reality will remain incoherent for you.
It doesn't feel that way. Who are you to say it will remain incoherent
*for me*? Maybe in my shoes, it would for you. Or maybe I am just not
all that bothered by incoherence.
>
>> I'd
>> suggest that conscious experience points to a particular kind of
>> non-physical domain, but not to the kind of domain that contains God..
>
>Ah, I think here you are implicitly using some external description of
>God, probably some Christian dogmatic views.
I think that we have to acknowledge common conventional meanings of
words, or else we all end up using private dictionaries.
...
>If so I fully agree with
>you. The path is to find what explains your conscious experience and
>then, if you wish, compare it to what others say about God. This is a
>point I completely disagree with traditional religion: not only do I
>not see any value in blind faith but I think it's contrary to God's way
>- as I understand it. You can only know God directly. Actually all
>knowledge is direct knowledge. For example if one doesn't oneself make
>the effort to understand physics then one doesn't know physics, no
>matter how well or how often one repeats scientific dictums one has
>memorized.
>
>And if you care to know my own opinion about Christianity I think that
>most of it is mythology, empty dogma, and convention. But what is not
>any of that is deeply meaningful and brightly beautiful. I wish people
>would not confuse the bathwater with the baby.
>
>> In any event, revealing a weakness in physicalism does not ipso facto
>> reveal a weakness in positive atheism. There is more to it than that.
>> No matter what domains of existence we agree to posit as existent, the
>> positive atheist can say there is no God in any of them, with equal
>> vigor.
>
>Sure they can :-)
--- Jim07D6
Gandalf Grey
"Don Kresch" <ROT13....@jv.ee.pbz.com> wrote in message
news:ib616213m5eu3r0e9...@4ax.com...
You're overreaching. If god exists as god, no one has an idea of what god
is, and no one 'know' that God cannot exist.
Gandalf Grey
"wbarwell" <wbar...@mylinuxisp.com> wrote in message
news:12617bm...@corp.supernews.com...
> Kurt Nicklas wrote:
>
>>
>> quibbler wrote:
>>> In article <1147045857.3...@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
>>> kurtn...@aport2000.ru says...
>>>
>>> > Absence of noncontradictory evidence does not imply that such evidence
>>> > does not exist, Billy.
>>>
>>>
>>> It doesn't absolutely guarantee it, but it is evidence of
>>> absence according to standard abductive and inductive logical
>>> procedures.
>>> Just as the original example showed, if you find no butter in the icebox
>>> that is evidence that butter does not exist in there. Now a theologian
>>> would counter that there could still be an invisible, undetectable
>>> essence of butter in the refrigerator, but no scientist takes such
>>> metaphysical nonsense seriously. In any event, the scientific standard
>>> is that evidence is required to overcome the null hypothesis and
>>> therefore, in the absence of evidence we are left with the null
>>> hypothesis that there is no butter, or god, for that matter.
>>
>> The universe is not a refrigerator.
>
> God is not a thing.
You've yet to prove that.
> There is no evidence for god.
You don't know that.
> Only theological assertions.
That's simply not true, given the definition of "theological."
> Since the assertions made for god contradict each other
Not all of them do.
> wildly and fatally, with overlapping contradictions, that
> god as hyposthsized, and that is all these assertions are,
That's not what all of them are.
> cannot exist. That explains why there is and can be no
> evidence for the creator of all omni-everything class of gods.
Even if all of the above were true, and I've demonstrated that it is not, it
would still not lead to your conclusion.
>
> This is as hard as debunking as anything in the Universe
> ever gets.
>
> God is as impossible as it gets.
You've become a bumper sticker intellectual.
Gandalf Grey
> In article <445f77c3$0$20682$9a6e...@news.newshosting.com>,
> Ganda...@infectedmail.com says...
>
>> Not that I enjoy being on KKKurt's side in any argument, but you've
>> chosen a
>> bad example.
>>
>> 1. The fact that you can't see butter in the refrigerator is positive
>> evidence that there is no butter in the refrigerator
>
> The fact that we didn't see butter is negative evidence, beccause it is
> something that we did not see. The fact that that we might have seen an
> empty refrigerator is positive of other things, but it is certainly not
> positive evidence of butter.
I think it's a huge mistake to fail to make a distinction between closed and
open systems when it comes to phenomena like negative evidence.
Martin McPhillips
news:1147185120.4...@v46g2000cwv.googlegroups.com...
It's always reassuring to know that Scott derives
his deepest sense of meaning from the lyrics
to popular music.
Scott's "absolutely convinced that all of us
may be wrong in our beliefs." He's finally found
the ultimate "I'm on every side of every
argument" justifier.
Gandalf Grey
"Martin McPhillips" <nos...@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:l338g.37299$nA3....@news-wrt-01.rdc-nyc.rr.com...
It's always reassuring to know that Martin get his most updated
philosophical and political points from Thomas Aquinas.
>
> Scott's "absolutely convinced that all of us
> may be wrong in our beliefs." He's finally found
> the ultimate "I'm on every side of every
> argument" justifier.
While Martin calls "something from nothing" an example of "materialist
mysticism," yet Martin believes that everything came from god, and God is
something, and God came from nothing.
Martin sees no contradiction in this.
Very comforting.
>
>
Ron Baker, Pluralitas!
"Dianelos Georgoudis" <dian...@tecapro.com> wrote in message
news:1147155815....@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
>
> Ron Baker, Pluralitas! wrote:
>> Replying through my post because your post didn't show
>> on my main reader:
>>
>> "Dianelos Georgoudis" <diane...@tecapro.com> wrote in message
>
>> > Because, from the materialistic point of view, consciousness appears to
>> > be
>> > completely superfluous. That's why some materialist thinkers go as far
>> > as
>> > to claim that consciousness does not exist, or does not really exist
>> > and
>> > is only an illusion. See:
>> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliminative_materialism
>>
>> So you cite something that says the consciousness doesn't
>> exist to support your view that it is unconnected to the
>> physical?
>> OK. I'll agree that if consciousness doesn't exit then
>> it is not connected to the physical.
>
> Again: From the *materialist* point of view consciousness appears to be
> completely superfluous.
Reading ahead I see you are equivocating, big time, on 'consciousness'.
Using the common meaning of counsciousness I am not a "materialist".
> There is no objective evidence that it exists.
> It's not objectively observable. It's not required as a hypothesis for
> explaining anything that is objectively observable. Therefore the
> (strict) materialist is moved to conclude that consciousness does not
> really exist. But it does, as you and I know.
I would agree, except for your equivocation.
> And as according to
> materialism only what is objectively observable or is used to explain
> what is objectively observable can be called "physical" the
> existence of consciousness implies that it is not a physical thing.
>
> [snip]
>> > Everything that is physical is either objectively observable, or else
>> > is
>> > posited for explaining something that is objectively observable. (If
>> > you
>> > don't agree with this, can you suggest a counterexample?) Some
>> > examples:
>> > Apples and lightning are physical because they are objectively
>> > observable.
>> > Gravitational forces are physical because they explain the falling of
>> > apples, and electrons are physical because they explain lightning. Now
>> > let's consider consciousness. It's not objectively observable and,
>> > significantly, it's not useful for explaining anything that is
>> > objectively
>> > necessary. Therefore it can't be physical.
>>
>> Nonsense. Consciousness is observable.
>> Ask any doctor or anesthesiologist.
>
> Here you are not speaking about consciousness but about wakefulness.
> It's true that we often use "conscious" as synonymous to "awake", but
> this is not the sense "conscious" is used in the philosophy of mind.
Equivocation, big time! After using the term a dozen
times you now say you didn't mean it as it is in the dictionary
but as it is used in "the philosophy of mind".
>
>> > > And welcome back. So did you theists all agree on one theology yet?
>> >
>> >
>> > Not really. The closest we have come to agreeing is that "God is the
>> > perfect being",
>>
>> No you haven't. For one thing not all theists believe
>> in God.
>
> See: http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/theism
See:
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/theism
>
>> > and therefore perfect in goodness, perfect in beauty, perfect in power,
>> > perfect in knowledge, and so on.
>>
>> Equivocation. Theists will define 'perfect' to mean
>> different things.
>
> It's easy to define "perfect": That which has no defects, or that which
> nothing better is conceivable.
Circular. Special pleading.
You have a different definition of perfect when
you apply it to your god.
Is it perfect to punish someone for what their ancestor did?
>
>> > By the way, have you materialists agreed on one description of physical
>> > reality yet? Last time I looked some of you claimed that physical
>> > reality
>> > is deterministic and some that it is certainly not, some that it
>> > consists
>> > of one physical universe and some that it consists of a furiously
>> > growing
>> > number of parallel universes, some argue that the universe is a
>> > two-dimensional hologram and its three-dimensional appearence is only a
>> > sophisticated illusion created by our brain, some point out that the
>> > Matrix is possible, some argue that there is a good possibility that we
>> > all live in a computer simulation and that nothing we see is actually
>> > real
I must say again, what a load of ridiculous straw men.
>> > (see: www.simulation-argument.com), and some agree with Kant that we
>> > cannot know anything about the external reality except that it exists.
>> > What makes this disagreement truly remarkable is that at the same time
>> > materialists claim that theirs is an *objective* field :-)
>>
>> Straw men.
>>
>> >
>> > Materialists also beat theists in the "way too fantastic to believe"
>> > category. Nothing concocted by a religious mind comes even close to the
>> > really and truly fantastic many-worlds interpretation of quantum
>> > mechanics. So much for materialism being down to earth.
>>
>> Straw man.
>
> Materialism is having a very hard time explaining the most fundamental
> fact of all: that we are conscious beings.
That is equivocation and contradictory to your previous statements.
If you mean the common 'conscious' there is no difficulty:
it is what the brain does.
If you mean your "philosophy of mind" conscious then
there is no difficulty because, as you have said, they say
it doesn't exist. No problem.
> Even in relation to its
> natural subject matter the fact is that different materialists are
> suggesting increasingly disparate (and fantastic) descriptions of the
> basic properties of physical reality.
Absolute nonsense.
All you've offered to support that is a load of ridiculous
crackpot straw men.
We can predict nature to 15 decimal places.
You seem to be saying, Aha! You don't know what
that 16th decimal place is so you are wrong.
The Bible is wrong in the first decimal place.
See Leviticus 14:2-52 for a leprosy cure.
See 1 Samual 2:8 for some astronomy/geology.
You are the pot calling the egg not white.
> Materialists eternally argue
> between themselves about what objectively exists and does not only
> exist as a mental concept (for example: do gravitational force fields
> objectively exist?) - evidencing that materialism does not offer any
> objective means for deciding between the two.
> For all these reasons
> materialism is found today to be very shaky as a discipline of thought.
> You can choose to face up to this fact or you can choose not to - but a
No, it is argumentum ad ignorantiam and straw man
on your part.
> freethinker certainly would. You seem to be convinced that materialism
> is very solid, but holding on to one's convictions and refusing to face
> up to the facts that contradict them is what makes mythologies
> possible.
So because some crackpot says we are all just a
computer simulation you say that shows materialism
is mythology?
Pardon me if I'm not convinced.
--
rb #2187
Emmanual Kann
>
> Emmanual Kann wrote:
>> An Mon, 08 May 2006 08:38:54 -0500, Don Kresch hat geschreibt:
>>
>> > Not with respect to that. If I'm wrong, then 2 + 2 != 4.
>>
>> I say there is no 4; 2 + 2 = 11.
>
> Being a programmer I would have to put it this way:
>
> 00000010 + 00000010 = 00000100
I think you missed my point. In my symbolic system for expressing
arithmetic, 4 does not exist so your equation is meaningless in that
system. I'm also demonstrating that arithmetic still works without
believing in 4.
quibbler
says...
>
> John Bell's inequality theorum was disproven showing that hidden variables
> cannot account for quantum physics' apparent lack of cause and effect on
> the quantum scale. This allows for "spooky action at a distance" for
> example. The quantum world is thus not strictly determinstic at the cause
> and effect level. and you can't explain it with hidden variables.
>
> So it is not deterministic in the strong sense of that word.
Yes, in a strong sense it's not deterministic. But in a fairly complex,
de facto sense it is still determined. It generates causes and produces
effects, even if the original causes are not predictable.
quibbler
duckg...@cox.net says...
> On Mon, 8 May 2006 10:21:06 -0600, quibbler <quibb...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >> Absence of noncontradictory evidence does not imply that such evidence
> >> does not exist, Billy.
>
> >absence according to standard abductive and inductive logical procedures.
>
Shut up, you mindless fool, dookie. You have nothing to contribute, as
usual.
quibbler
kurtn...@aport2000.ru says...
>
> quibbler wrote:
> > In article <1147045857.3...@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
> > kurtn...@aport2000.ru says...
> >
> > > does not exist, Billy.
> >
> >
> > It doesn't absolutely guarantee it, but it is evidence of
> > absence according to standard abductive and inductive logical procedures.
> > that is evidence that butter does not exist in there. Now a theologian
> > would counter that there could still be an invisible, undetectable
> > essence of butter in the refrigerator, but no scientist takes such
> > metaphysical nonsense seriously. In any event, the scientific standard
> > is that evidence is required to overcome the null hypothesis and
> > therefore, in the absence of evidence we are left with the null
> > hypothesis that there is no butter, or god, for that matter.
>
> The universe is not a refrigerator.
Your mastery of the obvious is underwhelming, though, I suppose, one
could consider the universe to be a very big refrigerator that on average
tends to be only a few degrees above absolute zero. Regardless, your
comment misses the point. To quote a familiar aphorism, if god is
everywhere then I only need to look in one place to disprove his
existence. At the very least, we need a credible explanation for the
fact that no serious investigation ever turns up evidence for god. Given
the claims made about god, we would not expect such divine hiddenness.
>
> >
> > >
> > > Your inability to find such evidence is not evidence does not mean it
> > > does not
> > > exist.
> >
> > As I said in a previous reply, it is evidence that the evidence is
> > absent. Evidence can be positive or negative. Video camera footage of
> > an empty room is evidence that nobody entered that particular room.
> > Likewise, thousands of years of no reliable footage or consistent,
> > objective documentation of god is strong evidence that no such god
> > exists, or at least can't be justifiably supported as a belief.
>
> See above.
Your inadequate and irrelevant comment is noted.
>
> >
> > >
> > > Again, your argument fails on it's premises.
> >
> >
> > Incorect. You're just ignorant of the standard types of argument used in
> > science and philosophy for that matter. You seem to be stuck on the very
> > outdated notion that we must have absolute proof of everything, before we
> > can say anything.
>
> You can say you've never seen evidence of God or that you've never seen
> any convincing evidence but you can't say no evidence exists.
I can say that there is no reliable evidence that any reasonable person
woudl accept unless they were making a special pleading for a
precommitted belief system. No criminal could cite grimm's fairy tale or
the Illiad as "evidence" that his or her action was justified. I suppose
that if you're desperate enough that you can declare a pile of horseshit
to be "evidence" for the existence of your god, but it's about the best
support that you're able to produce.
>
> See above.
You had nothing of substance to say above or anywhere else in this post.
Pitt
"Jim07D6" <Jim...@nospam.net> wrote in message
news:qta1629aaagf3k0c6...@4ax.com...
> ... my belief that there is no God ...
You mean your absence of belief in the existence of God.
"Atheism is characterized by an absence of belief in the existence of gods."
-- http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/intro.html
Arturo Magidin
Pitt <p....@....com> wrote:
>
>"Jim07D6" <Jim...@nospam.net> wrote in message
>news:qta1629aaagf3k0c6...@4ax.com...
>
>> ... my belief that there is no God ...
>
>You mean your absence of belief in the existence of God.
The latter does not preclude the former.
>"Atheism is characterized by an absence of belief in the existence of gods."
>-- http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/intro.html
Yes; so? The next paragraph in that very webpage reads:
Some atheists go beyond a mere absence of belief in gods: they
actively believe that particular gods, or all gods, do not
exist.
--
======================================================================
"It's not denial. I'm just very selective about
what I accept as reality."
--- Calvin ("Calvin and Hobbes")
======================================================================
Arturo Magidin
mag...@math.berkeley.edu
jie...@aol.com
Septic wrote:
> "Jim07D6" <Jim...@nospam.net> wrote in message
> news:qta1629aaagf3k0c6...@4ax.com...
>
> > ... my belief that there is no God ...
>
> You mean your absence
No he means his belief, his belief that there is no God, Septic, just
as he says. If you have any further questions on this point, Septic,
you can consult the standard definitions of "strong" (or "positive")
atheism vs. "weak" (or "passive") atheism. Try the infidel site, or
even the alt.atheism FAQ.
Jeff
Virgil
"Pitt" <p....@....com> wrote:
> "Jim07D6" <Jim...@nospam.net> wrote in message
> news:qta1629aaagf3k0c6...@4ax.com...
>
> > ... my belief that there is no God ...
>
> You mean your absence of belief in the existence of God.
Does Septic now claim the ability to read minds that he knows better
that the OP what the OP means?
Septic is the Pitts. And Pitt is Septic.
Kurt Nicklas
Don Kresch wrote:
> In alt.atheism On 8 May 2006 15:48:12 -0700, "Kurt Nicklas"> >Don Kresch wrote:
> >> In alt.atheism On 8 May 2006 04:04:19 -0700, "Kurt Nicklas"> >> >Don Kresch wrote:
> >> >> In alt.atheism On 7 May 2006 17:13:16 -0700, "Kurt Nicklas"
> >> >> <kurtn...@aport2000.ru> let us all know that:
> >> >>
> >> >> >
> >> >> >Don Kresch wrote:
> >> >> >> In alt.atheism On 7 May 2006 16:50:57 -0700, "Kurt Nicklas"
> >> >> >> <kurtn...@aport2000.ru> let us all know that:
> >> >> >>
> >> >> >> >
> >> >> >> >wbarwell wrote:
> >> >> >>
> >> >> >> >> There is a corrollary here. If you have no evidence, you only have
> >> >> >> >> assertions to inspect. But if the basic claims create impossible
> >> >> >> >> contradictions, they cannot be true. Thus not only do you
> >> >> >> >> know they cannot be true, now you can have understanding why
> >> >> >> >> there is no evidence. That that cannot exist cannot leave evidence.
> >> >> >> >
> >> >> >> >does not exist, Billy.
> >> >> >> >
> >> >> >> >does not exist.
> >> >> >>
> >> >> >> evidence is to be expected does, though.
> >> >> >
> >> >> >No,
> >>
> >> >
> >> >I'll bet you won't even acknowledge that you may be wrong in your
> >> >beliefs.
> >>
> >
>
> Is just the same as demonstrating there is no god.
Nonsense.
> Now try to provide the evidence for god, and provide the
> coherent, specific, objective, concrete, non self-contradictory, non
> fallacy-laden definition of god.
Can you provide such evidence for the existance of Don Kresh?
Post it here ---->>>
Kurt Nicklas
wbarwell wrote:
> Kurt Nicklas wrote:
>
> >
> > quibbler wrote:
> >> In article <1147045857.3...@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
> >> kurtn...@aport2000.ru says...
> >>
> >> > Absence of noncontradictory evidence does not imply that such evidence
> >> > does not exist, Billy.
> >>
> >>
> >> It doesn't absolutely guarantee it, but it is evidence of
> >> absence according to standard abductive and inductive logical procedures.
> >> Just as the original example showed, if you find no butter in the icebox
> >> that is evidence that butter does not exist in there. Now a theologian
> >> would counter that there could still be an invisible, undetectable
> >> essence of butter in the refrigerator, but no scientist takes such
> >> metaphysical nonsense seriously. In any event, the scientific standard
> >> is that evidence is required to overcome the null hypothesis and
> >> therefore, in the absence of evidence we are left with the null
> >> hypothesis that there is no butter, or god, for that matter.
> >
> > The universe is not a refrigerator.
>
> God is not a thing.
> There is no evidence for god.
Saying that over and over doesn't make it true, Billy.
> Only theological assertions.
Nonsense.
> Since the assertions made for god contradict each other
> wildly and fatally, with overlapping contradictions, that
> god as hyposthsized, and that is all these assertions are,
> cannot exist.
Even if this wild claim about "all the assertions" be true then
- given that you are not omnisient - all you can say logically
is that you have not heard any noncontradicting assertions about
God, Billy.
But that's not good enough for you, is it?
> That explains why there is and can be no
> evidence for the creator of all omni-everything class of gods.
What is a 'class of Gods'? Something you read about in the Rice
University
Library(tm)?
> This is as hard as debunking as anything in the Universe
> ever gets.
> God is as impossible as it gets.
You're nothing but a sloganeering crackpot, Billy, and your desperate
longing for a Godlike certainty makes you seem like the people you seem
to hate so much.
Kurt Nicklas
Such "maybeism" IS the only way to deal with such issues if you
lack the ability to confirm one way or the other.
But you're not satisfied with that. You need to be SURE that God does
not exist and so you are.
Faith drives you, Billy. Just the same thing that drives the people who
you
hate so much.
Kurt Nicklas
What sort of evidence would convince you, Christopher? Can you be
specific?
Jim07D6
Bug off, septic, I mean what I say.
<plonk>
--- Jim07D6
Jim07D6
>
>wbarwell wrote:
>[snip]
>
>> Science takes it that the Universe is real, and physical.
>
>If we live in the Matrix, or in a computer simulation, or if God is
>directly feeding us conscious experience, we wouldn't notice it, would
>we? Even though the physical universe would not be real? So why should
>science care about the reality of the physical universe? After all its
>objective observations, experiments and theories would pan out exactly
>the same even if it isn't. So, how do you justify your claim that
>"science takes it that the universe is real"?
>
>The view that the universe is real and that science describes it is not
>a scientific view but a philosophical one, called "scientific realism".
>The fact that there is an increasing number of wildly differing and
>rather fantastic descriptions of physical reality (and all consistent
>with scientific theory) spells trouble for scientific realism. But
>those who believe that anything that has "scientific" in its name must
>automatically be correct have trouble realizing that.
>
>> It works well as a system.
>
>You imagine. A system is supposed to be coherent - scientific
>realists' present claims are anything but.
Radical scepticism is a two-edged sword.
--- Jim07D6
wbarwell
>
> "wbarwell" <wbar...@mylinuxisp.com> wrote in message
> news:12617bm...@corp.supernews.com...
>> Kurt Nicklas wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> quibbler wrote:
>>>> In article <1147045857.3...@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
>>>> kurtn...@aport2000.ru says...
>>>>
>>>> > Absence of noncontradictory evidence does not imply that such
>>>> > evidence does not exist, Billy.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> It doesn't absolutely guarantee it, but it is evidence of
>>>> absence according to standard abductive and inductive logical
>>>> procedures.
>>>> Just as the original example showed, if you find no butter in the
>>>> icebox
>>>> that is evidence that butter does not exist in there. Now a theologian
>>>> would counter that there could still be an invisible, undetectable
>>>> essence of butter in the refrigerator, but no scientist takes such
>>>> metaphysical nonsense seriously. In any event, the scientific standard
>>>> is that evidence is required to overcome the null hypothesis and
>>>> therefore, in the absence of evidence we are left with the null
>>>> hypothesis that there is no butter, or god, for that matter.
>>>
>>> The universe is not a refrigerator.
>>
>> God is not a thing.
>
> You've yet to prove that.
I did. You simply lack ability to understand it as simple as it is.
1. There is no evidence for god.
2. There are only assertions.
3. Assertions made for the class of gods that are
omni-everything and creator of all create impossible
contradictions.
4. Thus god logically cannot exist.
5. 4 thus explains 1.
Do me a favor and attach this to every post from you in this
thread henceforth saving me the trouble to do so.
Your problem is a bad case of brain-lock.
I cannot help with that.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/24/science/24find.h
tml?_r=2
Findings
A Shocker: Partisan Thought Is Unconscious
By BENEDICT CAREY
Published: January 24, 2006
Liberals and conservatives can become equally
bug-eyed and irrational when talking politics,
especially when they are on the defensive.
Using M.R.I. scanners, neuroscientists have now
tracked what happens in the politically partisan
brain when it tries to digest damning facts about
favored candidates or criticisms of them. The
process is almost entirely emotional and
unconscious, the researchers report, and there are
flares of activity in the brain's pleasure centers
when unwelcome information is being rejected.
"Everything we know about cognition suggests that,
when faced with a contradiction, we use the
rational regions of our brain to think about it,
but that was not the case here," said Dr. Drew
Westen, a psychologist at Emory and lead author of
the study, to be presented Saturday at meetings of
the Society for Personality and Social Psychology
in Palm Springs, Calif.
The results are the latest from brain imaging
studies that provide a neural explanation for
internal states, like infatuation or ambivalence,
and a graphic trace of the brain's activity.
In 2004, the researchers recruited 30 adult men
who described themselves as committed Republicans
or Democrats. The men, half of them supporters of
President Bush and the other half backers of
Senator John Kerry, earned $50 to sit in an M.R.I.
machine and consider several statements in quick
succession.
The first was a quote attributed to one of the two
candidates: either a remark by Mr. Bush in support
of Kenneth L. Lay, the former Enron chief, before
he was indicted, or a statement by Mr. Kerry that
Social Security should be overhauled. Moments
later, the participants read a remark that showed
the candidate reversing his position. The quotes
were doctored for maximum effect but presented as
factual.
The Republicans in the study judged Mr. Kerry as
harshly as the Democrats judged Mr. Bush. But each
group let its own candidate off the hook.
After the participants read the contradictory
comment, the researchers measured increased
activity in several areas of the brain. They
included a region involved in regulating negative
emotions and another called the cingulate, which
activates when the brain makes judgments about
forgiveness, among other things. Also, a spike
appeared in several areas known to be active when
people feel relieved or rewarded. The "cold
reasoning" regions of the cortex were relatively
quiet.
Researchers have long known that political
decisions are strongly influenced by unconscious
emotional reactions, a fact routinely exploited by
campaign consultants and advertisers. But the new
research suggests that for partisans, political
thinking is often predominantly emotional.
It is possible to override these biases, Dr.
Westen said, "but you have to engage in ruthless
self reflection, to say, 'All right, I know what I
want to believe, but I have to be honest.' "
He added, "It speaks to the character of the
discourse that this quality is rarely talked about
in politics."
(End)
>
>> There is no evidence for god.
>
> You don't know that.
Yes, I do. If the best and brightest cannot show me any
evidence in college level textbooks used in the best institutes
of the world from Harvard Divinity school on down, show me
zilch, ain't any evidence known.
The logical debunking of god tells me why, but you will not
allow your mind to grasp that simple fact.
Brain-lock again.
See above.
>
>> Only theological assertions.
>
> That's simply not true, given the definition of "theological."
>
>> Since the assertions made for god contradict each other
>
> Not all of them do.
I show you several critical contradictions.
Again, you have a bad case of brain-lock.
Sorry, I can't help you make your brain work.
******* Useless brainlocked crap deleted **********
--
"Just because you don't take an interest in politics
doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you."
- Pericles
Cheerful Charlie
wbarwell
>
> wbarwell wrote:
>> Kurt Nicklas wrote:
>>
>> >
>> > quibbler wrote:
>> >> In article <1147045857.3...@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
>> >> kurtn...@aport2000.ru says...
>> >>
>> >> > Absence of noncontradictory evidence does not imply that such
>> >> > evidence does not exist, Billy.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> It doesn't absolutely guarantee it, but it is evidence of
>> >> absence according to standard abductive and inductive logical
>> >> procedures. Just as the original example showed, if you find no butter
>> >> in the icebox
>> >> that is evidence that butter does not exist in there. Now a
>> >> theologian would counter that there could still be an invisible,
>> >> undetectable essence of butter in the refrigerator, but no scientist
>> >> takes such
>> >> metaphysical nonsense seriously. In any event, the scientific
>> >> standard is that evidence is required to overcome the null hypothesis
>> >> and therefore, in the absence of evidence we are left with the null
>> >> hypothesis that there is no butter, or god, for that matter.
>> >
>> > The universe is not a refrigerator.
>>
>> God is not a thing.
>> There is no evidence for god.
>
> Saying that over and over doesn't make it true, Billy.
Denying the obvious over and over just shows that you are
incapable of simple thoughts.
Again, can you show me any hard, good evidence for god's existance?
You may use all the college level textbooks used in major univeristies and
theology schools as I did. Ain't none. You may as I did, search 20 years
of back issues of the most prestigous philosophy and theology journals.
Ain't none. I hunted hard and long for evidence and ain't none.
I looked at where it MUST be if it exists. Ain't none.
Here is your problem, you are not just totally ignorant, your brain does not
work. Sorry, science has yet to show me a way to kickstart a brain-locked
mind incapable of simple reason with mere words alone. So I cannot help
you.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/24/science/24find.h
tml?_r=2
(End)
---------
Still brainlocked and useless aren't you?
IS THERE A GOD?
Strong Atheism's answer.
A BASIC DEFINITION OF GOD.
The general overarching definition of god as per
the major religions of the world is:
A. God is personal, God has will and consciousness.
B. God has free will.
C. God is the creator of all.
D. God is omnipotent.
E. God is omnibenevolent.
F. God is omniscient.
G. God is that which nothing more powerful
can be imagined.
These are the basic attributes that can be claimed
for the god of orthodox Judaism, Christianity,
Islam, and Hinduism.
Omnibenevolence and omniscience are actually
logically derivable from the claimed attribute of
omnipotence and so aren't not truly independent
attributes, and may be considered special aspects
of omnipotence.
There are other attributes of god, that he is the
only such god, that he is is immortal and that
god has always existed that are not important
for this discussion and for now, can be ignored.
They are secondary arguments and are for the most
part not foundational or truly necessary, except
those that can be logically derived from the
attributes listed above.
A CLASS OF GODS
It is important to note here that this is a
definition not for a particular god, but an
entire class of gods.
Sub-theories about god are not important here.
Christianity claims one may attain salvation
only through Jesus, Islam claims the Christian
dogma that Jesus was the son of god is
blasphemous.
Ideas like this though, are of little importance
to the overarching and general claims made for a
personal, creator, omni-everything god. I have
coined a term, The Grand God of Grand Theologies
for this sort of god, this sort of theological
system of expansive claims for god.
Grand theologies are those theologies that have
adopted this class of god as their basic
attributes concerning the nature of god. But it
is important to remember here that what is being
discussed here is a class of gods, not particular
gods or specific gods.
THE FOUR GREAT THEOLOGICAL TRADITIONS
Again, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism hold
to this basic Grand God and are typical Grand
Theologies holding to this basic class of god as
their basic definitions of what god is at god's
most basic level.
A big problem with this class of gods is, it
collapses rather easily into internal self-
contradiction.
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL.
The problem of evil was first written down by
Epicurus in about the third century BCE.
Today's formulation is:
A. God is defined as omnipotent;
B. and as omnibenevolent.
C. Evil exists.
D. God therefore, is not omnipotent as claimed.
E. Or God is not omnibenevolent as claimed.
F. Or god is neither omnipotent or
omnibenevolent.
G. Or god is not existant.
THE FREE WILL DEFENSE
The free will defense of the problem of evil goes
back to St. Augustine who popularized it. It is
still popular, and is championed most notably
today by Alvin Plantinga, but also by other
theologians.
God gave man free will. Man freely chooses to do
evil. Ability to do evil is less evil than
lacking free will.
THE FREE WILL DEFENSE DEBUNKED.
God has free will.
God is omnibenevolent, he has a good nature
incapable of doing evil.
A. If god can have free will, and a good nature,
this good nature is not allowed to count
against god's free will.
B. Nor is god's lack of ability to do evil
allowed to count against god's omnipotence.
C. Likewise, man could easily have a god like
free will and a god like good nature.
D. Inabilty then to do evil would no more count
against man's free will than it does for god's
free will.
E. If so, it also counts against god's free will
and god does not have free will as claimed.
F. If god does not have absolute and total free
will, thus free will is not a true necessity
at all.
F. If god is omnipotent and omnibenevolent, and
can give man a god like free will and a
god-like good nature incapable of moral evil,
god must do so or god is not moral, not
omnibenevolent.
G. Evil exists because he allows it to.
So free will does not exist, or it does and we can
have a god like free will and a god like good
nature. Either way, free will cannot explain away
the existence of evil. This free will defense
then, is a failed argument.
OMNISCIENCE VERSUS CREATORHOOD OF GOD
God is defined as creator of all in most
religions.
And god is claimed to be omniscient, all knowing.
A. God created the Universe and all in it.
B. God is omniscient, all knowing, he knows all
in the Universe and he knows the future of the
Universe and its contents.
C. If god creates a Universe, he will know that
in 13 billion years this Universe will have a
man named John Smith in it.
D. If John Smith is good and saved, or evil and
damned, God will know that.
E. As he knows that the Universe in its present
state will have a John Smith, god may then
contemplate the future state of Smith and
decide if he will tolerate an evil Smith.
F. If yes, Smith will be evil only because of a
specific personal and will choice made solely
by god.
G. If Smith is evil, then evil exists solely
because of a choice made by god. In fact all
moral evil done by creations of god will be
evil and do evil only because of personal and
willful creations of god allowing evil acts
to be done, by direct decision of god.
H. If evil exists in a world with an omniscient
creator god, it is solely and only because
god allows evil.
I. If evil exists solely because of personal
choices of god, god then is not as defined,
omnibenevolent.
J. Man and any other sentient being in such a
Universe cannot have any free will, not even
in principle. A Universe with a god that
creates all and knows all precludes free will
for all beings god creates in the strongest
possible manner.
The Grand God of Grand
Theology is thus self destroying, it is
incoherent and contradictory as a theory
and such a god is impossible.
THE SITUATION SO FAR.
1. A minimalistic class of gods is defined, this
Grand God has been defined here with as few
terms as possible.
2. The problem of evil dooms such a claimed god.
3. The attempted defense, free will is fatally
flawed. God's good nature and free will doom
claims free will makes evil necessary for man
to have free will.
4. Omniscience and creatorhood of god further
doom claims of god's omnibenevolence and
man's free will free will cannot exist for
man. All evil is the direct and knowing
creation of god contradicting claims of
omnibenevolence.
5. Since Free will for man is totally impossible,
free will cannot be a good quality, much less
necessary.
Here, the Grand God of Grand Theology has
collapsed. As has Grand Theology. As pointed out,
this destroys the claims and viability of an
entire class of possible gods, all secondary and
tertiary claims for such a god of this class also
fail, as do dogmas or secondary or tertiary
claims.
If a these Grand Gods cannot exist as defined,
specific gods cannot, nor can claims such as this
or that Grand God sent this or that revelation to
man or some prophet or did this or that.
God is thus disproven and is utter irrelevant
to anything real and existant.
***********
Don Kresch
No, it's perfect sense.
>
>> Now try to provide the evidence for god, and provide the
>> coherent, specific, objective, concrete, non self-contradictory, non
>> fallacy-laden definition of god.
>
>Can you provide such evidence for the existance of Don Kresh?
So you can't provide the evidence for god, nor can you provide
the coherent, specific, objective, concrete, non self-contradictory,
non fallacy-laden definition of god, and you're just bluffing and
blustering to avoid admitting it. Gotcha.
Notice that your red herring will languish.
Don
---
aa #51, Knight of BAAWA, DNRC o-, Member of the [H]orde
Atheist Minister for St. Dogbert.
"No being is so important that he can usurp the rights of another"
Picard to Data/Graves "The Schizoid Man"
wbarwell
>
> wbarwell wrote:
>> Kurt Nicklas wrote:
>>
>> >
>> > quibbler wrote:
>> >> In article <1147045857.3...@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
>> >> kurtn...@aport2000.ru says...
>> >>
>> >> > Absence of noncontradictory evidence does not imply that such
>> >> > evidence does not exist, Billy.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> It doesn't absolutely guarantee it, but it is evidence of
>> >> absence according to standard abductive and inductive logical
>> >> procedures. Just as the original example showed, if you find no butter
>> >> in the icebox
>> >> that is evidence that butter does not exist in there. Now a
>> >> theologian would counter that there could still be an invisible,
>> >> undetectable essence of butter in the refrigerator, but no scientist
>> >> takes such
>> >> metaphysical nonsense seriously. In any event, the scientific
>> >> standard is that evidence is required to overcome the null hypothesis
>> >> and therefore, in the absence of evidence we are left with the null
>> >> hypothesis that there is no butter, or god, for that matter.
>> >
>> > The universe is not a refrigerator.
>>
>> God is not a thing.
>> There is no evidence for god.
>> Only theological assertions.
>
> If you would actually engage arguments made to you by some of us who
> are not arguing for Christianity or one of the mythic religions, rather
> than simply respond with assertions and your stock argument (which
> really doesn't accomplish what you claim it does), you'd be more
> persuasive. As it looks, you seem to be arguing a faith yourself --
> you avoid the tough questions.
> -The Fool
You have no arguments. Only specious time wasting
non sequiturs.
I am not arguing for mythic religions, just showing that god as
defined as omni-everything and creator of all is impossible.
As a class of gods. Now it so happens most major religious traditions have
that as their basic giod. Which is why it is immportant as many of these
traditions use god in a bad and destructive manner. There are
likewise many minor and lessor theological traditions that also
have such a class of gods.
But you can ignore these traditions and take that class of gods as a
theoretical possibility divorced of all religious mythologies.
That does not change teh results any.
Again, you simply are not thinking about it at all.
You are instead, looking for any excuse, and that is all you and your type
have is, bad excuses, not to accept the conclusions of a simple set of
facts.
Ignore myths and traditions and nothing changes. I should not have to point
the obvious truth to tyou if yiou really cared about reason, rationality,
truth, facts and logic.
There are other classes of gods, easily debunkable in similar matter. But
we never get to those because teh small handful of brain-locked kooks so
far encountered in this thread can't handle simple debunking No. 1,
the class of omni-everything, creator gods.
You guys can't handle anything.
The only ones with assertions are the believers who lacking evidence
substitutre assertions instead. Thge contradictions generated show this
class of gods is impossible, but to do so takes simple logic and rationality
which is turning out to be a rather rare commodity.
Gandalf lacks it, so do you.
Kurt Niklaus only rants.
He hasn't dirt.
McMartin keeps repeating his mantra philosophers have
have arguments for god, ignoring all are bad and debunked,
challenged to show a working proof he wearily creaks out his tiresome
mantra.
Your nym, the fool is most appropriate.
Four idiots here who will not think and cannot think and
show us why god is a popular error.
Thinking is rare.
wbarwell
> On Tue, 09 May 2006 08:56:36 -0500, wbarwell <wbar...@mylinuxisp.com>
> wrote:
>
>
>>But we have a domain where people have been seaching for 2600
>>years since Greek philosophers started the search in earnest.
>>And no evidence has been found, and that must be explained.
>>
>>We have several possibilities, one of which is, that thing does
>>not exist.
>>
>>And if there is no evidence, the theist should be honest enough
>>to admit that there is no evidence and note that there very well
>>can't be because god does not exist.
>
> I'd prefer they admitted it was on their faith, acknowledged that this
> is subjective not objective, and didn't expect us to take their word
> for it merely on their faith.
The problem is mere faith is debunkable.
Its not like it exists apart from logic, facts, truth, reason.
The problem is, what to do when mere faith is debunked.
When facts, logic and reason show faith is wrong and false.
The last thing the religious true believer will do is accept truth, facts,
reason or logic.
All are abandoned with out cares, regrets or concern.
There are two major kinds of of people in this world.
Those who will abandon logic and rationality and those who will
not even if it causes them to have to drop ideas they love.
Those who will abandon logic and facts at th edrop of a hat, are despicable
and untrustworthy. They can be manipluated to do anything, no idea
is so stupid it cannot be supported past all reason. This is where we get
religious fanatics, fascists, Nazis, Stalinists, Marxists, pseudoscientists,
cults, racists, quacks and other fools that have helped create mass human
misery over the ages. This is where we get pogroms, religious wars,
inquisitions, crusades, bigotries and other insanity.
wbarwell
> In article <125vn2s...@corp.supernews.com>, wbar...@mylinuxisp.com
> says...
>
>>
>> John Bell's inequality theorum was disproven showing that hidden
>> variables cannot account for quantum physics' apparent lack of cause and
>> effect on the quantum scale. This allows for "spooky action at a
>> distance" for
>> example. The quantum world is thus not strictly determinstic at the
>> cause
>> and effect level. and you can't explain it with hidden variables.
>>
>> So it is not deterministic in the strong sense of that word.
>
> Yes, in a strong sense it's not deterministic. But in a fairly complex,
> de facto sense it is still determined. It generates causes and produces
> effects, even if the original causes are not predictable.
>
>
>
It breaks the chain of strong cause and effect and thus strong
determinism.
Laplace's demon becomes inpossible because you cannot derive perfect
understanding of the state of the Universe at a future time understanding
the state of the Universe now.
We may know the sun will come up tomorrow but we cannot know even in
principle the state and location of every particle making up the sun.
We cannot say when a given radioactive atom will spontaneously
disintergrate. And more.
Free will in the sense of a Universe where strong determinism is ruled
out as then is any sort of Laplacian demon, is in the final analysis, what
we have.
This does not mean determinism is dead, but it is not the sort of
determinism that forbids free will in the strong sense.
Epicurus introduced the concept of swerving atoms to try
to perserve free will in an atomicists' Universe of moving atoms.
I am sure he would have been delighted to see how quantum
physics turned out.
wbarwell
Its a dead end as ancient radical Greek Sceptics showed us.
wbarwell
Maybeism is a bad way if you can disconfirm something and refuse to do so.
Blind faith that won't take no for an answer in face of disconfireming facts
and logic gives us monsters like inquistions, heresy hunts, religious wars,
dogmatic Marxist-Leninists, fascists, racists, and other scum chasing
disproven maybes.
wbarwell
>
> Ron Baker, Pluralitas! wrote:
>> Replying through my post because your post didn't show
>> on my main reader:
>>
>> "Dianelos Georgoudis" <diane...@tecapro.com> wrote in message
>
>> > Because, from the materialistic point of view, consciousness appears to
>> > be completely superfluous. That's why some materialist thinkers go as
>> > far as to claim that consciousness does not exist, or does not really
>> > exist and is only an illusion. See:
>> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliminative_materialism
>>
>> So you cite something that says the consciousness doesn't
>> exist to support your view that it is unconnected to the
>> physical?
>> OK. I'll agree that if consciousness doesn't exit then
>> it is not connected to the physical.
>
> Again: From the *materialist* point of view consciousness appears to be
> completely superfluous. There is no objective evidence that it exists.
We all experience it directly and personally.
I cannot believe you said something this stupid.
> It's not objectively observable. It's not required as a hypothesis for
> explaining anything that is objectively observable. Therefore the
> (strict) materialist is moved to conclude that consciousness does not
> really exist. But it does, as you and I know. And as according to
> materialism only what is objectively observable or is used to explain
> what is objectively observable can be called "physical" the
> existence of consciousness implies that it is not a physical thing.
>
> [snip]
>> > Everything that is physical is either objectively observable, or else
>> > is posited for explaining something that is objectively observable. (If
>> > you don't agree with this, can you suggest a counterexample?) Some
>> > examples: Apples and lightning are physical because they are
>> > objectively observable. Gravitational forces are physical because they
>> > explain the falling of apples, and electrons are physical because they
>> > explain lightning. Now let's consider consciousness. It's not
>> > objectively observable and, significantly, it's not useful for
>> > explaining anything that is objectively necessary. Therefore it can't
>> > be physical.
>>
>> Nonsense. Consciousness is observable.
>> Ask any doctor or anesthesiologist.
>
> Here you are not speaking about consciousness but about wakefulness.
> It's true that we often use "conscious" as synonymous to "awake", but
> this is not the sense "conscious" is used in the philosophy of mind.
>
>> > > And welcome back. So did you theists all agree on one theology yet?
>> >
>> >
>> > Not really. The closest we have come to agreeing is that "God is the
>> > perfect being",
>>
>> No you haven't. For one thing not all theists believe
>> in God.
>
> See: http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/theism
>
>> > and therefore perfect in goodness, perfect in beauty, perfect in power,
>> > perfect in knowledge, and so on.
>>
>> Equivocation. Theists will define 'perfect' to mean
>> different things.
>
> It's easy to define "perfect": That which has no defects, or that which
> nothing better is conceivable.
>
>> > By the way, have you materialists agreed on one description of physical
>> > reality yet? Last time I looked some of you claimed that physical
>> > reality is deterministic and some that it is certainly not, some that
>> > it consists of one physical universe and some that it consists of a
>> > furiously growing number of parallel universes, some argue that the
>> > universe is a two-dimensional hologram and its three-dimensional
>> > appearence is only a sophisticated illusion created by our brain, some
>> > point out that the Matrix is possible, some argue that there is a good
>> > possibility that we all live in a computer simulation and that nothing
>> > we see is actually real (see: www.simulation-argument.com), and some
>> > agree with Kant that we cannot know anything about the external reality
>> > except that it exists. What makes this disagreement truly remarkable is
>> > that at the same time materialists claim that theirs is an *objective*
>> > field :-)
>>
>> Straw men.
>>
>> >
>> > Materialists also beat theists in the "way too fantastic to believe"
>> > category. Nothing concocted by a religious mind comes even close to the
>> > really and truly fantastic many-worlds interpretation of quantum
>> > mechanics. So much for materialism being down to earth.
>>
>> Straw man.
>
> Materialism is having a very hard time explaining the most fundamental
> fact of all: that we are conscious beings. Even in relation to its
> natural subject matter the fact is that different materialists are
> suggesting increasingly disparate (and fantastic) descriptions of the
> basic properties of physical reality. Materialists eternally argue
> between themselves about what objectively exists and does not only
> exist as a mental concept (for example: do gravitational force fields
> objectively exist?) - evidencing that materialism does not offer any
> objective means for deciding between the two. For all these reasons
> materialism is found today to be very shaky as a discipline of thought.
> You can choose to face up to this fact or you can choose not to - but a
> freethinker certainly would. You seem to be convinced that materialism
> is very solid, but holding on to one's convictions and refusing to face
> up to the facts that contradict them is what makes mythologies
> possible.
--
The Fool
wbarwell wrote:
> The Fool wrote:
>
> > If you would actually engage arguments made to you by some of us who
> > are not arguing for Christianity or one of the mythic religions, rather
> > than simply respond with assertions and your stock argument (which
> > really doesn't accomplish what you claim it does), you'd be more
> > persuasive. As it looks, you seem to be arguing a faith yourself --
> > you avoid the tough questions.
> > -The Fool
>
> You have no arguments. Only specious time wasting
> non sequiturs.
You lie. I've posted challenges to you involving how you deal with
fideism, the nature of space-time as an entity created at the big bang,
and that one can not in principle privilege impersonal forces over
consciousness as a fundamental attribute of what moves the universe.
You ignore most of these, and then hide behind silly assertions like
that above or stock answers.
That is very weak, and while I'll still buy your book, I suspect it
won't have much clout if you're unwilling to take on the tough issues.
> I am not arguing for mythic religions, just showing that god as
> defined as omni-everything and creator of all is impossible.
Those terms are meaningless. What do you mean by omni-everything? Are
you assuming particular agreed upon definitions of "good" and "evil"
when these may just be social constructs? Your arguments only show
particular gods based on particular notions of reason and definitions
of terms aren't possible. Granted, that throws out many mythic
religions (though it still can't touch fideistic Christian belief), but
as some grand sweeping argument, well, that it aint.
> As a class of gods. Now it so happens most major religious traditions have
> that as their basic giod. Which is why it is immportant as many of these
> traditions use god in a bad and destructive manner. There are
> likewise many minor and lessor theological traditions that also
> have such a class of gods.
I agree completely about the abuse of religion, you won't find many
people more opposed to organized religious belief than I am. What I
object to is that you seem to have gone from a justifiable desire to
show the idiocy of particular religious beliefs to an overstated claim
about proving 'classes' of gods impossible. You push it too far, and
when challenged you seem to be dogmatic. Agreeing that your argument
can't capture everything, allows the fideists to hold their beliefs
without having been debunked, and keeps open spiritual conceptions of
god as a term given to a conscious force of the universe wouldn't be
giving in to the religious fascists.
> But you can ignore these traditions and take that class of gods as a
> theoretical possibility divorced of all religious mythologies.
> That does not change teh results any.
>
> Again, you simply are not thinking about it at all.
Statements like that are particularly telling. Clearly I am thinking
about it -- I've been posting about modern physics, the issues
invovled, fideism, etc. When you make a statement that someone
disagrees with you is "not thinking about it at all," that brings to
mind Shakespeare's "Methinks thou doth protest too much." You lash out
like that in a way that looks defensive, like you know I've found a
weakness in your argument, and rather than face it squarely you want to
simply attack and distract. Those are the tactics of the right wing,
not of free, rational thinkers.
> You are instead, looking for any excuse, and that is all you and your type
> have is, bad excuses, not to accept the conclusions of a simple set of
> facts.
Why do you say that? How do you define a "fact"? Your statement is a
vague mix of insult and assertion, with no support.
> Ignore myths and traditions and nothing changes. I should not have to point
> the obvious truth to tyou if yiou really cared about reason, rationality,
> truth, facts and logic.
Again, the attempt to say someone who disagrees doesn't care about
reason looks defensive and even pathetically desparate. You know I
(and Gandalf) have shown real flaws in your argument. You seem too
wedded to it to accept that, gee, you aren't perfect, you haven't come
up with the perfect argument that disproves God, you haven't achieved
this great goal, and you need to think through things more. You are in
love with your own argument, and that blinds you.
> There are other classes of gods, easily debunkable in similar matter. But
> we never get to those because teh small handful of brain-locked kooks so
> far encountered in this thread can't handle simple debunking No. 1,
> the class of omni-everything, creator gods.
So you believe.
> You guys can't handle anything.
What "you guys?" Anyone that questions you is in a category of people
who can't think, eh?
> The only ones with assertions are the believers who lacking evidence
> substitutre assertions instead. Thge contradictions generated show this
> class of gods is impossible, but to do so takes simple logic and rationality
> which is turning out to be a rather rare commodity.
You are being repetitive with your assertions. You seem to have a
jihadist mentality here of two sides in competition. I'm not on the
side of religious folk, I'm arguing philosophical and scientific issues
in a manner designed to simply critique an argument which I find weak
in spots. You seem to take that as a call to arms -- how dare I
question your argument! You have the answer! You are perfect! You've
proven this, and anyone who doubts you simply "can't think." Sheesh.
> Gandalf lacks it, so do you.
> Kurt Niklaus only rants.
> He hasn't dirt.
> McMartin keeps repeating his mantra philosophers have
> have arguments for god, ignoring all are bad and debunked,
> challenged to show a working proof he wearily creaks out his tiresome
> mantra.
>
> Your nym, the fool is most appropriate.
*chuckle* Yet you don't even try to handle my posts. You don't
respond. You repost assertions. I think you don't want to admit to
yourself that, gee, this great argument you thought up isn't perfect.
Reality bites.
> Four idiots here who will not think and cannot think and
> show us why god is a popular error.
> Thinking is rare.
And you show little of it. You don't respond to substance, you just go
off on a rant against a post that points out you don't respond to
substance. Oh well, you have your faith, the theists have theirs, and
those of us who want to think logically and openly about all
possibilities have to shake our heads and chuckle.
-The Fool
http://faculty.umf.maine.edu/~erb/blog.htm
Gandalf Grey
Neither do you. All anyone has gotten from you so far is dogma.
Gandalf Grey
"The Fool" <sn...@adelphia.net> wrote in message
news:1147230404....@v46g2000cwv.googlegroups.com...
>
> wbarwell wrote:
>> The Fool wrote:
>>
>
>> > If you would actually engage arguments made to you by some of us who
>> > are not arguing for Christianity or one of the mythic religions, rather
>> > than simply respond with assertions and your stock argument (which
>> > really doesn't accomplish what you claim it does), you'd be more
>> > persuasive. As it looks, you seem to be arguing a faith yourself --
>> > you avoid the tough questions.
>> > -The Fool
>>
>> You have no arguments. Only specious time wasting
>> non sequiturs.
>
> You lie. I've posted challenges to you involving how you deal with
> fideism, the nature of space-time as an entity created at the big bang,
> and that one can not in principle privilege impersonal forces over
> consciousness as a fundamental attribute of what moves the universe.
> You ignore most of these, and then hide behind silly assertions like
> that above or stock answers.
>
> That is very weak, and while I'll still buy your book, I suspect it
> won't have much clout if you're unwilling to take on the tough issues.
I suspect it will end up being more of a brochure...the kind you find
sitting under your plate at the local dinner, or stuck under your windshield
wiper.
Gandalf Grey
Remakable self-diagnosis, Dr.
>
> Again, can you show me any hard, good evidence for god's existance?
No. And you can't show him any hard, good evidence against god's existence.
wbarwell
>
> wbarwell wrote:
>> The Fool wrote:
>>
>
>> > If you would actually engage arguments made to you by some of us who
>> > are not arguing for Christianity or one of the mythic religions, rather
>> > than simply respond with assertions and your stock argument (which
>> > really doesn't accomplish what you claim it does), you'd be more
>> > persuasive. As it looks, you seem to be arguing a faith yourself --
>> > you avoid the tough questions.
>> > -The Fool
>>
>> You have no arguments. Only specious time wasting
>> non sequiturs.
>
> You lie. I've posted challenges to you involving how you deal with
> fideism, the nature of space-time as an entity created at the big bang,
> and that one can not in principle privilege impersonal forces over
> consciousness as a fundamental attribute of what moves the universe.
> You ignore most of these, and then hide behind silly assertions like
> that above or stock answers.
Again, stuff like this is superflous and irrelevant.
1. Is there evidence for god? No.
2. Are there assertions made about god? Yes.
3. A well chosen and surprisingly small subset of
assertions about god easily make it possible
to show god cannot exist by virtue of contradictions
these assertions create ruling out god's possible existance.
4. Explaining 1.
This stands alone. Whatever you say about the Universe that remains is
exactly and totally irrelevant to the fact that an entire class of gods is
easily ruled out by simple logical examination of claims made about god.
Since the entire class of creator, omni-everything gods is ruled out as
impossible by virtue of the fact that fopundational, basic, underlying
assertions made about this sort of god generate contradictions,
it all becomes utterly moot and irrelevant to speak of such gods, as a class
or as a specific god belonging to that class.
If you wish to babble about anything else, fine, it does not and never will
have anything to do with the question at hand, "Does god exist?".
Yarbling on abount conciousness or leperchauns, or how the
universe began or if there are fairies at the bottom of the garden
are all royally and magificently irrelevant to the question, "Can a god
exist?".
God as an entire class is readily and easily debunked.
Person A: If X =/= Y then X is not Y.
Person B. But buffloes are brown so you must be wrong.
Whatever you are babbling about is equivalent of "Buffaloes are brown".
Irrelevant, pointless, stupid. Amazingly, you are not capable
of seeing the simple point even if one grinds it in your face at tedious
length.
A god that cannot exist is pointless in discussing anything in the
entire Universe. If you cannot see why, you are in way over your little
head.
> That is very weak, and while I'll still buy your book, I suspect it
> won't have much clout if you're unwilling to take on the tough issues.
>
There is nothing weak in not being dragged into pointless 'debate'
over total irrelevancies.
If you want to discuss conciousness, brane theory, time or
unicorns, fine, but not with me as I am not interested. The
fact is the class of creator gods that cannot exist logically speaking
have no part in any other discussion.
You cannot save such a doomed class of gods by talking
about anything else such as conciousness.
All you can do is note things that theology blames on god
or claims god creates or does and note it cannot be so since god
as defined is impossible.
If creator gods who are omni-everything cannot exist, specific
gods who are creator omni-everything gods
cannot exist.
Secondary claims, god is simple, god is necessary, god is
trancedent or god is imminent are now all pointless.
Tertiary claims, Jesus is son of god, or Mohammed is prophet
of god are no longer viable.
The Eurythro paradox is moot.
Conciousness has nothing to do with god, nor free will, nor
anything you can imagine.
>> I am not arguing for mythic religions, just showing that god as
>> defined as omni-everything and creator of all is impossible.
>
> Those terms are meaningless. What do you mean by omni-everything?
Idiot. What have millenia of theolgians meant by that?
Have you ever read Aquinas Summa Contra Gentiles?
Here Aquinas assembles every proof of god he can find or
create. The ancient claim is, god is perfect. Which goes
back to earlier theologians such as Augustine.
Perfect means lacking nothing and all postive qualities and
attributes are derivibale from god's supposed perfection, even
if we cannot think of it.
Ansl;em systematically claims fior god teh maximum possible prefcetion in
all thgings, ggodness, poweer, wisdom, mercy, he is that that is so great
nothing greater can be thought of.
Obviously here, you know zip, nada, zilch about the extremely expansive
claims made for god by millenia of theologians.
I am not going to teach you the huge, massive, long wearisome
teachings of theology over 1900 years either.
Go read some of it yourself.
What do "I" mean? I point to all the teachings of theology over 1900 years
which has been attemnpting to maximize claims of god to any extreme that
theology has been able to imagine.
Aqunias SCG
That God is Universal Perfection
AS all perfection and nobility is in a thing inasmuch as the thing is, so
every defect is in a thing inasmuch as the thing in some manner is not. As
then God has being in its totality, so not-being is totally removed from
Him, because the measure in which a thing has being is the measure of its
removal from not-being. Therefore all defect is absent from God: He is
therefore universal perfection.
2. Everything imperfect must proceed from something perfect: therefore the
First Being must be most perfect.
From perfection you get anything you can think of.
Rather than angrily making ignorant statements, go find out from the source.
Do I have to write a 1000 page book of source documents over 2600 years of
philsophy and theology to hold a small debate with deeply ignorant, angry,
ranting know-nothings?
So I can show where all of this comes from? The idea of god's perfection
goes back to Empedolcles and Xenophanes. No, I am not going to tell you
more, you are an angry waste oif time who cannot handle what yiou have
already to consider. No use giving you more stuff to angrily confuse
yourself with irrelevantly.
Looks like but then you all would not read it and if you did understand
nothing of it because you will not stop, slow down, and think carefully.
> Are
> you assuming particular agreed upon definitions of "good" and "evil"
> when these may just be social constructs?
Theology tells us that good and evil are not our constructs. God's
omniscience and creatorhood shows us all evil, if there is evil is
struictly god's doing no matter how you define it since we can have no free
will in princiople.
I don't need to define it, simply note theology claims there is good and
evil and god is concerned with it.
Really, why do you work so hard to be so wriong about so much?
Why do you insist on making the simple hard for yourself?
If there is no possible free will which I prove, evil and punishment for
evil is a rather stupid idea no matter whose idea of evil is used,
Christian, Moslem, other.
> Your arguments only show
> particular gods based on particular notions of reason and definitions
> of terms aren't possible. Granted, that throws out many mythic
> religions (though it still can't touch fideistic Christian belief), but
> as some grand sweeping argument, well, that it aint.
>
Again I show that an entire class of gods, creator, omni-everything gods
cannot exist. That class includes all specific instances of same.
You simply will not think, will you?
If you use your brains, its not hard.
Its hard for you because you refuse to slow down and use
logic and simple rational thinking about small simple subjects.
So you go around and around is useless circles angrily clucking.
I tried to make it simple to read and understand but those who will not
think can defeat even the simplest laid out debate with irrelevant
nonsense.
>> As a class of gods. Now it so happens most major religious traditions
>> have
>> that as their basic giod. Which is why it is immportant as many of these
>> traditions use god in a bad and destructive manner. There are
>> likewise many minor and lessor theological traditions that also
>> have such a class of gods.
>
> I agree completely about the abuse of religion, you won't find many
> people more opposed to organized religious belief than I am. What I
> object to is that you seem to have gone from a justifiable desire to
> show the idiocy of particular religious beliefs to an overstated claim
> about proving 'classes' of gods impossible.
You simply can't get your head out of your butt, can you?
It is a simple technical argument. God has no evidence.
God has assertions. By chosing a few simple assertions, I can show
that the entire class of possible omni-everything, creator gods is
impossible.
This is above and beyond whether I care about god, like god, dislike god,
religion, theology or any possible consideration.
My wishes, proclivities, desires, or anything else play no part in the fact
that this is a simple proof that that entire class of gods is logically
impossible. There is no evidence for gods. This is a fact. My proof
shows us why that is and must be answerring the question, where is
evidence for god?
All else is secondary from here.
Whether anybody likes it or not.
> You push it too far, and
> when challenged you seem to be dogmatic. Agreeing that your argument
> can't capture everything, allows the fideists to hold their beliefs
> without having been debunked, and keeps open spiritual conceptions of
> god as a term given to a conscious force of the universe wouldn't be
> giving in to the religious fascists.
You won't think and you don't like being made to think.
I repeat the truth and that makes you angry for some stupid reason.
You repeat irrelevancies and get angry when I ignore them because they are
utterly and totally irrelevant to the simple fact tghat my proof logically
debunks that entire class of gods and shows us why we shoudl expect no
evidence for god despiute 2600 years of babblaing about existance of god.
You are privledged to see a definitive answer to long debated issues.
But the wise man points to the moon and the fool only stares dully at the
wise man's finger.
I can't help you out of your self induced puzzlement.
You simply are not ready for this is all.
Gandalf Grey
That's only an assertion.
An assertion isn't proof.
> 2. There are only assertions.
Another assertion.
> 3. Assertions made for the class of gods that are
> omni-everything and creator of all create impossible
> contradictions.
Another assertion.
> 4. Thus god logically cannot exist.
Non-sequitur.
> 5. 4 thus explains 1.
>
>
> Do me a favor and attach this to every post from you in this
> thread henceforth saving me the trouble to do so.
Why? You seem to show such manic glee in attaching it yourself. You should
open a mission and force the downandouters to listen to simplistic pseudo
logic before feeding them.
Gandalf Grey
> The Fool wrote:
>
>>
>> wbarwell wrote:
>>> The Fool wrote:
>>>
>>
>>> > If you would actually engage arguments made to you by some of us who
>>> > are not arguing for Christianity or one of the mythic religions,
>>> > rather
>>> > than simply respond with assertions and your stock argument (which
>>> > really doesn't accomplish what you claim it does), you'd be more
>>> > persuasive. As it looks, you seem to be arguing a faith yourself --
>>> > you avoid the tough questions.
>>> > -The Fool
>>>
>>> You have no arguments. Only specious time wasting
>>> non sequiturs.
>>
>> You lie. I've posted challenges to you involving how you deal with
>> fideism, the nature of space-time as an entity created at the big bang,
>> and that one can not in principle privilege impersonal forces over
>> consciousness as a fundamental attribute of what moves the universe.
>> You ignore most of these, and then hide behind silly assertions like
>> that above or stock answers.
>
> Again, stuff like this is superflous and irrelevant.
Dismissive rhetoric. You were quite correct when you said you were
polishing up your rhetoric. It's all you've got, Barwell. You're almost
wholly lacking in logical ability.
>
> 1. Is there evidence for god? No.
Correct.
> 2. Are there assertions made about god? Yes.
Correct.
> 3. A well chosen and surprisingly small subset of
> assertions about god easily make it possible
> to show god cannot exist by virtue of contradictions
> these assertions create ruling out god's possible existance.
Unfortunately, you haven't accomplished that.
> 4. Explaining 1.
Actually, just standing as a failure in logical argument.
>
> This stands alone.
What stands alone? All you've done is draw up a list of assertions that
don't follow from one another and called it a proof?
> I can't help you out of your self induced puzzlement.
> You simply are not ready for this is all.
Talk about irony!