Goliath

Luvluv,

I hold no such belief. Keep stuffing that straw man!

Sincerely,

Goliath

Radcliffe Emerson

I don't have a problem with people holding beliefs there might be some kind of supreme being. My problem is no supreme being has ever intervened in human life or favored one race of people over another.
My problem is so-called sacred books like the bible which are just books and have pretty much been proven to be myth, and the organized religions around them all claiming to be the only one that is right.

daemon

[Keith Harwood:] They could deduce that there could exist chemical based life-forms that directly perceiver EM radiation. If that perception varies with frequency, such life-forms would experience colour.

[luvluv:] But they would have no more reason to believe such creatures exist as we do to believe that pink unicorns exist, and there is no reason why the supposition that a creature could directly detect EM radiation should ever come to them.

[daemon:] You're partly correct here. There is no reason to believe what could exist actually does without evidence. I would hesitate to draw a connection between the hypothetical creature and a pink unicorn, however--what a unicorn is is not as easily or clearly defined.

[luvluv:] Even if it did, that is still along distance from the recognition of a phenomenon called color, which they would still have no reason to believe in. It would just be hypothetical speculation, it would never rise to a belief unless they came into contact with sighted beings.

[daemon:] Okay. So what?

[luvluv:] This is the chauvinism to which I refered. Are you saying that we can detect anything that exists and anything we can't detect, while it may exist and may be surronding us, is irrelavent.

[daemon:] Sounds about right to me.

[luvluv:] Color, if the sightless beings could detect it, could effect them in as many ways as it effects us. Color does not fail to exist because they fail to perceive it, so why do the things that we cannot perceive necessarily fail to exist?

[daemon:] You're equivocating here. Something that we fail to detect is not the same as something we cannot detect. Things we are incapable of detecting might as well be nonexistent, as they are unable to effect or be effected by us.

[Keith Harwood:] If something can affect us in any way then that way provides us with a means of detection, so, yes, if something exists we can necessarily detect it.

[luvluv:] How can you say this? In the hypothetical sightless world, color does exist and yet the sightless intelligent beings cannot detect it. Besides that, radiation has always existed but we only discovered it's existence recently. Isn't it premature to declare, on the present status of human knowledge, that we can right now positively determine everything in the universe which exists and which doesn't exist?

[daemon:] So what? Radiation exists; we can detect it. You haven't done anything to undermine his point, here.

[luvluv:] There could be telepathic beings who wonder why we can't builda machine that could replicate their ability to directly perceive thoughts. Because lacking the sense we lack the ability to even conceive of such an apparatus.

[daemon:] Well, considering there is no evidence that thoughts can be detected at a distance by anyone but the thinker, there is no reason to pursue any avenue of inquiry on such apparatus. As soon as you actually know of some way, you be sure to tell someone, okay?

phlebas

luvluv,

I think you're getting confused with the difference between "what we can currently detect" and "what is detectable."

We cannot say with any seriousness that we can detect absolutely everything that exists. What we are saying is that everything that exists could potentially be detected.

If you are saying this god of yours has some attributes that can be detected and measured, then I'll just shrug and assume that you are guessing.

Something doesn't necessarily not exist because we have yet to find it. However, our not finding something is not evidence of its existence. The best we can say is "we have no data to support the god hypothesis" and move on to a more likely explanation.

If your god is tiny enough to fit in the gaps around what we don't currently know, then have at it. Every day makes that god a little smaller, though.

Koyaanisqatsi

Let us suppose that when fallacious arguments like this one are demonstrated to be invalid, the presenters of those arguments recognize they are incorrect and that their entire way of thinking is likewise incorrect and they finally discard their ludicrous beliefs like the used rubbers they really are.

Wouldn't the world be a better place?

Synaesthesia

Whether or not we conclude a thing exists has to be judged on it’s own merits. I don’t need to assume that I know everything to conclude that one theory is likely true and another is likely truly absurd.

I judge it very likely that I do not see all that exists. I can at the same time doubt that God exists because of the absence of evidence for this anthropocentric theory.

Regards,
Synathesia

luvluv

Well folks, thank you for a spirited debate. For the record, I was not trying to offer this little idea as a "proof of God", I was here merely being critical of what I see as a flaw in materialism (or perhaps, more specifically, empiricism, if there is such a term). So not, I am not, in any way, saying that because you cannot detect all that exists, then God must exist, I am saying that just because you cannot detect something's existence does not mean it doesn't exist.

"The flaw in your argument, IMO, is the correlation between "see" and "exist." "See" itself is just a human conceit; the rub is detection. Any intelligent being anywhere in the universe must IMO have the ability to detect that which is around it. therefore, an intelligent race could create (or have created for it) a machine capable of detecting electromagnetic waves of the "visible spectrum" and converting it into some sort of forum the being could directly detect"

Good point, W@L.

I think colors while they may not objectively exist to other beings without a sense of vision, they are relavent to our existence if we can percieve them and recognize the particular signals that they send out. A being who could not see colors would still be very much effected by color (and his lack of ability to discern them) if he came to a stop light. Color is not a totally subjective phenomenon, the ability to perceive color is a mechanism that better enables us to survive. So, I don't think we can say color does not exist or does not effect the sightless race of intelligent beings. But you folks would conceed that there are things that exist right now that we might not be able to perceive. That was my whole point about radiation; certainly it has always existed and it has always effected us, but we have only developed the technology to be able to see it very recently. Before that, if a peasant had come up to you with a magic rock that sends out invisible rays that makes everyone it touches sick, you might have said "Friend, science has proven that such a silly little rock could not possibly exist." My only point here is that it will be forever premature for humans to say that something does not exist because we can't prove it to exist. There may be hard limits to what the human being can prove, and there is no reason to assume that everything that exists is within those limits.

But again, this is merely a critique of your worldview, not anything offered in support of mine.

And God would not have to be imperfect to create beings which could not directly perceive Him. There is always the possibility that He did not want to be directly perceived.

rainbow walking

luvluv: But again, this is merely a critique of your worldview, not anything offered in support of mine.

rw: Why is it every time someone tries to sell snake oil and finds no buyers they end up dissin human nature or humanity instead of closely examining the oil?

luvluv: And God would not have to be imperfect to create beings which could not directly perceive Him. There is always the possibility that He did not want to be directly perceived.[/QB][/QUOTE]

rw: And there's always the possibility that he doesn't exist to be seen.

tronvillain

Writer@Large:
It would probably be more accurate to say that "pink" is a culturally agreed upon language label we use to describe our perception of a given range of wavelenths of electromagnetic radiation, in order to better our ability to communicate.

No, the portions of the electromagnetic spectrum labeled "microwave" and "radio" are not visible to humans. Also, while the label may be completely artibrary, what it labels is slightly less so, depending as it does upon our visual system.

Synaesthesia

Tronvillain,
Since the discovery of phenomenon such as color consistency, we now know that there are systematic differences between wavelength and our perception. It depends upon the contrasts, the size of our pupil, the chemical state of our brain and the wavelength. Several well known optical illusions can illustrate various facets of these phenomeonon.