Bosun

Right you are. Bertrand Russell said it too. (paraphrasing) "To say that a phenomenon violates the laws of physics is impossible. The most that can be said that the law governing the phenomenon has not yet been discovered."

Also Kat, my beliefs are only beliefs and I fully appreciate that just because I believe something doesn't make it so. Therefore, my beliefs do not rise to the level of a theory which is something that may be tested and falsified.

Nathan:

I do not fault you for folding your cards based on your level of rationality. I prefer to check. It seems to me that your dogmatism about who is right and who is wrong is just as irrational as any hell-fire preacher calling his flock to salvation. Is it just a tiny bit possible that you may be wrong? Are you really sure there is no creator of all we see?

As Voltaire said, "Doubt is not a pleasant condition but certainty is absurd"

Bosun

njhartsh

You're correct that long life is not fundamentally at the base of what makes claims more or less extraordinary, but it's an awfully convenient shorthand. In the modern world, any piece of "longstanding, long-accepted science" goes through constant tests and experimentation that could, in theory, show it to be wrong. A "longstanding, long-accepted" theory therefore has a pile of data supporting it that extends up to the sky. Surely that should be immovable by Copperfield merely claiming that he can levitate.

One can indeed argue that the heliocentric-universe claim was extraordinary at the time it was proposed. It appeared to contradict a significant amount of evidence of geocentrism.

But on our terms, Galileo's observations were emphatically not "simple." They constituted unquestionable (and reproducible!) evidence that directly contradicted the geocentric model. Kepler and Newton then put the latter out of its misery.

Copperfield hovering six inches off the floor (while Randi watches, aghast) would be "simple" in an informal sense, too--but that's extraordinary evidence nonetheless.

No--scientific data. Though I suppose you're somewhat close.

Oh, please. Find me someone who would draw the Copperfield levitates-vs.-Copperfield jumps dichotomy in the other direction.

Extraordinariness is a mere comparison of an empirical assertion to the set of scientific knowledge that we have, to date, been able to substantiate with a large amount of data. You are correct; it is trivially true that as the amount of data available to humanity grows, the set of "ordinary" claims grows. So what?


I agree with you that nailing down a definition of "god" is an important early step in any argument between atheists and theists. I think most people on this discussion board, however, understand the word "god" to mean a supernatural being with certain omni-attributes, such as omnipotence and omniscience. Bosun, like many theists, claims that his god-idea created the Universe.

But there is no data that I am aware of (and Bosun has provided none--his references to, e.g., "the fact that our universe is orderly and follows discoverable laws of interaction" are self-refuting) that are explained by any such god hypothesis but unexplained by a non-god hypothesis.

Ergo gods are extraordinary claims. Bosun's evidence, like all evidence the atheists here have ever seen from theists, is at best extremely ordinary. If reason matters, that's not good enough.

- Nathan

Kat_Somm_Faen

And here we are:

Bosun has an opinion. A belief. A subjective notion about something. It is like preference.

De gustibus non est disputandum.

Why does he chose to believe? By his own admission, he simply chooses not out of rational thought but out of belief.

It is like this - "I like the color blue." There is no rational reason or basis and this belief/opinion can not be rationally proved or disproved. It is in fact irrational. We can spend countless hours discussing but it is futile.

That is why I asked him for a definition. And we have reached a barrier - why waste logic and resoning on something that does not depend on it? It is irrational and I will leave it at that.

At least he accepts the possiblity that he is wrong but he simply does not care. It is a choice he made and he is not swayed by the fact it is an irracional choice.

BTW I do not say irracional as an insultive term - simply as something outside of being explainable by reason.

Bosun

But ... [And this is a big but ] my belief is informed by reason. And a lifetime of wrestling with these questions. I am a rational person and my rationality causes me to reject theism, and ahteism as well.

Question: Does the true atheist say, "There is no god", or does s/he say, "I believe there is no god."?

Which statement is the more rational?

Bosun

njhartsh

About what? The content of Occam's Razor? The definition of "extraordinary evidence"? The fact that your design argument is self-refuting? All of those statements are provable by definition--so, no. It's not possible.

Of course, you are laboring under a notable misconception of what I have and have not claimed:
When, pray tell, have I ever said that "there is no creator"? All I've done is show the irrationality of your positive claim that there is one. Might you have entered into a debate on an atheists' forum without even knowing what atheism is? (Added: Yup--see next post.)

Doubt? In this discussion, that's I, not you. I haven't expressed an ounce of certainty in my responses to you that isn't derived directly from axiomatic philosophical terms of art (the Razor, "extraordinary," etc.).

You have alleged that the deist god exists. I have demonstrated that your arguments, under the tests of reason, do not support that allegation. The point of the Socrates quote is that your belief is therefore irrational and unwarranted--that "I don't know," not "I believe," is the rational choice.

- Nathan

njhartsh

<Sigh.>

Neither. At least not necessarily.

I am continually befuddled at the number of people who come here to debate atheists without even learning what "atheism" means.

Please, Bosun--look us up.

- Nathan

njhartsh

Bosun appears to disagree with this statement, but I don't.

And that's fine. A belief's a belief, and civil rights are civil rights. Irrational beliefs are no less protected by the freedom of conscience than rational ones are. I'm just calling a shovel a shovel.

I think that's an important point to make. I in fact would argue that irrational beliefs about the objective state of the universe are morally objectionable in a way that reports of subjective mental states (e.g., "I like the color blue") are not, but I agree that the two categories share an external status with regard to reason.

- Nathan

Bosun

These are expressions of certainty. Not expressions of doubt. Why is it that you have misread what I have been saying and that Kat has it right? Do you feel threatened by what I say?

You have imagined that you have demonstrated that my arguments, under the tests of reason, do not support that allegation. But by my lights the demonstration has failed.

I think the answer lies in the possibility that your beliefs are right for you and that mine are right for me and that there is no imperically objective belief that is right for everyone. This idea is not confined to metaphysics but exists in the physics as well.

In an essay on fundamentalism, John Maclachlan Gray wrote:

"Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against belief. Even the atheist is a believer, being unable to conclusively prove his position; even the scientific method becomes a form of belief when it gets into quantum mechanics and string theory. Face it, we live in a universe that is either finite or infinite or both (depending upon which astrophysicist you talk to) -- only, all three alternatives are inconceivable to the human mind. As we dangle between impossibilities, belief becomes unavoidable."

Actually, the main thrust of my original post (which you seem to have completely missed) is the evil that exists in trying to make ones own view of the universe, universal. Evangelism is my enemy, even atheistic evangelism. I have nothing agains anyones belief. Using the civil law or politics to impose those beliefs on everyone is my anathema. Or the idea that I'm right and you're worng when, in truth, we have no idea where the reality lies.

In the end, I think rational people will arrive at vastly different conclusions. You seem to feel that there is only one rational position, yours. I don't think so.

Bosun

copernicus

Shame on you, malookiemaloo! You have over 350 posts on this board, and you've never heard of the "God of the Gaps" argument? You aren't going to impress nonbelievers with that kind of nonsense. The problem with the Bible is that it records a great deal of ignorance about the natural world. Those people who have come under its influence have a long history of persecuting those who point out its flaws, which has not just included scientists. Yet Bible-inspired religion has retreated steadily in the face of advancing knowledge. All you are saying is that you refuse to recognize the trend.

Sure it has. God's revelation as corrected and deflated by scientific revelation.

Bosun

<sigh>

I know what atheism is.

Bosun