Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

Goliath,

To tell the truth I am hesitant to respond to your first post. We don't seem to be on the same wavelength or even discussing the same thing at all.

Your post seems to have a very combative tone which indicates that you think I am 'attacking' atheism or trying to redefine atheism as a faith. This is simply not the case.

If you read my follow up post that gives definitions for terms 'proof', 'faith' and 'evidence' you'd see that the original post equates 'faith' and 'belief'. This understanding may affect the way you would interpret the original post.


With this said there are three comments I wish to specifically respond to in your original post.


This is something that we are going to have to agree to disagree on. As of right now there is no 'proof' that universally convinces either people one way or the other. If there were...we sould all be theists or atheists.

Any proofs for/against God come down to subjective hot spots that the other side invariably disagrees about. Notice this is not the case with non subjective topics...like math.


I can prove to you beyond a shadow of a doubt that the two lines y=3x+2 and y=x+4 intersect.
Regardless of your worldview you could not refute this argument. I can provide unilateral proof that everyone in the world would agree on.

Again as of now...there does not exist a proof like the above concerning the existence of God.

I think reading the posts definitions of 'proof', 'faith' and 'evidence' would clear this issue up. As mentioned above the terms 'faith' and 'belief' are used interchangebly. That is if you have 'faith' that you won't win the lottery this week THEN you 'believe' you won't win the lottery this week even though you cannot prove it.


Before I progress I want to say that you can define yourself however you wish. It is your perogative. And frankly I don't wish to debate with you over the definition of the term 'atheism'. Your an athiest, feel free to define it as you wish. However...


From my perspective there is little difference between 'having no belief in God' and 'having no belief that God exists'. That is saying you 'have no Invisible Pink Unicorn belief' is equivalent to saying you 'don't believe Invisible Pink Unicorns exist'. If this is the case, 'having no belief in something' would not be noticably different than 'not believing in something'.


Again...I don't wish to argue semantics.

Thoughts and comments welcomed,


SOMMS

Jayhawker Soule

I would appreciate is if you would address the comments made by Clutch on the previous page.

HRG

The stance that there is no essential difference between "I don't believe that X" and "I believe that not-X" is easy to refute by the "Planets of Rigel"-Argument.

Let R0, R1, ... R19 be the statement "Rigel has exactly n planets" (n=0,1,...19), and R20 "Rigel has 20 or more planets".

The R_n form a complete dichotomy (i.e. they are mutually inconsistent and "R0 or R1 or .. R20" is tautologically true.

Since we don't know anything about planets of Rigel, for each n it is rational to say "I don't believe that Rigel has n planets" or "I don't believe R_n".

If SOMMS' stance is valid, then for each n it would be rational to say as well "I believe that not-R_n"; thus "I believe that not-R0 and not-R1 .. and not R20" would also be rational. But since Rigel has some number of planets, "not-R0 and not-R1 ... and not-R20" is a contradiction; and it can never be rational to believe a contradiction.

Thus we have seen that "I don't believe X" and "I believe that not-X" are not even "essentially" the same.

Regards,
HRG.

Goliath

SOMMS,

We are having a discussion about things related to the existence of a god, are we not?

No combative tone was intended. I always strive to say exactly what I mean: no more, no less.

I reject your definition of faith. Faith is belief that is not supported by evidence or proof. Faith is therefore not equivalent to belief.

Correct. However, this in no way, shape, or form proves that such a proof doesn't exist.

Unproven assertion.

Again, your definition of faith is incorrect, and again, faith is not equivalent to belief. I believe that the sun will rise tomorrow morning. Since there is a mountain of evidence on which to base this belief, no faith is required.

No faith is required, since I have never bought a lotto ticket.

Well, I'm not sure what "having a belief in a god" means...a belief as to what aspect, exactly? Of course, when we speak of "belief in a god," we usually mean belief in existence. However, "believing in a god" could mean believing that a particular god is benevolent, or prefers waffles over pancakes.

What I think you might be trying to say (correct me if I'm wrong) is that the statements "I don't believe that any gods exist" is equivalent to the statement "I believe that no gods exist." Since the latter statement involves making a claim--in particular, the claim that no gods exist--and the former statement makes no claim whatsoever regarding the existence of gods, any claim that the two statements are equivalent would be demonstrably incorrect.

Sincerely,

Goliath

luvluv

I don't want to divert the thread, but I think there is a significant difference between an invisible pink unicorn and God. Questions like "Why is there something instead of nothing?" generally generate a God hypothesis. There are certain fundemental questions for which there are currently no answers, and these generate a God hypothesis. I'm not aware of any set of circumstances which would cause us to have to appeal to the existence of an invisible pink unicorn or of a 200 foot vampire (you must have high ceilings in your office, K.). That's why the belief in God, at this point in time at least, is not equivalent to the existence of an invisible pink unicorn and the like.

K

luvluv:

I think the problem with that line of thinking is that it has been used incorrectly since ancient times. Whenever we saw something we couldn't explain, we credited that unknown to a god or gods. Now that we know what causes lightning, the seasons, and eclipses, some of those early gods look rather rediculous. It's funny that we somehow think our unknowns are so much more profound then the unknowns of our ancestors.

The funny thing about the vampire example is that originally vampires were used to explain the unexplainable. We now know that all of the phenomena associated with vampires can be explained by the natural decay of corpses and by known diseases. Vampires were simply another supernatural explanation for perfectly natural observations. By the way, my ceilings aren't that high, it's just that this 200 foot vampire can pass effortlessly through matter when it chooses to .

So, I guess I would say that simply not having an explanation for something does not make supposing the existence of a god any more sensible than supposing the existence of a vampire or the validity of astrology or any other supernatural explanation of the things we see in the natural world.

luvluv

Right, but existence itself is a much taller mountain to hike than lightning. I doubt very much that we'll ever have a purely naturalistic explanation for existence itself.

I tend to agree with SOMMS, that those who belittle the God of the Gaps argument do so because of their philosophical presuppositions. There is no proof which states that since we have discovered the cause of lightning, that we will discover the cause of existence. All Gaps are not equal, and there are some that may be beyond the reach of science. We can obtain an explanation of the mechanics of the universe in greater and greater detail and we'll still never know why it bothers to exist in the first place. Even Hawking said he has absolutely no answer to that question. It is my opinion that this question is probably unanswerable.

Let's assume for a minute that the question of the cause of existence proves to be unanswerable. Would it then be wrong to appeal to the God hypothesis to answer a question that science has no answer for?

Autonemesis

Yes it would. God is no answer. God is avoiding the question. Assuming "the God hypothesis" still begs the questions "Whence came God?" and "Why this God and not some other omnimax being?" Even if science cannot answer the question, assuming God only adds confusion.

Taffy Lewis

luvluv:

There are at least two further disanalogies involved.

No one honestly claims to experience the presence and activity of an invisible pink unicorn in their lives. However, God has purportedly been experienced by millions of people under varying conditions through most of recorded history in virtually every culture.

Also, it seems that the idea of an invisible, pink unicorn was invented specifically as a counter-example to theism. But in the case of theism, the concept of God was not "set up" to parallel some other concept or as a means of mocking the beliefs of some group of people. Thus, the concept of God does not seem contrived whereas the concept of an invisible, pink unicorn certainly seems to be.

K

luvluv:

I agree with Kind Bud. Assigning our the gaps in our understanding - however profound those gaps may be - buys nothing. It is exactly equivalent to assigning them to the IPU. It's a supernatural hypothesis that can't be tested, that provides no predictive utility, and that continually diminishes as we discover more and more of the natural universe. If a god, or vampire, or IPU created the universe, what does it matter? What possible benefit do we get from assigning the gaps to the gap god? It tells us nothing about the gaps and nothing about the god.