Freethought & Rationalism Archive

thebeave · 12-01-2002, 06:40 AM

Part of the problem is that believers cannot pin down, even to themselves, any attributes to their god. How can you go about trying to find something when you don't even know what it is you should be looking for?

Clutch · 12-01-2002, 07:44 AM

TT, I and others recently covered some of the same ground <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=56&t=000365&p=" target="_blank">here</a>.

TerryTryon · 12-01-2002, 07:45 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Zadok001:
I believe it is fully impossible to disprove the existance of a deity. Regardless of how much evidence is lacking (sense not to the making I am), you can never prove the non-existance of an entity with 'infinite' power. This entity would obviously be capable of obscuring himself, and perhaps even his actions.

That is why I restricted myself to the God of Abraham (GoA)as he is supposed to operate in the Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The god of the theologians is definitely an unprovable hypothesis with contradictory attributes and thus is as meaningful as the IPU. That god is simply a nonsensical retrenchment from the strong, testable claims for GoA. When it became apparent that GoA did not exist, the theologians created a god about which nothing meaningful could be said.

Thus, the fundamental problem in debating with believers is that they refute Atheist arguments by referring to one of these gods or the other, willy-nilly, without ever coming to grips with the fact that the two gods have mutually exclusive attributes, and thus cannot possibly be the same entity.

Polar Bear · 12-01-2002, 08:38 AM

Often someone will call and ask for my roommate. I'll walk around the house and look for him, calling his name the whole time. After a while I give up and tell the caller that my roommate is not home.

Sure enough, a few minutes later my roommate comes up from the basement, steps out of the bathroom, or comes in from the front porch. Turns out he was home.

"Sorry dude, I didn't hear you calling for me," he says by way of apology.

I think if God does exist, but behaves in the same way that my roommate does, we are justified in concluding that he is not home to answer the phone.

doodad · 12-01-2002, 09:20 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by TerryTryon:
We positive atheists are often chided for our confidence with the catch phrase, �The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,� or in stronger words, �You cannot prove a negative.� To go beyond the aphorism, what, if anything, counts as evidence of absence? In other words when someone challenges our atheism, is the only defense we can muster is a lecture on who bears the burden of proof?

In one of his books, Antony Flew describes a thought experiment I have come to call the Allegory of the Boulder. Suppose that a guest in your house suddenly declares that that there is an enormous boulder in the middle of your living room. You reply, �No, there isn�t. I am looking at the space, and there is simply nothing there.�

�That�s because it is invisible.�

�But if I examine the place where you say the boulder lies, the pile of the carpet is not crushed as it would be if something as massive as a boulder lay there.�

�It is also without mass.�

�If I walk across the place where you claim the rock lies, I do not stub my toes.�

�The boulder is intangible.�

At this point, I would observe that the meaning of the word �boulder� entails certain attributes, among which are mass, visibility, and tangibility. If there is anything extraordinary in the space referred to, it certainly cannot be referred to as a boulder.

I believe I have thereby demonstrated evidence of absence. I have also proven a negative.
The word god, as used in monotheism, implies some very strong claims about the how nature operates, and the structure of the universe. If these conditions are not met, am I justified in saying that the monotheistic god does not exist? Am I permitted to insist that any concept of god must carry a set of coherent attributes, which may not be refashioned in an ad hoc manner according to the direction of the debate? Is there such a thing as �evidence of absence�?

Terry you pose an interesting question, but let's consider it relative to the existence of God.
To me God exists in conceptual form and IMO most believers have the same mental construct but cannot or will not admit it. People can describe their God in conceptual form, so it seems that is sufficient evidence that a conceptual God does exist. That's not to say that everyone has the exact same concept of God, but it is saying that the concept and the God it represents exists.

doodad · 12-01-2002, 09:41 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Jobar:
Carl Sagan's version of this is the invisible floating dragon in his garage, which breathes invisible heatless flame.

(From "Demon Haunted World" I think.)

For something to exist, we need to define it. In the case of ETIs, we define it to be a source of structured transmissions from outside our solar system; since we have detected no source within a few hundred light years of Sol, we can not say that *no* ETIs exist, because the universe is far vaster than the miniscule area we have searched.

When the entity being discussed is God, the lack of any agreed-upon definition allows us to prove nonexistence, IMO. We can certainly require anyone claiming proof to define God in a way which allows proof or disproof. If no such definition is forthcoming, we are quite justified in telling the theist his claims are nonsense.

Jobar you are correct in what you are saying and I agree with you. I think the idea that the lack of any agreed-upon definition allows us to prove nonexistence is the linch pin of your assumption, and it may prove to be the weak point.

It is the nature of religion to be nebulous and mysterious rather than to be concrete and obvious. Having a supernatural entity (a god) as a faith object has an advantage over having a tangible one. A supernatural god cannot be destroyed, stolen, or damaged like an idol can,
which brings me to the point I wish to make.

The actual existence or non-existence of a god such as the Christian God is secondary to the belief that it exists, because it's the belief that influences peoples' thinking and behavior.
It's similar to the spirit of freedom or the spirit of Christmas (giving).
I could have God stashed away in my closet, but if no one believed there was such an entity it really wouldn't matter whether he was there or not. Those who try to destroy or discredit organized religion by casting doubt or seeking to prove the non-existence of God have their work cut out for them because as long as there are people who want to believe that God exists he will exist for most practical purposes. Granted, we can get into the three o's, but that's beside the point that has been raised.

Is there any point in discussing the existence or non-existence of God. Certainly, as it's a basic issue for most atheists. The belief that he doesn't exist is the basis of their premise. What does it really do for anyone? As long as believers stay out of your faith just lean with the wind and let it blow right over. From my experience of talking to atheists and other types of non-believers it appears that many have suffered abuse at the hands of religious zealots.
That's sad and as a believer I'm not a bit proud of that practice, but give the moderate Christian such as me a little slack. I practice religion for personal reasons, and am not interested in judging you for your lack of belief in God or your apparent lack of need for the benefits it can bring. Different strokes for different folks they say.

doodad · 12-01-2002, 09:49 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Zadok001:
I believe it is fully impossible to disprove the existance of a deity. Regardless of how much evidence is lacking (sense not to the making I am), you can never prove the non-existance of an entity with 'infinite' power. This entity would obviously be capable of obscuring himself, and perhaps even his actions.

We assume that if God ran around saving people from certain death and being an all-around omnibenevolent entity that we would see a result. However, this God would also be perfectly capable of 'masking' his actions so we would never uncover them, thereby masking the very evidence we need to determine his existance or lack thereof.

That's why, IMHO, religon is so powerful - An all-powerful entity isn't disprovable. Your boulder, perhaps. It has known characteristics. It also has no intelligence, and certainly not infinite intelligence.

I agree with you in principle, and would like to offer this possible corollary to your proposition. It's easy to prove that a god of infinite power exists if that faith object has a material form, such as an idol made of stone or metal. What is tough is to prove that such a god has infinite power. I find it highly unlikely.

12-01-2002, 10:28 AM

God is consistent with any state of affairs. That there is 'evidence' for god, that the world is consistent with his existence, is trivialized by the fact that any state of affairs can be so construed.

The point is not whether or not there is evidence for God. The question is one of the nature of evidence. Scientific theories, for example, aim to make predictions that are very improbable. Moreover, they provide an interpretive framework with which the structure of things can be explored and how new theories can be constructed.

None of this is possible with God since he is so far outside of human understanding. Our observations cannot fail to be consistent with God and he provides no means to investigate any structure. We are left with an infinite explanatory baggage and incomprehensible explanatory content. Thus, God is theoretical deadweight

Quote:

Am I permitted to insist that any concept of god must carry a set of coherent attributes, which may not be refashioned in an ad hoc manner according to the direction of the debate? Is there such a thing as �evidence of absence�?

But you don't need to pin down a particular theory of God since almost all Gods are consistent with anything at all. The idea of God as an unlimited being is itself the fatal flaw. Ad hoc revision is just window dressing to keep a very far out idea plausible.

There is an infinite amount we don't understand about God. Thus, if something we think, discover, percieve is not expected by how we think of God, we can just remember that there is infinite leeway for God to do something unexpected. Thus no ad hoc modification is required - God doesn't make sense in the first place.

Quote:

Originally posted by Family Man:
I think that there are claims for God out there -- such as he being omnipotent, omniscience, and omnibenevolent -- that imply certain consequences that are indeed missing. These are often our most powerful arguments against the existence of any God.

I disagree. God is not the sort of theory from which you can derive concrete predictions thus it's not the sort that can ever be contradicted. It is empircically vacuous because we need only look at what we discover about the world by OTHER means and say "God did it". Thus, any knowledge of the world that God provides is not a consequence of God-theory

bluefugue · 12-01-2002, 10:30 AM

Quote:

People can describe their God in conceptual form, so it seems that is sufficient evidence that a conceptual God does exist. That's not to say that everyone has the exact same concept of God, but it is saying that the concept and the God it represents exists.

I'm sorry, I don't understand this. Are you saying that if we can describe characteristics of God, that is evidence that God exists?

But I can describe characteristics of unicorns, hobbits, Santa Claus, Jedi Knights, and Constitution-Class starships, all in considerable detail...

Or are you merely asserting that coherent concepts of God(s) do in fact exist?

[ December 01, 2002: Message edited by: bluefugue ]

Keith Russell · 12-01-2002, 12:44 PM

Greetings:

The fact that we discover new things, proves that there are things which we now know exist, but for which we once had no evidence.

From this, we can assume that there will be things in the future that will be known, but for which the evidence currently is unavailable.

Yet, we cannot 'believe in' those things, until we discover the evidence to support such beliefs.

(And, you can prove a negative in a closed system. One could easily prove that there are no elephants in my apartment, for example.)

Keith.

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12-01-2002, 06:40 AM	#11
thebeave Veteran Member Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Silicon Valley, CA Posts: 4,183	Part of the problem is that believers cannot pin down, even to themselves, any attributes to their god. How can you go about trying to find something when you don't even know what it is you should be looking for?

12-01-2002, 07:44 AM	#12
Clutch Veteran Member Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Canada Posts: 3,751	TT, I and others recently covered some of the same ground <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=56&t=000365&p=" target="_blank">here</a>.

12-01-2002, 08:38 AM	#14
Polar Bear Junior Member Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Louisville KY Posts: 66	Often someone will call and ask for my roommate. I'll walk around the house and look for him, calling his name the whole time. After a while I give up and tell the caller that my roommate is not home. Sure enough, a few minutes later my roommate comes up from the basement, steps out of the bathroom, or comes in from the front porch. Turns out he was home. "Sorry dude, I didn't hear you calling for me," he says by way of apology. I think if God does exist, but behaves in the same way that my roommate does, we are justified in concluding that he is not home to answer the phone.

12-01-2002, 12:44 PM	#20
Keith Russell Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Overland Park, Kansas Posts: 1,336	Greetings: The fact that we discover new things, proves that there are things which we now know exist, but for which we once had no evidence. From this, we can assume that there will be things in the future that will be known, but for which the evidence currently is unavailable. Yet, we cannot 'believe in' those things, until we discover the evidence to support such beliefs. (And, you can prove a negative in a closed system. One could easily prove that there are no elephants in my apartment, for example.) Keith.

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