John Page

Hi Albert!

I think its the other way round if anything. The idea of god is the culmination of aggregating all other concepts, not the source from which they flow.

See this link for my theory that under your proposal that god is the ultimate idea, god can only be a concept (as opposed to the Catholic claims that god is a little more daunting).

Cheers, John the non-traditional atheist.

Conchobar

It fecked up the greek letters. It is supposed to be Δ P Π r4/ 8ή1

Sorry, it killed the humor intended.

Conchobar

Badfish

That is brilliant!



NOT!

Defiant Heretic

Badfish is correct, albeit a tad overenthusiastic. That argument doesn't prove anything. You assume that a god would share a certain property (that of being in the visible spectrum) with a chocolate bar, without supplying supporting evidence.

Albert Cipriani

Dear John,
You assert: Your view begs the question of what a concept is. Your view posits free-floating concepts that we, for some strange reason, arbitrarily group together into an unimaginable super concept we call “God.”

What you take as a given, I recognize to be a miracle. Concepts that involve value judgments are first order abstractions -- abstractions of the face of God. All other abstractions or concepts (e.g., numbers or words) are second order abstractions of physical empirical things.

What could be your naturalistic explanation for these first order abstractions? How can you accept as natural what has no correlative in Nature? Natural evolutionary processes are based upon selfish survival, ruthless competition, and might making right. Wherefore are our antithetical conceptions of selfless sacrifice, love, and moral standards based upon if not upon the supernatural?

Your link concluded: I have no problem with this. To say that God is a concept is a more accurate way of saying that God is a supernatural being. – Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

John Page

Free-floating? A concept is the abstract of some lower level sense data. The concept becomes axiomatic (i.e. self-fulfilling, or definitional) when it is used to test for the presence of the entity-type which it axiomizes.

Back to my dog example. Each of us has in our mind the concept associated with the name label "dog". This is evident as we can disagree about whether a particular object is a dog. A statue of a dog does not qualify as it is not animate. However, the use of concepts is modifiable by context - if we're watching Deputy Dawg we could both agree its about a dog (but we both know its not a real dog.

Is your reference to our arbitrarily grouping things connected to your use of the expression free-floating?

Finally, I'm going to draw the line at "unimaginable super concept". Taking the meaning of "unimaginable" as something that cannot be created by the mind and "super concept" as something that can only exist in the mind, there can be no natural correlate to such thing due to the contradiction involved. I agree that the concept "unimaginable" exists, but I suggest we should not be confused between its literal meaning and common usage. This way, god disappears in a puff of logic while the axiomatic concept of god remains.

Hope this is clear!

Cheers, John

Conchobar

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Thomas Metcalf
[B]Originally posted by Conchobar :



Who's using empirical methods to define God? How are you defining God, if not by empirical methods?

I am not defining god by empirical evidence. God is invisible, inaudible, intangible, non-measurable by any method. Simply put, god is an hypothesis completely lacking in any evidence let alone proof.

And if not, how am I defining God by empirical methods? I say God is omnipotent, omniscient, morally perfect, and the creator of the universe.

On what basis do you define God as omnipotent, omniscient, or morally imperfect and creator of the universe. The only evidence fundies present is the badly flawed bible which I use to discredit God.

How do you define him?

A hypothetical entity that some people think created the universe, but for whom there is not a shred of evidence, no logical construct, and the more compulsively defined the more contradictons appear. I personally have no reason to consider the God hypothesis a serious proposition. I am equal opportunity and add Mother Goose, Humpty Dumpty, Neptune, Zeus, Dagda, and Leprechauns to God in the box of imaginary silly ideas.



You're saying ghosts aren't supernatural. I doubt anyone will agree with you there.

I agree that ghosts are not natural. They are imaginary with no proof of their existence. Gullible, superstitious, and scientifically illiterate believers are unable to cognitively analyse the issue. They need no evidence only their desire to believe the fantasy.

Or else you admit they're supernatural, yet we can still have empirical evidence for or against their existence. I think you lose either way.

If you took logic and science in school you would know that one cannot prove a negative. Ghosts exists in the minds of those who hallucinate them, but have no objective evidence to support any supernatural, unnatural, infranatural, or natural explanation.



Creatures in a two dimensional universe can still see creatures in three dimensional universes; it's just that they don't fully see them.

They can only see the three dimensional creature if it crossses the plane of the two dimensional one. If outside that plane they are invisible.

A sphere would look like a line segment to them.

Granted.

Again, the mere fact that God is supernatural

First there is no fact about God, only beliefs. If there is a god, he need not be supernatural. So that sentence has two fallacies.

entails nothing about whether or not there are natural ways to apprehend evidence of his existence.

I am open to some discovery of a God -detector device. Let me know when it is available and reliable in the way intended.



Then you must agree that we can disconfirm the existence of supernatural beings. Q.E.D.

No, it is impossible to prove a negative hypothesis. I cannot prove nor disprove God in your defined way. That is why I am an agnostic. I feel that the total absence of evidence confirmatory or disprovable, means that only really know that god is a mental concept but not a separate existence outside of humans neurons and synapses



I think all self-defeating positions are in fact necessarily wrong. The position that "We can't define God to any degree at all" is inconsistent with itself, because it, itself, defines God to some degree.

No matter how defined, the ones supporting the claim of God must show convincing evidence. Otherwise I have no obligation to give it any consideration. My daily sense of well being is not dependent upon me evaluating the existence of God, the Yeti, Bigfoot, or Mother Goose.



The overwhelming majority of theists believes in a god that leaves some evidence of his existence. If you don't believe in that kind of god, then that's fine.

I don't believe in a god that leaves some evidence of its existence because no such god has ever been presented to us. Naturally I don't believe in what does not exist, a god who leaves evidence. All gods leave no evidence.

But you're not really talking about the same god most of us here describe and about which most of us argue.

You are arguing about a God that doesn't fit your own theology. He has evolved in the human mind from polytheistic Judaism to monotheistic monotheism borrowed from Egypt, and evolved to the other Egyptian and Persian Trinity Gods. But it is all hearsay, tribal oral superstitions and myths. Evidence does not come from testimony that some barmy prophet saw or talked to what he thought was God. Muhammad did. Hindu's talked to Brahma. Celts like Amergain, Taliesin, ?Myrddyn talked to Dagda, Danu, Cernunos, and Crom Cruach. That gives them no real credibility. For all we know all prophets are psychotic hallucinators.

If God wanted all of us to believe, he would communicate with all 7 billion of us simulataneously and give the same message in our language. Revelation being so mixed and multifocal it is clearly not reliable. Most of the Gods like Dagda, Lugh, Danu, Cernunos and Sila na nGig are kinder and nicer gods. But that it just a reflection of Celtic personalities inventing a god, compared to savage and cruel desert bedouiins who viewed nature as evil.

Conchobar

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by Conchobar :

Um. We're humans. We get to make up what our words mean. We choose for "God" to mean what it does. It's not like we have rules about what our words can mean.

But there can be empirical evidence of ghosts. Why not of God?

Ha. I took science in high school and have taken Honors science in college. I got an easy 4.0 in Intro to Logic and I got an easy 3.9 in Intermediate Logic. If you had taken any of those courses, you would know that to prove a negative is beyond easy. For example, you can do it with modus ponens, modus tollens, disjunctive syllogism, and reductio ad absurdum, with little trouble at all. Respectively: (1) If gratuitous evil exists, then God does not exist; gratuitous evil exists; therefore, God does not exist. (2) If God exists, gratuitous evil does not exist; gratuitous evil exists; therefore, God does not exist. (3) Either gratuitous evil doesn't exist, or God doesn't exist; it is not the case that gratuitous evil doesn't exist; therefore, God doesn't exist. (4) Assume God exists. It follows that there is no gratuitous evil. But there is gratuitous evil. So on the assumption that God exists, we get a contradiction. Therefore, we must negate our original assumption and decide that God doesn't exist.

No one's accusing you of believing in any god. I'm pointing out that Christians believe in a god who leaves evidence of himself. If you don't think that god exists, fine. But you must accept that if a god is defined to leave empirical evidence of himself, as the Christian god is, then it's possible to prove it nonexistent.

Albert Cipriani

Dear Thomas,
You say “Empirical” evidence left by the Christian God is called a miracle, that is, it is empirical enough for those who experienced it, but it is a delusion for non-believers. The founders of the Christian religion founded their belief on the “empirical” evidence of the Resurrection. But as long as such a miracle can be explained away by such bromides as “delusion” or “mass hysteria” they are not empirical.

What you need is a photo of Jesus holding a newspaper dated three-days after his resurrection. But even then, such “empirical” evidence would be subject to conspiracy theories of photo-doctoring. Admit it. It’s not that the “empirical” evidence you ask for cannot be found, it’s that by your standards it can never be found. That’s the rub.

So either stop claiming that Christians claim God leaves empirical evidence, or lower your standards (as I have) of what constitutes empirical evidence to include subjective phenomena. – Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

John Page

Albert:

According to your statement, it would be a miracle if god left empirical evidence and a delusion if god didn't.

Did you ever read Catch 22?

Cheers, John