Living Dead Chipmunk

Kally:
That quote works fine against theists, but this thread is an argument between people who say "we have no way of knowing whether or not a god-like being exists" and people who say "I know a god-like being does not exist".

In effect, the positive statement being made is "we have a way to know god doesn't exist", and it's not the agnostics that are making it. In effect, you're asking us to prove that there's no way we can know god exists... in other words, requiring us to prove a negative.

Metcalf:
No, that was YOUR definition of agnosticism. You took my definition, latched on to a syntactical ambiguity, and turned it into a straw man. Unless english is not your first language? If it's not, I apologise.

As you well knew at the time I said it, "not sure if ANY gods exist" does not mean "agnostics tacitly believe in the existance of every god ever created" as you seemed to interperet. I don't even know how to re-word it to steer clear of your spin-doctoring. How would you interpert the question "are there ANY gods up there?" The word "any" is being used in the same context in both instances.

I don't appreciate you semantically twisting my statements around so you can win a straw man debate.

Fiach

I think that you are all getting too hung up in a circular semantic argument. Put simply there are people who are gullible and believe in theistic bollocks in spite of a total lack of evidence. They are most people.

Then there are people who are not gullible. They think rationally for the most part. God as presented is pure gabberloony and we recognise it as such. But each of us describes our methodology for unbelief (not disbelief) of God(s).

We may be splitting hairs by "strong" and "weak" and by agnostic versus atheist.

Simply put, we here see that God as defined as a conscious creative being, is lacking in any evidence, is unnecessary for explanation of nature, improbable by great odds for a cosmic creator to have a human like mind. So there is no good reason to believe in such a hypothesis.

Fiach

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by Living Dead Chipmunk:

"As you well knew at the time I said it, 'not sure if ANY gods exist' does not mean 'agnostics tacitly believe in the existance of every god ever created' as you seemed to interperet."

I do? I don't think it seems that way. Suppose you knew that God exists. Would you qualify as a person that wasn't sure if any gods existed?

Synaesthesia

That's an eniterly loaded statement. I am a strong atheist. I utterly reject mystical theories because they are less tenable explanations for anything as a grand unified field theory created by a five year old.

Can I prove that God doesn't exist? That's the wrong question alltogether. God implies not only an addition to ontology, but the abandonment of rational epistemology. (albeit in a limited field) As such, it should be rejected totally. It is not logically impossible and it is, by definition, consistent with any evidence.

However, the acceptance of God is irrational and appears can never be rational. Since there isn't even the remotest liklihood of establishing the existence of such a being, I see no reason to be 'weak' or qualified. It's pure nonsense. (Although, I hasten to add, I'm somewhat more tactful when I'm speaking to theists.)

Mad Kally

I'm another one of the few strong atheists. Synaesthesia described my thoughts on the subject perfectly.

Living Dead Chipmunk

Synaesthesia:

You like using big words, don't ya? Could you distill that down for the elementary teacher in training here? I've got a cold, and it's late, so my brain's not quite on target.

I believe, personally, that there's no way anyone can know absolutely whether or not there is a God, for much the same reason nobody can know absolutely what happens when we die. You'd have to die to find out in both cases, and then regardless of what the answer is, you can't come back and tell us.

Mad Kally

I'm a stronger atheist than Lovecraft..

Darkblade

That would depend on the definition of god. I don't see any way there could be a god, because I define god as something (presumably conscious) omnipotent. That's right, I don't believe, as they are characterized, Zeus, Ra, Odin, et cetera, would be true gods, so even if they happened to exist I would still be an atheist. Why does something deserve to be classified as a god unless it is omnipotent (even if it created the universe (in that case, I would call it "the creator of the universe")), and thus, supernatural as well, for omnipotence is a self-contradictory characteristic, naturally speaking. And to believe in the supernatural would be to believe, that at any random moment, two plus two could possibly be five. I see no evidence that that could be so.

Selsaral

At the same time, no one can really know absolutely whether or not we even exist. So then according to what you seem to be saying, it's illogical to strongly assert that we do? I think it's just as logical to assert that the christian god doesn't exist, as it is to assert that I myself exist.

luvluv

Vorkosigian:

The existence of the brain is explained by evolution, but the existence of the "mind" and consciousness, which so clearly exceeds the sum of it's parts, has not been explained by evolution. At least, there are a lot of very smart people, many of whom are psychologists and neurologists, who are still under the impression that this is a problem.

I disagree. There is no direct survival advantage for advanced mathematical skills. We are smarter than we need to be to survive, and we have more abstract intellectual abilities than are necessary for survival (our aesthetic sense, for example). Has it actually been demonstrated that these faculties ATTEND more advantageous faculties, or is that just assumed? I'm not familiar with brain mapping but I have always assumed that, given the fact that different abilities "take residence" in different parts of the brain, that you would have a hard time justifying the existence of the aesthitic sense simply by saying that it is an attendant to depth perception, which is in another part of the brain. (I think. Where is DRF?) I just read a Paul Davies book (Mind of God) which made this point very well, there isn't one reason in the world to assume that any of our higher mathematical capabilities, for example, should exist, and no reason to think that we could not survive very well with far less of them. So why are they here? If our mental abilities developed one mutation at a time, instead of in massive leaps, I don't see why any of our cognitive abilities with less biological utility (like the afforementioned aesthetic sense) had such an advantage that the trait is now ubiquitous in the species. Perhaps I need to brush up on my cognitive evolution (is that what it's called?).

Not why are "we" here, why is anything here? Why is here here? Why is there something instead of nothing?

Well, the problem arises from the fact that life is SO fragile to VERY, VERY slight variations in various constants that we can very rightly marvel that life evolved AT ALL. You are speaking as though it is a given that life must evolve in every universe regardless of the given constants. We know of no restraints on many values, and given the fact that they could have taken any form at all, we have a right to be suspicious when their values, if altered even a hundred, thousandths of a percent, would not allow life anywhere in the universe. The coincidences come about when one realizes that for MOST of the values of MOST of the constants life would be impossible.

Where are you, again? You can walk into almost any major bookstore in the states and get it. Any online bookseller will have it.

Thomas Metcalf:

Snowflakes are ordered but they do not even approach biological complexity.

Let's be clear that by supernaturalistic I am not saying "magical", simply something that is literally "outside of nature", something that cannot be explained or defined by any means at our disposal within the universe.

The ability to understand our WORLD is a biological advantage. The ability to discover our universe, to understand that space curves, or that e=mc^2, is not a biological advantage. People who are not acquainted with either of these facts manage to breed quite well.

Of course it is, but I'm assuming that naturalism is false.

No, there aren't. As far as I know, the origin of life science, to date, is one long record of dismal failure. As of the last interenational conference on the subject (ISSOL?), according to articles I've read, there aren't any truly plausible prospects on the table. Maybe I'm behind though, and I'd be glad to be enlightened by any new discoveries that I am unaware of.

I'd agree but the point I am trying to make is not that theism is the only rational option but that both theism (or deism) and naturalism are, at present, both fully logical views. The naturalistic buckets are just as leaky and numerous as the supernaturalistic buckets. You think the universe can create itself, you think the anthropic coincidences require no intelligence, you think that there is a naturalistc explanation for the origin of life... Well, that's fine. I think the opposite on all of the above issues, and at this stage both views are equally logical. There are working scientists whose research has lead them to a deistic view. It is not an unreasonable view, or one that can only be held by the uninformed. It's not the forgone conclusion that it's made out to be around here.

My point was that the cosmological argument + the teleological argument + DNA = a strong case for a supernatural (i.e. outside of nature) creator with a mind who purposed life. I was trying to say that they weren't three seperate cases, regardless of how many atheistic philosophers would try to view them. Despite the fact that none of them alone are sound, the evidence of all three of them gives sufficient evidence to draw a generally reasonable, though not formally sound, Deistic conclusion.

Recognizing that there is something instead of nothing, that this something, the universe, burst into existence as a result of something outside of the universe, that the universe has parameters which, if altered slightly, would not allow for any carbon-based life form to exist, that our genetic material encodes, stores, and translates information, something that in our experience only Intelligence can do.. given all of the above, it does not require cognitive dissonance to arrive at a Deistic conclusion. Many reputable scientists have done so.

I've never been impressed with this argument principally because it is so disengenuous. God's abilities represent the absolute limit of the power, knowledge, and goodness that can be possessed by ANY agent. There is a different between not being able to scratch one's ear, because one can ONLY scratch one's ear, and not being able to learn because one knows EVERYTHING. If you argued that McEar can only scratch his ear because he has already DONE everything else that can logically be done by any agent, then you are getting a closer approximation to the situation of God's omniscience. If God couldn't learn because of a learning disability, then He would legitimately cease to be omniscient and omnipotent, but if He can't learn because THERE IS NOTHING IN EXISTENCE FOR HIM TO LEARN, then that would not reduce his omniscience or His omnipotence.

We have not establihed that God CANNOT learn, we have only established that there is nothing FOR God to learn. The limitation is not with God, but with his environment, which cannot possibly produce anything for Him to learn about.

A similar case could be made for God's omnibenevolence. We don't know that God LACKS THE ABILITY to do evil, we only know that He won't do it. It is a logical fallacy to assume a can't from a won't. You are assuming a power limitation where a character trait may be a sufficient explanation. Is it true that I am lacking in power because I won't rape children or murder innocent people? And if it's not true for me, how can it be true for God? I think you must establish that it is the case that God CANNOT do evil, because I think God would be just as omnibenevolent if we said that God DOES NOT do evil. I admit, though, that this omni-quailty is much trickier to deal with than the others.

I await your thoughts on these matters.