Hawkingfan

So do you take an AGNOSTIC stance on the existance of my little goblin living in my engine who makes it run?

Synaesthesia

I do indeed have the logical tools with which a truth preference can be established between a God invented by superstitious savages and one who created the heavens. Strong agnosticism is itself untenable.

If you deny rocks you are immediately disadvantaged because you are denying the existence of a very ubiquitous sort of substance.

God is a different story. It's simply a bad theory, and can be rejected without any loss of theoretical power. Not only is the theory unecessary, unlike rocks it is useless. Moreover, it is infinitely unparsimonious while rocks require only the operation of known, testable, verifiable physical laws.

With rocks, we can find about the lifecycles of ancient organisms. We can shatter the skulls of our enemies. We can build houses atop them.

God... well, you don't talk to god. You talk to the raving guy in sackcloth and ashes. He's the reason we believe in God. Rocks speak for themselves.

Jayhawker Soule

I need to think about this some. Thanks for the comments.

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by Living Dead Chipmunk:

"Congratulations. You've disproven a single specific example of a supreme being. But once again, attempting to apply the contradictory nature of a specific instance to the whole of the god concept is a composition fallacy."

This thread is intended to provide reasons to reject agnosticism, or at least, my post was. And it has.

But here's some more. Suppose it is an essential property of anything called a god that it has a mind, and that it helped to create the universe, either by itself or with the help of other gods. In terms of our experience, most creators of putatively natural phenomena are mindless. Therefore, the creator of the universe is probably mindless. Therefore, probably, no gods exist.

Darkblade

(Sorry, I know this is off-topic.)

I would appreciate it if people would stop insulting unicorns here at Infidels by using them in arguments. My best friend is an invisible pink unicorn, Ytterbium. Ytterbium created the universe. I know this because he told me so. Unfortunately, "reasonable" people seem to think that Ytterbium is an imaginary friend that I made up because of psychological deficits and/or disorders.

All other invisible creatures besides Ytterbium are false! Do not believe the Draconians! They are evil liars against Ytterbium!

Corgan Sow

Agreed. Why some atheists take it that when religion is bunk, God must be bunk? It's laughable attempt.

All of us know other religions out there are better even than the Judeo-Christian God.

luvluv

Thomas Metcalf:

And these have been discredited how, exactly? Certainly there are alternatives to the God hypothesis in both cases, but none so compulsive (as yet) as to render the God hypothesis absurd. At best one could counter that it is unnecessary, but if superstring theory turns out to be correct then certain ways of accounting for the anthropic coincidences via inflationary theory are also unnecessary, and vice versa.

You had to know I was going to ask you to explain this, so why the extra unnecessary step?

Philosoft:

Well, firstly that's debatable. Secondly, that isn't what was being asserted by Fiach, which was not that God was not CONSCIOUS.

You should be explaining this to Thomas and Keith, not me. I did not claim to be able to prove, disprove, or accurately describe God's existence. And if one cannot do any of these things, one has no business declaring that God "can not exist". Frankly, if anyone on this board could demonstrate this with logical certainty they'd be published in every language by now, and would be too busy declining job offers to argue with me. There wouldn't even be a need for the board you could just post that on the front page of the website and everybody could go on to other questions, the God one having been settled.

Reasonable Doubt:

I don't think that is an unreasonable conjecture, actually. If God exists and if He fully designed the universe, He also purposely created entropy, so one could argue that it was His intent that things EVENTUALLY break down. The Bible is pretty explicit about this possibility early in Genesis when it describes God as purposely limiting man's age to about a hundred years. ("My soul will not strive with man forever").

Whether or not a design is pefect depends upon the intent of the designer. It is indeed true that we might not be able to fathom a reason for many designs, but that does not logically exclude the possibility that there are reasons for it. I'm not calling out Oolon here or anything, but logically one cannot argue from the malfunction of a design to the limitations of the designer because it is logically possible that the designer INTENDS for the product to malfunction at a certain time or for a certain reason. I don't know about other religions, but from the Bible it is fairly clear that we are not on this earth to be perfect examples of God's skill as an engineer. We are here as part of a process that includes death, so if we were constructed so perfectly that we never died then part of God's plan would not function properly. In short, you can only demonstrate that the malfunction of a product indicates the limitations of the designer if you have compelling reason to believe the designer never intended for it to malfunction. (Given the limited resources of our planet, for instance, planned obselence in humans isn't the worst idea. Most of our overpopulation problems in the future do not stem from children being born but from adults living longer lives).

Jayhawker Soule

Synaesthesia, is this what you meant by "the epistemology upon which God relies trivializes evidence."

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by luvluv:

"And these have been discredited how, exactly? Certainly there are alternatives to the God hypothesis in both cases, but none so compulsive (as yet) as to render the God hypothesis absurd."

Well, the Moderns (Hume and Kant, at least) dealt with both of them. The Argument from Finetuning cannot be compellingly supported; I think the objections offered against it are conclusive.

Certainly, there may not be any persuasive counter hypotheses, but the objections I use do not depend upon counter hypotheses. I simply point out that it's an egregious non sequitur from "Therefore, there is a necessary being" or "Therefore, the universe had a cause" to "God exists." It's akin to concluding from "Someone wears a red suit," "Santa Claus exists." As for the teleological argument, again, I need offer no competing hypotheses; I simply must point out that the argument itself is unsound. We're not in a position to conclude a Designer from the order we perceive. And the Argument from Finetuning, third, requires no competing hypothesis, only the reminder that to conclude "Not chance" from "High improbability" is another big non sequitur.

"You had to know I was going to ask you to explain this, so why the extra unnecessary step?"

Sorry, pure laziness. Omniscient beings cannot learn and morally perfect beings cannot do evil. These are the most common points one makes to show that God's attributes are inconsistent.

Philosoft

Any disproof offered is contingent on the definition of "God" presented. Since by far the most common definition of "God" is "Judeo-Christian God," any positive claims made about God's attributes are subject to scrutiny. If any of those positive claims lead to logical contradictions, the only refuge of the claimant is extra-logical sophistry. Thus, we can correctly say God is logically impossible.