Wyz_sub10

Just to be clear, are you saying you don't see the sun's crucial significance to life on earth?

Stephen T-B

OK. Life can exist without sunlight. (Things at the bottom of ocean trenches etc.)
But Genesis says god created night and day before he created the sun.

Do you see anything at all weird about that?

Bosun

What is proof to one person is not proof to another. Usually becuase people apply different standards to proof. For the sake of discussion, I propose three different standards.

1. Proof beyond any doubt whatsoever.

2. Proof beyond any reasonable doubt. This is the standard used in American criminal courts.

3. Proof by a preponderance of the evidence. This is the standard used in American civil courts.

I regard the existence of god in the third catagory. Of course there is plenty of doubt about the matter but the existence of god is manifest by existence itself. Never mind that there is the possibility that the universe is self-generated and self perpetuated, such a state is outside all experience. The fact that our universe is orderly and follows discoverable laws of interaction is also (to me) evidence of a creator. Beyond that, I believe, there is absolutely nothing one can say with any degree of certainty about that creator. This, of course would preclude a personal god. or a god that communicates with us.

One thing that seems clear to me is that the idea that one needs to believe a certain way about god in order to acheive some sort of divine favor is a despacible one. The paradigm of most religions posits that humankind is flawed and sinfull. That divine intercession is necessary in order to correct those flaws. That one must hold to a common set of beliefs in order to acheive that intercession. The whole idea is odious. It is an assault on reason and the cause of much of the suffering humanity has experienced throughout history.

In sum, everyone must make his/her own private assissment of god based on the lights one can bring to bear on the matter and not expect anyone else to share it, or even appreciate it. What really sticks in my craw is some ayatollah like Khamani or Falwell comming up and pretending to speak for the ineffable creator god.


Bosun

njhartsh

Why? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence--and an infinite, multi-omni deity is one of the most extraordinary claims imaginable. Seems to me that any rational person would demand standard of proof #1 or at least #2 above.

But your Argument from Personal Incredulity is blatantly fallacious. (Surely an all-powerful, all-knowing being is "outside all experience"!) Is the god you posit self-generated and self-perpetuated?

Why? If an orderly universe implies an orderly creator, doesn't an orderly creator imply an orderly orderly-creator creator? And so on?

A surprising number of "proofs" of gods are, like both of yours, self-contradictory.

- Nathan

Wyz_sub10

Bosun,

Welcome to the forums! Please take the opporunity to say "hi" and introduce yourself in the Secular Lounge.

Wyz_sub10,
EoG Moderator

Bosun

The position that there is no creator is at least as extraordinary as the position that there is one. One cannot demand any level of proof. You have to deal with the cards you are dealt. If you do not have level 1 or 2, Occams razor instructs us to apply level three. There is no irrationality about it.

Could be. As I said, there is little if anything one can say about that god. One thing that is obvious to the first level of proof is that our knowledge cannot extend to pre-existence. The big bang, the singularity, is a barrier beyond wihich we cannot go.

Such speculations are purely pedantic. We are discussing our creator, nothing else.

Well, my mileage varies from yours. Another thing that I believe is that we cannot help what we believe. Our attitudes are a produce of our culture. You have an atheist meme and I have a deist one. The discussion is nice, but opinions are rarely changed.

Bosun

Kat_Somm_Faen

Alright. Seems interesting enough.

But before we talk about proof, before we prove and make conclusion I ask if you could bring about a definition or a postulate or a theory.

Keep in mind that in scientific method you first develop a theory and then set about proving/disproving/experimenting and so on.

So please come forward with - who is God, where does he come from, what does he do, what can he do and so on.

Because there is nothing more futile than trying to come up with an argument for something that is ( at best ) loosely defined.

...

NJ - Why does it follow that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof - is not the "extraordinarity" of a claim in the eyes of the beholder? I just argue that most theists don't see "existence of God" as extraordinary....

njhartsh

Er--that's self-evidently false. We both believe that the universe exists. You hold an additional belief that I do not: that a creator deity exists. If those two belief sets are equally "extraordinary," then logic is a sham.

Right. With our cards, rational people fold:

This is utter nonsense. Occam's Razor is the proposition that one should "not multiply entities unnecessarily"--and, interestingly enough, multiplying entities unnecessarily happens to be exactly what you are doing.

Occam's Razor is not the doctrine that one should continually lower the evidentiary bar until a doubtful theory becomes shamefacedly "acceptable." That tactic is called "wishful thinking."

That's quite possibly correct. And it demonstrates exactly why every statement you have made about your deist god-idea (they're all about "pre-existence") is patently irrational. I recommend you try Socrates' method instead.

- Nathan

njhartsh

Nope. The extraordinariness of an empirical claim consists merely of the extent to which it falls outside of (or contradicts) longstanding, long-accepted science. It isn't, in theory, impossible to prove that a given person (let's call him "David Copperfield") can in fact levitate, in apparent violation of the heretofore universal law of gravity--but it will take a very significant amount of evidence, gathered in experiments conducted under rigorously controlled conditions (and preferably performed by James Randi), before rational people will accept Copperfield's levitating ability.

If, on the other hand, Copperfield alleges that he's capable of jumping three feet into the air, no such exacting standards are necessary--because his claim is entirely consistent with current knowledge about gravity and human physiology. We can probably take his word for it.

You're right. They're wrong.

- Nathan

Kat_Somm_Faen

Nathan-

I would say that "longstanding" has nothing to do with extraordinariness... Eg. a londstanding view of the cosmos was that Earth was the center of the Universe, static and flat around which the Sun, planets and such were revolving. The veiw that Sun was the center of the solar system was quite extraordinary - and it warranted such extreme action as burning at the stake!

Yet all it took was a simple observation from a naked eye and at most aided with the simplest of optical devices to disprove it. Again, it seems to me that the notion of "extraordinariness" changes with advances in technology, changing culture and so on. Eg. would someone from the middle ages consider extraordinary that we can communicate with such ease through such a variety of media? Would we be amazed at the anti-gravity drive of the year 2010 after the correct postulating of the Grand Unified Theory by a idiot savant from the Australian Outback in 2009? The definition of "extraordinary" seems to be at least dependent on the current state of technology and culture and mutable if not completely subjective.

The Universe exists, countless glaxies, nebulae and cluster strech for billions of light years all round us - yet it takes a very simple concept to prove it - a telescope - an acheivement of simple optics and I will argue that the existence of a star on the Hubble Deep field would be an extraordinary claim some 100 years ago. To us its a virtual given axiom since it is plainly obvious from a photograph but also the developments and the adoption of these new developemnts as a new axiom. It took the science a lot of effort to make people believe the existence of bacteria and virii cause disease. If you think someone just held a microscope and all vere converted you are wrong. Todays Nintendo Game Boy is a marvel of unparalelled computing power compared to what was out there 50-60 years ago.

We can not make predictions about future state of cosmology and physics in general. And that is upon what your definition of extraordinary proof is based upon. And it is a fact that we can not say that this is the final state of science in the future. That the all defining laws of physics have beed alredy postulated. We in truth may be at that point but also we also do not know that the next equivalent of the Newtons Laws or the Big Bang Theory is waiting for us in the next decade/century/millenium.

Anyway, I just wish for anyone who wants to talk theism to define him first and then we talk. Otherwise you just get stuck with changing character of God all the time.. wiggleing from omnipotent to this to unprovable to bla to bla bla...

Let anyone who thinks God exists come up with something concrete rather than a vague idea what it should be and what it could be. As you can see, Bosun can make a statement about God that he chooses since he is not boud by any definition. He can bring about any level of proof and any argument when we still do not know what the hell is he talking about... Who is this God he is talking about? His attributes? His qualities? And he can just go on ad infinitum about proof, needing it/not needing it; Arguments from belief and on and on. In the same manner he can tell you that it is not extraordinary for God to exist. That is his axiom about God and it can certainly be since he has left all the options open for himself.