Subjective Evidence of Gods

So this thing you call "god" you think exists in the same sort of abstract Platonic sense that a perfect circle or the number pi can be said to objectively exist? In a Platonic sense - Yes. And be clear here that non-zero sum morality is a result of the maths rather than something in and of itself. In this little conjecture of ours morality is essentially just an inevitable by-product of maths. Nothing more. What intelligence? If my conjecture is correct then intelligence itself would be a result of the blind mindless logic from which all else follows. What intelligence? All we started with was blind mindless logic. You have added intelligence, creativity and a sense of morality. In effect you have anthropomorphicised the idea in a way that is utterly typical of humans displaying the psychological proclivity to invoke false positive agency at every opportunity in exactly the way we have been discussing.Your inability to consider any question without inserting a human-like intelligent agent into it is kinda proving my psychological point isn't it? What you have done here is what you have done throughout this thread. What you have done is show that if you assume that your notion of god exists then you can explain everything in that paradigm and create a huge wheel of circular reasoning.If you assume god exists as part of the premise then you will inevitably conclude that god exists. And - before you say it - No I haven't assumed that god doesn't exist. I have assumed nothing but some form of Platonic mathematical abstract existence that can meaningfully be called "objective". From this you can conceivably derive non-zero sum morality. But some supreme, creative intelligence with a sense of morality of it's own is entirely your own addition.

Refusing to assume that something is present is not the same as actively assuming that it isn't present. I no more assume an absence of God than I assume an absence of James Bond, Mickey mouse or squirrels. I only "assumed" that mathematics is objective. Nothing more.Look - I saw you get pounced upon for suggesting that some form of morality can be considered objective and independent of the human mind in some sense and it seemed only fair to try and point out why your idea isn't as crazy as some might think it is.Many do say that mathematics is true in some objective Platonic sense. Things like Pythagoras theorem are the same for all. It isn't an opinion. It is as true for me as it is you and as true for the ancient Greeks as it is true for the alien mathematician in a far off galaxy. It is arguably objectively true.So if maths is objectively true and morality can be derived from some sort of mathematics of game theory involving non-zero sum reciprocal altruism (effectively a mathematical basis for why it is self advantageaous to co-operate with, rather than shit, on others) then arguably it can be said that this form of moral reasoning is objectively true in the same sort of Platonic sense that pythagoras theorem is true. Possibly. Maybe.But to re-interpret Platonic mathematical existence to some unfounded ethereal form of existence and start introducing creative, intelligent agents with a sense of right and wrong based on love and compassion rather than mathematical self interest is completely unfounded.To do this is simply a demonstration of the sort of flawed human psychological proclivities to anthropomorphicise everything in exactly the way we have been discusiing here and elsewhere.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

And intuitively I agree. As did all those ancient invokers of Sun gods and the like. All of those who concluded that some intelligent presence must lay behind the things that they couldn't comprehend. Because I, they and you are all human and all subject to this same intuitive need to explain everything in terms of some sort of vaguely human-like intelligent agent.But where you seem to think that this intuitive thinking is a reasonable basis for drawing the conclusion that some sort of intelligent agent must be present I recognise that this is the same flawed human thinking that has resulted in everything from false gods, to conspiracy theories via imaginary friends and the imbuement of human-mind-like properties to inanimate objects and aspects of nature.So I don't trust this intuitive thinking. Because the evidence suggests it isn't a reliable mathod of drawing conclusions. I have absolutely no idea what is required for "truth" to exist. This is just a rehashing of "Why is there something rather than nothing?" isn't it?And to that I would say that there are all sorts of philosophically conceivable answers and very possibly some answers that aren't even able to be conceived by humans. But of the vast array of possible answers "God" is just one rather limited and very human one.It is an answer that almost certainly says more about the psychology of man than it does the truth of existence.

Actions speak louder than words.Long winded multi-referencing posts are acts of evasion not methods of answering. You were asked to answer the following questions honestly and explicitly:1) Is the Earth billions of years old or only a few days old?
2) Is your answer to the above a mere opinion or an evidenced fact?Why not just try and do that?I'll tell you why you can't answer the above. It's because in the absence of any test for Last Thursdayism any conclusion about the age of the Earth being billions of years old is, by the terms of your dimwitted argument, merely an opinion. And you won't admit that because you know how silly it makes you look.Prove me wrong. Answer the questions honestly and explicitly.But if you can't answer them then I urge anyone reading this to think about the conequences for any scientifically evidenced conclusion competing with an unfalsifiable alternative possibility. Did evolution actually occur? Who can say if you haven't tested for the claim that Satan undetectably planted all of the evidence for evolution in order to lead us to ungodly conclusions?RAZ has created a world in which there are no conclusions. Only opinions. Because there is an unevidenced and unfalsifiable alterative to every scientific fact you can name.

Can anyone tell me how old RAZD thinks the Earth is? He is obvioulsy unwilling to say...........I wonder why. Yes - Empirically. Dude - Give me a specific example of a supernatural entity that you want tested and I'll talk you through it.Or explain to you (again) why it is that things which cannot be empirically detected are necessarily sourced from human imagination and not very likely to actually exist.

Actions speak louder than words RAZ. I'm guessing you still haven't moved out of your bedroom. So why not just admit that you are as confident as I am that the undetectable killer bogeyman dwelling in your bedroom is a human fiction rather than a real entity? Your 'cest la vie' approach to being butchered in your bed isn't a credible response.And it seems that nobody can say how old you consider the Earth to be despite you claiming to have explicitly answered the following two questions: Can anyone state what RAZ's answers are? It depends on the supernatural concept in question. Obviously. In the case of a werewolf for example we would watch to see if the person in question actually transformed into a wolf at full moon. In the case of Thor as commonly conceived we see if a big godly viking waving his magic hammer around really is the cause of thunder and lightning. If something is empirically detectable there is no reason in principle why we cannot test for it is there? Given the prevalence of religious experiences and the level of sophistication of our detection devices isn't is astonishing that we have never detected one of these beings? If they are empirically detectable to humans then any modern camera phone will pick them up.If it isn't empirrically detectable then you are confronted with explaining how something immaterial can possibly interact with the physical world in the shape of the human brain. The mind body problem by any other name. Can you test to see whether or not internal sexual experiences are caused by supernatural beings? Why do you think religious expereinces are any more likely to have a supernatural cause?If someone claims to have had an audio-visual expereince of any kind whilst they are in a room being audio-visually monitored and recorded then - Yes - We can say whether or not they had a genuine empirically detectable experience.Can you give an example of the sort of expereince you have in mind?

Which is why it boils down to asking why there is something rather than nothing. And even if there is this eternal God that you believe in he will necessarily be fruitlessly asking himself that very same question. "Why is it that I, rather than nothing at all, exist?" How can it be based on the conclusion that God doesn't exist when God remains as one of the multitude of possible answers? Your assertion doesn't make sense at all.

RAZ you can't test for the undetectable bogeyman in your bedroom but you know as well as I do that it is a human fiction.You can't test for Last Thursdayism but you know as well as I do that the Earth is "old, very, very, old" Message 30 (and many places elsewhere).So you are not even applying your own nonsensical demands for testing when drawing your own conclusions. Apart from anything else your stance is just hypocritical. I can test that static electricity accounts for thunder and lightning and on this basis confidently but tentatively reject the idea that some supernatural agency is involved. Exactly as you have rejected Last Thursdaysim in the face of evidence in favour of an old Earth despute being unable to explicitly test the truth or falseness of Last ThursdayismLikewise we can test the human ability and proclivity to invent false positive agency (in the form of imaginary friends, conspiracy theories, demonstrably false gods and the teleological imbuement of natural phenomenon with human-like intelligence) and the circumstances in which such agency is typically invoked (when events are deemed significant and/or inexpicable or when rational modes of thought give way to more intuitive modes due to strong emotion or mental illness).You may not like the evidence. But you can't just ignore it. Here is a short essay by one of the leading researchers in the field outlining the general approach. Link

How do you know that cause and effect is not a particular property of our universe and thus not relevant to it's own existence?I don't claim to know. Why do you?

I have no idea what this even means. But god(s) as prime over is just one of the potentially infinite possibilities. On what basis should we deem it any more or less likely than any of the conceivable alternatives? Or even the possibility of any inconceivable alternatives? And if it is one of an infinite array then just pure stats makes your particular claim unlikley to be true doesn't it? Untrue. The conceivable possibilities are vast.You seem to be taking an approach to probability that says a roullette wheel will either hit black 15 or not. So it is just as likely to win on black 15 as any NOT black 15.This is patently flawed.

I'll just quote cavediver:

Have you heard of infinite regression?

Anyone who rejects Last Thursdayism without testing it and instead confidently concludes that the Earth is billions of years old is, by the terms of your argument, a "pseudoskeptic". Which of course means that ALL conclusions, scientifically evidenced or otherwise, are mere opinions according to your argument.Because any evidence we can cite for anything could have been falsely placed in our minds when the universe was created 1 second ago.Can you name any high confidence conclusion that isn't just an opinion RAZ? Can we ever (even tentatively) know anything?If so - What? Can you give a specific example of a conclusion that can legitimately be considered high confidence?Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

I have done previously. Here are the same off the top of my head examples I gave before.Maybe something godlike used to exist but it distributed it’s consciousness amongst the multiverse such that our own individual consciousnesses are all that remains of it — collectively we (i.e. all that exists) are god. Maybe we are part of a something in which all physical and non-physical possibilities exist simultaneously in some quantum-like state and it is therefore both true that gods do exist and true that they don’t exist simultaneously. Maybe all that exists is blind mindless logic and all else follows from that including something that believes it is god. Maybe an immaterial unintelligent uncaused and eternal universe making machine blindly following mathematical rules is responsible for our existence. Maybe our existence is the result of a collective conscious of a vast number of individually unintelligent entities - Kind of like us being the mind where they are the neurons that produce that mind. Maybe the matrix just exists and we are in it. Maybe the concepts of time and causality as experienced by humans are a complete illusion and there is nothing to explain except the reason for our flawed perspective of reality. Maybe, maybe, maybe.........Maybe no human mind has yet conceived of the correct answer. Maybe the human mind isn't even capable of conceiving of the correct answer.I don't know. But there are an infinite number of philosophical possibilities and in the absence of any objective evidence any individual one is deeply improbable isn't it? And that certainly includes whatever concept it is you are advocating.

Which would imply that you consider any invocation of anything uncaused as illegitimate.But I suspect you are going to special plead the object of your own belief as an exception anyway.Go on. Prove me right........