Inductive Atheism

The concept of the tree has to exist in the human imagination, but we can point to an actual tree. That's my response to Bluegenes theory... So what? All concepts, whether of supernatural being are not, come from the human imagination.The problem is that we can't point to a supernatural being like we can a tree.So the relevant difference between a SB and a tree is that we can objectively verify the tree but not the SB. Then, then theory seems to be about things that we can't objectively verify. The theory that all things we can't objectively verify are figments of the human imagination can't be objectively verified non-circularly.The theory being about the actual beings, themselves, wouldn't be evidenced by showing that the concepts of them are imagined.I still don't see any merit in the theory. I don't rememer explicitly claiming that. I maintain that they could be, and that we don't know they aren't. For me personally, its when my experiences tell me that the naturalistic explanation is insufficient. For a scientific, or naturalistic, explanation, well yeah, its not ever going to be a non-naturalistic explanation. But that doesn't really tell me anything about the actual veracity of the supernatural explanation.

You don't conclude that something is worthy of agnosticism, you start at agnosticism as the default untill evidence shows one way or the other. I've maintained that specific gods, whether falsifiable or not and regardless of people believing in them, can be shown to not exist and thus lead to disbelief in them.

What vacuum of all objective evidence? What does that even mean? Is that even possible? The conclusion is about concepts, not any beings themselves. I can't provide a concept that isn't a concept. The ones that we have insufficient evidence against, either by way of limited ability, or insufficient description to go against, or that I haven't heard enough about yet.

Not exactly. You can have an absence of evidence towards or against some particular, which would not necessarily be evidence of absence of it, without being in a vacuum of all objevtive evidence. Its taughtological... They lack any empirical evidence for them, unlike the tree does, but I'm not so sure that leads to a conclusion of a lack of basis in reality. Well there's my concept of god and then there's, presumably, some actual being that exists that I'm conceptualizing. Are there any beings that exist that we cannot empirically investigate? How would we know?Simply assuming they must be made-up because we don't have empirical evidence for them isn't rational, in my opinion. I'd bet that some of them could be rationally discarded, but then there's also some that couldn't.

Because we haven't gone through any details or evidence against it to lead you from the starting position of agnosticism to the atheism. All concepts come from human imagination. This says nothing about the existance of some being that the concept is about. Without getting into the details, its impossible for you to know if the being could exist or not. You are, quite literally, without knowledge of whether it exists or not.

Well, to be fair, the atmosphere on Pluto lacks the oxygen requirements necessary to suscitate any mammal But yes, I'm sure you can make up some ridiculous unfalsifyable supernatural beings. You shouldn't, you just made it up to make a point. I understand the position. I disbelieve in many gods as well, but I don't find the position against some kind of god in general to be evidenced.The arguments I see against a god are post hoc rationalizations of a position that already existed, not some evidenced based conclusion. Yes, I do. Thank you for sharing and being honest.Now, where's the data?

More like a school-girl The hicks 'round here sound like "Huh Huh" In the sense of seeing no reason to believe in it and thus not, I don't have a problem with that type of atheism.Although, if you took the position that it did not exist, then I'd expect something that leads to that position. I'm not for the God of the Gaps argument, either. On the other hand, I do realize there are observations that have not been able to be attributed to naturalistic explanations. Too, simply limiting true observations to those that do have naturalistic explanations limits what can be investigated, not what can exist.

Like what? That'll work for now for the purpose of this discussion. No, all concepts, by definition, are things you imagine.Some of them stem from empirical observations and some do not.

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I have an idea, it changes and is a little fuzzy sometimes, the generally accepted core qualities of a god tend to stay, but my personal beliefs are irrelevant.

Non-sequitor.A refutation of another, especially more primitive, concept of a god is not evidence that the being that my concept of god is presumably based on has no basis in reality. I don't think so. The problem is that anything that isn't easily acceptable to empirical investigation is ruled out as non-evidence, and the only evidence that is accepted is that of a scientific nature. But that limitation, itself, reduces the evidence to only that which supports your premise in the first place. And I'm not getting into "subjective evidence" here. I gotta go now, but if you want, I can dig up some references to events that I think eliminate the possibility of human invention, yet still suggest a supernatural being with those qualities you describe. Granted, the concept of the being must still be something that a person has to imagine. Although, I predict that it will be "inconclusive" on whether or not the being actually exists and you'll still doubt it and act like there's no evidence at all against you.

No, I'm still using your definition. Read what I wrote again. The only known source of any concept is the human imagination, by definition. That's not evidence that the thing that the concept stems from doesn't exist.The only way that the only "known" source can be assumed to be human imagination, is if you limit the knowledge to the scientifically acceptable and ignore the rest. I haven't bothered to dig up any specifics yet, but there's an old hotel where people have ignorantly and independently witnessed a semi-transparent human male figure with old coat and civil war hat. The curator replies each time: "oh yeah, that's so-and-so. He died here when this hotel was used as a civil war hospital. He's been here ever sense. We have trouble keeping employees after they run into him."If the people aren't aware of the story beforehand, and they're reporting seeing the same thing, then it can't just be from their imagination. It must have some empirical detectability in order to be witnessed. But that doesn't mean we're capable of obtaining enough information for a scientific investigation.So the source of this supernatural being isn't "known", but we know they both didn't coincidentally imagine the same thing on their own.

Yes, by definition. Concepts do not exist outside the imagination. Right, some concepts stem from empirically verifiable objective things and some do not. Humans can and do invent tree concepts as well. Here's a child-like concept of a tree: Me pointing out all the errors this has is not evidence that there was no tree that this concept stemmed from, nor does it hurt other concepts of trees.Just like you pointing some problems in some god concepts is not evidence that there is no god that it stemmed from, nor does it hurt other concepts of gods.What you have going for you is the lack of empirically verifiable objective evidence of the supernatural being, itself. The concepts of those beings, though, can stem from things outside the conceptualizer's imagination, such as a book or another person, but those too haven't been shown to stem from something other than another's imagination. Not in the sense of being empirically verified as objective, no. But like in my hotel example above, we can know that the concept could not have stemmed from the imagination without knowing what the source of the concept is. Limiting the sources to those that have been empirically verified as objective is not looking at the whole picture.

I don't think it does.

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The problem is that anything that isn't easily acceptable to empirical investigation is ruled out as non-evidence, and the only evidence that is accepted is that of a scientific nature. But that limitation, itself, reduces the evidence to only that which supports your premise in the first place.

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If the people aren't aware of the story beforehand, and they're reporting seeing the same thing, then it can't just be from their imagination.

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So the source of this supernatural being isn't "known", but we know they both didn't coincidentally imagine the same thing on their own.

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But since you're using science as the criteria for "known" and we're dealing with supernatural beings, which we don't expect to be scientifically demonstrable to exist, then your reasoning is circular. Obviously, I've said as much myself. I don't think its strong, nor should it be considered a theory, because its a circularly reasoned hypothesis lacking any real data towards it. That, and its not something worth of publishing in a scientific journal. All of the real ones that deal with naturalistic phenomenon as opposed to supernatural beings like this one tries to. Irrelevant. The simple matter is that the source cannot be imagination even though we're unable to identify what that source is.It exposes that claiming that all known sources are imagination excludes the very things that suggest the "theory" is wrong, thus the circularness.

Its basically because of trying to use science (only naturalistic explanations) on supernatural, or non-natural, sources.The only scientifically known source of supernatural beings is the human imagination. If the source becomes scientifically known, then there is a natural explanation and it is not supernatural. If the source is non-natural, then it will not become scientifically known. So, the only sources that can become scientifically known cannot be supernatural beings. Therefore, we're left with the only other possible source which is the human imagination. If there was another source, and it became scientifically known, then it wouldn't be supernatural. If it was supernatural, then it wouldn't become scientifically known. So, the only source that can become scientifically known cannot be supernatural and we're left with the only other source which is imagination. But, if another source did become known... etc. etc. When multiple people independently, and ignorantly, report the same thing, then they all couldn't have imagined it. So we can know that the source is not human imagination while not having enough information to scientifically know the source.

Arguments against belief are easy, I have no problem with yours.The origin of the bluegenes challenge was a request for an argument against agnosticism, Message 166.Got one of those?