Can science refute the "god hypothesis" beyond all reasonable doubt?

Hi, Stile.I liked this post quite a lot. There is one thing I don't understand, though.In Message 278, to Onifre, you wanted "reasonable doubt" to be applied universally, not individually or subjectively: But, to Catholic Scientist, you said this: When you define "reasonable doubt" in terms of what we know and where we've been told to look, don't you mandate that "reasonable doubt" can only be assessed in terms of a particular audience?If so, doesn't your argument ("only what's available to us") take the same logical form as Oni's primitive-rainforest-tribe analogy? In other words, aren't you, in effect, only saying, "it's a valid argument to me," just like Oni's tribe?Aren't you basically lending validation to any argument simply because it is adequate to convince somebody somewhere?Edited by Bluejay, : extra yellowing

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.

Despite Stile’s distaste for semantics, I think the discussion has gotten a little hung up on the issue of "reasonable doubt" and how this applies to the question at hand. I think it has been agreed by most that "reasonable doubt" is essentially subjective: what counts as reasonable doubt to one group may not be reasonable doubt for another, more educated group or for an individual with a different understanding of "reasonable."What follows is that, if we all agree that an idea is "refuted beyond all reasonable doubt" (within our present state of knowledge), but the decision can later be reversed in light of new evidence, we have all become a bunch of AlphaOmegakids.I will grant that a lack of evidence renders the “God hypothesis” essentially useless in terms of scientific inquiry. So, if we take the theistic viewpoint as a scientific hypothesis, I agree with Stile that it is not a viable, valid scientific idea.However, I disagree that the concept of God itself has been refuted beyond all reasonable doubt. On that, I stand with Catholic Scientist: any argument that God does not exist based on what we don't see in the world is hardly more than an assumption.My argument can be summed up as follows:Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

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But, absence of evidence is evidence of uselessness.

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.

Hi, Straggler. It's one of those things that's technically true, but that, on a practical basis, can be ignored when you're talking about a whole herd of buffalo. Obviously, the rules are somewhat different when you're looking for someting secretive and elusive (like a single mosquito or an immaterial God) than when you're looking for something blatant and big (like a hurricane or a herd of buffalo). It would also depend on the magnitude of the area you're searching.Exactly where God should fit on the spectrum is anybody's guess.As I argued before, I think the absence of evidence is sufficient to rule out the widespread usage of God as an explanatory hypothesis for natural phenomena. But, His non-existence is a different question, and would require the proven absence of a whole lot more evidence, I think.

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.

Holy cow, Straggler!I’d forgotten all about this thread. Fine. Take out “widespread.” It was just me being overly cautious about my arguments (as always), anyway.----- I agree that religion is more likely just somebody’s dream for happiness running away into collective delusions of grandeur than an actual, adequate description of any God that might have created this universe.But, if “likelihood” is all you want, your thread is boring. ----- It’s a good thing I’m just a stereotype, then, isn’t it? Otherwise “generally” might not apply to me. You know I'm not going to complain if you say most religious beliefs are delusional and erroneous. But, I think that using this to relegate all religious beliefs to the loony dustbin is a composition fallacy: there may be some truth to some religious belief somewhere, so I'd prefer to remain overly cautious and shrug my shoulders, instead of committing to a specific belief (I've already had bad experiences with that, if you remember).

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-Bluejay/Mantis/ThylacosmilusDarwin loves you.