Peanut Gallery

I, nor anyone else I have seen here, would make that statement. There is no objective evidence in favour of any given god. There is objective evidence in favour of the mutually exclusive possibility that any given god concept is a human invention.Unless RAZD is actually denying that there is objective evidence in favour of the possibility that any given god concept could be a human invention then I don't understand what his point is.I have asked him this question but he won't answer it. Message 91

I couldn't resist.Is anyone else as intrigued by this one as me?Will RAZ ever acknowledge the difference between falsifiable evidence based theories and statements of absolute logical certitude?

So you disagree with RAZD's position?Then you are obviously guilty of un-evidenced opinions, based on your world view, biases, confirmation bias and wishful thinking all of which you will never accept due to cognitive dissonance.Say no more.....

I have read both RAZ''s and bluegenes posts.RAZ is doing what he always does when confronted with an argument he is unable to counter. He seeks to self moderate/referee the thread in question in his favour. Every comparison he doesn't like or point he cannot answer becomes "Off topic". Every argument he cannot deal with is met with declarations about rules and guidelines rather than counter-arguments. All while he relentlessly engages in multi-coloured histrionics and assertions of cognitive dissonance etc. in his opponents.Bluegenes quite clearly stated the terms of the debate in the original challenge Message 167Why RAZD thinks the debate hinges on bluegenes ability to disprove anything (never mind things specifically designed to be immune from disproof) remains a mystery.

And spoil the fun.........?

Firstly how can you disprove (which is what RAZD is demanding) the existence of any empirically imperceptible entity?Secondly - If the entity in question (e.g. the Immaterial Pink Unicorn that he has demanded be disproved) is empirically imperceptible how can it be anything other than a concept derived solely from the internal workings of the human mind?It cannot have been perceived as part of external reality. So where else can it possibly be sourced from?

I dunno. Take Jesus. Now if the Jesus of the bible (born of a virgin, prophecised, here to atone for mans sins etc. etc.) really did exist as the son of God he would be a supernatural being capable of overcoming the laws of nature purely by means of his conscious will would he not? Throw in an ability to flit between the natural world and some sort of ethereal heavenly afterlife outside of time outside of material reality realm and I really don't see how you can call that natural rather than supernatural?If there is a second coming of Christ then that dude will be supernatural. I don't see how it can be otherwise. Likewise if Yahweh or any other god decides to reveal themselves (e.g. judgement day, armeggadon etc.) I really don't see how they can be described as "natural" if they are the source of natural laws rather than being limited or derived from them. I think conceptually it does. Otherwise how are we able to distinguish between explanations for as yet unknowns (e.g. the origins of the universe) that are natural and those that are supernatural?I guess if we wanna pursue this at all we should do it elsewhere. Maybe the Supernatural Hypothesis thread. But we don't have to make a big thing of it.

Not really. Are colliding branes a supernatural explanation to the origins of the universe?Is the idea that an eternal omnipotent omnipresent omniscient being (e.g. the common Christia notion of God) created the universe a supernatural explanation?What is the difference between the two? Not really. The move from a supernatural answer to a naturalistic one is more than just making something once unknown known. For example Thor is a supernatural explanation for thunder and lightening. Static electrical build up in storms is a natural explanation. If we had indeed found that a divine super-being was responsible for storms etc. we wouldn't be looking for naturalistic answers to existing unkowns. We would instead be trying to determine what sort of divine being was responsible for magically sparking life into existence (or whatever).We wouldn't be scientificaly studying such questions. We would be seeking divinely inspired spiritual answers to such questions by praying (or otherwise seeking to communicate) with said spritual entity. Again not really. If you had been able to show those cultures that rather than some spooky mystical unknowable fire spirit imbued with the conscious will to spread and burn things fire was simply a controllable phenomenon which any man with the knowledge to do so could master, create and utilise much like a spear or any other more familiar concept - Then I don't think that is the same as making their concept of fire natural. Instead you have fundamentally changed what their concept of fire is. And replaced a supernatural explanation with a natural one.We really should take this to the other thread if you want to continue.......Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Do you think bluegenes went too far in stating this theory as well?Bluegenes writes: "ALL rabbits come from other rabbits"It seems you are as incapable as RAZD of distinguishing between falsifiable theories and statements of fact. No. It is RAZ's way of demanding the disprrof of things which he knows cannot be disproved. As if disproving anything had any relevance to anything anyway. If it cannot be perceived what difference does it make? Where else can it have been sourced from? Why does somebody putting their hand up and saying "It was me" make any difference to that? Bluegenes: Human invention is the only known source of supernatural beings. If you disagree, tell the world about the other known source or sources.And so it goes on.......Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

You tell us.What is it that RAZ is demanding?

OK. If you are saying that there are no supernatural phenomenon only natural phenomenon to which supernatural explanations have been attributed then you know that I agree wholeheartedly that this is almost certainly true.But those supernatural explanations are not "nothing". They are concepts in which people genuinely believe. Some reasonably well defined. Some as ambiguous as hell. It describes what they believe. Whether it is real or wrong or even rather evidentially stupid isn't the point. I don't think it is fair to say that it "describes nothing".The supernatural beliefs of Slev and Buz etc. may be un-evidenced by any standard of evidence deserving of the term. They may be the product of the human mind. They may be wrong. But they are not "nothing". Any more than the beliefs of Hindus are "nothing". I think my son honestly believes that spider-man exists. He wants me to take him to NY to see him because I told him that is where he lives. Now you and I know that this is a false belief. But he doesn't believe in "nothing". He believes that spider-man exists."Unreal" and "nothing" are not synonomous. Not all supernatural beliefs are ambiguous. Creationists may be wrong but they seem to have fairly well defined what it is they believe in. And if by some miracle it did turn out to be true it would be neither "nothing" or "natural". It would be real and supernatural.In my view the ambiguity comes as the retreat in the face of evidence is adopted. Culminating in the deistic notion of the supernatural that much more reasonably can be described as "nothing".Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Why do you think these are the obvious responses? Seriously just stop and think about that. Is "You're wrong" an unreasonable response to your magical green elephant assertion? If it is reasonable why is it reasonable? Is there really no relevant evidence to this question at all in your view?Is there an "absence of evidence "? Really? The deeply evidenced fact that the human mind is capable of making such things up combined with the overwhelming psychological and cultural evidence demonstrating that given a contextual reason to do so, or even half an opportunity to do so, we will.This capacity for imagination is what makes us human and "special" but it is also what makes us exceptionally poor natural judges of reality. Hence our need for systematic methods of discerning the real from the imagined and also our need for a degree of skepticism to be the default position when confronted with the claims of other humans. So we know that this thing is imperceptible. We know it cannot have originated as a human concept by means of experiencing external reality. We also know for an absolute hugely evidenced fact that the human mind is capable of internally imagining things that do not exist.Yet you think someone saying "I did it" is the deciding factor here?

If we found a man who it could be confirmed was born from a virgin, whose DNA reflected this rather bizzarre happenstance and who seemed to be unbounded by the laws of nature in terms of the things he could do - Do you think that this dude would qualify as "supernatural"?I think if this dude turned up claiming to be the son of God RAZD could justifiably claim victory in this debate.

I remain unsure what your problem is with bluegenes argument.Are you disputing that there is evidence of humans inventing supernatural concepts?

I have been thinking about this as it is bugging me as to what is we actually disagree about here. I couldn't put my finger on it at first but I think I have worked it out.You seem to be trying to define the supernatural out of existence by simply insisting that if something turns out to be real it, by definition, must be natural.But I don’t think this is either justified or useful. If entities exist which are neither derived from, nor subject to, any laws of nature (e.g. Jesus Christ as conceived by Christians such as Buz and Slev) then these entities are both real and supernatural.That these entities almost certainly don’t exist isn’t really the point.