Agnosticism vs. Atheism

crashfrog, Oh, I got pulled up short, make no mistake! That's why debating with people who don't dodge, evade, & actually tackle points head on can be such a great learning experience.[added by edit - that's ME learning!]Mark[This message has been edited by mark24, 09-26-2003]

Jack, There is no such thing as negative evidence, negative evidence is a lack of evidence, non-evidence, if you will.An argument of the form: A then B, not B therefore not A is a valid form of argument, & the conclusion MUST be true if the premises are true.Consider someone making the same argument regarding giant squid 500 years ago. At that time there was no evidence of such things. Therefore, if giant squid exist, they should leave evidence, there is no evidence, therefore giant squid don't exist. But giant squid DO exist, so why does a supposedly valid argument that must have a true conclusion actually have a false one?Something is wrong.Mark------------------
"I can't prove creationism, but they can't prove evolution. It is [also] a religion, so it should not be taught....Christians took over the school board and voted in creationism. That can be done in any school district anywhere, and it ought to be done." Says Kent "consistent" Hovind in "Unmasking the False Religion of Evolution Chapter 6."

Hi Jack, Correct, but the positive evidence that you didn't hit the vase with a baseball bat as hard as you could is the fact that it is in one piece. I am basing my inference on positive evidence, I am making a direct observation of something, rather than nothing. If I couldn't see the vase, I couldn't make the inference.The point is that with the god argument you don't have an observation you can make of something (as opposed to nothing) with which to make an inference. But you are. It is implicit in the arguments form; A then B, not B then not A. If B equates to evidence, & A god, the statement claims that there is no evidence of god therefore there is no god. A lack of evidence = a lack of god. Absence of evidence is evidence of absence. In which case you need to scan the entire universe in order to have evidence of absence of god.But this isn't true, anyway. Fishermen had trawled the sea & found no squid, so the logic stands. Squid existed. In any case, even if you trawled the entire sea & didn't find one, it still wouldn't be a direct observation of absence. Maybe you just missed them.Investigation is not a requirement of the argument; A then B, not B then not A. At any particular time, regardless of whether you have looked, or not, there may be no evidence of A, yet it is not necessarily true that A actually is false. It is possible that A can turn up at any time, which the squid shows is possible in this sort of argument. A corollary of this is if the conclusion can be false, the argument isn't necessarily valid because the premise B may be false. If the premises may be false then it's not a very convincing argument.It then comes back to how do I falsify that you hit the vase with the bat, without ever seeing the vase? Or even the bat for that matter?Mark

compmage, Agreed. It was a semi-rhetorical question, & I deal with it in the second from last paragraph to Jack, above.If the premises cannot be shown to be true, then the truth of the conclusion isn't guaranteed. Yes. Exactly. You said it yourself, the premises must be true. If I can provide exactly the same argument where they are not, then the premises in the god argument aren't necessarily, either. But then again, they may be . It is the not being able to determine that's the problem, as I see it.MarkMark

Sidelined,Presumably if god affected the universe he would become natural.Mark

compmage, They are, but my point is that a generic god cannot be disproved. You can destroy every religion on earth & still not know that some god exists? I agree.Mark------------------
"I can't prove creationism, but they can't prove evolution. It is [also] a religion, so it should not be taught....Christians took over the school board and voted in creationism. That can be done in any school district anywhere, and it ought to be done." Says Kent "consistent" Hovind in "Unmasking the False Religion of Evolution Chapter 6."

sidelined, This is going off topic a bit, & I've argued this before, but a lot of people, scientists included, seem to think god is removed from science by definition, he/she/it isn't, for this very reason. If god exists, then there is potential evidence to be found, & god can be studied scientifically.God is only removed from methodological naturalist science because there is no evidence, not because there is god. Try telling that to Phillip Johnson.Mark

sidelined, Or that we wouldn't understand it if we did, or that we simply haven't found the evidence that does exist....Mark

sidelined, Because things we see as natural laws of physics aren't "natural" (they probably are, but you get what I mean). If "gods" involvement was to create the precursor conditions, & tweak a vacuum fluctuation in such a way as all our temporal dimensions & laws of physics are direct corollaries of that single big bang event, how would you detect that the original "finger click" wasn't involved, or that it was?Mark