Inductive Atheism

I think, in the case of RAZD, it's more that this existence cannot be ruled out, on the whole wide universe scale. And bluegenes would concur, I would expect. It's only that we haven't seen the evidence (i.e. - peer reviewed scientific objective evidence), the card in the deck, that does not belong in the deck, it still has not showed.The hard chicken bone in all of our throats is that we cannot go to the "there" that all of these great debates have been skirting around. If something is unexplainable, cannot be understood and we don't even know what it looks like (the ignostic starting point), it will be a while before we can get to even conceptualizing the designing of the needed experiments. "And Madonna, she still has not showed
We see this empty cage now corrode
Where her cape of the stage once had flowed
The fiddler, he now steps to the road
He writes everything's been returned which was owed
On the back of the fish truck that loads
While my conscience explodes
The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain
And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain."

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- xongsmith, 5.7d

It's the top of the 10th inning in the playoffs against the Yankees in Yankee Stadium in 2004. All of us Red Sox fans are fervently believing in a most merciful and benevolent God. And He delivered.

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- xongsmith, 5.7d

Bullshit. There are atheists in the foxholes. I have been a Red Sox fan for years and am as a rabid as any, and I have never prayed to this "benevolent god"(whatever the hell that means), to help the Red Sox win. Even if this god thing exists, why should I expect my prayers to mean more than Yankee fans. Don't you think prayers like this demean the concept of a god? I will remember that game forever and no god or supernaturalism ever entered my thoughtsYou fall into the same trap theists seem to always fall into about atheists. They paint us all with a broad brush and then invoke a version of Pascals' Wager.

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Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts

So in what respect does RAZ disagree with atheists who are 6 on the Dawkins scale - see Message 129 - and who do not proclaim certainty? Atheists who in fact advocate a position that inherently requires a degree of uncertainty. Aside from his relentless use of colourful charts and seemingly incoherent description of himself as a "deist" this (i.e as you describe it) all seems very compatible. Do you understand the idea of inductive scientific reasoning?Which of the geologists, cosmologists, physicists, chemists, meterologists, evolutionary biologists (is there another kind?), psychologists, historians, archaeologists, astronomers and numerous other "ologists" have not provided hard objective empirical evidence that refutes the actual existence of supernatural-being-concepts such as these: Solar deitiesWind godsFertility deitiesLunar deitiesThunder godsCreator godsFire godsDo you want peer reviewed literature that suggests that the Sun isn't being dragged across the sky by Scarab the godly dung beetle? Or by Apollo's flaming chariot? Or perhaps a peer reviewed paper on IVF that contradicts the idea that sacrificing lambs to a fertility goddess isn't the answer to a low sperm count?What peer reviewed evidence is is that you think is missing here?

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.

This is indeed THE significant problem for you or anyone else who wants to falsify Bluegenes theory. Do you understand the idea of scientific inductive reasoning and the necessary tentative and falsifiable conclusions that this results in? Do you think that inductively derived scientific theories are weakened by unsupported and unfalsifiable claims that contradict them?Do you think that scientific theories are "illogical" and not scientific theories if they are based on inductive reasoning?

Ok, I apologize if someone has said largely what I'm saying here, but after reading countless threads and posts on the subject, I honestly couldn't bring myself to continue reading this one.What we have is a propostion: "People from all over the planet believe in a supernatural deity." If you strip away all the specifics of the various religions, you'll come to this undefined/undefinable supernatual being (or beings) which RAZD seems to be defending ad mauseum. I can sort of see his point about consillience, and this consillience does imply a singular cause. As it stands, I'm aware of only two potential causes being bandied about.1) Cause 1 is the commonality of the human brain, mind and psyche. As support for this cause, we have uncounted billions of examples of people:
a) Creating completely unreal concepts. i.e. fiction, lies, delusions, etc.
b) Believeing unreal things that they, or others, have conceived through deceit, ignorance, or psychosis.
c) Desiring explanations for natural things that, as yet, have no explanation. (at one time, lightning. now-a-days, the existence of anything rather than nothing, death, etc)
This cause is able to explain, and predict, other such phomenon.2) Cause 2 is the actual existence of some form of supernatural deity that is not, or is unable to be, understood by human minds.
In support of this cause, we have nothing beyond the phenomenon we are trying to explain. This cause is unable to predict anything beyond the specific phenomenon we are trying to explain.When we have cause 1, with it's superior predictive and explanatory abilities and known existence, compared to cause 2, with no predictive/explanatory abilities and is unevidenced except by the very phenomenon we're considering, I think it is not only logical, but right to place most of our support behind cause 1, and until more evidence is brought forth, to ignore cause 2.Can RAZD, or any other Deist, tell me where in my analysis I have performed logical fallacies, or have misunderstood the argument?

I think you have summised what I have been saying for months/years exceptionally well.

Oh dang, you missed the Smiley at the top of the post.....

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- xongsmith, 5.7d

I rarely pay attention to them.Sorry

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Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts

Good summary, but I have to make a point about this. It ignores the non-theistic religions, and even amongst the theistic religions, the gods are not necessarily universe creators. They can be created by the universe, or self-created within the universe.Because Jewish mythology gives us one of the "mind before matter" ex nihilo creator concepts (of which there are quite a lot) and the members of this board come from traditionally Christian cultures, there's a tendency to ignore the other types of gods, and religions without gods.If we really wanted to look for something in common in all traditions, it would actually be the human soul or spirit (often attributed to other animals, and even plants and non-living things in some traditions). "Me and my body" as separate entities is something we easily perceive. It wouldn't actually be gods, although they're common, let alone an ex nihilo creator. The weirdest and most striking example of consilience I've found so far is two completely separate cultures on different continents (India and North America) which both have a world supporting turtle. Apart from world supporting elephants (India also) I can't think off hand of other world supporting animals, so it seems odd that the two should make the same choice out of so many animals available. The turtle's shell is the only source of inspiration I can think of.Of course, I'm teasing RAZD with this, because it's something that clearly doesn't exist. So much for consilience. I see nothing in the myths that isn't easily explicable by, as you put it, "the commonality of the human brain, mind and psyche".Good summary, anyway.

I am puzzled that you would pursue this with me, Straggs. BTW, one of the finest IPAs this side of the pond raised to you. Well, if you really wish to know my opinion on a 6.0 dawkins, it is not illogical. A 6.0, as both you & I have noted, leaves room for Doubt. It is the 7.0s, such as our dad, who seem to have jumped off the deep end. I will back off RAZD's 6.0 line, because in the end it's all arbitrary where you draw lines like this and useless to raise bullets & boiling oil over such trivialities and why not pick a cozy 5.7. There is Doubt, no? This means that all the drawn cards (such as you again laboriously listed to a choir-type audience such as I) do not do anything to guarantee that the Card That Does Not Belong In The Deck does not still lurk somewhere down in the deck, waiting to make it's astonishing appearance. We have levels of confidence that it won't exist that can be derived from probability theory (such as the insurance industry's Mean Time Between Failure calculations) that puts those odds at a very minuscule chance of showing up. That is plenty enough to proceed at a 6.0 level for most of us - that is, to choose to continue to live our lives as if there were no Supernatural Beings/Events/Things with ever increasing confidence. This is as inductive as it gets. Do we have certainty that the sun won't rise? No, but we had an amazing amount of confidence that it will. Evidence for the supernatural.Excuse me, I must get my next bottle....

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- xongsmith, 5.7d

Maybe spomeone took copies of Terry Pratchett's DIscworld books back in time. In his books, DIscworld (whic is in fact flat) is supported on the backs of four elephants who in turn live on the back of Great A'Tuin, the massive turtle swimming through space (to only he knows where).

Nothing's impossible with magic. Although that reminds me of the theory of our descendents mastering time travel, then going back in time and creating the first life forms, because Pratchett got his version from an early European misconception of the Indian myths that put the turtle and elephants together, when they were actually separate myths.I love the Discworld - my favourite fantasy world.

Mine too, though they're only so good because I've read so many other fantasy series...not to mention police-type procedurals and such.