Inductive Atheism

Wouldn't that question be better aimed at Christians? Other than the fact that you don't like it what exactly is your complaint here? Define the supernatural being you believe in and then we'll discuss the evidence for and against as it pertains to that specific concept.Or would that be a little too unambiguous for your liking?

We have a highly evidenced naturalistic explanation for an observed phenomenon. This explanation inductively applies to ALL supernatural concepts. It applies in exactly the same way that any scientific explanation is tentatively applied generally. Jumping up and down whilst yelling but you haven’t falsified my specific unevidenced and unfalsifiable belief is of no consequence to the evidential validity of this explanation. No more so than (for example) baseless omphalistic claims are cause to dent our confidence in the scientifically evidenced age of the Earth. The evidentially derived conclusion is that ALL supernatural concepts are sourced from human imagination. This is a high confidence theory. And it applies equally to god concepts, such as yours, which have been designed to be directly unfalsifiable.Which part of this are you still struggling with? The same can be said of any naturalistic explanation for anything.The only known source of light and heat in filament bulbs is electrical resistance. If some people are stupid enough to believe that some filament bulbs operate by means of ethereal salamanders does this weaken that conclusion? The same can be said of any naturalistic explanation for anything.Does the philosophical possibility of filament bulbs powered by ethereal salamanders weaken the scientific conclusion regarding this phenomenon? The same can be said of any naturalistic explanation for anything can't it?Why do you think this is different? Genuinely evidenced conscilience suggests both a human source of such concepts and a human proclivity to invent such things.Which part of this are you still struggling with?

Who cares about them? You made the claim that: 'If Jesus pops up and starts the whole armeggadon thing, raising people from the dead and whatnot, even the most ardent athest would eventually have to be considered somewhat churlish to sit there saying "I am sure that there is a perfectly good scientific material explanation for this". At that point bluegenes theory could be considered falsified and atheists should have the decency to admit they were wrong.'You seem to think that some dude grave-hopping around town bringing folk back to life is evidence of God.Why? You've unfortunately completely missed the point.JonEdited by Jon, : ?

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

Jesus? Faced with what by all accounts is the genuine second coming of their Messiah I would imagine that Christians would be dancing in the streets. As they follow his exploits - Raising the dead, purging people of their sins, inducing rapture, delivering people to eternal paradise and whatnot you apparently will demanding to know what any of this "has to do with God". I believe this would qualify you as what is commonly known as a "party pooper". I think that evidence of the Christian concept of a supernatural Jesus actually existing would be evidence falsifying a theory that predicts that all such concepts are sourced from human imagination. Which part of this are you confused by? Oh the irony.........

Of course that's not what you said; what you said was: 'atheists should have the decency to admit they were wrong.'So again, why do you think some grave-hoppin', corpse-raisin', hootin'-of-a-good-time man has anything to do with God?Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

Are you asking what has the return of God, the descent of the kingdom of God to earth from the heavens and God's final judgement of mankind has to do with God?A lot, I would have thought. Did you forget the part where Straggler mentioned Armageddon?Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Nope; was talking about Jesus, not God. Jesus has nothing to do with God, obviously. I'm not sure what Armageddon has to do with God...Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

So it appears that you really don't think that god's final judgement over all of mankind as the kingdom of god descends from heaven and god made flesh bodily resurrects humanity might constitute a scenario which could pass as having some relation to a thing called god.Since, by the nature of your latest replies, it is evident you are being as elusive as you are obtuse - the sensible course of action is to leave it having simply repeated my point in a sufficiently sharp manner.But maybe you will feel like having an actual sensible discussion later on, which might be nice. I'll know that day is come when you present a defence for your position rather than hiding behind short content free posts...maybe even tying it to the original point of debate.I'm fairly sure I actually get where you are heading, but at least give us the courtesy of reading our posts, comprehending them and responding in a way that isn't like a 1st yr philosophy student that thinks they are being...clever.

I am not even sure how we would know what such a creature was. Some of those silly Christians might call it God, but they'd likely be as wrong as they've always been when they've attributed inexplicable events to divine interventionsplagues, lightning, eclipses, etc. I wouldn't trust their judgements or their books half as far as I could throw them. Would you? Well, simply put, both you and Straggler seem to have bought into the silly Christian God concept, which makes no sense to me as you're both atheists. Just cause men in robes (dresses?) and an old book say it's God doesn't make it so. If, as Straggler says, the events of an Armageddon (which sounds nothing like 'I'm a-gettin'' to Americans, by the way ) should turn atheists from their ranks, then I'd say they weren't much for atheistsprobably more like irrational agnostics doubtful of their own agnosticism. Cleverness has nothing to do with it, sir. The goal was to figure out just what you or Straggler felt Armageddon had to do with God. And, now that I've told you why I think it hasn't a thing to do with God, perhaps you two could tell me why you think it does.Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

Jon you now seem to be suggesting that the demonstrable existence of an entity that exactly matches the Christian concept of Jesus isn't evidence in favour of the actual existence of the Christian concept of Jesus. Even the most rabid cynic would have to admit that this is a somewhat overly skeptical approach. I will take on board any method of knowing which is demonstrably significantly superior to blind random chance in terms of yielding results. If they genuinely start describing and predicting reality with the same sort of accuracy and reliability that science currently does then I don't see how they could be ignored. Do you think that calling oneself an atheist is a declaration of certainty? How many times do you need to be corrected about this? Do you know what the word "tentative" means? Have you actually read the OP of this thread at all? Here it is Message 1Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

As might anybody that speaks English or other language which uses the Gott/God word to describe supernatural creators and judges of the world. That should be a clue that we don't buy it. We just accept that Christians believe in a thing called God and the thing that they call God has certain properties and if there was strong evidence of an entity that has those certain properties then there would evidence of the thing Christians (and other English speakers) call 'God'. In the same sense that a stampede of bulls has to do with bulls. It is an event that contains an entity that is referred in English to a certain noun. In one case, bulls, in another case God.If a bunch of old men in robes described a stampede but I had never seen one and I said that stampedes were figments of the human imagination it seems reasonable to re-visit that theory if I am presented with something that has all the defining characteristics of a stampede. The same applies for gods and supernatural end times.

Aside from the mistake of concluding that it is supernatural, you seem to have missed his point: the source is not human imagination.That alone would be sufficient to falsify bluegenes' theory.However, let's not let CS's hotel ghost get lost in all the other armageddon going on around in here.CS describes a repeated observation of a ghost by observers, especially observers who are uninformed and independent of each other, across a length of time from the Civil War. His conclusion is that the source is not human imagination because all of the observers describe the same ghost.What is the explanation? He says it is unknown but it is not human imagination.1. The ghost really exists2. The family that has owned the hotel has made it up and is perpetrating a hoax that looks like a ghost matching the common description. If new owners come along, they are shown how it is done and quickly catch on to the commercial value and readily will perpetuate it.3. Enough intentional leaks of partial information have been made to inform the so-called uninformed (i.e. - a billboard advertising "Come See The Ghost" with an illustration of the civil war figure as they approach the town from miles away) in a subliminal way so as to provide enough commonality for any charlatan worth his or her salt to extract in a series of well-practiced leading questions of each hotel guest. Minor coincidences of those guests who are susceptible to these ghost stories being real will be transmogrified into major consiliences. Another way of doing the Hoax. Almost certainly this charlatan will secretly be under the employ of the hotel.4. When examined in detail, it will simply turn out not to be true. This falls under the category of repeating a lie often enough to make a sufficient number of the unwary to believe it's true....and so forth. There are certainly many other ways of discovering the explanation.

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- xongsmith, 5.7d

You and CS are determined to talk yourselves into riddles by selectively swapping and conflating the idea of something being derived from an unknown source with it being derived from a genuinely supernatural source. Can you explain how the "mistake" of attributing the cause of something to the supernatural falsifies the theory that ALL supernatural concepts are derived from human imagination? Which would falsify the rather ridiculous theory that everything we don't understand is sourced from human imagination. And if none of those lead to an actual supernatural cause as the explanation where did the idea of the supernatural concept in question being the cause of the phenomenon under consideration come from? Where other than human imagination?You seem to actually be arguing that if people wrongly cite supernatural causes this is evidence against rather than in favour of the human imagination theory.How very very silly. Think about it.

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What's the joy in playing the dictionary games? Certainly there are better things to discuss on this topic than meaningless word meanings...

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Language evolves. The foundation of a word is very important, especially when one is attempting to seek the being described by the word.In this case, since we are dealing with the human imagination, we see how the word has evolved and the meaning has changed.In this discussion, all I see is a lot of imagination floating around. A lot of if's. We can imagine all types of scenarios. At some point one has to look at the reality behind the concepts.Right now, IMO, the discussion is useless because it is wrapped up in the human imagination.So you play the imagination game instead.

Straggler, I can see why my brother has had so much trouble with you understanding what he is trying to say, given your apriori presumptions about the process of how he or I or others in this forum are formulating our lines of thought. Step back! Let us raise another glass to Ned Devine!REMEMBER: I agree basically with bluegenes.
REMEMBER: I think his was an imperfect presentation, subject to attack. I am trying to rally support in rephrasing it so it will stand up better than it has.Here, however, as much as I feel that Catholic Scientist is on my side, he has just spilled out this apocryphal story about this hotel ghost and that got lost in the Armageddon noise. CS is claiming that this story is evidence of something that is not a product of a human imagination. I take issue with that, but was surprised to see no one else picking on that bone.I was just trying to alert those following this thread that, *hey*, you can't let that slide through the door without scrutiny.As for the Armageddon/2nd coming/return etc. that is unequivocally supported by scientific objective repeatable experiment, what makes you think that science, by its very nature, won't just fold it in? It will be studied and the existing body of scientific thought would be extended to include these results, no? They will become part of the revised Natural Law. That is how it has always been done before. So again, the very process of using the scientific method can only produce results that conform to Natural Law. Now it is certainly true that such a turn of events would turn the world on its head and throw science into a very giddy state of affairs, but the likelihood of such an event is so small that such an upheaval would be in concert with the exceptional nature of the phenomenon.

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- xongsmith, 5.7d