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Author | Topic: I Know That God Does Not Exist | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
ringo Member (Idle past 440 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Straggler writes:
There still has to be some pre-existing concept, some framework for the new data to fit into. The first human to see an elephant would have to think, "That's some kind of animal, like a deer but different...."
Well if no-one had conceived of elephants before finding them they would be discovered before being conceived of.
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Straggler Member (Idle past 94 days) Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined: |
Ringo writes: What makes you think anything is a possibility? Evidence. Methods of knowing that have proved successful in the past.
Ringo writes: This is how science works: We imagine a possibility. Really? The Higgs Boson (for example) wasn't just plucked out of the air. Nor was anti-matter. Space-time curvature. Evolution. Etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. These were proposed based on evidence. Then tested.
Can you give an example of a fruitful scientific investigation conducted on something for which there was absolutely no evidential reason at all to even consider possible? Ringo writes: Then we devise ways to test that possibility. Why are gods even considered a possibility?
Ringo writes: Only when every test has failed can we say that something is impossible. Nobody here is saying the existence of gods is impossible. Any more than I am saying the existence of immaterial unicorns is impossible. You are going down the absolutist path again. I'm saying it's more likely to be a product of human invention than a real thing.
Ringo writes: The catch is that we can never know if we have tried every possible test. Knowledge is fallible and tentative. I've already said that. What is your point? Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.
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Straggler Member (Idle past 94 days) Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined: |
Ringo writes: There still has to be some pre-existing concept, some framework for the new data to fit into. The first human to see an elephant would have to think, "That's some kind of animal, like a deer but different...." OK. So we know that similar creatures (other mammals etc.) actually exist so the discovery of a new type of the same sort of thing isn't that shocking. How many godly or supernatural entities have we come across such that we think the existence of gods is similarly possible? Look Ringo - If the world were full of ghosts and demons and angels and whatnot the claim that gods don't exist would be pretty weak. But the whole idea of supernaturality seems (based on all the evidence) to be a human construct designed to fulfill very human internal needs with nothing external to support it.
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ringo Member (Idle past 440 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined:
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Straggler writes:
That's what I'm saying. The idea has to exist before we know what to look for or how to look for it. You don't just find a Higgs boson under the microscope and say, "What the hell is that?" You have to have an idea where a Higgs boson might be and what it might "look like" before you can go looking for it.
The Higgs Boson (for example) wasn't just plucked out of the air. Nor was anti-matter. Space-time curvature. Evolution. Etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. Straggler writes:
If that's all you're saying, you can save your breath. Nobody's arguing against that. I'm saying it's more likely to be a product of human invention than a real thing. What I'm arguing against is extrapolating from "more likely" to "I know". If I deal out five cards, a pair is "more likely" than a royal flush. I'm saying that you can't "know" you'll get a pair on the basis of it being "more likely."
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ringo Member (Idle past 440 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Straggler writes:
How do you distinguish between advanced technology and magic?
But the whole idea of supernaturality seems (based on all the evidence) to be a human construct designed to fulfill very human internal needs with nothing external to support it.
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Straggler Member (Idle past 94 days) Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined: |
Are you suggesting that gods are just aliens with super-advanced-technology rather than genuinely supernatural beings?
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Rahvin Member Posts: 4046 Joined: Member Rating: 7.4 |
And they didn't "know" that the earth was flat. The average person 1000 years ago would have said that they "knew" the Earth was flat. You appear to be alternately using the wrong definition of "knowledge" here. "Knowledge" cannot imply certainty, as if that were the case the word would serve no purpose; we would all simply have to admit that none of us "know" anything. Your "standard current thought" line is simply an obfuscated appeal to popularity - the prevalence of opinion is not and never is the determining factor (or even a contributing factor) to determining which hypothesis is most likely to be accurate. There are no words you can say which will make it otherwise. Your argument can only be successful if you can provide evidence that suggests that "gods" do exist - when the only objective evidence regarding a specific hypothesis is negative, ringo, what does that mean? It means that all competing hypotheses which have either no evidence whatsoever or at least some positive evidence are more likely than the hypothesis in question.
As I've already pointed out more than once, you're not using the same goalposts for the gods as you're using for the pen. You know that there's no pen "on your desk" and you know that there are no gods "where you have looked". But you haven't even begun to scratch the surface of all the places you'd need to look before you could know that gods don't exist at all. Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the terms "conspicuous" and "strongly expected" and "evidence." You may also be unfamiliar with the term "extrapolation." There are many "god" hypotheses, ringo, from many cultures. Just about every single one, however, involves an entity that will respond favorably to prayer or ritual. Yet in every test ever performed, prayer and ritual provides no meaningful statistical result distinguishable from doing nothing at all. This is an absence of strongly expected evidence - prayer and ritual are strongly expected to have an effect, and in the absence of that expected effect, the likelihood that the "god" hypothesis is accurate is greatly diminished. In the absence of any positive evidence suggesting that "gods" do exist, it's easy to tentatively extrapolate that "gods" are not llikely to exist outside of those studies, as well. But look, ringo - "gods" are just unevidenced imaginings. They're like polka-dotted unicorns on Planet Xebes in Dimension X. All things being equal, hypotheses that do not include such extraneous entities are significantly more likely to be accurate than their competitors. The hypothesis that there are no "gods" is significantly more likely to be accurate than any of the myriad "god" hypotheses simply because it avoids extraneous terms in its equation. That conclusion is tentative, as is all] "knowledge" of the practical sort, and can immediately be revised if new evidence is uncovered which requires the introduction of such an entity. But as it is, the world would look exactly the same to us whether we are in the Matrix or not...and so the hypothesis that we are not in the Matrix is more likely, because there is no evidential requirement for such additional entities as the Matrix to be included in our model of reality. In the same way, the world without "gods" is nearly indistinguishable from a world with "gods," save that there is some negative evidence in the form of failed predictions from the "god" hypothesis. Therefore, not only is the "no gods" hypothesis more likely, it is significantly more likely, by far, than the various "god" hypotheses. Occam's Razor is not merely an optional logical tool, ringo. The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. - Francis Bacon "There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. — Albert Camus "...the pious hope that by combining numerous little turds ofvariously tainted data, one can obtain a valuable result; but in fact, the outcome is merely a larger than average pile of shit." Barash, David 1995.
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Straggler Member (Idle past 94 days) Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined: |
In the absence of certainty what can we ever have but estimations of likelihood?
I know that the Sun will rise tomorrow. But in philosophical terms I have to admit that this knowledge is tentative and fallible and that I am effectively saying that, based on the evidence it is very unlikely that the Sun won't rise tomorrow.
Ringo writes: What I'm arguing against is extrapolating from "more likely" to "I know". Do you know that the Sun will rise tomorrow? Is it absolutely certain in philosophical terms? How likely is it that the Sun will rise tomorrow
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Rahvin Member Posts: 4046 Joined: Member Rating: 7.4 |
That's what I'm saying. The idea has to exist before we know what to look for or how to look for it. You don't just find a Higgs boson under the microscope and say, "What the hell is that?" You have to have an idea where a Higgs boson might be and what it might "look like" before you can go looking for it. Yet that's not always the case. As Straggler pointed out, the first person to see an elephant did not need to imagine or search for an elephant prior to making the discovery. In fact, it's not necessary that physicists already have a theoretical model of and be searching for the Higgs prior to discovering it. That's the way it happened, but that doesn't mean it was a requirement - many similar discoveries have been made simply by analyzing aberrant data, simply stumbling over something important that we never even knew was there. Antibiotics, for example, were not previously imagined or sought - penicillin was discovered quite by (fortuitous) accident. Edited by Rahvin, : No reason given.The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. - Francis Bacon "There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. — Albert Camus "...the pious hope that by combining numerous little turds ofvariously tainted data, one can obtain a valuable result; but in fact, the outcome is merely a larger than average pile of shit." Barash, David 1995.
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ringo Member (Idle past 440 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Straggler writes:
I'm asking how you would distinguish between the two.
Are you suggesting that gods are just aliens with super-advanced-technology rather than genuinely supernatural beings?
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ringo Member (Idle past 440 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Rahvin writes:
There you go again, defining God out of existence. If elephants are defined as "large herbivores that live in Africa" then the one in your living room doesn't count - but it doesn't cease to exist either.
There are many "god" hypotheses, ringo, from many cultures. Just about every single one, however, involves an entity that will respond favorably to prayer or ritual. Yet in every test ever performed, prayer and ritual provides no meaningful statistical result distinguishable from doing nothing at all.
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Straggler Member (Idle past 94 days) Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined: |
Well one is able to be explained by natural laws and phenomena whilst the other cannot be because it genuinely isn't natural. It is supernatural.
That is the distinction in principle. So how are you concluding that gods are anything other than a case of mistaken identity combined with the human idea that there actually exists beings that can defy natural reality in some way? Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.
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ringo Member (Idle past 440 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Straggler writes:
No. Do you know that the Sun will rise tomorrow? I know how to bake a cake. I can demonstrate to you that I know. I think it's pretty likely that the sun will rise tomorrow but I can't demonstrate it.
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ringo Member (Idle past 440 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Rahvin writes:
Data can only be aberrant if there is a framework for it to deviate from.
That's the way it happened, but that doesn't mean it was a requirement - many similar discoveries have been made simply by analyzing aberrant data, simply stumbling over something important that we never even knew was there.
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ringo Member (Idle past 440 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Straggler writes:
What's the difference between something that "genuinely isn't natural" and something that we don't have a natural explanation for yet?
Well one is able to be explained by natural laws and phenomena whilst the other cannot be because it genuinely isn't natural. Straggler writes:
I'm concluding that gods might be something that we can't explain yet.
So how are you concluding that gods are anything other than a case of mistaken identity combined with the human idea that there actually exists beings that can defy natural reality in some way?
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