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Author | Topic: I Know That God Does Not Exist | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
ringo Member (Idle past 412 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Straggler writes:
What makes you think anything is a possibility? What makes you think that gods are even a possibility other than our ability to imagine them as such? This is how science works: We imagine a possibility. Then we devise ways to test that possibility. Only when every test has failed can we say that something is impossible. The catch is that we can never know if we have tried every possible test.
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ringo Member (Idle past 412 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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ringo Member (Idle past 412 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 412 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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ringo Member (Idle past 412 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 412 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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ringo Member (Idle past 412 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 412 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 412 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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ringo Member (Idle past 412 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Rahvin writes:
On the contrary, it's thoroughly relevant. All knowledge builds on previous knowledge. There is no such thing as a discovery in a vacuum. The idea exists before the discovery. (Not all ideas become discoveries, of course.)
ringo writes:
Irrelevant. Data can only be aberrant if there is a framework for it to deviate from.
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ringo Member (Idle past 412 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Rahvin writes:
But we have to find it before we can decide whether it's a god or not. While we're looking for possible gods, we shouldn't have overly specific notions about what one will look like.
... if we're discussing whether "gods" exist, we must only be considering that subset of phenomenon that, if observed, would recognizably be a "god."
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ringo Member (Idle past 412 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Tangle writes:
How do we explain them except in the context of what is already known?
It seems to me that we stumble across most things, then try to explain them.
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ringo Member (Idle past 412 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Stile writes:
I have. I would suggest that in order to move past the confusion... and since you do not agree with the definitions that I have provided... then you can provide new definitions for "knowing things" and "God" in order to discuss the ideas in the way you think is best. I have said that knowledge can be demonstrated - e.g. the knowledge of how to bake a cake. The sun coming up tomorrow can not be demonstrated before the fact and therefore is not knowledge until after the fact. The notion that we have looked "everywhere" for God an not found Him is far too sweeping a generalization to be demonstrable. I have also said that "God" is a possible entity with powers that are not yet understood. Columbus didn't "know" that he could reach Asia by sailing westward. He believed it. His belief was wrong for two reasons: first because there was an unexpected obstacle - the Americas - and second because he didn't have the technology to sail that far non-stop. (As it turned out, Magellan's expedition succeeded in circumnavigating the world because the obstacle provided a place for them to re-provision - i.e. two wrongs cancelled each other out.) Similarly, you don`t "know" that God doesn't exist - unless you define God as something that you haven`t found yet. You believe that God doesn't exist. There's a gray area between belief and knowledge and our disagreement is over the shade of gray. I prefer to keep my gray as clean as possible.
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ringo Member (Idle past 412 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
panda writes:
If you think there's any specal pleading involved, feel free to point it out.
*Given up arguing with Ringo's special pleading*
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ringo Member (Idle past 412 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Panda writes:
Seriously, I don't recall special pleading ever being suggested in this thread. If it has been, link it. If not, explain yourself. Don't just run away.
The third time's the charm? I doubt it.
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