I Know That God Does Not Exist

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t's just that something (anything... regardless of it being God or not) being "unconstrained by nature or observation" seems irrational to me. Which is why I then dismiss the rest of your entire argument... because if your defintion of God is irrational, then it doesn't have an effect on my rational conclusion. (Do you agree with that? ... "if" such a definition was irrational?)

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I think the mistake is that you are conflating an epistemic or methodological irrationality with an ontological irrationality. That god is unconstrained by nature or observation only tells us that we cannot necessarily use nature or observations to understand god. This does not mean that god is irrational in itself, such as would be the case if god was presumed to have contradictory characteristics, such as being a married bachelor. Although I don't think I've even gone into details about what an appropriate definition of god would be, even if I did I don't think anything would be said that would make god itself irrational. I have only maintained that making truth claims about god is what is irrational.

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If it is true that all things we have ever known "to exist" are all constrained by nature or observation, then wouldn't it be irrational to suggest that anything (regardless of it being God or not) exists that is not contrained by nature or observation?

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Well, we do not know if all things are constrainable by nature or observation. It is conceivable, for instance, that we will never know how our universe came into existence because no aspect of our universe may be used to predict the properties or behavior of the universe at t=0, let alone t<0. Science is trying it's best, but it might fail. Similarly, you talked about quantum mechanics--yes it is apparently true that the quantum world behaves in accord with certain rules, but it remains that some metaphysical theories about quantum mechanics are indeterministic--i.e., precise behaviors cannot be constrained. I don't think that just because the rules of quantum mechanics suggests that ever electron in your body is actually occupying the entire volume of the universe that it or quantum mechanics does not exist.Nevertheless, the real problem is, what do you do when it is supposed that god is a supernatural entity? Why does this make god irrational? For all we know it could be even more rational than quantum mechanics by, for instance, operating in a fully deterministic system. In addition, entire theodicies are based on explaining quantum mechanical indeterminism by invoking the supernatural domain of god (e.g. see John Russell's book "Alpha and Omega"). This 'supernatural system' may be constrained by a new set of rules which we may never be able to access or infer from observation of natural systems. This doesn't mean that god is irrational. I means that it is irrational to make truth claims about god.

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What I'm talking about is that proposing the idea for such a God is not based on any information we have on hand (our "data set"). In this way, I find the proposal of the idea to be irrational (and therefore justifiably discarded as irrelevant).

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This has nothing to do with knowledge and everything to do with ignorance. Ignorance is not knowlede. You can justify disbelief in god, but you cannot demonstrate that non-existence is knowable. Your line of reasoning--pretending we can make truth claims about things for which we have no evidence, let alone demonstrable understanding for what evidence would look like--is precisely what science shows us is absurd. This is the type of reasoning that propels theology.

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We have never encountered anything that is unconstrained by nature or observation.

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We have encountered an infinite number of things which are unconstrained by observation--this is the nature of scientific progress as a conquest against ignorance. This doesn't mean it is unconstrainable by observation, although that doesn't mean everything in the universe is constrainable. The origins of the universe may turn out to be unconstrainable by observation, in addition to objects like black holes. On the other hand, we have not demonstrated, and might not be able to demonstrate, that anything we observe is not constrained by nature.

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I have not heard of any direct link from the data we have that would indicate God being unconstrained by nature or observation is a possibility.

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Pretty much every locus of ignorance is an opportunity for explanation via god, indicating possibility of some sort of divine agency. Moreover, I might be misunderstanding you, but the usual definition for god makes it, by definition, unconstrained by nature, so I'm not really certain what you are suggesting.

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I'm not trying to say that this makes God irrational. I'm trying to say that the proposal of this idea is irrational because there is no indication from the data we do have to lead us towards this idea.

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This is approximately what I am saying, although somewhat improperly stated, and your statement bears no relation to your original claim. One may propose the idea that god exists. An initial problem is that I have no idea what epistemic value is itself assumed by this proposal--does it refer to evidence, demonstration, plausibility, feasibility, utility, apodictic certainty, etc.? It is sufficiently clear that we are under no obligation by reason of evidence to accept the conjecture that god exists, and this absence of evidence reasonably justifies disbelief. What is irrational is your original claim that the statement "god does not exist" is knowable. The fact that evidence uniquely implicating god happens to be absent, is irrelevant.

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Let say we live in an area where only white swans exist. We study the swans, we understand the evolution of the swans. But all the ones we study and understand are always white.
I'm saying that given this scenario, it is irrational to propose the idea that "maybe black swans exist."
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I'm saying that given this scenario, it is rational to say "I know that all swans are white and that black swans do not exist."
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I don't understand how you cannot see the absurdity of maintaining your position in the wake of an example like this. It is not remotely irrational to propose that "maybe black swans exist" unless you have unstated premises such as "A necessary characteristic of Swan-ness is being the color white" or that the premise that "we understand the evolution of swans" is equivalent to saying that "we understand the evolution of swans sufficient to claim that there can be no black swans". Your supposedly rational statement that "I know that all swans are white and that black swans do not exist" is absurd. Science would be incompetent drunkards if it were valid. I think that this shows precisely how epistemologically bankrupt your original claim is.

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This is how I'm trying to use the terms. If we take this same usage and apply it consistently to the proposed idea of God being unconstrained by nature or observation... then I must find such a thing irrational because there is no indication of such an idea from our data set.

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You are completely missing the logical implications of a proposal that something exists that is unconstrained by nature or observation--it means that whether or not your dataset implicates something is totally irrelevant. It cannot be used. This goes back to my argument that "no one can demonstrate that an observation necessarily follows from the hypothesis that god exists". In this case your swan example is even more useless because we can constrain knowledge about white swans sufficient to say something about the plausibility of black and blue swans. No such thing can be done with god, and a more appropriate analogy might be that possibility of a simulated universe (i.e., living in a matrix).

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If I were to accept that such an idea of God was rational, and valid... then I could no longer say that "I know plaid swans do not exist."
I find such a defintion to be unusable and not to align with the way I think of "knowing things" in everyday life.

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I do not think that the logical circumstances that allow you to say you have knowledge of something is respectable. It is irrational to apply it to black swans and it is infinitely more irrational to apply it to god. I could accept your claim to "know god does not exist" in the same manner that I could claim that "I know we do not live in a simulated universe", but I would stop in my tracks and recognize that this is flaccid pseudoknowledge, and that no such thing is necessarily knowable.

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I put it to you that there is an immaterial unicorn looking over your shoulder as you type.

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Do you know that I have just invented this proposition? If so - How do you know this? What are the chances that I did invent this but that by some miracle of co-incidence it also happens to be true?

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Whilst we can't claim certainty I think it perfectly reasonable (and rational) to say that this immaterial unicorn almost certainly does not exist and is nothing more than a product of human imagination.

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Given that nothing is absolutely certain it seems silly to restrict the term "know" to such certainty. So - Again - It is perfectly reasonable and rational to conclude that we know said immaterial unicorn does not exist.

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"Knowledge" has the proviso of being tentative and potentially fallible. But beyond that where is the problem in the non-existence of aforementioned immaterial unicorn being known?

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You are correct, in a sense, that knowledge has a tentativity, but this is because claims to knowledge inherently involve methods of determination. We can say we know C as long as A and B are true. This is why we can make truth claims about things which are not directly observable in sciences. However, this sort of claim loses a lot of power in the case of the invisible unicorn because invisibility means that there is no A or B--C must be critiqued in isolation.More importantly: A critical piece of misinformation is involved in this contrast. You are trying to corroborate uncertainty of a proposition with the absurdity of a specific case. The absurdity comes from the knowledge that unicorns are the subject of classical legendary, strengthened by the implication that invisibility is an ad hoc explanation for it's absence in nature. What this seems to do is take the logically strict remark that it is impossible to say that invisible unicorns do not exist in any case, and suggest that apparent absurdities allows us to further pretend that absurdity is a demonstration of non-existence. It should also be noted that this auxiliary absurdity doesn't necessarily exist in the case of god in general. However, even in this example I maintain that non-existence is unknowable. It remains a justified belief, not a claim to knowledge about the categorically unobservable. Moreover, I maintain that such claims to knowledge are merely, basically, instinctually, simply a residue of our more childish desires to satisfy inquiry by meeting an end.The correct (and infinitely more effective) course action is to demand that your opponent play by the rules, not pretend that his refusal or incapacity to play means he has lost. One does not need to pretend they have initiated checkmate against invisible unicorns when all you need to do is laugh at their struggles.

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Why is it that when confronted with what should be an un-contentious example that we can all agree upon as something which is almost certainly non-existent theists feel the need to start throwing terms like absurd around?
What is or is not absurd is entirely subjective. I may well find your concept of god absurd. So let’s put aside assertions of what is absurd and what isn’t.

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Absurdity isn't entirely subjective inasmuch as it is simply another way of saying that the proposition is at odds with reasonable inference, to say the least.

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I am trying to establish a baseline. I am trying to see if we can both agree that we know that the immaterial unicorn in question doesn’t exist.

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Do you agree that we can know this? Or do you claim that we cannot know this?

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We can both agree that the immaterial unicorn in question does not exist. But I won't agree that that this inference is to be classified as knowledge. I am just not willing to claim that unknowable things become knowable just because they are obviously contrived, lacking evidence, or suffering from any other sort of epistemic retardation. To my mind, this additional inference to pseudoknowledge does nothing except endanger more reasonable pursuits into the unknown (by whatever means of philosophical investigation) by devaluing what it means to "know".

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Can you explain to me how such a statement about black swans could be rational based upon the example?
If all the swans we've ever heard of or seen are always white... how is it rational to propose that "maybe black swans exist?"

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Because nothing exists which necessarily rules out black swans. Moreover, you ask the question based on the proposition that we have gathered sufficient data to rule out the possibility of black swans existing. As such, the relevant question is whether or not it is feasible that the data are insufficient. If the data are not, all things considered (and all free parameters understood), overwhelming, one is not only justified to state that "maybe black swans exist". This should be a trivial exercise in logic.Black swans happen to be native to Australia. If it were 16th century Europe and someone ruled out the possibility of black swan's existing based on their observations of the known world, I don't suppose you would be with them. Moreover even if the species of black swans did not exist as known today, we would still be justified in saying "maybe black swans exist" given uncertainty elsewhere.Recognize, also that a statement of a logical reality is not necessarily correlated with justifications for seeking out evidence for that reality. If no black swans had ever been observed, one might not be justified to, for instance, explore African jungles with the sole purpose of looking for black swans. This is because the logical capacity to state that "maybe black swans exist" is based on incomplete information, not an inference from complete information. You only seem to think that inference directly from available data is rational, which would, if accepted by the scientific community, almost entirely incapacitate investigation. It certainly would impugn nearly all of my work in theoretical geophysics.

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If all the swans we've ever heard of or seen are always white... how is it rational to propose that "maybe black swans exist?"

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Because maybe we have not seen all swans? Maybe because we have not explored all possible habitats for the theoretical black swan? There are also unstated premises--does "black-swan-ness" require distinct speciation, or can a black swan be born of a white swan via mutation? Can the species be extinct?

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I fully admit that it can be an idea. But how is it possibly rational? Especially scientifically... how would you test it?

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The statement that "maybe black swans exist" is not scientific. It is logical.

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Wouldn't you just watch the birth of swans for a while? And if they all, always, came out white... wouldn't you say that the proposal is falsified and therefore invalid?

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Are you trying to plagiarize the peanut butter argument for intelligent design?Edited by TrueCreation, : No reason given.

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In your view, is there anything that does not exist?

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It depends entirely on how it is stated, and what is stated, and whether or not what is stated is presumed to justify investigation (ie, that one can test the proposition). I would agree that it is known that dinosaurs, as they are preserved in the fossil record, are extinct (and do not exist in that way), but I would not agree that we know that fluorescent ants or black swans--even if we did not have knowledge of them--do not exist. Similarly, i would say that we can say that "we know that there are no large land dwelling organisms on Mars", but I would not say that "we know there is no life on Mars".Edited by TrueCreation, : No reason given.Edited by TrueCreation, : No reason given.

You are right I am applying different criteria, but they are not really contradictory as long as we accept that science constrains knowledge, without which you only have logic--so we can make scientific truth claims without deductive exactness. Whether or not dinosaurs exist today is well constrained by what is already known about those organisms, so their existence is precluded by more than simply whether or not we have observed every place on Earth's surface. There are important unstated premises about what a Dinosaur "is" (do modern birds count?), but this will not apply to species like T-rex or Brachiosaurus--so you might be right that I would have to constrain my criteria when I am talking about 'dinosaurs'. But this doesn't apply to the black swan because the important question in that case is whether or not mechanisms by which a black swan can be produced is sufficient to say that exploration remains a caveat to the inference of non-existence. The main question is whether or not the characteristic of being black is impossible, which might be evidenced by, for instance, the knowledge that Swans simply cannot be black. Stile has made assertions about circumstantial knowledge that we may have always observed swans to be white, but that simply isn't an appropriate constraint--all of it is trumped by the biological conceivability that a Swan can naturally acquire the characteristic of being colored black.

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But there could be rock-like creatures (ala Apollo 18) living on the surface of Mars.
You have not looked everywhere on Mars for large land dwelling organisms.
Until you do, you cannot claim they do not exist.

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I think you're right. I would have to modify the claim to require that the Martians have certain characteristics--this is what I tried to do by saying "land dwelling", but it seems insufficient. Mind you, we could still say make the truth claim that dinosaurs do not exist on Mars because this is constrained by scientific knowledge about dinosaurs, but things aren't nearly as easy for general truth claims about life on Mars.But back to god. Science cannot say anything so we can't use scientific knowledge, or observations of nature, to say anything about the existence of god the way we can about dinosaurs on Earth or on Mars. So, does the existence of god preclude anything which is observed? No. Therefore, god can exist. Therefore "god does not exist" is an erroneous inference. Therefore the inference is not knowledge--not scientific, not logical, not rational.

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Now I think it is quite rational to think that black swans may exist.

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...but this comes from the data we have (as described in the example).

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What if we did check the entire world, and we still never found any black swans? What if we studied swans for 50 years, all over the world, every single swan... and all of them were always white?

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Then I think it is rational to say "I know that black swans do not exist."

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Your assertion that it is rational to think black swans "may exist" because of the data that we have from other species is not compatible with your assertion that you can rationally say that "black swans do not exist" (which is not the same as "black swans probably do not exist") based on the exploration--at least the way it SHOULD have been stated. If you COULD say that "every single swan" has been observed, and none of them are black, then deductively it follows that there are no black swans. This isn't appropriate because it destroys the only reason the 'black swan' problem is interesting--because we have many samples of white swans but none of black. The question is whether or not the fact that all observed swans are white is sufficient to say that there are no black swans. You cannot rule out black swans unless you can A) catalog all existing swans and deductively rule out black swans or B) establish that no unobserved swans CAN be black. As long as all swans are not observed (i.e. exploration is limited), the possibility of black-swan-ness trumps arguments about the impressiveness of the extent of exploration.Therefore, it is not rational to say that "I know that black swans do not exist" since this is necessarily a different class of argument from that which can be drawn from evidence which is correctly stated "I know that black swans probably do not exist", inasmuch as it is conceivable that all swans are not cataloged and black-swan-ness is within normal possibility.

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You mentioned that black swans are native to Australia.
I would like to add to the example that (to make things easy) all white swans are restricted to everything-but-australia and black swans are restricted to australia.

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Lets say australia hasn't been discovered yet. Therefore black swans haven't been discovered yet.
All swans in the entire world (as we know) are always white.
We learn that there's "a new area" called australia to go and explore (and that's all we've heard about it...)

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I'm saying that at this point it's still rational to say "I know that black swans do not exist" because there is no indication that black swans are going to exist in australia.

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And I am saying that that inference is obviously irrational. The statement that "I know that black swans do not exist" necessarily covers the statement "I know that black swans do not exist in Australia", which in your scenario also translates to "I know that black swans do not exist in Australia, but I have no data from Australia". Do you honestly not see the problem here?

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To propose that they would, given that all the swans we know are always white... would be going against the evidence we have collected. Such a decision doesn't seem like an honest analysis of the data.

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It is beyond me how you cannot see the problem with this reasoning. Every trivial discovery must be an astonishingly dumbfounding experience for you.

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It's like calling the idea "maybe the sun won't rise tomorrow" a rational thought. It's a thought, but there's nothing rational about it. It completely goes against all the data we do actually have.

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These two ideas aren't even remotely analogous--a more appropriate analogy to "I know that black swans do not exist in Australia, but I have no data from Australia" would be "Maybe the sun is the only body of it's type in the universe", "Maybe there are only a few thousand stars in the universe", or "Maybe there are only 8 planets in the universe" before the associated discoveries. These assertions went against demonstrable inference from available data, but they did not contradict available data.

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I am also very intrigued by your implication that science is off investigating anything that is not inferenced from the data we have. Could you provide us with an example? Perhaps maybe even something you're working on (if you'd like)?

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Pretty much all scientific activities at the edge of knowledge involve investigations into things not demonstrably inferred from the data. The subject of my current work is the attempt to understand the properties and behavior of the oceanic lithosphere, an active problem of research since the tectonics revolution. The idea is that oceanic plates are formed at spreading ridges and gradually migrate away as a rigid unit until they encounter subduction zones. Over time, up to about 180 million years, the mantle below the surface cools by losing heat to the oceans above. So if we know the age of the surface we can attempt to infer something about the thermal state of the mantle below, constrained by certain observations (like the heat flow measured at the surface or the subsidence of the surface from thermal contraction) and modeling based on heat transport theories and experiments. The problem is that there is a lot that we do not know either because our models are unsophisticated, our understanding of mineral physics is poor, or the geophysical observations (e.g. subsidence, heat flow) are unclear or problematic. Nevertheless, our modeling and surveying activities has lead us to a model of the Earth which we think is at least fundamentally accurate. There are, however, many "black swans in uncharacterized Australia's" because our understanding is so limited. I'll give a couple:1) The temperature of ambient mantle throughout the upper mantle (upper 100-300 km of the Earth) is not well understood--we can constrain mantle temperatures from studies of rocks at the surface of oceanic crust, but it is possible that the temperature changes with depth, with horizontal distance, or as a function of age, which is not possible to constrain at this time. So we have a good handle on the temperature of the mantle near the surface where the lithosphere forms, but not elsewhere. It is reasonable to assume that there are no significant variations like I just suggested, but to claim that we know there are no such variations is an absurd extrapolation of limited data.2) It turns out that the geophysical observations indicate that after the lithosphere cools for about 50-70 million years, something appears to cause the lithosphere to heat up somehow, probably from the base, which increases heat flow at the surface and causes the seafloor to stop subsiding. What causes this behavior? We're not really sure, but there are popular ideas. For instance, the most popular explanation is that convection below the plate introduces additional heat. There is no direct evidence for this, it is simply an explanation of observations, and it turns out that some of the best "pictures" of the upper mantle from seismic tomography show that small-scale convection might not be the correct explanation. Nevertheless, it remains a popular explanation which will be vigorously debated in the literature. One of the principle debate points is whether or not such small-scale convection is possible (analogous to the question: are black swans possible?), because the only way to demonstrate that this "black swan" does not exist is to demonstrate that it cannot exist. These activities remain 100% rational because it is understood that tomographic methods contain their own uncertainties (maybe our methods of exploration hasn't allowed us to find "black swans"?) and that the geophysical observations may not have not been correctly filtered to ascertain what is really going on at depth (are we sure this swan is black?), among other unertainties. There remain other alternatives, such as volcanic events causing crustal thickening near the surface (explaining elevated old-age seafloor, which we know happens), perhaps radiogenic heat in thick sediments over old seafloor causes the elevated heat flow, or perhaps our understanding of convection at the base of the lithosphere needs revision before we compare it with tomographic evidence. We do not know if these "black swans" exist, and we have no direct evidence (or in some cases any evidence), that they do. But proposing them is not irrational. We do it all the time. This is the nature of the scientific investigation at the boundaries of knowledge. Most importantly, it is absurd to pretend that just because the popular models have proven efficacious that these unevidenced alternatives therefore do not exist. If I were reviewing a paper which made such statements I would find it difficult to recommend it be accepted without careful revision.Have you been reading Feyerabend?

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And by the same logic, there is very little that can't exist.
As long as it is internally consistent (i.e. is not an invisible pink unicorn), then there is nothing stopping it from existing.
Can you give me an example of something that can't exist?
Dinosaurs: could exist, but are currently undiscovered.
Red swans: could exist, but are currently undiscovered.
Large lifeforms on Mars: could exist, but are currently undiscovered.
(But at least we have evidence that something similar does exist/has existed.)

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Can you think of anything that could not exist, using your "No evidence for it and no evidence against it means it could exist"?
Because using that logic, I see nothing stopping fairies, goblins, invisible dragons and Santa Claus from existing.

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Your correct that I agree that absolutely anything could exist, this is the nature of logic. There is always the possibility of encountering an illusion--maybe unicorns exist. Maybe they are invisible. Maybe 40km tall unicorns exist which are visible but my mind is wired in such a way that it is impossible to observe these unicorns as they are and everyone else is running around terrified and shaking me because they don't understand why I am the only one who can't see the giant unicorns destroying the planet.These absolute uncertainties do not bear on knowledge in general because of epistemic enterprises like science. The existence of red swans is a function of our capacity to determine whether or not we have knowledge of all swans and whether or not swans can be red at all. If we are talking about something which has scientific content, we can constrain knowledge about that thing. We don't need to have perfect certainty about it. The problem is that god has no scientific content. It cannot be constrained by scientific knowledge. Therefore we are left only with the logical uncertainty which demands that we say nothing about whether or not it exists.What I'm trying to say is that classifying knowledge depends on what one is willing to accept as a qualification of knowledge. Scientific knowledge is not in the same bin as knowledge acquired from deductive inference. The existence or non-existence of things like red swans and life on mars is subject to scientific qualification because testability is conceivable even if it is not, at the moment, within our capacity to infer from data. It is not possible to perform such tests on god, meaning that the problem of god cannot be ascertained as a subject of scientific knowledge--neither positive or negative. Failure to qualify as scientific knowledge doesn't mean the thing doesn't exist, it means that we must relegate to an alternative scheme of epistemic qualification. Edited by TrueCreation, : Added the last paragraph.