I Know That God Does Not Exist

I said no such thing. I mentioned the dark matter, for example. We have not searched the dark matter, which constitutes most of the universe. That's a very, very, very long way from "absolutely everywhere".

That has nothing to do with what I said. The general (and universal) principle that logic does not depend on its inputs for rationality can not be overruled by any specific case(s) in which the inputs are invalid. We can also say, "We are Napoleon," and we'd be wrong about that too. What we should say is, "according to the information available to us, we do not know that God exists."

You have it backwards. You need a rational reason for assuming that God is not hidden by dark matter before you can claim to "know" He doesn't exist. And it seemed that the Northwest Passage would not be up this river or that inlet - but that conclusion was both wrong and based on irrational thinking. It's not an irrational search. Claiming you "know" something doesn't exist before you finish the search is irrational. The search is essential, not "irrational".

That's why. We don't have enough information to say we do know. So we say we don't know. There was no Northwest Passage in the information available to us, until there was. Every time we looked, we confirmed another place that the Northwest Passage didn't exist. But it was always wrong - and irrational - to claim that we "knew" the Northwest Passage didn't exist.

That isn't rational.Not finding something in the past is not an indicator of not finding it in the future. And since we didn't know about dark matter at all until very recently, your "thousands of years" are worthless. You've been looking on the wrong menu. By the same logic, we will never find the Northwest Passage. What? There certainly was a rational reason to think the Northwest Passage existed. But there's always a rational reason to search: If you don't search, you won't find anything. That's the foundation of science.

I don't think that "makes sense" at all. If God was omnipresent, it would "make more sense" for Him to be detectable by anybody. Consider people who seek ghosts or Loch Ness monsters "with all of their hearts". They are predisposed to finding what they're looking for, even if what they're looking for isn't real. Nobody needed to commune with electrons but we looked for them anyway - and we found them. Nobody needs dark matter but we're looking for it anyway. They won't find Him if He doesn't exist. They certainly might find Him without wanting to or without expecting to. The idea that you have to believe to find Him is ridiculous.

If you had zero information, you could say the same thing. It's a meaningless statement. On the contrary, there is no logic that concludes that a Northwest Passage couldn't exist. It was always irrational to pretend that we "knew" it didn't exist. We just didn't know that it did exist.

Then not finding the Northwest passage in 1800 meant we would never find it. Not finding dark matter in 2000 means we will never find it. That doesn't make any sense. Logic follows rules - and those rules don't change with time or depend on what we know. What was logical in ancient Greece is still logical today.If it was logical to look for the Northwest passage in 1500, it was logical to look for it in 1600 and in 1700 and in 1800. Not finding it was no logical basis for thinking it would never be found. The pattern was set: whenever something new came up - we didn't find the Northwest Passage there.
That pattern worked for hundreds of years.But that pattern was wrong. See above. Patterns are not infallible. We should not say we "know" they are. A real example shows that your logic doesn't work - i.e. that your thinking is irrational. It's the same thing we keep telling creationists about micro/macro evolution: There's no reason to think you can't get there from here. If you want to claim that there's a barrier, you need a rational reason to claim there's a barrier. Again, it's always rational to search. You have it backwards. What was the link from imagining a barrier to suggest that one actually existed?If you're aimed directly at the Azores, there's a barrier - but you can see open water on both sides so you have no reason to think there's an impenetrable barrier. Same with the Northwest Passage - there was always more open water to explore.Same with God. There is more open water to explore. It's a rational reason to think they might exist. That's the only reason we ever search for anything.

We had zero information about dark matter fairly recently. We're just at an earlier stage in the search for God. We haven't explored the dark part of the universe (yet) so we're comparatively barely outside the Mediterranean. If it confuses you, feel free to ask questions

It's tempting for the teacher to say, "You failed to learn," when he should be saying, "I failed to teach." Different stage in the investigation. Non sequitur. But I did - the Northwest Passage. I stand by it, whether you like it or not. You're a Northwest Passage denier in a different era. It is not rational to impose expectations before the search is finished. There is no difference. It's just a different stage in the investigation. Every investigation begins with "no previous experience".

It's what I said. What you said was out of context. We did though. We had thunder and lightning, for example. Those were dead ends but there's no reason to conclude that all ends are dead. That's some pretty strange mathematics. Me + Tangle + ~1.6 ≠ 1(Apologies to anybody I left out.)

You'll go from "knowing" one thing to "knowing" the opposite overnight. We can't afford to take seriously what you think you "know". I say I know how to bake a cake and I demonstrate that I can bake a cake. Then you say, "But you can't bake a cake while standing on one foot on the summit of Mount Everest." I never said I knew that. You're moving the goalposts.I only need to bake one cake to demonstrate that I know how to bake a cake.

We don't know that they exist only in our imagination until we look.

How can I go from making a cake one day to not having made it the next day? You are moving the goalposts. You're changing from "I can bake a cake" to where I can bake a cake. If I demonstrate that I can bake a cake, that event can not un-happen. We can not un-find the Northwest Passage. If we find God, we can not un-find Him. It's a one-way street.Edited by ringo, : No reason given.

That's a pretty silly rabbit-hole to be going down. If that was true, we really couldn't know anything. I have never made any such demand. I have been telling you that knowledge can change - in this context, from no knowledge to some knowledge. When we have no knowledge, we can not legitimately claim that we know.