I Know That God Does Not Exist

Are you sure you're looking in the right place? :-) Well I really, really don't know, and I suspect neither do you. I don't even know what the words mean when we're talking about stuff like this. I suspect we've hit a singularity in dictionary terms.

So you and Stile say. But it's simply an assertion.Our iron age predecessors were wrong to think that some powerful being was causing lightening, but without knowing real causation or being able to know the real causation it was a rational idea.In more modern philosophical terms it was a logical teleological argument. Effects require a cause.

quote:

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The Universe troubles me, and much less can I think
That this clock exists and should have no clockmaker

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You don't have to accept the arguments - and I don't - but they are rational.

These are bi-products from drawing the wrong conclusion about interventionist gods. There are several respectable, rational arguments for the existence of god(s). They're all wrong imho, but they're rational. The teleological problem of apparent design requiring a designer is quite rational - though wrong. And there are others. You just dismiss out of hand umpteen good philosophical arguments as being irrational. So your argument goes, but it's an error as all it says is that we can be sure that there is no god because we have no physical evidence for one. When all we can accurately conclude from that is that so far we have no evidence to support the existence of god(s); believe what you like. I choose to believe that no god exists.It's this finality that bugs me. It's said in the same breath as 'all scientific knowledge is tentative' whilst claiming certainty. Knowledge is, by definition, only what we know now. Some things have very, very high probabilities of being correct - that really is a chair over there - some things are so far out of our knowledge bubble that we don't even know what we don't know. I suggest that a non-interventionist god is one of them.But still no input from the only known deists on the forum RAZD and Percy.

Sure, once a concept is proven wrong - lightning, flat earth, whatever - if you continue to ague for it, you're irrational. But you need the evidence that it's wrong first.Here we're arguing something doesn't exist because there's no evidence; not that we have a proven alternative that rules the something out.Our argument is that atmospheric conditions make lightning not Zeus. Our argument isn't that we haven't found Zeus yet so he doesn't exist (even though the lighting does).

That's a novel definition of irrational. Only scientific methodology is rational? You are saying that philosophical arguments are irrational. Now *that's* irrational.Also, you are claiming that tentative scientific conclusions are absolute. *That's* not rational.And you're making the error that something that has not been found can never be found. *That's* not rational.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

Ok, that's your view Let me guess, you will decide which? And science has no disputes? Ha!
But, in general, science provides real answers while philosophy provides good arguments. So I'm not arguing about that. I'm saying that there are rational arguments that are not scientific. Sure. But are you going to tell the best philosophical minds in history that they are irrational? You might say, like several have, that they're wrong because of this and that, but being wrong is not the same as being irrational.

Me too, but science, as yet, has nothing to say about god. It certainly does not say that god does not exist or have any opinion at all. It awaits evidence. Sure me too. But being wrong is not necessarily being irrational. The arguments *are* rational. They're just not scientific. Fill your boots.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

If you change the silly use of the word 'heart' to 'mind', you have it right and it sounds rather different doesn't it?

You can't do that with waffly preachy words You have a bad habit of knowing the other side of the argument but not being able to answer it. Juries don't stay out for long, life goes on. I think that too. With the exception that I don't believe that your mind is in anyway content. Why would anyone even try? It's a bullshit idea. Forgive me Phat but you do not seem to be a content individual. It seems to me that religion is your consolation for poor health and a low paid job. Or just people with ordinary lives - with all that entails. If there really was the loving god that you think there is, why do people need comfort? God as opium? That's the best you can do? Neither you nor I know whether that's true or not. But I suspect that desperate people find their consolation in god quite easily. Faith found what she needed to find, was she right? I don't need to find solace anywhere. That's the mistake you keep making time after time. Needing solace is not normal, it should be an exceptional thing, necessary in rare situations.

Yup, it's the certainty in the absence of evidence that is unscientific - and irrational.

Yeh, we've done all that. Many, many times. I'm not going there again, it's just wordplay.The fact is that we can never be sure about an absence of something if the thing that is absent is potentially non-trivial and outside the bounds of our existing knowledge. It simply remains unknown and possibly unknowable, not certainly non-existent.

That's a pretty fair question. Let me ask you one. Do you think that fairies are in the same category of unknown as a mainstream god?

There is a difference in that the creators of Tinker Bell, Puck and Morgan tell us they are not real and the readers of their *fictions* do not believe them to be real.However, I believe them all to be fiction - some more obviously so than others. Yahweh does not sit on a cloud.But the existence of a non-interventionist, deistic god is a different category of idea. Nothing is known about such a being, it can't even be imagined. To me, it's a daft idea and doesn't exist, but that's just my belief. I certainly can't say I know it to be true in the same way that I know Tinker Bell is a fiction. For Tinker Bell I have proof.

Now THAT makes no sense at all! Something that we know exists is not something we generally argue doesn't exist. We can prove Santa Clause doesn't exist. We can't prove god doesn't exist. Dunno about chimeras, never thought about them. We can't prove Bigfoot or Nessie don't exist, but we believe they don't. This is all we're arguing about. A tentative conclusion can't be absolute knowledge. See above, it's you that's claiming certainty. If all you're saying is that you believe something to be true/not true to the best of your knowledge, then we are in agreement.

Luckily I don't spend any time at all identifying reality in storybooks marked as fiction. Now you're just being silly. I wonder how many other ways we could work out whether hobbits, orks and wizards are real if we were dumb enough to suggest that they were. And here it is again. I am in agreement with your tentative conclusion. That is not certainty. From that you cannot say that you 'know' that such a thing doesn't exist. What you can say is that given the state of our current knowledge, it is unlikely to exist.