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Author Topic:   I Know That God Does Not Exist
Sarah Bellum
Member (Idle past 595 days)
Posts: 826
Joined: 05-04-2019


Message 2487 of 3207 (880440)
08-06-2020 1:09 AM
Reply to: Message 1569 by Tangle
07-31-2019 3:31 AM


Re: No evidence = irrational
But surely there had to be some who thought up the idea first?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1569 by Tangle, posted 07-31-2019 3:31 AM Tangle has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 2490 by Tangle, posted 08-06-2020 2:58 AM Sarah Bellum has replied

  
Sarah Bellum
Member (Idle past 595 days)
Posts: 826
Joined: 05-04-2019


Message 2488 of 3207 (880441)
08-06-2020 1:24 AM
Reply to: Message 2464 by ringo
01-11-2020 11:08 AM


Re: No evidence = irrational
You write
quote:
There is no evidence that James Bond exists but the idea of James Bond is not illogical. There is no evidence that Holden Caulfield exists but the idea of Holden Caulfield is not illogical. There is no evidence that Tom Joad exists but the idea of Tom Joad is not illogical. There is no evidence that Long John Silver exists but the idea of Long John Silver is not illogical. There is no evidence that Lemuel Gulliver exists but the idea of Lemuel Gulliver is not illogical. There is no evidence that Jesus exists but the idea of Jesus is not illogical.
There is no evidence that God exists but the idea of God is not illogical.
By your way of thinking, the idea of a secret agent with a license to kill, equipped with clever gadgets, etc. is not an "illogical" thing, even though a particular one labeled 007 doesn't exist. Fair enough. But the idea of Tarot cards (which we agree do exist) telling your future is not logical, even though one could go through the process of reading someone's fortune and, often (especially with a judicious use of cold reading) attain surprising accuracy.
In the same way that the process of Tarot card reading is not a logical method of foretelling the future, the idea of a deity (by whatever you mean your deity to be, whether an explanation for lightning bolts or a morality car wash to clean away your sins) is not a logical thing.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 2464 by ringo, posted 01-11-2020 11:08 AM ringo has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 2494 by ringo, posted 08-06-2020 9:54 AM Sarah Bellum has replied
 Message 2499 by Phat, posted 08-06-2020 10:35 AM Sarah Bellum has replied

  
Sarah Bellum
Member (Idle past 595 days)
Posts: 826
Joined: 05-04-2019


Message 2489 of 3207 (880442)
08-06-2020 1:28 AM
Reply to: Message 2466 by Tangle
01-11-2020 11:54 AM


Re: No evidence = irrational
It's tough to stake out the position that there is no evidence for a deity in the face of statements that some of the great philosophers of the past have thought there was a deity.
Nevertheless...

This message is a reply to:
 Message 2466 by Tangle, posted 01-11-2020 11:54 AM Tangle has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 2491 by Tangle, posted 08-06-2020 3:19 AM Sarah Bellum has replied

  
Sarah Bellum
Member (Idle past 595 days)
Posts: 826
Joined: 05-04-2019


Message 2492 of 3207 (880453)
08-06-2020 9:37 AM
Reply to: Message 2490 by Tangle
08-06-2020 2:58 AM


Re: No evidence = irrational
Still, it's interesting. If we see something we don't understand there may be a natural tendency to impute a cause (SOMEBODY must be up on a mountain throwing those thunderbolts!) but the ideas of the monotheistic religions? How they developed must have been far more convoluted.

This message is a reply to:
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Sarah Bellum
Member (Idle past 595 days)
Posts: 826
Joined: 05-04-2019


Message 2493 of 3207 (880457)
08-06-2020 9:43 AM
Reply to: Message 2491 by Tangle
08-06-2020 3:19 AM


Re: No evidence = irrational
It almost seems as if the religionists have specifically designed their concept of a deity as something that cannot be objectively proven or disproven...

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 Message 2491 by Tangle, posted 08-06-2020 3:19 AM Tangle has not replied

  
Sarah Bellum
Member (Idle past 595 days)
Posts: 826
Joined: 05-04-2019


Message 2495 of 3207 (880460)
08-06-2020 9:58 AM
Reply to: Message 2494 by ringo
08-06-2020 9:54 AM


Re: No evidence = irrational
But I haven't said any of literary characters you listed (007 etc.) are illogical.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 2494 by ringo, posted 08-06-2020 9:54 AM ringo has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 2496 by ringo, posted 08-06-2020 10:02 AM Sarah Bellum has replied

  
Sarah Bellum
Member (Idle past 595 days)
Posts: 826
Joined: 05-04-2019


Message 2497 of 3207 (880466)
08-06-2020 10:18 AM
Reply to: Message 2496 by ringo
08-06-2020 10:02 AM


Re: No evidence = irrational
You listed James Bond, Holden Caulfield, Tom Joad, Long John Silver, Lemuel Gulliver and Jesus in your list of literary characters. In the next paragraph you talk about god. If you had intended god to be in the list of literary characters . . .
Anyway, you've not answered my point
quote:
In the same way that the process of Tarot card reading is not a logical method of foretelling the future, the idea of a deity (by whatever you mean your deity to be, whether an explanation for lightning bolts or a morality car wash to clean away your sins) is not a logical thing.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 2496 by ringo, posted 08-06-2020 10:02 AM ringo has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 2498 by ringo, posted 08-06-2020 10:23 AM Sarah Bellum has replied

  
Sarah Bellum
Member (Idle past 595 days)
Posts: 826
Joined: 05-04-2019


Message 2500 of 3207 (880470)
08-06-2020 10:41 AM
Reply to: Message 2498 by ringo
08-06-2020 10:23 AM


Re: No evidence = irrational
If you were to project the size of an American family extrapolating from data of the years 1900 to 1940 you might miss the Baby Boom following the war, but your process would not be illogical. It might merely give the wrong answer. But Tarot cards, as a way of making a similar projection, even if it were accurate, would not be logical. Do you see the distinction here?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 2498 by ringo, posted 08-06-2020 10:23 AM ringo has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 2502 by ringo, posted 08-06-2020 12:12 PM Sarah Bellum has replied

  
Sarah Bellum
Member (Idle past 595 days)
Posts: 826
Joined: 05-04-2019


Message 2501 of 3207 (880471)
08-06-2020 10:45 AM
Reply to: Message 2499 by Phat
08-06-2020 10:35 AM


Re: No evidence = irrational
I'm sure there are plenty of reasons people believe things that are illogical. That doesn't make those things logical.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 2499 by Phat, posted 08-06-2020 10:35 AM Phat has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 2503 by Phat, posted 08-06-2020 12:15 PM Sarah Bellum has replied

  
Sarah Bellum
Member (Idle past 595 days)
Posts: 826
Joined: 05-04-2019


Message 2505 of 3207 (880475)
08-06-2020 1:06 PM
Reply to: Message 2502 by ringo
08-06-2020 12:12 PM


Re: No evidence = irrational
Perhaps there is a difference in the ways you and I conceive of the terms "logical" and "illogical"?
Could you give me an example of a thing (or process, if you wish, though a process is also a "thing" in the broad sense) which you would consider illogical? I only ask because you seem to want to categorize everything as logical and only have the concept of "illogical" come in as a possibility when we talk about "belief" in that thing.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 2502 by ringo, posted 08-06-2020 12:12 PM ringo has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 2510 by ringo, posted 08-07-2020 12:28 PM Sarah Bellum has replied

  
Sarah Bellum
Member (Idle past 595 days)
Posts: 826
Joined: 05-04-2019


(2)
Message 2506 of 3207 (880476)
08-06-2020 1:13 PM
Reply to: Message 2503 by Phat
08-06-2020 12:15 PM


Re: No evidence = irrational
But what is your concept of a god? If you believe in a god because you have experienced it, that is logical, in the sense that you have sensed it and so think it is there. That's fine, so far as it goes.
But what is god? The god of Moses? The god of the KJV? The god as conceived by the deists who founded the United States? We must know what a thing is before we can decide whether or not it is logical.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 2503 by Phat, posted 08-06-2020 12:15 PM Phat has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 2507 by FLRW, posted 08-06-2020 6:08 PM Sarah Bellum has replied

  
Sarah Bellum
Member (Idle past 595 days)
Posts: 826
Joined: 05-04-2019


Message 2511 of 3207 (880634)
08-08-2020 4:11 PM
Reply to: Message 2510 by ringo
08-07-2020 12:28 PM


Re: No evidence = irrational
A person who sees thin ice, thinner than ice that, in their experience, people have always fallen through, nevertheless says, "I'm going to walk across this!" Is that "illogical" in your way of thinking, or just "wrong" because there's no specific fallacy or something else in the philosophical jargon that is involved here, however irrational the situation?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 2510 by ringo, posted 08-07-2020 12:28 PM ringo has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 2513 by ringo, posted 08-08-2020 9:59 PM Sarah Bellum has replied

  
Sarah Bellum
Member (Idle past 595 days)
Posts: 826
Joined: 05-04-2019


Message 2512 of 3207 (880635)
08-08-2020 4:17 PM
Reply to: Message 2507 by FLRW
08-06-2020 6:08 PM


Re: No evidence = irrational
But be careful about quoting famous people!
Shockley (to take an example of another famous scientist) may have been a genius, but his views on some issues were not ones you'd want to quote.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 2507 by FLRW, posted 08-06-2020 6:08 PM FLRW has not replied

  
Sarah Bellum
Member (Idle past 595 days)
Posts: 826
Joined: 05-04-2019


Message 2514 of 3207 (880677)
08-09-2020 11:03 AM
Reply to: Message 2513 by ringo
08-08-2020 9:59 PM


Re: No evidence = irrational
Hmm. Interesting.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 2513 by ringo, posted 08-08-2020 9:59 PM ringo has seen this message but not replied

  
Sarah Bellum
Member (Idle past 595 days)
Posts: 826
Joined: 05-04-2019


Message 2549 of 3207 (880970)
08-15-2020 12:52 PM
Reply to: Message 2548 by Tangle
08-15-2020 10:15 AM


Re: No evidence = irrational
I find it depressing to hear people say even great physicists (or other scientists, scholars, etc.) can be wrong. It's true, I suppose, but it's not like making a moral choice (to steal or not to steal) and being wrong. One can live one's life without making a wrong moral choice, but one can't study science without going down dead ends, making mistakes, trying and failing. In fact, that's practically the definition of science: try something and see if it works.
The scientists who are "wrong" are no more "wrong" than the explorers who tried to climb Mount Everest before Edmund Hillary (no, Hillary Clinton was not named after him: she was born in 1947 and Everest wasn't conquered until 1953).

This message is a reply to:
 Message 2548 by Tangle, posted 08-15-2020 10:15 AM Tangle has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 2550 by Tangle, posted 08-15-2020 1:29 PM Sarah Bellum has replied

  
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