I Know That God Does Not Exist

Your reasoning bears a striking resemblance to the epistemic reasoning of intelligent design.Moreover, I feel you bestow infinitely too much credibility on the inventions of theologians by implying that their notions of God are all that is possible.

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If you have a better idea for understanding "how we know things" than the one I have proposed, I would be interested in hearing about it.

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Well, I think science works pretty well. Science is the greatest source of knowledge because statements of fact about unobserved things are constrained by observations of nature. Your demonstration of the non-existence of a thing called god requires that observation statements necessarily constrain unobservables which happen to be exceptions to rules of nature. It doesn't necessarily work. You must either devalue your claim to knowledge or you must couple a non-scientific method with philosophical statements about the nature of the relationship between natural observables and the existence of a certain type of god.

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All rational concepts of God known to us have been tested and found to be false.

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Qualifying that the god must be rational is interesting because it seems to demand that it be amenable to some form of testability, but a paradox arises because there is no reason to believe that a concept of god must be demonstrated as rational by this criterion. Accordingly, falsifications are only possible if one demonstrates that characteristics of god necessitate certain observations in nature. This is the best case scenario. The actual scenario, of course, is that no one knows neither the characteristics of gods even if one does exist, nor its relationship to nature. Even in the case of the popular gods, one may provide plentiful reasons to believe they are fabrications, but these are not demonstrations of truth about a negative.Edited by TrueCreation, : No reason given.

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I'm having a tough time with this one. What are the "observation statments?" What are the "unobservables which happen to be exceptions to the rules of nature?"
Are you trying to say that in restricting my method to the rational, that I've excluded God from the get-go because God is necessarily irrational? That is, that God is necessarily an exception to the rules of nature? Therefore, I need to accept irrational ideas (your suggestions about using philosophical statements...) in order to "correctly" ponder this question?

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Observation statements are statements describing something that is observed. The unobservables which happen to be exceptions to the rules of nature are the entities/objects/rules which are essentially supernatural.

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When you say "rules of nature" are you trying to say something equivalent to "the things we rationally understand" such as Einsteins laws and our theories of how the world works? If not... do you know of any "rules of nature" that are not things that we rationally understand? If so... then if you are saying God is an exception to the rules of nature... you are defining God to be something that we "do not understand." In which case, again, God is something irrational.

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More aptly, the rules of nature are the things which allow us to predict what is unobserved using what is observed. They do not necessarily need to be totally rational, but their behaviors must be 'constrainable'. For instance, quantum indeterminacy may have an irrational basis, but quantum mechanics can be described by rules sufficient to predict observations.The problem of god is that it is necessarily (I suppose) beyond nature. The 'nature' of gods may or may not be rational, but our capacity to evaluate the truth or falsity of statements about gods is presumptive.

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To borrow an example from Catholic Scientist, I think that ancient people were actually being somewhat rational when they worshipped the sun as a God. After all, the sun brings warmth, warmth brings the season of Spring, Spring brings new life to almost all animals. If this is our data set, it is a rational conclusion to think that the sun is a God. Eventually we investigated the sun to expand our data set and were able to rationally determine that the sun is just another inanimate object. Therefore it does not do any of the other things we tend to attach to a definition of God. This doesn't rationally mean that God must be somewhere else. This rationally means that the sun is not God and we need to find another line of rational reasoning to point us to thinking that God may exist somewhere else. And we did. We thought God was in the moon, in the stars, in the night sky itself, doing this, doing that... and we have investigated all these rational ideas. We have also discovered that they are all inanimate objects, and that nothing at all actually "does this or does that" (prayer healing, helping good people.... etc.).

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What we are left with, is no more "rational ideas" for where God may exist. We do, however, have plenty of "irrational ideas" where God may exist. Maybe in another dimension, maybe "beyond our universe", maybe many other places we can put words in a certain order to describe. However, we still must accept that there are no more "rational ideas" that point us to think that God might actually be in a certain place. Like the sun. This is a significant point in the search for God.

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You are correct that study of observable 'things' like the Sun, the stars, the moon, etc. has made conjectures about these objects being gods rather silly, but if you don't think these observations are amenable to theological rationalization, you'll be disappointed. The important point is better highlighted by your suggestion that prayer healing, helping good people, etc. is somehow an epistemic tool. If these things did happen when we sacrificed goats to Helios, that would be something, but the point of irrationality here lay in the belief that we be certain that these qualities are necessary for the existence of god, not necessarily that an unfalsifiable notion of god is itself irrational. One might say the irrationality is epistemic rather than ontological.Unless one can show that (1) if god exists it is of a certain type, and (2) that this type of god can be confirmed or disconfirmed/falsified by some observation of nature, it cannot be said that one 'knows' god does not exist, inasmuch as 'knowledge' involves a demonstration of truth.Edited by TrueCreation, : No reason given.Edited by TrueCreation, : No reason given.Edited by TrueCreation, : No reason given.

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Such a thing seems silly to me as well. But, this is not my idea.
I claim that we know something until we're proven wrong after we've also investigated all areas we're able to investigate and analyze our resulting data set.

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I don't see how this is significantly different from intelligent design's epistemology of ignorance.

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I agree that it is possible to conceive of things that are not in our data set that may (if they exist) overturn some of the things we "think we know" from within our data set.

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Well, they needn't overturn anything we know from observation of our universe. It is conceivable that the existence of gods has nothing to do with our universe.

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But to take these conceivable ideas that may or may not even exist themselves... and say that they should have an effect on a rational conclusion that is based on our collective data set... that is what seems ridiculous to me.

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If there is nothing within our collective data set that doesn't even indicate that "something" may exist outside of our data set... I find it silly to consider that such a "something" should have the power to overturn rational statements of knowledge that do come from a rational analysis of the data we do have.

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I don't see the problem with acknowledging that some statements of fact are unfalsifiable.

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You may not like it, but the dog bites both ankles.

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My parameters were marked, the question was whether there where snakes in my garden, not the world or cosmos. Being unable to find snakes in my garden despite using all possible efforts, is evidence of absence - in my garden. That can not be in doubt.

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So abiogenesis. Does the same logic work? I'd say it does. Science's inability to show how life might have started is absence of evidence that speaks to evidence of absence. But it's as limited as the snakes not being in my garden.

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Does it apply to god? I think so but maybe it's stronger evidence - we have, after all, been looking everywhere we can think of for thousands of years. It's not proof but it IS evidence of absence.

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Much of the heuristic power of science is owed to the fact that it recognizes how intellectually flaccid this type of reasoning is. In order for a hypothesis to be tested, scientific or not, you must demonstrate that an observation follows from that hypothesis being true. Confirmation of the hypothesis is then merely proportional to how confident you can be that your observation statements are true.The problem with god is that you invariably fail step 1: no one can demonstrate that an observation necessarily follows from the hypothesis that god exists. In fact, the idea is paradoxical on a basic level since it is possible to suggest that such observations might include the existence of life, the universe, or any other such problem on the fingertips of science. So ignorance suggests god exists and ignorance suggests god doesn't exist. This is below serious consideration for the same reason the intelligent design pseudotheory is.There are only two workarounds: (a) Either unnecessary but sufficient observations can be found such as a pulsar pumping out morse code indicating supernatural causation (this is Monton's example: Is Intelligent Design Science? Dissecting the Dover Decision - PhilSci-Archive) or (b) invent a characterization of god whose existence necessitates certain observations.The first would be an outright "super-scientific" proof (in other words, truth depends not on evidence or testing, but confidence that what is observed is not simply illusory), but this is just fantasy. The second shows us that it may be possible to take advantage of the fixity of history and demonstrate falsity of at least once case using logic, but lo, here comes the theologian to ascend Mt. Ignorance, stake his flag, and beam confidence in face of yon horizon.Edited by TrueCreation, : No reason given.

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Hypothesis: There is no god
Test: Look for any evidence of the supernatural
Outcome: Haven't seen anything supernatural yet. Test continues.
Conclusion: Not yet proven, but it's looking more likely to be true than not. (ie the absence of evidence is building towards evidence of absence.)

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You're not taking seriously my suggestion that "no one can demonstrate that an observation necessarily follows from the hypothesis that god exists." This should be fully realized when you consider that even if you could explore all corners of the universe it remains conceivable that no evidence should be found that god exists since it is conceivable that no property of the universe uniquely implicates divine agency. Accordingly, it cannot be demonstrated that probabilistic inferences contain epistemic information on this matter. As I said, this type of testing is only useful if you happen to find a sufficient circumstantial proof or if you consider a specific notion of god. Moreover, for the latter case, to then claim that you have knowledge about whether or not god exists you must demonstrate that that notion of god is all that can exist.

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And yes, you can quibble that we can't define 'god' like we can define 'snake' but I'm not particularly interested in semantic argument - most people understand what the term 'god' means in common usage and would expect to recognise one should it turn up.

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It is not a semantic quibble, it is a necessary condition to make the sorts of general statements the OP wants to make. In addition, you can't simply relegate to what "most people understand what the term 'god' means" unless that is just code for doing exactly what I just said will not lead you to the general claim that there is no god (ie, testing specific notions of god).

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Your suggestion is being taken seriously, it's a very obvious qualification. However, I'm ignoring it because it's not relevant - I'm making a very narrow point about absence of evidence. For the moment, I'm not concerned about Gods that might exist beyond our powers to find evidence for them.

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Then you are not interested in affirming the statement that god does not exist. You must be interested in affirming another sort of statement.

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Most people, when talking about God, have a particular version in mind. The fact that there is no evidence for any of their versions is evidence for their absence.

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This is a mistake. The fact that one has no evidence for a conjecture is only a demonstration that it is conjecture. A problem is that an absence of evidence doesn't denote anything about efforts exhausted to find evidence. Even more problematic, however, is that the statement of an absence of evidence seems to connote that such efforts have been sufficiently exhaustive to say something about the likelihood of absence. My point has been that this cannot necessarily be done because it is impossible to know what necessary observation demonstrates existence. The only way this can be attempted is if you test specific versions, and that ultimately these tests don't, or only rarely, succeed in demonstrating proofs.Nevertheless, I feel that the OP's argument is not only logically mistaken but is also misguided. It is precisely this type of reasoning which scientific method has saved us from--we have learned to dismiss the idea that ignorance is meaningful. Arguments on the matter of god's existence should focus on demonstrations of absurdity and epistemic uselessness rather than audacious attempts at falsification.Edited by TrueCreation, : No reason given.Edited by TrueCreation, : clarified some things

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Perhaps this is our difference.
I don't understand how something could be considered a "statement of fact" if it is unfalsifiable.

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Unfalsifiable, to me, means that it is untestable. If we are unable to test it... if we can't check it... how can we call it a statement of fact?
Wouldn't it, then, just be an idea?

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A statement of fact is not necessarily true or supported by evidence. It is simply a proposal that something is true and can be either falsifiable or unfalsifiable. One may arrive at circumstantial evidence for unfalsifiable hypotheses, such as god revealing itself to humanity, but because it is unnecessary for the hypothesis that god exists (a statement of fact) is true, the absence of such circumstantial evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence, and it certainly is not a demonstration of absence.

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Wait, what? If it ain't true then how's it a statement of fact?

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Because a statement of fact merely classifies what the statement implies, and what it implies is that something is the case in reality. This is just the convention I have used.

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I agree with you that "having evidencial support that God does exist (like God revealing Himself to humanity)" is unnecessary for the hypothesis that God exists to be true. But, we must point out here that you've equivocated on the word "true" in this sense.
This is not "knowing that something is true."
This is "absolutely true in the true-est sense of the word." Or, as I identified in the first post, knowing something "for sure-sure's and absolute truth's sake:"

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It's not a matter of absolute truth, it is a matter of evidence or the capacity to infer evidence. Inferring evidence for the non-existence of things is already difficult, and becomes nigh irrational when talking about something as difficult to reify as god. It is possible to make a statement that looks kind of like "I know god doesn't exist", but this statement itself is just erroneous on every level. Maybe you should expound on what you imply by "I know" and "god".

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The way I've set things up... it most certainly IS necessary for there to be evidencial support for God's existance before you can use the statement of fact that "I know God exists." If we stop equivocating and use a single definition for the word "know," you either have to accept this, or stop using the word "know" for anything else.

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You are obviously correct to say that one must have evidence for the existence of gods before you can claim that "I know god exists". But, I don't think that you are using the same standard for the demonstration that "I know god does not exist" because your supposed evidences are pseudoepistemic. The only way I can agree with your statement that you "know" god does not exist is if I accept a total devaluation of what it means to "know".

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If you want to redefine and use terms in such a way that it removes a very common word from english dictionaries... that's up to you.
But I've defined my terms and they make sense, and if we stick to those definitions and requirements, then "I know that God does not exist" is simply a rational conclusion.

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It is not a rational conclusion. I think it is based on rational argument, but the inference itself demolishes all preceeding rationality. It is an inference, at best, based on ones dissatisfaction with an absence of positive evidence. Kind of like dismissing Wagener's continental drift because the geophysics of the day said it was impossible, or the inference of design because we cannot explain abiogenesis.

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If God wasn't so socially popular to believe in, everyone would treat the idea that "I know God does not exist" the same as "I know Santa Claus does not exist." They would treat it as the mundane, "duh," basically useless statement of fact that it actually is.

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Comparing the notion of god to Stanta Claus is about as productive as comparing organic life to a pocket watch in the design argument. The similarities between your reasoning and classical theology are uncanny.

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That would make sense to me, but the issue isn't that things aren't making sense to me... it's that they are not making sense to those who object. I take it as a personal challenge to try and defend my positions on other people's terms... whatever those are, if it's at all possible.

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I think that's great. I did a similar thing on this board for several years, except as a creationist.Edited by TrueCreation, : No reason given.

There is no evidence for the claim that "god does not exist" because you cannot demonstrate that an observation cannot follow from the statement that god exists.Returning to one of Stile's statements:

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But to take these conceivable ideas that may or may not even exist themselves... and say that they should have an effect on a rational conclusion that is based on our collective data set... that is what seems ridiculous to me.

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The problem is that it is not ridiculous because his supposedly rational conclusion can only be based on data that we do not have. The statement that "god does not exist" cannot be based on data that we do have because of what I said above.It is necessary because Stile is trying to claim that the statement that he "knows god does not exist" is sound (i.e, that the statement "god exists" is demonstrably unfactual).I do not understand how Stile's epistemology is rational.Edited by TrueCreation, : fixed some errors

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It's as rational as saying that you know there isn't an undetectable unicorn looking over your shoulder as you type.

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Not really. I might say that it would be more analogous to saying that there is something undetectable over your shoulder as you type, and that that thing is related to the universe, life, or people sufficient to call that thing god. However, only the latter part of that statement is required because that this thing is either undetectable and over your shoulder, are unnecessary.

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Can you give an example of something that you do know?

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This is both easy and very difficult to answer, but I'll try.Firstly, all knowledge is contingent on the method by which (and the data on which) a truth can be demonstrated. By 'method' I mean things like logic or science. I think that "we know" statements essentially means that one has sufficient evidence to take it's truth as granted, as if the subject matter of the statement were itself observed. Note that this doesn't have anything to do with absolute truths.So I could say that we know that mirrors reflect light, as this is itself observed.But I could also say that we know the topography of ocean basins is at least partly a consequence of the density of oceanic lithosphere, and that these variations in density are at least partly due to temperature.I can also say that we know that when we observe an igneous intrusion cutting through strata and that the geologic state is indicative of original emplacement, the sediment came first."We know" statements consist in those for which falsification would incur amazement, not necessarily at any fantastical implication of the observation, but because it were thought to be demanded by observation.Edited by TrueCreation, : added last statementEdited by TrueCreation, : No reason given.Edited by TrueCreation, : No reason given.

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It only becomes difficult and irrational if the definition for God is irrational, or the proposed indication for His existance is irrational.

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I don't think that's correct. Reification of god is difficult because it is unconstrained by nature or observation.

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This is a significant point in the rational search for God.
This means that it is rational to say "I know that God does not exist."

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To overturn the statement, you need to do one or more of the following:

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Discover (or invent) a new, rational definition for "God."
Discover (or invent) a new, rational indication of God's existance.

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Not necessarily. One must only discover or invent a rational example of what would be god (ie, something that is sufficiently god). This should be a trivial exercise.My suspicion is that you might observe that it can be reasonably (I think) stated that no such conceivable god is falsifiable or constrained by nature, and is thus irrational--but this is a mistake.

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A very good point. Already brought up by Catholic Scientist.
I expounded on what I mean by "knowing things" right in the beginning of Message 1.
I eventually expounded on what what I mean by "God" in Message 63.
Please feel free to inform me of anything you don't find rational.

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Well, I've explained previously that no one can demonstrate that an observation necessarily follows from the hypothesis that god exists (Message 93). Presumably you would say that that means god is irrational, but it means no such thing. What it actually means is that it is irrational to make truth claims about god, as you have done.

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There are plenty of rational indications that abiogenesis is valid. The fact that there was no life on Earth at one point and then there was life on Earth at another point. The fact that RNA seems like a precursor to DNA. The fact that investigation into chemical experiments concerning abiogenesis are making progress. The point is that there are rational indications that abiogenesis is possible.

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Which is exactly what I'm asking for about God's existance. What are the rational indications that God exists?

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No one can demonstrate that an observation necessarily follows from the hypothesis that god exists. As I say above, this just means that it is irrational to make truth claims about god, as you do. You can say you have good reason to believe that god does not exist, but this is totally alien to the statement that you actually have this knowledge.

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I have thought of:
-God existing in the sun, the trees or a variety of natural weather conditions
-God existing "anywhere" and having an affect on humans such as prayer healing or helping good people or punishing bad people

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We have investigated these rational indications and the results are that God does not exist.

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This is like demonstrating that evolution is false because there are no crockoducks. Constraining evolutionary history doesn't work that way, and neither does constraining characteristics of god. As I've said, no one can demonstrate that an observation necessarily follows from the hypothesis that god exists, so even cases where your specific conjectures about the characteristics of god lead to falsification, the conclusion that "god does not exist" is irrational.

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All I'm saying is that after the rational investigating we have done, and pending no further rational avenues... the only rational conclusion is to say "I know that God does not exist."

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No, the rational conclusion is to say that reality presents you with no reason to believe, justifying disbelief. Rational justification for disbelief is capable of epistemic commentary on this matter because it refers only to a necessity of evidence. But this is contrary to the rational demonstrations of truth by evidence that we call knowledge.Edited by TrueCreation, : No reason given.

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I'm sorry, but that quadruple negative is confusing... Let me see if I can break it down:

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Given the statement "God exists", any observation could follow from that. Therefore, no observation can support the opposite statement (God does not exist).

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Is that what you're saying?

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Sorry it was a bit confusing. What I mean isn't that any observation could follow from that, I mean that there is no observation which must follow from that statement.

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Right, so given that we are in The Matrix, you could still say that you know you're sitting at a computer (even thought you're not) because the data set you do have allows you take it for granted. You wouldn't absolutely know, but you'd know.

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That's what Sile's saying about God...

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Givent that God does exist, the data set that he has says that God doesn't, so he can say that he knows its true. Not in the absolute know, but he knows.

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I think Stile is confusing the demonstration that one can reasonably justify the belief that god does not exist with knowledge that god does not exist. I have no reason to believe that we are in a Matrix, so I believe that it is untrue. However, I would not say that I know that I do not live in a Matrix, because I cannot demonstrate any such thing.Edited by TrueCreation, : No reason given.