I Know That God Does Not Exist

As it sits, that statement doesn't tell me very much. What do you mean by "God"?I think the more specific and discrete you get about gods, the more confident you can get about them not existing. As you approach the other end, where God becomes more abstract, your confidence in any position towards it approaches zero. How are you determining the difference between God not existing and those propositions being wrong about God?What data have you found and analyzed that wasn't just something that someone imagined about God? I suppose it could be rational for you to have become convinced that the concept that you invoke with the word God does not exist, and therefore know that it doesn't. But I don't think that tells us much about whether God really exists or not.Is there any being(s) that is a "higher power" than humans that they could cause them to believe that a God exists?

Wait. What about being able to see to the other side of the room unblocked by any elephants, and that the floor is still holding up, and that the room still smells like the candle from yesterday, and that you can still hear the TV from the other room. All of that is evidence that there is not a herd of elephants stampeding through the living room; you don't have an absence of evidence.

So, you're not differentiating between a God and peoples propositions about a God. That is, you're only testing people's propositions and not actually testing a God. But you've defined knowing as finding and analyzing data. If you're only analzying peoples' propositions about a God then you're only knowing that their propositions are wrong. The one that would be there if it was real. You would still have the erroneous propositions that you've discarded all the while never actually determining anything about the God. Well I was thinking along the lines of sufficiently advanced aliens that helped primitive man become civilized and then became deified. There could be a purely natural "god" that the propositions stem from that you'd be unduly rejecting, imho. But your data is limited to peoples' propositions. I'm not following this. It sounds like your saying that an alternative is irrational, therefore your claim is rational. But that doesn't seem logical to me.

I think that's closer to it

I guess if you want to try to turn it into an absense of evidence then you can look at it that way. But its positive evidence nonetheless.The room smelling like the apple candle is what: absence of evidence of it smelling like elephant shit, absence of evidence of it smelling like cheese, absence of evidence of it smelling like gasoline, absence of evidence of it smelling like... whatever else you care to throw in there.But, it is the presence of evidence of it smelling like apples too.Is the rate of acceleration due to gravity 9.8 m/s/s because of the lack of evidence of it being 9.7, or 9.9, or any other number? Or is it because we have evidence that it is, in fact, 9.8?

Not all of them are testable. No, I don't think so. I'm fine with your usage. Its not that, its that you havn't really collected any of the data you think you have. All you've tested is what people have imagined about it but you haven't ever actually tested it. No. No. I'm doubting that you know what you think you know.

For me personally, yes*, but I think your description can work well for this thread.*for example: That's too anthropomorphised for me.

Sure. But them being irrational doesn't necessitate your's being rational. I don't think you've shown that your position is rational yet. Okay, but you're assuming that what people have imagined about it is actually a search area. You're not distinguishing between that and them being wrong. Before you said:

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By checking all the propositions, then it doesn't matter if the propositions are correct or not, any correct ones will be checked.
If all propositions are wrong, and no correct propositions exist... then there is no data to evaluate and no claim exists.

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So, take a culture that worships the sun as a god. Well, there is a sun up there. Is it a god? How do you test that? That's not what I mean. I'm just saying that you've never actually tested for a god, all you've tested is what people have told you they believe about a god. You're conclusion would be that you know that people are wrong about what they believe about the god. Okay, so back to our cars in the parking lots. I know my car is out there. That's fine. But in order to establish that my car is out there, I'd have to get up and go look.If I haven't established it, and somebody says that its not out there, I'd probably react and go look. If I'm standing there looking at it, i.e. its established, and somebody tells me that its not out there, then I'll just roll my eyes.So when you're saying that you know that god doesn't exist, its not in a way that you've actually established anything.I don't really have a problem with that. But you did say you wanted to defend, so I'm just providing you with some offense

I'm not specifiying that it lacks those things. Its just that we tend to think of things in human terms. Do you think God would have a brain that is made of cells and blood n'stuff? Seems dubious.

That's why I said that as it sits, "I know that God does not exist", doesn't really tell us that much without understanding what you're talking about with the word "God". I don't know. But I think that reduces the confidence you can have in your knowledge and eliminates any establishment you could have about gods. I'm not seeing it. But the sun does exist and people have worshiped it as a god. So were they just wrong or are you? Where's that been established? That, and what you mean by "God". Seems alright to me... but as you say:

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my statement is easily taken out of context and can seem like it's overstepping it's boundaries.

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By itself, it isn't really conveying much meaning. As I said:

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you to have become convinced that the concept that you invoke with the word God does not exist, and therefore know that it doesn't.

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I think it'd be better with further qualifiers on what you mean by "God".

The point was that your statement doesn't distinguish between those things, that it isn't really telling me much. Ok. As I said before, the more specific and discrete you get about the god, the more easily it is to know it doesn't exist. Yeah, you can't really. I agree more with you that the questions doesn't deserve any rational consideration than I do that you know the answer.

I agree that absence of evidence can be evidence of absence. What I was disagreeing with was this:

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Absence of evidence is always evidence of absence, because that's how we detect absence - by the lack of evidence.

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Trust me, there's no evidence whatsoever for the proposition that a herd of elephants is not stampeding through your living room besides the complete lack of evidence that they are.

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You can also detect absence by the presence of something that couldn't coincide with the thing in question.

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

Oh, like "claiming" a fact rather than stating one?'Cause that seems different...

No, a "statement of fact" is stating something that is factual. Its not just a claim or proposal about the veracity of the statement. Well its unconventional and confusing, but whatever, I can work with it.So back to this: How are you even addressing what he's saying? Sure, you can claim something is true even though its unfalsifiable. But what does that have to do with unevidenced possibilities not having an effect on evidenced conclusions?