Agnosticism vs. Atheism

Mark24, There is a difference between having no evidence, and having evidence something is not so. Please allow me an analogy here. Suppose I have a china vase and a baseball bat. You hypothesise that I have hit the vase with the baseball bat as hard as I can. I then argue that you are false because if I did hit the vase with the baseball bat it would be in shattered pieces. By observing that this is not so, we are able to prove that I haven't smacked the vase with the baseball bat. This doesn't follow. I am not claiming absence of evidence is evidence of absence. Which is what you have in the case of the Giant Squid. If you had trawled the sea and found no squid then you would have evidence of absence, instead all you have is a lack of investigation.

There is nothing wrong. The argument is valid assuming that the premise is correct. However for the premise the be correct you need a few things, namely; 1) you need a working definition of what A is and what kind of evidence it would leave, and where, and 2) you need the ability, either natural or technological, to detect this evidence. The second (maybe unstated premise) is that you need to have used this ability to search a sufficiently large segment of the 'where', without having found any evidence of A.In the squid example it is likely that the second 'premise' was not satisfied.Sa basically the argument assumes that you know what A is and what sort of evidence it would leave and that you have looked 'enough' of the right places to claim that there isn't any evidence. What is 'enough' depends what A is.Am I making any sense?------------------
He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.
- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

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1. If (God A exists) then (evidence of God A)
2. If (God B exists) then (evidence of God B)

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Sure. If god is supposed to perform an action, or is supposed to have performed an action, which can be checked, then we can confirm or deny that conception of god. What we are confirming or denying is the conception, really, not the god. It is great fun nonetheless.

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n. If (God n exists) then (evidence of God n)
n+1. Not (evidence of God {A, B,...n})

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Mathematical induction only works in rigidly defined systems. Think of it as toppling dominoes-- you've probably heard this analogy. In a system like mathematics, you know the next domino will fall-- it is built into the system. In the real world, you don't know that the next domino-- the next conception of God-- will fall. All you can do is check one at a time. You will be busy for eternity.

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At what point is it rational and reasonable to declare Not (God)?

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I think it is rational to behave as if there is no God until evidence for one is found. This is the same for anything else. I will behave as if there are no alien colonists on Earth until someone finds evidence for such. This is not to say I believe in alien colonists, nor does it say I don't.

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Anyway, it is my position that any truth (small "t") claim can be assigned to a position on a continuum of confidence based on evidence. "not (evidence)" may not permit you to declare absolutely that "not (claim)", but "not (evidence)" iterated over a sufficiently large data set may allow you to provisionally declare "not (claim)" with a high degree of confidence.

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I just really don't see it that way at all. Only things that have evidence get onto my continuum of confidence, as you put it. Things that don't have evidence just sit in limbo.------------------
No webpage found at provided URL: www.hells-handmaiden.com

Hi Jack, Correct, but the positive evidence that you didn't hit the vase with a baseball bat as hard as you could is the fact that it is in one piece. I am basing my inference on positive evidence, I am making a direct observation of something, rather than nothing. If I couldn't see the vase, I couldn't make the inference.The point is that with the god argument you don't have an observation you can make of something (as opposed to nothing) with which to make an inference. But you are. It is implicit in the arguments form; A then B, not B then not A. If B equates to evidence, & A god, the statement claims that there is no evidence of god therefore there is no god. A lack of evidence = a lack of god. Absence of evidence is evidence of absence. In which case you need to scan the entire universe in order to have evidence of absence of god.But this isn't true, anyway. Fishermen had trawled the sea & found no squid, so the logic stands. Squid existed. In any case, even if you trawled the entire sea & didn't find one, it still wouldn't be a direct observation of absence. Maybe you just missed them.Investigation is not a requirement of the argument; A then B, not B then not A. At any particular time, regardless of whether you have looked, or not, there may be no evidence of A, yet it is not necessarily true that A actually is false. It is possible that A can turn up at any time, which the squid shows is possible in this sort of argument. A corollary of this is if the conclusion can be false, the argument isn't necessarily valid because the premise B may be false. If the premises may be false then it's not a very convincing argument.It then comes back to how do I falsify that you hit the vase with the bat, without ever seeing the vase? Or even the bat for that matter?Mark

compmage, Agreed. It was a semi-rhetorical question, & I deal with it in the second from last paragraph to Jack, above.If the premises cannot be shown to be true, then the truth of the conclusion isn't guaranteed. Yes. Exactly. You said it yourself, the premises must be true. If I can provide exactly the same argument where they are not, then the premises in the god argument aren't necessarily, either. But then again, they may be . It is the not being able to determine that's the problem, as I see it.MarkMark

If we have a definition of God given to us that gives location and properties would there be any problem to verify through science that there is an actual existence of God? I do not mean where God is defined as an abstract(God is love)but as an entity? with characteristics that allow us to make statements of the abilities God supposedly possesses.For instance,God is,as far as I can tell, accepted as having created the universe.The ability to do so necessarily leads to the question by which means did he accomplish this.It seems to me ,also, that the accepted answer is through supernatural means.Here we have the crux of the problem,I believe,in that a definition of supernatural is not forthcoming that would suffice to offer any way for someone to have gleaned Gods' existence.Merriam webster defines supernatural asMain Entry: supernatural
Pronunciation: "s-p&r-'na-ch&-r&l, -'nach-r&l
Function: adjective
Etymology: Medieval Latin supernaturalis, from Latin super- + natura nature
Date: 15th century
1 : of or relating to an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe; especially : of or relating to God or a god, demigod, spirit, or devil
2 a : departing from what is usual or normal especially so as to appear to transcend the laws of nature b : attributed to an invisible agent (as a ghost or spirit)Since supernatural relates to those items that are beyond laws of nature they would,I assume,not be amenable to the five senses or to any means of detection that was subject to the laws of nature.So God performed the act of creating a universe which,by definition,God is beyond.How do we account for this? Is there no evidence of the act of creation?How would we recognise it if we came across it? What biases must we overcome in order to arrive at a clear and unambiguous
acceptance of God as real? Now we have books written by men that give differing versions of history that point to a God but that none can define.Does this follow any pattern of logic?What good is it to say that we cannot disprove the existence of something because we haven't looked everywhere when what we are looking for,by definition, would not be locatable in the first place?These are just rambling thoughts and I am sure that more the learned than me will be able to poke holes in them but this is how we learn best."You got to be careful if you don't know where you're going,because you might not get there." Y.B.

Heh. Yeah, it is fun. If I understand what you're saying here, basically as long as we're only dealing with a specific deity or someone's particular conception of a deity, and that deity is alleged to be interventionist, then it is valid to state that particular deity doesn't exist (the positive "strong atheist" stance) if there is no evidence that would be expected of said intervention. The folks arguing against the strong atheist stance are therefore arguing against what they conceive as a fallacy of composition - i.e., taking the non-existence of a specific god (or multiple examples of non-existence) and generalizing to the whole class of "gods". That makes sense. The domino analogy is a good one. I guess I'm coming from the standpoint that if a large but finite number of god-conceptions have been falsified, there's not a whole lot of point to continuing the endless chain of falsification. As you state... ...for all intents and purposes at some point you might as well behave as though there weren't any deities. I think the strong atheist simply makes the small, albeit epistemologically strictly erroeous, next step, and positively state that since the conceptions of A through n have been falsified, the god-hypothesis has been falsified. I'm not sure I can agree with this bit, in the sense that it almost smacks of begging the question. There are beaucoup claims for which we can have only very speculative inference (like the Higg's boson or abiogenesis or extraterrestrial sentience) for which there appears at this point to be little or no direct evidence, but yet can be provisionally accepted as a reasonable inference (i.e., placed somewhere on our confidence scale). There are also a large number of claims for which there is not evidence that we basically reject for that reason. Do you believe in ESP, remote viewing, etc? No? If not, do you simply state "there is not evidence" and claim agnosticism? How about Noah's Ark? Absence of evidence for a great flood aside, do you state that Noah's Ark doesn't exist? Even though we are looking at simple lack of positive evidence in favor, there are in fact many reasons why arkian remnants - even if the ship had once existed in some form - might have disappeared over the intervening millenia. Are you an arkian agnostic, or do you state "It didn't exist"?I'm not trying to put you on the spot with the above - you can consider them rhetorical questions. I hope they illustrate my point that at some level we all make strong, non-existence claims for many things. And just as you or I would probably state "not (ark)" due to lack of evidence, the atheist states "not (god)" on the same basis. The difference between atheist and agnostic is that atheists include "gods" in the range of non-existent phenomena for which they are willing to make a positive claim - even if it means lumping in the non-interfering, non-corporeal, non-involved, yet unfalsifiable generic "god" the agostics are so wrapped up about.

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Anything that doesn't leave any possible evidence, doesn't exist.

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You can't know that. It is possible that some things exist which we can never detect-- previous or alternate universes for example. It is very questionable whether we can ever settle this. It isn't a statement of existence or non-existence. We simply can't know. Something we can't detect may not make a difference to us and we ought to be able to ignore such things; but that isn't a statement of non-existence.

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Granted there is plenty we can't detect now, which is why I say we don't know yet that god doesn't exist.

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That is exactly the problem with 'lack of evidence' arguments. It is always a matter of what we can detect right now. You can't know what will be detectable a few days, weeks, or centuries from now; and so you can't make claims of non-existence based upon lack of evidence.

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It's not a question of there being no evidence.

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Sure it is. There isn't any evidence. That makes it about 'there being no evidence.'

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There is evidence, but it's in the negative.

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I think you mean what a logician would call contradictory evidence. We can refute a lot of particular claims. What this proves is that the particular claim is wrong. You will never exhaust the particular claims and you can't generalize from particular to universal. It would be like trying to prove that there are no red marbles in a box of infinite size. There really is no contradictory evidence. The only way to prove the postulate is to investigate every single aspect of the box. The box being infinite, this is impossible.

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There are things that should be observable based on the god construct which aren't. God, by it's very nature, must be a pretty obvious thing, a 'god' which hides in some dark corner of the universe and quietly shuffles dust particles is no god at all.

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It is your assumption that a God would be obvious. You don't know that, and you can't know that, without having the ability to investigate God. And if we could investigate God, we would have positive proof of God's existence and we wouldn't be having this conversation. There are conceptions of God which do not fit your criteria. You cannot brush them aside to make your argument work. That is special pleading.

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Your graviton example is completely different. We don't have evidence either way. We just can't find them.

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Which is exactly the same case as with God... How is the example not apropriate?

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Or more accurately that either they don't exist or our theoretical predictions are wrong.

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Now apply the same logic to the idea of God. "God doesn't exist, or our idea of God is wrong."------------------
No webpage found at provided URL: www.hells-handmaiden.com

My Atheism is not based just upon the lack of proof for a god but on the logical reasoning behind how religious dogma arises.Jesus could easily have been one man or a number of different legends rolled into one. In his time and place the jews considered themselves to be a conquered people and were looking for someone to lead them in their rise against the Romans. It is known from other texts that there were others but this man was quite probably the most popular.His stand against the orthodox jewish establishment and the Roman would have allowed the people to believe almost anything about him. Later on the Roman empire and then European kings saw how they could easily use this to keep the populations happy and in line.Argue all you want about proof but with a little logical thinking it is easy to see why such fairy stories have sprung up and then been enforced. As this is now the 21st century I think we should start to leave this behind. I doubt the existense of god for the same reasons that I doubt the existense of santa claus.

I'm gonna skip down to where you start disagreeing.

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I'm not sure I can agree with this bit, in the sense that it almost smacks of begging the question.

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I don't understand how. I don't even understand enough to guess at a response.

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There are beaucoup claims for which we can have only very speculative inference (like the Higg's boson or abiogenesis or extraterrestrial sentience) for which there appears at this point to be little or no direct evidence, but yet can be provisionally accepted as a reasonable inference (i.e., placed somewhere on our confidence scale).

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Inference is acceptable. I don't see the problem. Inferring a God would be acceptable as well. I don't know of any such thing. It would really change the debate if someone could present something like that.

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Do you believe in ESP, remote viewing, etc? No? If not, do you simply state "there is not evidence" and claim agnosticism?

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Well, yeah, I do actually. I don't know of any good evidence for ESP, but I don't consider it impossible either.

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How about Noah's Ark?

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The ark story in the Bible is specific enough that I think it can be effectively refuted. It could have been based on some real event-- a sea-faring migration, perhaps, or just a large local flood.

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Absence of evidence for a great flood aside, do you state that Noah's Ark doesn't exist?

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The Flood story is not just about a lack of evidence. We know enough about floods to know what traces one would leave behind. "God" isn't so simple a postulate. We don't have any evidence of small local gods which might tell us what evidence a large God would leave behind.

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Even though we are looking at simple lack of positive evidence in favor, there are in fact many reasons why arkian remnants - even if the ship had once existed in some form - might have disappeared over the intervening millenia. Are you an arkian agnostic, or do you state "It didn't exist"?

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I agree that an Ark, had it existed, may have disintegrated, or perhaps is buried and simply hidden from view at the moment in some unknown location. But I am not an arkian agnostic. The ark story is specific enough that one can say it didn't exist. It is too small to hold the animals it must have held. It would have been too large for the wooden structure to hold. You get the idea. But this is a conclusion about the particular ark recorded in the Bible. Some ship, or artifact, may have had a myth build around it. This is the same as refuting a particular example of God. A God that invariably answers prayers can be refuted or confirmed. But we don't know that a God would invariably answer prayers. In fact, assuming God has a will of its own, it is reasonable to assume God wouldn't invariably answer prayer-- perhaps deeming some prayers too trivial or some requests distasteful.------------------
No webpage found at provided URL: www.hells-handmaiden.com

How is this different from any other logical argument? They are all dependent on their premises. Agreed, but only when this argument is used in situations where it is not applicable. You can it for specific god's, but not for a generic god.Anyway, I think that this will get us nowhere. We agree on just about everything except what we call ourselves. We are arguing about minute details here.------------------
He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.
- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Sidelined,Presumably if god affected the universe he would become natural.Mark

compmage, They are, but my point is that a generic god cannot be disproved. You can destroy every religion on earth & still not know that some god exists? I agree.Mark------------------
"I can't prove creationism, but they can't prove evolution. It is [also] a religion, so it should not be taught....Christians took over the school board and voted in creationism. That can be done in any school district anywhere, and it ought to be done." Says Kent "consistent" Hovind in "Unmasking the False Religion of Evolution Chapter 6."

Mark 24b,Then He would be amenble to scientific investigation.I have tried to get creationists to follow this thread however they never continue beyond this point.I guess such is the nature of faith.

sidelined, This is going off topic a bit, & I've argued this before, but a lot of people, scientists included, seem to think god is removed from science by definition, he/she/it isn't, for this very reason. If god exists, then there is potential evidence to be found, & god can be studied scientifically.God is only removed from methodological naturalist science because there is no evidence, not because there is god. Try telling that to Phillip Johnson.Mark