Agnosticism vs. Atheism

Mr Jack,Just for clarification as I'm unfamiliar with some of your notation, is:A => B, !B therfore !A.the same as compmagesif A then B, not B therefore not A. ?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."

Er, yeah, think I mixed C++ and mathematical notation there...Yes, they're basically the same.'=>' is implies. '!' is not. I think using '~' for not is actually the correct standard, sorry.

Hi Jack,If A then B, not B therefore not A, is not a valid argument in this case. The argument allegedly falsifies god, but because it is not true that the consequent actually is a consequent at all, the argument fails to falsify.What evidence would you accept that god created the universe? It’s an impossible question to answer, really, since you have no idea how he did it, & therefore no knowledge of the evidence that should be left behind. The best you can say is that, god/s should have left evidence that I would recognise, since this isn’t absolutely true, then the argument above is not absolutely conclusive. Hence still no falsification. How? In order to logically (& by definition, absolutely) falsify god your premises/consequents etc must be absolutely true, but you have know way of knowing that they are. You are defining god as an entity that created the universe isn’t considered god, unless it has one or more human worshippers?Regardless, it now has one. Me. It has become a god. You mean when my god is proven, & atheism becomes irrelevant? You are appealing to non-existent knowledge.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."

Hi compmage,See my post to Mr Jack, above. True. The difference being is we know what evidence should be left.Mark

Agreed. I was not taking sides. I was simply pointing out that as far as I could see your representation of Mr Jack's argument was incorrect.Forgive me if this isn't the correct terminology (I have never taken a logic course in my life), but his argument is valid. Ofcourse it only works when god is defined well enough that you know what sort of evidence it should leave behind.------------------
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

Not really. I'm saying that when (or if, if you prefer) we explain the existence of he universe it will disprove the existence of any universe-creator god. Thus knowledge of this non-existence is a posibility.I claim it is possible to know that there is no god. I do not claim we know that now. You're trying to get a single No God argument. There is no such thing, however there is an array of arguments that can falsify any given god. A given god makes predictions about the world and can be falsified by the failure of these predictions. A god that makes no predictions about the world, or equivalently, cannot be deduced from the properties of the real world doesn't exist. Absolute knowledge is not possible. I am simply talking about knowledge. I know the sun will rise tommorow. I know my name is Jack. I know 1+1 is 2. I know if A => B, then if A is true, B must be. There's nothing absolute about any of these. I'm defining gods in terms of human religion, yes. Creation, or not, of the universe doesn't come into it. There are plenty of mythologies with gods that are not accredited with creating the universe.

compmage, It is valid if the consequent is true (gods leave evidence). Which ain't necessarily so.Anyway, & Jack, & Crashfrog, if you're reading, very, very, enjoyable discussion.Mark

Mr Jack, Yes, I am. A falsification that disproves all god/s. If we agree that no such thing exists, then we agree. But there isn't. I understand what you mean, you can falsify a biblical literalists version of God by showing that the flood didn't occur, but the entity itself hasn't been falsified. Showing that powdered rhino horn doesn't improve your sex life doesn't disprove rhino's exist, or that rhino's horns exist. Even if none of us had seen a rhino, it still wouldn't.It's immense fun blowing righteous christian myths out of the water, I'll grant you, that's why I'm here, anyway! MarkPS I'm going to be busy this WE, so I'm not sure how many post's I'm going to get in before then.------------------
"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."

The formula "If (God exists) then (evidence of God)" does lead to ~(God exists) if you have ~(evidence of God). The problem is with the direction of causality in the premise. You can't know that God would leave ( detectable ) evidence, if he exists. Consider: If gravitons, then evidence. We have no evidence for gravitons, therefore the do not exist. Well, this works just fine until someone finds evidence for a graviton. You can plug in any number of things. A few hundred years ago there was no evidence that heavier than air vehicles could fly, therefore heavier than air vehicles can't exist. It just doesn't work. The formula that does work is "If (evidence of God), then (God exists)." This is not equivalent to the previous formulation, and ~(evidence of God) does not lead to ~(God exists).------------------
No webpage found at provided URL: www.hells-handmaiden.com

Yeah, I had a good time. I'm sorry if I wasn't occasionally very clear on what I meant - I've never really had to defend atheism to people who actually paid attention to logic.

John, I agree with you. Thanks for the succinct re-statement of the problem. However, doesn't this formulation pose a level-of-confidence issue (which, now that I think about it may be the root of the difference in the arguments here)?Allow me to illustrate. You point out that what Mr.J and others have posited is "If (God exists) then (evidence of God)" must presuppose that G(g)od(s) must leave evidence, and how this may not be a valid assumption. I agree. OTOH, if we restate the problem as1. If (God A exists) then (evidence of God A)
2. If (God B exists) then (evidence of God B)
...
n. If (God n exists) then (evidence of God n)
n+1. Not (evidence of God {A, B,...n})At what point is it rational and reasonable to declare Not (God)? I agree that it's not possible to declare the Absolute Truth (tm) of the statement "not God", especially since you can conceive of a falsification of the underlying assumption. Of course, by strict logic isn't it impossible to make any declaration of Absolute Truth (tm) on any subject? "1+1=3 for sufficiently large values of 1" if I claim unity may be defined differently somewhere... (and no, Rrhain, I don't want to get into an argument - I'm engaging in a reductio ad absurdum to emphasize the point. A joke, yes?)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. Yes? No? I'm full of it?[This message has been edited by Quetzal, 09-26-2003]

I did mention that in the post you were replying too. Anway, I don't think Mr Jack is trying to use the argument to disprove all gods, only those gods that would leave evidence. Yes, this is most definately on the the better atheism/agnostism and related topic discussions I have ever had.Now if we could only get creationist/fundamentalists more or less on this standard. ------------------
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

crashfrog, Oh, I got pulled up short, make no mistake! That's why debating with people who don't dodge, evade, & actually tackle points head on can be such a great learning experience.[added by edit - that's ME learning!]Mark[This message has been edited by mark24, 09-26-2003]

Anything that doesn't leave any possible evidence, doesn't exist. Granted there is plenty we can't detect now, which is why I say we don't know yet that god doesn't exist. However, in general, god postulates claim observables (dualism, creation myths, intervention, etc.). This isn't the same thing at all.It's not a question of there being no evidence. There is evidence, but it's in the negative. 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.Your graviton example is completely different. We don't have evidence either way. We just can't find them. If we run our new improved ACME graviton finder thingy (or whatever they'll actually use to find gravitons) and we still don't find evidence of them then we will have evidence that they don't exist. Or more accurately that either they don't exist or our theoretical predictions are wrong.

Jack, There is no such thing as negative evidence, negative evidence is a lack of evidence, non-evidence, if you will.An argument of the form: A then B, not B therefore not A is a valid form of argument, & the conclusion MUST be true if the premises are true.Consider someone making the same argument regarding giant squid 500 years ago. At that time there was no evidence of such things. Therefore, if giant squid exist, they should leave evidence, there is no evidence, therefore giant squid don't exist. But giant squid DO exist, so why does a supposedly valid argument that must have a true conclusion actually have a false one?Something is wrong.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."