Reply to Re: Religion
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Can't wait for you to get to college and try to pass that "being contradictory is flimsy evidence against existence' line. *chuckle*
I never generalized it like that. I said that it's flimsy as proof that god can't exist (as an aside, even if they disagreed they're way too scared to offend your religion to say anything against that in college). You're the one trying to apply my reasoning to everyday situations.
From that perspective, I don't think we disagree too much. If we're watching cheetahs running on the savannah, I'm sure we both agree they're not suddenly going to start moving backwards as they're running forth. The difference is that you think it's simply not possible for that to ever happen, while I'm only 99.99~infinity sure.
When talking of highly theoretical concepts, god, the universe, how can you be so certain your logic and laws will always be absolute and flawless? Doesn't the birth of the world itself go against the law of non-contradiction? Something can't just start existing from nothingness, this also means it couldn't have always existed. That's just one thing among many the human mind can't understand. In that light, how can you say with absolute certainty that a judeo-christian god could never exist?
Yes, in MOST cases it is impossible to prove a negative. Santa Claus, giant radioactive dinosaurs etc. would all apply here. But there IS one exception and that is in things which are logically contradictory. To those the 'Can't prove a negative' rule does not apply.
You think logic is always absolute, I'm not that sure. If taken far enough, I guess it could be said that I think "anything is possible" and you don't. It is a really semantic difference most of the time, but if something that contradicts the law of non-contradiction really did happen once, I wouldn't have to change my mind.
Independent existence - These are things which exist independently of what we think or believe about them. A blind man who believes he is walking on clear, smooth ground will still trip over a rock in his path regardless of what he believes about that rock because the rock exists independently of human thinking or belief.
Okay if you are going to raise a fit over some semantic nonsense then please, whenever you see me say that something which cannot exist for reasons of logic, assume I mean that it cannot exist as an independent entity. God may well 'exist' in a sense inside your head and millions of other imaginations but I do not concern myself with such since your imaginations cannot cause me any harm or grant me any benefit.
Okay, thanks for clearing up what you're talking of, I wasn't just referring to an imaginary god with that though. If you told to me that a three-tailed invisible slayer is standing in front of me, I couldn't know it isn't there with 100% certainty.
Positive. I do not ever recall seeing any of his or her posts either. We're not going to start playing the 'Let's assume Tony is some other poster we didn't like and ran off' game are we?
I was joking; something you dang vulcans often struggle with!
Close enough I suppose but for simplicity's sake let's just say it is the ability to ponder a decision.
Not really, there's a huge difference. You're right in that an omniscient being can't ponder things. However, that doesn't negate having a personality.
Okay listen up; let's say you are God, sitting around 50 gazilllion years ago. At this point since you are omniscient you already KNOW with absolute certainty that Adam & Eve(or humans in general) will exist and live on Earth.
Now...at what point could you ponder a decision to create humans?
No matter how far you go back the omniscience applies and you are without the capability to ponder anything. This is so unless or until you are somehow stripped of your omniscience and that cannot happen without you knowing it would.
If you know that there is free beer in the pub, and that you will definitely go there (based on the type of person you are), do you ponder about it? You would never choose not to go because you are you. If god didn't want to create humans it wouldn't have happened. He may not spend time wondering what to do, but since what happens is based on who he is and not someone forcing him to do contrary to his will, I don't think that undermines "free will". Isn't pondering just a way to find out what you want to do? An omniscient being would know that by default.
Not at all. You could not do ANYTHING but what you KNEW you would do. You would be as a robot following programming only without the possibility of a malfunction or bug occurring in the coding because any action you took which violated your omniscience would of course render your omniscience null and void.
Right, but that's how people are anyway. If I lived my life again without previous knowledge about having lived it before, everything would go exactly as it goes now, we would be having this exact same conversation. That's of course under the assumption being omniscient is possible; there are no random chances and such. This is not something I believe, but I'm humble enough to NOT be absolutely certain my beliefs are the only possible truth.
Then you are seeking to re-define omniscience to mean something less contradictory. You are free to do that but such a re-definition is at odds with the definition found in the Bible/Qur' an/Torah.
Meh, I think I just worded that badly.
Not really. One reason I never use the "Can God create a rock so heavy...?" argument is because it does not really apply. "All powerful" does not mean "Able to do the logically impossible". A 'rock' by definition MUST be 'lift-able' or it is not a rock and if it is lift-able then an all powerful being can lift it.
I don't really agree, but I don't want to add even more points to an already dastardly long quote fest.
Nope...that does not work and no one in the world would accept that sort of reasoning for any other claim. For example:
"Ted Bundy was a saint and should be given a martyr's burial. Just because YOU are unable to comprehend the true humanitarianism of his actions does not means he was not a saint!"
"A fall from 50 stories up cannot kill you. Such perceived deaths are illusory and brought on by our too-limited sensory capabilities. When you take a swan dive off a skyscraper you actually bounce right into a parallel universe!"
And so on...
I can't know they aren't right with complete certainty. There's no difference at all as to how I would treat people claiming such things... but there's always the possibility.
This is absolutely FALSE. The absolute MOST intelligent of believers cannot even provide good EVIDENCE, let alone proof.
They can provide "proof" on par with your claim that god cannot exist beucase he contradicts the law of non-contradiction. To use the creation of the world as an example again, since the universe couldn't have just sprung up from nothingness, god must exist. They use a higher power to explain stuff that is otherwise unexplainable. Can you logically explain how or why the world came to be?
Really though, I agree much more with your points than the points made by most religionists. But until logic and science can completely explain everything, how can you say they're definitely wrong?
There was no "theory" that the earth was flat and certainly no "proof" of such. It was an understandable assumption and one that even modern children have to be talked out of. There was PROOF that the earth was a globe though, even 250-500 B.C.E. but like I said...having proof available does NOT mean that everyone will unanimously be aware of and understand such.
False. Everyone who knew of and understood his "proof" acknowledged it as such(which amounted to a tiny population of Greeks at the time). The error you are making here is a fallacy called argumentum ad populum. It is an error in reasoning which presumes that the popularity of an idea or claim is directly tied to the validity of said claim or idea.
That may have been a bad example. I don't really know anything about Erastothones and friends and how solid his proof may have been. But there's plenty of evidence brought forth by different scientists favouring this theory and other evidence favouring that theory. It's only after overwhelming evidence supporting one theory is found that we can safely say these folks had it right, and these other folks had it wrong. Meanwhile, everyone uses the evidence to prove their own theory, and it's not a simple matter to determine who is right.
Lack of evidence is some of the strongest evidence AGAINST a thing's existence you can find, contrary to some common assertions to the contrary. And those holding the negative position NEVER have the burden of proof so if the positive claimant's of God's existence absolutely lack proof(or even evidence) then our position is the default.
In some cases. For example, if you were asked to determine if a mogwai is inside this box, and you couldn't find it, lack of evidence would be a very strong point for it not being there. Since we haven't found any life outside of earth in the universe, though, is it logical to assume that it doesn't exist?
I'd think the default position would be neutrality, not denial.
This last sentence is too ambiguous for me to make sense of.
I was just trying to sum up my stance. Based on the knowledge you, me, or anyone has, I don't think there is any way to be certain of anything. This is what Sparrowhawk was saying also, and what I have repeated over and over in this post. :} Also, I'll quote something you said from the Psychic Powers thread, since it's relevant to this point:
There is this common misconception of skeptics that we are dour, hard-nosed people who recoil at the very idea that such things could be true. Most of us are connoisseurs of science fiction, fantasy, comic books etc., myself included.
We just don't confuse that desire and open mindedness we have with a rational assessment of reality. Unfortunately we do not live in an 'Anything is possible' reality. We live in a finite reality. Like it or not, some things are not real, no matter how much they entertain or inspire us creatively.
On the flipside, thinking that "anything is possible" in no way hinders being skeptical or assessing reality rationally. It's not living in a dreamworld, merely accepting the fact that there are no certainties. Reality may or may not be finite but as a subjective fleshbag you can't possibly be asolutely sure you're perceiving it correctly.
I never generalized it like that. I said that it's flimsy as proof that god can't exist (as an aside, even if they disagreed they're way too scared to offend your religion to say anything against that in college). You're the one trying to apply my reasoning to everyday situations.
From that perspective, I don't think we disagree too much. If we're watching cheetahs running on the savannah, I'm sure we both agree they're not suddenly going to start moving backwards as they're running forth. The difference is that you think it's simply not possible for that to ever happen, while I'm only 99.99~infinity sure.
When talking of highly theoretical concepts, god, the universe, how can you be so certain your logic and laws will always be absolute and flawless? Doesn't the birth of the world itself go against the law of non-contradiction? Something can't just start existing from nothingness, this also means it couldn't have always existed. That's just one thing among many the human mind can't understand. In that light, how can you say with absolute certainty that a judeo-christian god could never exist?
Yes, in MOST cases it is impossible to prove a negative. Santa Claus, giant radioactive dinosaurs etc. would all apply here. But there IS one exception and that is in things which are logically contradictory. To those the 'Can't prove a negative' rule does not apply.
You think logic is always absolute, I'm not that sure. If taken far enough, I guess it could be said that I think "anything is possible" and you don't. It is a really semantic difference most of the time, but if something that contradicts the law of non-contradiction really did happen once, I wouldn't have to change my mind.
Independent existence - These are things which exist independently of what we think or believe about them. A blind man who believes he is walking on clear, smooth ground will still trip over a rock in his path regardless of what he believes about that rock because the rock exists independently of human thinking or belief.
Okay if you are going to raise a fit over some semantic nonsense then please, whenever you see me say that something which cannot exist for reasons of logic, assume I mean that it cannot exist as an independent entity. God may well 'exist' in a sense inside your head and millions of other imaginations but I do not concern myself with such since your imaginations cannot cause me any harm or grant me any benefit.
Okay, thanks for clearing up what you're talking of, I wasn't just referring to an imaginary god with that though. If you told to me that a three-tailed invisible slayer is standing in front of me, I couldn't know it isn't there with 100% certainty.
Positive. I do not ever recall seeing any of his or her posts either. We're not going to start playing the 'Let's assume Tony is some other poster we didn't like and ran off' game are we?
I was joking; something you dang vulcans often struggle with!
Close enough I suppose but for simplicity's sake let's just say it is the ability to ponder a decision.
Not really, there's a huge difference. You're right in that an omniscient being can't ponder things. However, that doesn't negate having a personality.
Okay listen up; let's say you are God, sitting around 50 gazilllion years ago. At this point since you are omniscient you already KNOW with absolute certainty that Adam & Eve(or humans in general) will exist and live on Earth.
Now...at what point could you ponder a decision to create humans?
No matter how far you go back the omniscience applies and you are without the capability to ponder anything. This is so unless or until you are somehow stripped of your omniscience and that cannot happen without you knowing it would.
If you know that there is free beer in the pub, and that you will definitely go there (based on the type of person you are), do you ponder about it? You would never choose not to go because you are you. If god didn't want to create humans it wouldn't have happened. He may not spend time wondering what to do, but since what happens is based on who he is and not someone forcing him to do contrary to his will, I don't think that undermines "free will". Isn't pondering just a way to find out what you want to do? An omniscient being would know that by default.
Not at all. You could not do ANYTHING but what you KNEW you would do. You would be as a robot following programming only without the possibility of a malfunction or bug occurring in the coding because any action you took which violated your omniscience would of course render your omniscience null and void.
Right, but that's how people are anyway. If I lived my life again without previous knowledge about having lived it before, everything would go exactly as it goes now, we would be having this exact same conversation. That's of course under the assumption being omniscient is possible; there are no random chances and such. This is not something I believe, but I'm humble enough to NOT be absolutely certain my beliefs are the only possible truth.
Then you are seeking to re-define omniscience to mean something less contradictory. You are free to do that but such a re-definition is at odds with the definition found in the Bible/Qur' an/Torah.
Meh, I think I just worded that badly.
Not really. One reason I never use the "Can God create a rock so heavy...?" argument is because it does not really apply. "All powerful" does not mean "Able to do the logically impossible". A 'rock' by definition MUST be 'lift-able' or it is not a rock and if it is lift-able then an all powerful being can lift it.
I don't really agree, but I don't want to add even more points to an already dastardly long quote fest.
Nope...that does not work and no one in the world would accept that sort of reasoning for any other claim. For example:
"Ted Bundy was a saint and should be given a martyr's burial. Just because YOU are unable to comprehend the true humanitarianism of his actions does not means he was not a saint!"
"A fall from 50 stories up cannot kill you. Such perceived deaths are illusory and brought on by our too-limited sensory capabilities. When you take a swan dive off a skyscraper you actually bounce right into a parallel universe!"
And so on...
I can't know they aren't right with complete certainty. There's no difference at all as to how I would treat people claiming such things... but there's always the possibility.
This is absolutely FALSE. The absolute MOST intelligent of believers cannot even provide good EVIDENCE, let alone proof.
They can provide "proof" on par with your claim that god cannot exist beucase he contradicts the law of non-contradiction. To use the creation of the world as an example again, since the universe couldn't have just sprung up from nothingness, god must exist. They use a higher power to explain stuff that is otherwise unexplainable. Can you logically explain how or why the world came to be?
Really though, I agree much more with your points than the points made by most religionists. But until logic and science can completely explain everything, how can you say they're definitely wrong?
There was no "theory" that the earth was flat and certainly no "proof" of such. It was an understandable assumption and one that even modern children have to be talked out of. There was PROOF that the earth was a globe though, even 250-500 B.C.E. but like I said...having proof available does NOT mean that everyone will unanimously be aware of and understand such.
False. Everyone who knew of and understood his "proof" acknowledged it as such(which amounted to a tiny population of Greeks at the time). The error you are making here is a fallacy called argumentum ad populum. It is an error in reasoning which presumes that the popularity of an idea or claim is directly tied to the validity of said claim or idea.
That may have been a bad example. I don't really know anything about Erastothones and friends and how solid his proof may have been. But there's plenty of evidence brought forth by different scientists favouring this theory and other evidence favouring that theory. It's only after overwhelming evidence supporting one theory is found that we can safely say these folks had it right, and these other folks had it wrong. Meanwhile, everyone uses the evidence to prove their own theory, and it's not a simple matter to determine who is right.
Lack of evidence is some of the strongest evidence AGAINST a thing's existence you can find, contrary to some common assertions to the contrary. And those holding the negative position NEVER have the burden of proof so if the positive claimant's of God's existence absolutely lack proof(or even evidence) then our position is the default.
In some cases. For example, if you were asked to determine if a mogwai is inside this box, and you couldn't find it, lack of evidence would be a very strong point for it not being there. Since we haven't found any life outside of earth in the universe, though, is it logical to assume that it doesn't exist?
I'd think the default position would be neutrality, not denial.
This last sentence is too ambiguous for me to make sense of.
I was just trying to sum up my stance. Based on the knowledge you, me, or anyone has, I don't think there is any way to be certain of anything. This is what Sparrowhawk was saying also, and what I have repeated over and over in this post. :} Also, I'll quote something you said from the Psychic Powers thread, since it's relevant to this point:
There is this common misconception of skeptics that we are dour, hard-nosed people who recoil at the very idea that such things could be true. Most of us are connoisseurs of science fiction, fantasy, comic books etc., myself included.
We just don't confuse that desire and open mindedness we have with a rational assessment of reality. Unfortunately we do not live in an 'Anything is possible' reality. We live in a finite reality. Like it or not, some things are not real, no matter how much they entertain or inspire us creatively.
On the flipside, thinking that "anything is possible" in no way hinders being skeptical or assessing reality rationally. It's not living in a dreamworld, merely accepting the fact that there are no certainties. Reality may or may not be finite but as a subjective fleshbag you can't possibly be asolutely sure you're perceiving it correctly.
