Criteria for evidence of a God.

Post Reply New Topic

You dodged the point though - ie. you have no material proof, none, that proves the nonexistence of human spirit or any sort of spiritual plane, spiritual matter, any sort of backlighting to the tactile world that we call 'reality'. This is what I kept repeating over and over, when I said that atheists are strict positivists - ie. if I can't touch it, smell it, taste it, or empiricize it then it doesn't exist (implied: or until I find a way to empirically measure and prove its existence). The line I drew between that and solipsism is that its an absolute assumption, an a priori, that draws man in not only as the center of the universe but it speaks of the world as if we are at the end of science, the end of discovery, or that we are the measure of all things and that we are creating everything beyond the threshold of what's testable and that anything currently outside our range doesn't exist unless we bring it into sort of an artificial existence through our own thoughts (ie. what you seem to be indicating of God).

Beyond that, all my arguments about society are more secondary. Just like you have a valid 'no God' hypothesis, believers have a 'God exists' hypothesis which is of equal intellectual honesty to your 'no God' hypothesis. That's what your missing when you insist that its a crutch - that's throwing your intellectual opposition into a much neater stack than they are and I daresay it smacks of broad brushing all religious as common parochial yokals rather than there being many who are like that AND many who are extremely intelligent (just like you have Sam Harris on the dumb end for atheists, Christopher Hitchens quite a bit more clear and Jurgen Habermas even more so - different levels of quality in intellectual thought).




Do I think people would go on a rampage and just do whatever the heck they wanted if atheism was everywhere? No. What I do think is that maybe 20% of the people who are on the line would see less of a need to play along, if that happened the societal norms would harden a great deal. A great many people are fundamentally good, as in they can't do wrong to others without a great deal of pain brought on by their own internal senses - they wouldn't change but they're also a blessed minority, many other people have inklings, many other people just have long-term self-interest, and a sizeable enough minority have a 'as long as I don't get caught' or even 'as long as I'm strong enough to take what I want with no reprocussions' mentality. I'm saying the world would be no better, *slightly* worse and quite sadly if generalized apathy took over and radicalist religion resurged in a certain part of the world with as much zeal as the Christians during the middle ages or the Muslims in the 8th and 9th century - I honestly think if the radical Muslims want to take over the world and have every woman wearing a burka and forbidden to drive cars, the best way to soften the world up is fund and encourage the societal agents that promote ethical lethargy and less social cohesiveness (ie. many people will also think "Geez, I'm here for nothing, my existence means nothing, I mean nothing - I'm not saying I'll just eat a fist full of roofies and slap myself in the face all day long but wow...do I even feel like getting out of bed this morning?"). Its not that humanity would become hideously evil but more that the governance we have right now both wards off ethical lax and a lot of nihilism that Western Europe seems to be enjoying the comsequences of right now.

As for 'no genocide' training; your *sure* that no passionate youth, seeking to plot out their own greatness and identity (only validated by their own grandeur in life and how much of a mark they can leave) won't be captivated by obvious that the disabled, the sick, the infirmed, even those with hereditary predispositions - are a drag on society and being that their lives have no value that they themselves are of negative value and that society world would be far more efficient without them?




What on earth does that have to do with there being or not being a God?

Of course there's no proof that something doesn't exist because if it doesn't exist proving that is impossible because you have nothing to test. If I were to claim the Brooklyn Bridge didn't exist you could prove it did (because it obviously does there are pictures and you can go and stand on it) but if I claimed there was no microscopic loch ness monster in the ocean how would I prove that?

In any case since you have no proof for the existence of those things either our claims are equal in weight and to prove me wrong you would need to provide evidence. The one claiming something does exist is the one who has to provide proof. Without proof it does exist the claim that it doesn't exist stands on it's own.



No one ever said that if our science can't quantify it or it hasn't been discovered yet that it doesn't exist only that if we have no evidence to support claims that it does exist we cannot say with any certainty that it does. If we cannot place any certainty on a claim then it would be foolhardy to assume it to be truth. For example your standing next to a frozen lake, your friend says "Cthulhu is holding up the ice so you can walk across it without it breaking." He has no evidence that his statement is true but you have no evidence it is false either. Does that mean you should try to walk across the thin ice?



It's true they have the same validity but as I stated above in the absence of evidence, treating a hypothesis as truth and basing your life around it is less justifiable than not.



Do you really believe people like that would ignore the law, morality, human decency and all that and be stopped by religion? You put far too much stock in the fear of hell.. a place I daresay the majority of the faithful don't even believe exists.



I still don't understand why people believe that without religion everyone would become listless as suicide is still more common among christian dentists than atheists. Just because you were never taught to find other meaning in life doesn't mean life without religion is meaningless. If anything no longer treating this life as just something to endure, a "waiting in the lobby for the show to start" if you will and realizing that this is the only chance your going to get in my experience at least has made myself and others I know better people more interested in knowing my neighbors and not taking anything for granted.

As for a "religious resurgence" I'm not so sure about that. I think after a generation or two when religion isn't so badly romanticized and it no longer seems like something normal (which it isn't) anyone wanting to join a religion would be considered as insane as those who take "Flying Spagetti Monsterism" seriously today.

As for Western Europe I'm not sure what your talking about as the lack of religion has nothing to do with their problem. If anything by your logic they should be almost the perfect society since they have even gone so far as to all (I think) pick out national religions.



People are going to think like that either way. Hitler for example used religion as a tool to garner support for his policies and push through things the public would otherwise object to if not shrouded in the loving support of religion institutions to great effect and we know how that turned out.

What stops it from being repeated today? Religion? No it's history the memory of what happened then and could happen again keeps us ever vigilant not because religion tells us to but simply because it's not something we want to allow to happen again.



Nothing except that you believe that people are monsters being held in check by the power of religion and I like to think they are better than that and don't need to be suppressed under cognitive tyranny to maintain order. That if given the chance people can make greater strides improving themselves without the yolk of the thought police behind the pulpit.

Unlike in the dark ages when religion was the only way to impart morality on the ignorant masses by bashing them over the head with it today people are educated enough to decide for themselves how to live their lives and fit in with society.

People are clinging to an archaic system of law that is no longer necessary and is now only getting in the way. If we were never to change the law to meet the times we would still have slaves here in the US for example.

I haven't fore a minute in this conversation made the proposition that I would change your mind and have you agree with me, nor have I made any claim to certainty that I'm right and your wrong. What I am telling you is that theists have grounds for their beliefs that are a bit firmer than your claim that they're just suffering from a character flaw and need rehabilitation - that's the part I find dishonest.

Also your thin ice and Cthulhu analogy needs help. Density and crystaline structure of ice and its buoyancy on water including the depth and thickness of the ice is well within the realm of science.



Read what you just quoted for your first question - the answer is there. As for the second question, for most people its much less about fear and much more that believing you have some spiritual or divine element in you (and believing the same of other people) *helps* one to feel motivated to do good for others, to help people out, to tithe, to get involved in helping those who are suffering - and yes, having character.

Just to stave off any misunderstanding, what I just mentioned is the utilitarian side, I'm arguing that separately than the possibility for the reality of the divine because I believe they are conceptually somewhat separate in terms of their grounds of existence - one I can have certainty on, the other I can have certainty that the human wiring points the human being in the direction of the divine but that urge doesn't prove its existence either which I acknowledge.



I offered the grounds that we're still all living on a secular value system derived from the religious and as religion goes away that pool of good will dries up as well - all that has to do with is every generation being an empty slate, we only know what we're taught and if we're brought into this world and taught one thing and then see our parents making no sense based on the emotions they hold from their own development - it won't mean anything. Emotions and the 'heart' don't do well at setting a high ethical bar on their own.




That just proved two things 1) maybe I need to introduce myself and 2) your convinced that anyone with any religious beliefs is still living in the 1950's or prior.

Myself - your talking to a guy who's an avid dark jungle/drum & bass producer (love the deep, dark, and glitchy isht), learning martial arts right now and set on black-belt, body building since the beginning of the year, went to raves for years back in my late teens and early 20's, tried a wealth of substances and had positive experiences from all, was listening to hardcore metal and skater thrash in 6th grade before all of this, playing guitar, currently has a bachelors degree with which he graduated suma cum laude, and right now as well my life is dedicated to making my own way through this mess - particularly I want to have some of my vinyls pressed on Metalheadz, Renegade Hardware, Xtinction Agenda, Cylon Recordings, something along those lines.

Am I waiting in the lobby?

Also, while a great many people haven't been as unconventional as I've been I'll say this, whether your looking at the average Christian of today or the Mormon's flooding all the reality TV shows and pro sports - no one's sitting on their thumbs waiting for 'God to take them'. Maybe 70 years ago, not even close now. I suppose though, despite their success, despite the fact that most pro-atheletes, most celebrities, all have some sort of spiritual beliefs and ironically more than half of the scientists in this world - I think your going to need a much bigger soap box and platform than WP, because all of these people are still siting on their potential waiting for Yaweh, Allah, the Hindu gods, nirvana, reincarnation, or whatever Scientologists believe is in the here after - to take them.



If you can get all the teachers, all the media, and all the textbooks to distort what Christians are about, talk about them as if they're evolutionary dinosaurs... I don't know, make it sound like we were burning people at the stake in the 1980's, holding star-chamber court, or say that prop 8 was a manifest to lynch gays - sure, you might snag some people.

On the other hand, people who grow up with religion or with any sort of faith won't be that ignorant though, won't fall for the straw-man arguments, you won't have much luck. Reason being - if the religious can tell their side of the story they have an eloquent case. There's no 'romance' involved or needed.



That's both confusing and confused. The aim has been that, at least for ango-saxons, that if your religious your a bit of a nut. Being that the areas have been populated since the days of Rome I can see where they'd have national religions, they've been there for thousands of years and no one's gotten around to fully supplanting that and declaring atheism as the national religion.



I'd have to wonder what religion your speaking of. He persecuted and crushed all that were there, Christians, Jews, anyone. It functioned as a state with no religious freedom.



1). Recent memory of what it came to 2). a reason to say it was wrong.

Human life has as much value as we assign it. Everything is ultimately relative, maybe not in the mind of Fraya or Techstep, but it is relative if you strip down all the decisions and labeling you've *chosen* to give it. The first reason will go away on its own and fade with time if people aren't careful with how well written history is kept. The second, it generally takes a divine excuse and - to tell the truth - its hard for even those who have a faith to validly argue at least against soft eugenics aside from "we don't know what we're doing, we're not smart enough or wise enough to call it yet".





I'll copy and paste my paragraph from earlier:



Yes, I'm extremely black and white on this



I'll repeat myself - an assumption is an assumption, its not tested, often times when its like that its taking absolutely no evolution of thought into account. The only thing that shows is that you have a very primitive understanding of religion and most likely have far less of a grip on what it is your attacking than you realize. Usually though, people aren't this strident about abolishing religion if they are well informed or have perspective on it - so I guess I really should have expected it.



I'd say put your hand on the hot stove, burn your hand, and find out for yourself; but, you can't do that without burning my hand in the process.

On the other hand though, I think if you want some better and more salient criticisms on the structural aspects of religion I think you may want to read some Michael Novak, Dinesh D'Souza, fillet their arguments, and then come back. Otherwise - your showcasing a blatant braggado built on ignorance, its why so many people have been trying to correct you on it, not because they're shaking in a corner trying to hold on to the teddy bear and blanket. At least understand it before you try to rip it down - just for the sake even of being able to rip it down adequately.

^ Insufficient parameters.

What if God can't break his own laws of physics?[/quote]

He walked on water, didn't he? And what abut all those health-related miracles he performed? 1st century medical science(?) could not possibly have reproduced -let alone explained- spontaneous, instantaneous reversals of conditions like blindness, lameness, epilespsy, and
death. And I don't mean someon who might not have actually been actually deceased. Lazarus, as we all know, had been entombed for days before Jesus rose him up. And he was risen up whole, not as some horrible zombie.




Which begs the question, How long did Lazarus live after that?

1st century medical science was also horribly inadequate at such complex and difficult things as accurately determining whether or not someone was actually deceased.

Ever heard the term "dead ringer"? That's actually a reference to, even as recently as a century ago, to the practice of tying a string to the wrist of a dead person when they're buried and running that string up through a pipe to a bell so they could dig the person up when the bell started ringing and they realized the rumors of their death (among the medical professionals of the time) were grossly exaggerated.

You use the term "as we all know" as if the bible were some factual infallible historical record when even that hasn't been proven.

As for fixing blindness etc, etc there's no evidence any of that ever even happened or if it did that they were actually being truthful about their ailments and lets not forget the effects of psychosomatic suggestion (still utilized today by a number of highly paid scam artists... I mean faith healers).

If you don't accept Propisition A, naturally you won't accept Prop B, C, D, or E ...

The one thing I never do is ask people to share my beliefs.

The simple truth of Existence, is, as it relates to human beings, is that, there is absolutely no way to gain any information, of any reliability in relation to what actually governs Existence.....

There is no more value in believing in God, as there is in taking the position of being athiest. Neither position, has any evidence, of any kind, way, shape, nor form, that either position, has any more validity, than the other...

To put it more simply: it is just as stupid to not believe in God, as it is to believe in God...

The only spiritual, religious, or philosophical position, of any worth, that a human beings can take, is that of the agnostic.

It really is as simple as that.

Of course, one needs to be flexible, at any picosecond of human history, all of a sudden, human beings may learn the truth about what governs Existence.

However, that day, is not today, therefore, agnosticism, is the only choice, if a human being wishes to be realistic about the reality of Existence, as it currently exists to human beings, at the current point in spacetime they find themselves at.

Any other position human beings choose, is self-denial, at the true reality of Existence.

The Universe, as human beings know of it, is the perfect firewall, between, us, and whatever the reality is, that governs Existence.

Agnosticism is the religion of those afraid to be wrong or even make a decision.

"There might be a god or there might not be." Yeah we know but that doesn't answer the question as to whether you believe there is or not it's just fence sitting by atheists who are afraid the theists might be right and don't want to go to hell.

You can't have both.

This doesn't even make sense.

Agnosticism is not "just fence sitting". It is an episthemological position.

However, absolute skepsis, accurate or not, is not useful in approximating truth.
It is a mindset of lazy fatalism - which is naturally also a valid option.

*shrug*

I just find it annoying how agnostics seem to think they've discovered something amazing when just about everyone theist or atheist has thought of it also and in the end decided to make a decision.

The point I was trying to make though is that contrary to what they believe it's not "getting the best of both" it's "deciding not to decide" and generally just opting out of that whole segment of life.

At least theists and atheists have chosen and so can move on with living... the agnostic will always have it hanging over their heads that they will be wrong in the end no matter what.

If there is no god then they were foolish for believing in one if there is then they are damned to hell for doubting.

You're grossly oversimplifying though. Agnosticism is more than simple indecision. It is the position that some questions are beyond the realm of understanding for human beings. When you say "theists and atheists have chosen", you make it sound as if a conscious decision to accept neither as certainty isn't a decision at all. I've chosen too. My position as an agnostic is that absolute certainty can be a very dangerous thing in the hands of fallible imperfect men. At one point, remember, we were certain the Titanic was unsinkable.

If I may ask, why, given that throughout human history neither side has been successful in proving its beliefs beyond a shadow of a doubt, is it even necessary to make a choice one way or the other? I know it's counterinstinctual for us as beings who crave patterns and organizations and answers, but don't you believe it's possible to accept that we may never know for sure? What you seem to be advocating is that people essentially flip a coin either way, and take a stab in the dark. I've chosen the third option. I've chosen not the flip the coin at all, not out of laziness, but out of recognition that it's a moot question. Nobody on either side is capable of proving anything, so barring actual physical intervention from a tangible deity, the question's never going to be resolved anyway.

Edit: way too much sugar, chocolate and dairy over xmas.
.

Last edited by ouinon on 30 Dec 2008, 10:56 am, edited 2 times in total.

Holy crap people. "Epistemological position".

No true scottsman...I mean, no true agnostic is just "IDK lyk who knows lol"

Are you saying that failure to produce a natural explanation is proof of the supernatural? That is the Argument from Ignorance.

ruveyn