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Merged A Proof of the Existence of God / Did Someone Create the Universe?

Sorry, I do not have time to respond to all posts. I have to go back to my work. I will be back tomorrow and then on Monday.
 
Porpoise of Life said:
Check out Jabba's immortality thread if you want to hone your skills. He's much better at these dishonest tactics.
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If nothing else it will show Buddha how trite his game is and he can observe what happened to someone who played it much, much better then he could ever hope to.
 
Buddha said:
Sorry, I do not have time to respond to all posts. I have to go back to my work. I will be back tomorrow and then on Monday.
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To save time, and to save the time of the posters you will not be responding to, why don't you give us a list of those you deem not smart enough to debate you. That way they won't waste their time posting things you don't plan to read.
 
JayUtah said:
Jabba had plenty of hubris. Remember, he claimed he was a master of "holistic thinking" which somehow automatically gave him a better perspective on everything.

Yeah, this is just the standard "I'm so much smarter than everyone else" schtick. The evolution book is the real kicker. Spout a bunch of ignorance and then ignore the criticism because it somehow doesn't pass the bar for the claimant's valuable attention.
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The Sparrow said:
I think it IS Jabba.
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Well, there was ProgrammingGodJordan, for a quick example of a poster who would tediously drone on and on how smart they were and how dumb everyone else was. I think yerreg was of a similar bent and PartSkeptic. And DOC.

They are truly Legion.
 
Porpoise of Life said:
Buddha said:
This was the first step-- I proved that the universe was created by someone.
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No you didn't...
You only 'proved' that one couldn't provide evidence for your other two hypotheses in video format.
You did not disprove them, and even if you had, that does not automatically make a random third hypothesis more likely, and certainly doesn't constitute proof of any kind.
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And additionally "Buddha" declared victory and quickly detoured towards another topic, String Theory, with his typical melange of buzzwords, narcissistic references and scarce dysfunctional bits related to the topic he claims to be proving.
 
Buddha said:
Carnap could have said that but he didn't, his position regarding God is not clear.
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But that dodges the point. If you're claiming to be a disciple of some certain set of authors, what those authors would have said about a proposition you're making -- and invoking their memories to defend -- is fair comment and something a disciple should be able to answer. Your argument is veering dangerously close to "I'm so much better read than all of you, therefore my proof is correct."

Be careful. You made the mistake of leading us to the book you wrote on evolution, which is a joke on its face. It's obviously and naively wrong on a number of points. What it tells us is that you, as an author, cannot be trusted to fully apprehend the fields in which you write. So when you tell us that you are the hobby-master of another field, philosophy, and that we must respect your grasp of it, the foundation of your argument is unconvincing.

Russell wrote a book...
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And again we're not talking about Russell's arguments or Wittgenstein's arguments or Popper's arguments. Having set the stage for your argument, philosophically speaking, you now must let it stand on its own and you must defend your lines of reasoning in ways that pay attention to what your critics are actually saying. Merely reciting over and over that they must not understand the genius of your proof because they haven't read this or that selected work is a claim anyone can make, whether he actually does understand the field or not. It smacks of bluff and bluster, not erudition.

Regarding my position: both false and meaningless statements are not acceptable. I have nothing more to add to it.
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Regarding false statements, you still haven't answered how a proof under verificationism allows you to say that statements you can't verify must therefore be false. You're either cheating or you don't understand the most fundamental things about empiricism and the logical calculus that carries observation toward knowledge. If you claim a hypothesis is unverifiable, then it is meaningless, not false. You're playing fast and loose with the philosophical underpinnings of the notion of meaning so that you can hide the equivocation that makes your proof seem to work.

And the whole point of Phiwum's question was to point out that your final conclusion must be meaningless under the philosophical guise you've adopted. Your rejoinder is lackluster; you say that the author didn't specifically address that exact question and their own personal religious convictions vary, so the evaluation is unclear. No, it's not unclear. It's categorically rejected.
 
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Buddha said:
Unfortunately I do not have time to answer to all posts. I choose the ones presented by the smartest opponents. I am sorry if you are not one of them. If you read my original post carefully you will see that I am not "declaring victory". I said from the start that not everyone will agree with my proof.
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You're wrong as almost always, pal. I didn't present any contra-argumentation, so your failed comeback lacks a basis, the same way your ruminations here do.

You just selected a heterogeneous collection of posts that you were able to reply from sophistry and avoided all those pointing the lack of logic in your argumentative lines. That's what "surgical avoidance" means. Those post remains there for you to eventually address them.
 
Buddha said:
If you were immortal you wouldn't have a problem with my proof. All astrophysics theories imply observation periods that lasts for trillions of years. Using just one observer is a figure of speech, every astrophysicist uses it. Knowing that would have saved you from the trouble of going through all your calculations.
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You deliberately skipped the post "if someone says to you he is 50 years old..." and you're repeating your false argument.
 
aleCcowaN said:
And additionally "Buddha" declared victory and quickly detoured towards another topic, String Theory...
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Indeed, it's a familiar pattern. That's why we had to wait ten days for the proof to appear. He was probably hoping interest would wane and he'd be let off the hook. That's probably why he threw artificial obstacles in the path -- "I have to do it in a new thread and I can't start one yet." It's a pattern that suggests he probably knew how badly the proof would be received and hoped he wouldn't have to go there. Now it's all about the deflection and reframing. Why do we continue to hope these debates will unfold in any other way? It's always the same pattern of argumentation, presented in the same rhetorical style.

In any case, debating the anthropic principle is off-topic for this thread.

...with his typical melange of buzzwords, narcissistic references and scarce dysfunctional bits related to the topic he claims to be proving.
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Indeed. He's a self-taught Bible translator, so now he knows all about how to properly interpret the Bible and other religious texts. He's a self-taught philosopher, so now he can prove God exists. He's a self-taught evolutionary biologist, so that lets him write a book exposing all its faults. Now he's going to be a (somewhat) self-taught physicist and show those fellows a thing or two -- just you wait. The foundation of the argument in all those cases is his largely unadjudicated claims to expertise.

And again with the pattern: "I'm just here to hone my argument before I present it to the 'real' audience." Ostensibly the exercise has some value, as it presumes the commentators are competent and helpful. Then as soon as any significant set of flaws is found -- again ostensibly, what the claimant said he wanted -- the tone shifts. "You guys aren't smart enough to understand or comment on my argument." The objective strength of the criticism is rarely a discussed issue after that. "I'm too busy to address all the criticism, therefore I'm going to pick and choose whom I answer." And the answers rarely involve evaluating the criticism and modifying the argument to account for it. Then the inevitable flounce.

It's a coup-counting exercise. It lets the claimant believe his argument has faced and survived an onslaught of criticism without actually putting it in a venue where he would be hard-pressed to dismiss the criticism so easily. If his book on evolution had been presented to a conference of prominent evolutionary biologists, he would have been laughed off the stage. And unless he's completely delusional, I think he would realize that. But if he just presents it to an internet forum, he has an out. "I presented my argument to them and they _________." If fate fills the blank with "...thought it was marvelous," then he gets the acceptance he's after. If it's filled instead with, "...tore into it mercilessly," then he can follow up with, "But what else would you expect from some internet forum? A better prepared audience would have thought it was marvelous." That's why these claimants have to keep alluding to the alleged philistine nature of their critics. It has to be a credible enough belief that the audience is at fault, not the claim.
 
aleCcowaN said:
Those post remains there for you to eventually address them.
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Except that tomorrow there will be another two pages of heterogeneous posts for him to choose from, exhibiting a wide spectrum between serious comment and outright mockery. And so those serious posts he has ignored from yesterday and days previous become more and more stale. This is how these forums work, which is why they present ideal opportunities for people to pretend their arguments have survived serious scrutiny. Dealing with the "wild west" nature of unmoderated public forums offers a palette of excuses with which to paint a picture of one's own imaginary victory.
 
JayUtah said:
Except that tomorrow there will be another two pages of heterogeneous posts for him to choose from, exhibiting a wide spectrum between serious comment and outright mockery. And so those serious posts he has ignored from yesterday and days previous become more and more stale. This is how these forums work, which is why they present ideal opportunities for people to pretend their arguments have survived serious scrutiny. Dealing with the "wild west" nature of unmoderated public forums offers a palette of excuses with which to paint a picture of one's own imaginary victory.
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I agree. I plan to quote some of those forgotten posts at regular intervals to remind everyone they remain unanswered and how Buddha's resembles Dale Carnegie's more than Popper's.

Users like Jabba or Buddha represent a sociological problem and I agree it's our chore to explain their "selling" methods to the general public.

It's a pity his booklet on evolution doesn't even serve such purpose as a result of adding weak and lackadaisical to wrong. I was tempted to start a thread about it in the science section but, what's the use?
 
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