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

[Buddha]

Why are you repeating yourself and where is that article you claimed you had?

And if some clarification is needed, the kind of replies you got doesn't reflect the philosophy or knowledge of the group who is replying. Everything was called by the mistakes you did yourself. Call it the buddhacrapic principle: your mistakes born in carefully tailored argumentations to fit a purpose will be replied with carefully tailored argumentations to fit your mistakes.

But your words are still very revealing: your purpose isn't find the wrong in your ways but to detect what might be the "philosophical" basis of every piece of criticism. Then, instead of replying to the critics on the specifics you will tailor a way to play down the supposed philosophical basis in their criticism and tell you follow a different approach.

Hence your purpose here is not perfecting your arguments but insulating them in a better way so they can be celebrated by a biased public in some folkloric conference.


Again, where's your article?

Please clarify what article you are talking about.

 

[Buddha]

Have you considered why the title of that book is not simply "Wrong"?

Hint: Not falsifiable is different from false, i.e. wrong.

Please explain the difference. I do not see any since Popper said that all theories that are not falsifiable should be rejected as wrong. Based on his own assessment, he rejected psychoanalysis as a wrong theory that cannot be falsified. You can find articles regarding his evaluation of psychoanalysis on the Internet. Just google the words "Popper" and "psychoanalysis"

 

[Buddha]

I suspect it is still in his lower abdomen. He only ate the alphabet soup yesterday! Give him time to collect the results and put them through spell-check.

This might disappoint you, but I am not going to get into a shouting match with you. I did this many times on Digg when it didn't have moderators. Now you can imagine how fast these matches deteriorate and what kind of 4-letter words they lead to. At that time I enjoyed insulting my opponents but now I see this tactics as a sign of weakness.

 

[Buddha]

And try this time to avoid the circular reasoning in it that has being pointed to you several times. You know, the same kind of circular reasoning that you like to falsely attribute to others in your puerile lectures:

«It seems these evolutionists were using circular logic: the beings are human > this skeleton more closely resembles the female human skeleton > this is a hobbit female > these beings are human. When this type of logical deduction is used, the first step in the chain of inferences coincides with the last one. In reality, no one knows how to distinguish a female hobbit skeleton from a male one because not a single hobbit has been captured alive or dug out of a fresh grave»

This might surprise you but I used similar example in one of my debates that you use here -- I wrote that it is impossible to tell the sex and the color of a pre-historic animal based on its skeleton.

 

[Buddha]

1. God is a being who can do anything he wants.

2. Rocks exist, therefore by definition they have the quality of being, therefore they are beings.

3. Rocks are inert, lacking cognition.

4. Beings that lack cognition cannot experience or desire.

5. Therefore rocks want nothing.

6. It is a vacuous logical truth that anything, regardless of its capabilities, that wants nothing can do anything it wants.

7. Therefore, every rock is God.

8. Therefore, God exists.

9. I can write a paper presenting the preceding argument.

10. Paper covers rock.

11. Therefore, I win.

12. God hates scissors.

I wish I could understand your line of reasoning. But I didn't play paper, rock, scissors in my childhood.

 

[Buddha]

Could you post that proof, or post a link to where that proof is offered please?


A link to that proof would be interesting, also. I take it that Bishop Berkeley (not an Archbishop AFAICS) didn't believe in reincarnation, so his proof would make a nice contrast to the Buddha's proof which, according to you, does require such a belief.

I could reproduce that proof in another thread. I didn't see it on the Internet. But before that I would have to prove that the reincarnation exists, which I am going to do at another thread after this one runs out.

 

[Buddha]

You also excluded other possibilities. That's why you get such fair pieces of criticism.

Please name the other possibilities that I excluded. This is the promise that really impressed me.

 

[JayUtah]

...after this one runs out.

It ran out four days ago when you stopped paying attention to your critics.

 

[JayUtah]

Please name the other possibilities that I excluded.

They were named days ago. When you admit that you pay only selective attention to what people say, you don't get to ask people to repeat themselves.

 

[JayUtah]

I wrote that it is impossible to tell the sex and the color of a pre-historic animal based on its skeleton.

And you claim this based on your extensive training in paleontology and osteology? You seem to think you can master complex and diverse fields after only cursory study. You read one of Popper's two dozen or so books and now you think you're the master of scientific philosophy -- except that you can't manage to have a conversation that isn't just you foisting your interpretations on others.

 

[Dave Rogers]

I could reproduce that proof in another thread. I didn't see it on the Internet. But before that I would have to prove that the reincarnation exists, which I am going to do at another thread after this one runs out.

Then your premise in starting this thread was fraudulent. If your proof for the existence of God depends on reincarnation being proven, and you decline to prove reincarnation until after discussion of your proof of the existence of God is concluded, then you've made it clear that you want the discussion of your proof of the existence of God to go on for ever without reaching a conclusion.

Dave

 

[Buddha]

That would be fantastic, if true. It'd mean that we are in the final stages of Buddha's cycle here: he'll remain a short time defending what he did (not), trying to be patronizing and condescending, satisfying his narcissistic needs to finally abandon the place to reincarnate in other place.

Of course such other places don't include an anti-evolution book for a scientific public nor a conference with a scientific public nor anything related to string theory nor any of the other fantasies he briefly brings to life here.

Do not expect me to depart from this website in a near future. I have a plenty of other ideas that I would like to test in front of specific audiences including this one. Currently I am also testing my controversial ideas that go against Christian faith at the Christian websites.

 

[Buddha]

Which is why Buddha is casting as many aspersions as possible on scientific realism. And why he formulated his "proof" as little more than a contrived thought experiment, not with any actual evidence or reference to knowable fact. He did say at one point that he could provide "empirical" proof of God, but I'm beginning to believe that he's just throwing out buzzwords from science and philosophy without really knowing what any of them mean. He equates "unfalsifiable" with "false," for example.

His strategy is to note that some of his critics are indeed relying on scientific realism to affirmatively refute his proof. And to them he claims to have so much better understanding of the various competing philosophies that could apply, and simply declare realist rebuttals categorically wrong because what's dreamt of in his philosophy is so much more academically appealing or in vogue. It's like saying your apple pie isn't really apple pie because banana creme pie is so much more enjoyable. He admits up front that not everyone will accept his proof. But that merely steps into his next argument, which is that if you don't accept his proof you're just not as philosophically sophisticated as he. Because he read a book a few months ago, you know.

But not all his critics follow that pattern, so his answer above is little more than a straw man. Some of his critics, myself included, also point out that he's really not getting the other philosophies right either. His proof is a mish-mash of poorly wedded tidbits borrowed and misrepresented from various disciplines or invented out of whole cloth and wrongly attributed to great minds. He ignores such criticism because in order to refute it he would actually have to demonstrate knowledge of the fields he's raided. And this he cannot do, so he continues gaslighting and chest-thumping. His proof isn't intended for knowledgeable eyes, apparently. It seems more intended to fool some naive third party into being impressed.

Your quotation is incorrect. I said that I cannot provide EMPIRICAL proof that God exists, so I resorted to a logical one. I hope you didn't misquote me on purpose, otherwise I would say that such tactics is a clear sign of defeat.

 

[JayUtah]

Please explain the difference. I do not see any since Popper said that all theories that are not falsifiable should be rejected as wrong.

No.

Based on his own assessment, he rejected psychoanalysis as a wrong theory that cannot be falsified.

Psychoanalysis is not a "theory" as science uses the term. It is a field of study that can give rise to individual theories. He rejected the approach of psychoanalysis because it's based on individual theories, and produces individual theories, that cannot be falsified according to his terms. He did not say those theories must then be false.

Similarly you go on to misrepresent Popper as saying that individual unfalsifiable theories are false. This -- as I have explained several times -- is simply wrong. I grow tired of repeating myself only to be assiduously ignored by you.

 

[Buddha]

I think that's reasonable. It depends slightly on whether we regard logical impossibilities as something not beyond the realm of omnipotence, but you've not committed to that notion, which I think is the right path.

If, in the other hand, we allow omnipotence to include the ability to do the logically impossible, then an omnipotent being could easily prove his abilities.

If not, then something which merely contradicts scientific laws only suggests that we don't know what the real laws are.

He is defined as omnipotent by the Judeo-Christian theologians who grossly misinterpreted the Bible. But this is their problem, and I do care about their opinion. In this case the only person whose opinion matters to me is myself. I am not a member of Christian denomination so I can say anything I want without the fear of being excommunicated.

 

[JayUtah]

I said that I cannot provide EMPIRICAL proof that God exists, so I resorted to a logical one.

You don't know what any of those words mean. You're confusing empirical with inductive, and inductive with deductive. You have changed your story several times on what kind of proof you think you provided. You say its a deduction, then you say you meant to write induction, after trying to say it was a hybrid of the two. In actual fact your proof is based on thought experiments that rely on failed empiricism. You started out this thread saying an empirical proof for God was possible in principle, your proof is predicated on empirical falsifiability. The only time you deny empiricism in your proof is when you attempt to excuse your final conclusion from it.

I hope you didn't misquote me on purpose, otherwise I would say that such tactics is a clear sign of defeat.

No, now you're just looking for excuses to ignore me and your other critics.

 

[Buddha]

That's Popper in a nutshell. Experiments have to end to have any scientific value. When they end, we might be able to draw a conclusion inductively by making a reasonable leap. But the price paid for the conclusion is that the conclusion must be "forever tentative" (his words). That is, we can conclude that a being is omnipotent based on a substantial number of completed tasks. And that conclusion will be shattered as soon as he fails a task. Omnipotence is not knowledge in a positivist sense, in that case. But is it knowledge in a philosophically valid and useful sense? Yes. Buddha doesn't think much of Popper, but he also doesn't understand positivism either.

Apparently you misunderstood my position on so called omnipotence, so I'll make myself perfectly clear -- I reject it. Even God doesn't have it, whatever the word "omnipotence" means. When I express my own ideas I prefer not to use this word. When I refer to someone else's ideas I have no choice but to use it.

 

[JayUtah]

He is defined as omnipotent by the Judeo-Christian theologians who grossly misinterpreted the Bible. But this is their problem, and I do care about their opinion.

Irrelevant. You were asked to define God. The only definition you could come up with was that God is "someone who can do anything he wants." That's irrespective of what Judeo-Christian theologians have formulated, and irrespective of whether they're right or wrong. You haven't reconciled your formulation of God with your ideas about falsifiability. You just swept them under the carpet in your proof.

 

[Buddha]

And yet again, we sit in the theatre, in the dark, all alone, staring at an empty stage marvelling in the silence at the old echoes of jaded tap dancing routines from years long faded into a past illuminated only by the eternal spotlight of nostalgia.

This is quite poetic but it falls on a deaf ear -- I am not versed in poetry.

 

[JayUtah]

Apparently you misunderstood my position on so called omnipotence, so I'll make myself perfectly clear -- I reject it. Even God doesn't have it, whatever the word "omnipotence" means. When I express my own ideas I prefer not to use this word. When I refer to someone else's ideas I have no choice but to use it.

No, I didn't misunderstand it. I rejected your hairsplit. You "reject" the word omnipotence and then go on to define your God as functionally omnipotent. I and others have correctly pointed out that such a definition cannot be falsified under positivism no matter how much you try to tap dance.