Hawking says there are no gods

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Nonpareil said:
That isn't "right" or "wrong", Tommy. The words you are looking for are real and unreal.

They are not the same.
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Austin highlights the complexities proper to the uses of ‘real’ by observing that it is (i) a substantive-hungry word that often plays the role of (ii) adjuster-word, a word by means of which “other words are adjusted to meet the innumerable and unforeseeable demands of world upon language” (Austin 1962a, 73). Like ‘good,’ it is (iii) a dimension-word, that is, “the most general and comprehensive term in a whole group of terms of the same kind, terms that fulfil the same function” (Austin 1962a, 71): that is, ‘true,’ ‘proper,’ ‘genuine,’ ‘live,’ ‘natural,’ ‘authentic,’ as opposed to terms such as ‘false,’ ‘artificial,’ ‘fake,’ ‘bogus,’ ‘synthetic,’ ‘toy,’ but also to nouns like ‘dream,’ ‘illusion,’ ‘mirage,’ ‘hallucination.’ ‘Real,’ is also (iv) a word whose negative use “wears the trousers” (a trouser-word) (Austin 1962a, 70).
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https://www.iep.utm.edu/austin/

"True" or "right" is a subset of "real".

Religion is real, natural, a fact and true/right as confirmed by observation.
You can't observe right or wrong using science. You can observe something you predict or something else. You can name that "right", "wrong", "real", "unreal", "true", "false", but those are names for what is actually going on:
You can observe something you predict or something else.
I predict that you can observe religion as a fact and thus it can't be a wrong fact, because a wrong fact is that you observe something else.
 
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Tommy Jeppesen said:
"True" or "right" is a subset of "real".
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No.

Tommy Jeppesen said:
Religion is real, natural, a fact and true/right as confirmed by observation.
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No. Religion is real. Its claims are neither true nor right.

Tommy Jeppesen said:
You can't observe right or wrong using science.
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Yes, you can.

Tommy Jeppesen said:
I predict that you can observe religion as a fact and thus it can't be a wrong fact, because a wrong fact, is that you observe something else.
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You seem to be making up an entire argument in your head that has little to nothing to do with what is actually being said to you.
 
Nonpareil said:
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I don't conflate right through observation with right through cognition.

To me religion is simply something I don't believe in, because it doesn't make sense to me.
You use wrong, I don't. I don't have to. All I need to state is that I don't believe in religion. It is you who need wrong. But that is based on your cognition.
Right and wrong are redundant.

You just state what is going on. So far all cases of religion are subjective beliefs about something, which is objective. I don't need to believe in religion.

That you think religion is wrong, is something you state.

Science doesn't draw conclusions about supernatural explanations
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https://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/0_0_0/whatisscience_12

What reality is, is a belief.
Science is to the effect the belief in methodological naturalism. You start with the belief in a natural world and thus you can't say anything about the supernatural, because that is another belief.
To me it makes sense to believe in a natural world.

It is you who need wrong. I don't.
 
Chanakya said:
...soft atheism is reasonable, while hard atheism isn’t.
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Reasonable? :rolleyes:

No doubt you accept your version of reality, but you should at least recognize that's merely your opinion that you are stating as fact.


Chanakya said:
...And I was further pointing out to Skeptic Ginger that her decision/conclusion that there is to be no further enquiry about God ideas basis her evaluation of such God ideas as she might have studied, while perfectly valid, is a purely subjective and personal decision. If she imagines that this pronouncement of hers is objectively valid, just because she herself finds it agreeable, then she is simply conflating the subjective with the objective (an error that theists are very commonly given to, but evidently some atheists also fall prey to this kind of foggy thinking).
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Objective fact: People make up god myths.
Objective fact: Not one person has presented valid objective evidence of the existence of god(s).

Where's the subjective? You don't like the conclusion I draw from those two objective measures.

Conclusion: there is overwhelming evidence that gods are human invented fiction and zero evidence of any real gods.

If you want to keep beating your dead horse leaving that door open for invisible garage dragons and gods, go right ahead.
 
Tommy Jeppesen said:
I don't conflate right through observation with right through cognition.

To me religion is simply something I don't believe in, because it doesn't make sense to me.
You use wrong, I don't. I don't have to. All I need to state is that I don't believe in religion. It is you who need wrong. But that is based on your cognition.
Right and wrong are redundant.

You just state what is going on. So far all cases of religion are subjective beliefs about something, which is objective. I don't need to believe in religion.

That you think religion is wrong, is something you state.
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This, again, is gibberish. It does not parse.

Tommy Jeppesen said:
https://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/0_0_0/whatisscience_12
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Science can and does make conclusions about supernatural phenomena. A single web page trying to couch this in the gentlest terms possible doesn't change that.

Tommy Jeppesen said:
What reality is, is a belief.
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No.
 
Nonpareil said:
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No.
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Reality is physical or not physical. Both are possible and can be observed, but they amount to a contradiction.
So it is possible to live a life without knowing what reality actually is.
So it is on you to show that yours is not a belief, because I have shown that it is possible to live a life without knowing what reality actually is.
You give the evidence, because I have shown that it is possible to live a life without knowing what reality actually is.

I accept that my understanding of reality is a belief.
You show now that you can do it differently.
 
Tommy Jeppesen said:
Reality is physical or not physical. Both are possible and can be observed, but they amount to a contradiction.
So it is possible to live a life without knowing what reality actually is.
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This, again, is gibberish. You have not sufficiently defined your terms or constructed your sentences coherently. And, again, you appear to be arguing with someone that exists only inside your own head, as your statements are only tangentially connected to what I am trying to say to you.

This is getting tedious.
 
Nonpareil said:
This, again, is gibberish. You have not sufficiently defined your terms or constructed your sentences coherently. And, again, you appear to be arguing with someone that exists only inside your own head, as your statements are only tangentially connected to what I am trying to say to you.

This is getting tedious.
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Yes, we believe differently and you don't know that you believe.
If this goes on you hit Agrippa's Trilemma. There is a limit to knowledge.

I am an old-school skeptic.
"Man is the measure of all things: of the things that are, that they are, of the things that are not, that they are not." Protagoras
You believe you know.
I know I believe.
It is called cognitive relativism.
 
Tommy Jeppesen said:
Yes, we believe differently and you don't know that you believe.
If this goes on you hit Agrippa's Trilemma. There is a limit to knowledge.

I am an old-school skeptic.
"Man is the measure of all things: of the things that are, that they are, of the things that are not, that they are not." Protagoras
You believe you know.
I know I believe.
It is called cognitive relativism.
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And we've descended into full incoherence.
 
psionl0 said:
Yeah. That's exactly what " the probability is so ridiculously small that it isn't worth considering" means. :rolleyes:
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It's infinitely more likely then the giant invisible wizard in the sky. If you demand a "Eeee I could be wrong" on that, you're doing it for ulterior motives.
 
psionl0 said:
STOP BESMIRCHING SCIENCE! :mad:

Science has nothing whatsoever to say about gods.
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Bull... crap. That's the copout the believers and the apologist want to hide behind.

If God can affect the universe, science gets a say in his existence. Period. End of discussion. Accept that or go in the corner and start babbling gibberish with Tommy because you're saying the same thing just formatting it better.
 
psionl0 said:
What scientific test settles the question?
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Jesus Christ read the rest of the thread. I'm not spoon feeding the whole argument to you again so you can stall.

You're putting a massively unreasonable standard on "Settling the question" fo God, one that isn't put on other questions.

We've walked in the room, looked around, and saw no chair. I'm done listening to you and yours jump up and down screaming about addressing the possibility of magically undetectable chairs of variable vagueness before we consider the case closed.

There's no God to the same degree there's no invisible, silent, odorless, undetectable dragon in my garage.
 
Tommy Jeppesen said:
You and I don't no agree on what philosophy is, yet you talk with certainty of what philosophy is:

Notice the "or". You could replace it with an "and/or", but either way it is a point of uncertainty in one sense and certainty in another. To you philosophy is different that to me and that is where we end.

I am driven by not judging other humans and their thinking in any sense of wrong and that is not just morality/ethics.
To you, you can show that religion is wrong. I don't believe in wrong or truth, because I consider these words redundant.
So you are certain truth matters. To me that is a belief and I believe differently.
So learn to spot your own certainty before you criticize me for being certain.
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There are almost so many definitions of philosophy as philosophers. This is why the tow main internet encyclopedias of philosophy don't have an article called "Philosophy". I used the words of Aristotle: "Sciences, as we have already observed, always have their origin in the admiration or amazement that inspires the state of things”. Well, I have retouched it a little.

Your radical scepticism seems to me a little melodramatic. Therefore I asked you if you believe in the Fairy Queen's existence. You didn't answer. Try it, please.
 
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