Hawking says there are no gods

[JoeMorgue]

I'm sorry, I'm not interested in all this. Go back to the debate whenever you want.

Of course you aren't interested in all that. It shows you are wrong and has no place for you to do your "I'm so much smarter than the rest of you" act by spouting off word salad.

It's also factually correct, but that doesn't seem to concern you.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Because the hypothesis of the dragon in the garage is not really believed by anyone.

Neither are all these "Gods" you keep making up that are just vague vagueness vaguely doing vague stuff vaguely.

You seem to think you "win" because of one word being poorly defined and vaguely used.

And regardless of all that is it you claim that magic invisible garage dragons would become likely, that the burden of proof would shift, if some tipping point of people started honestly believing in them?

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

Neither are all these "Gods" you keep making up that are just vague vagueness vaguely doing vague stuff vaguely.

You seem to think you "win" because of one word being poorly defined and vaguely used.

And regardless of all that is it you claim that magic invisible garage dragons would become likely, that the burden of proof would shift, if some tipping point of people started honestly believing in them?

This will do:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creator_deity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monad_(philosophy)

From here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deities_by_classification

Notice that all claims of a creator also includes a non-god creator.
So all gods, which effect this universe in time and space as a natural effect can be tested.
All creators, which created the universe and left it alone or hide/cheat/only show itself so special people can't be checked by science.

Science doesn't draw conclusions about supernatural explanations
Do gods exist? Do supernatural entities intervene in human affairs? These questions may be important, but science won't help you answer them. Questions that deal with supernatural explanations are, by definition, beyond the realm of nature — and hence, also beyond the realm of what can be studied by science. For many, such questions are matters of personal faith and spirituality.

https://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/0_0_0/whatisscience_12
By definition means that if someone claims a supernatural god then science can't examine that god, because science uses an axiom of naturalism.

So any religious person can claim any variant of a supernatural god, he/she likes. It doesn't mean that there is such a god. It means that it is a fact, that a religious person can do so. And any claim of "wrong" is a first person evaluation between 2 facts: It is possible to believe in a god, but you don't have to.
Now a hard atheist claims that there are no gods, where as a version of soft atheism is that you don't need to believe in gods to have a life.
So when a religious person ask me if I believe, I answer: No! If the person then says I will go to Hell, I answer: I believe when we die, we are no more.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Science doesn't draw conclusions about supernatural explanations

When exactly did this get established and we did we all agree to this?

Outside of just being yet more special pleading this is functionally "I can put a modifier on something so I don't have to have evidence for it."

"Supernatural" is a meaningless, weasel phrase.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

When exactly did this get established and we did we all agree to this?

Outside of just being yet more special pleading this is functionally "I can put a modifier on something so I don't have to have evidence for it."

"Supernatural" is a meaningless, weasel phrase.

You and I don't have to agree on that. You just have to do the following:
-Google "what is science".
-Take this link: https://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/whatisscience_01
-Go down to: "Science has limits" Follow link: https://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/0_0_0/whatisscience_12
-Read this part:
Science doesn't draw conclusions about supernatural explanations
-Check the claim yourself; "by definition". That is a form of replication, you reproduce the thinking behind "by definition".

Now as for agreeing. Limits in human mobility is there, whether we agree or not. Limits in human mobility ends in brute, objective, common to all humans, physical facts.
Understanding what the universe is, is a combination of brute and social facts.
"There are no gods" is a social fact, not a brute fact.
If it was a brute fact, then some humans couldn't get away with believing in gods, because it would be impossible, just as it is impossible to walk in the air. But it is not impossible as there are humans, which believe in gods and get away with it.
Thus "there are no gods" is not based on brute facts. It is a metaphysical belief or if you like a social fact.

"There is a creator god" is a much as meaningless, weasel sentence as is "there are no creator god". Neither is a case of knowledge, but a case of personal belief.

• I know there is a creator god.
• I know there is no creator god.
• I know that I don't know either.

I take the 3rd one. You take the first one and we are still both part of the universe. Go figure.

 

[JoeMorgue]

You can't just slap the "Super-" modifier on something and declare victory.

I can't argue that you owe me 100 bucks in "Supereconomics."

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

You can't just slap the "Super-" modifier on something and declare victory.

I can't argue that you owe me 100 bucks in "Supereconomics."

Neither can you. You can't just use the word "science" as a magical word. The claim "Science show there are no gods" is a string of words like any other string of words and you start by checking them; i.e. doubt them as a skeptic; like you doubt any other claim.

I don't argue that you are "wrong" or anything else in the variant. I argue that we believe differently and it is a fact, that we can both get away with that despite it being different.
That you care for other humans and want them to have a better life and stop them from being "wrong", is a case of what you believe in. I believe differently about a better life and being "wrong". And that you don't believe me as being sincere, is something you do: You don't believe that I am sincere, but that don't cause me to become insincere. Words are not magical, I don't become insincere, just because you claim so.

 

[JoeMorgue]

This is just more scorched earth nonsense, pissing on the very concept of "knowledge" so you never have to face the possibility of being wrong about anything.

 

[Belz...]

That's essentially it. "God totally exists he just hides using magic whenever big mean science looks for him."

You'd think he'd be quite happy to be detectable. Having evidence of his existence doesn't negate free will in any way. If it did, we would have free will only when acting entirely from ignorance.

Hi JayUtah

Standards in philosophy.
In one sense there are standards in philosophy and in another there is not.

What is the standards: That you know enough about philosophy in general, its subdivisions, that you can do logic, that you can check a text for internal consistency, find any hidden assumptions if they are there and compare to other POV.

But there is no standard in the following sense:
Skeptic Ginger linked to a philosophical text about ethics and biology. It end with the following: There are 3 positions on meta-ethics and if you check 2 of them are in contradiction to the 3rd one.
That means that there is no standard as in science. The standard in science is that you can replicate and get the same results. In some forms of philosophy you can "replicate" and get a contradictory result and both claims are still philosophy.

So am I a philosopher? Yes, I get the limits of philosophy and I can point them out. I know what you can do using philosophy and what you can't do in practice. I understand the field and get the different approaches. I have my own POV, all philosophers have. We are of different schools of thought.

That still doesn't answer his question.

So yes, I am an amateur philosophy, but whether I dabble you can't judge. So stop doing that.

We can absolutely judge. You suck at it.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

This is just more scorched earth nonsense, pissing on the very concept of "knowledge" so you never have to face the possibility of being wrong about anything.

You conflate "we" as shared common, objective, physical, brute facts with "we" as a social fact. You and I share the first, but not the latter, no matter how much you claim a "we" for the latter.
I started out my political life as a libertarian, drop private property rights, became an anarchist and I can still do "the individual is not a member of a group no matter how much someone claims a we"".

I will never become neither "right" nor "wrong", just because you say so. And that you don't get that I do "right" and "wrong" differently that you, is your problem, not me. I can't live your life and you can't live mine.

 

[Belz...]

A carefully worded straw man. You made a claim to expertise and then made a dismissive argument using that claim as a premise. In a public forum where anonymity is enforced, claims to expertise are inherently unverifiable and are therefore a rather poor choice of premise. Arguments where the claim to expertise takes on a character of intimidation are just bad form anywhere, anytime.



"Philosophy" and "philosopher" are words that have meanings. When you try to equivocate those meanings, your critics would be remiss in their duty if they did not challenge you. They have challenged you. You responded with snarky comebacks and evasion. Your critics reasonably infer from that defensiveness that it was your intent all along to see how much you could get away with. In other words, your critics called your bluff. That's a fairly legitimate tactic in debate. Don't like it? Don't bluff.



No.

You tried to use your purported "25 years of study" to intimidate Skeptic Ginger from challenging your homegrown attempts at philosophy. And it is not the first or only time you have tried to lord your supposed superiority as a philosopher over the other posters, myself included. If you cannot abide having your feet held to the fire, don't make claims that invite the kinds of scrutiny that make you uncomfortable.



You're still trying to make this about someone else. You made a claim that does not stand up to scrutiny, and you have been evasive and dishonest in the discussion of it. Currying sympathy or shifting your responsibility onto other people does not meet the challenges against your claims.



To dabble means to work at something in an irregular or superficial way. That seems to be an accurate description of how you've told us you approach the study of philosophy. If my stating it plainly, in contrast to your diluting it in volumes of equivocal screed, makes you uncomfortable, then that was the point.

Now one can dabble and still achieve a high degree of proficiency. My new colleague is an engineer who does thermal analysis of jet engine designs for Rolls Royce. My grandfather was a frontier blacksmith and later a machinist. My colleague dabbles in baking. My grandfather dabbled in oil painting; he was a Bob Ross devotee before it was cool. Now my colleague's proficiency at baking can be judged in part by his having placed third in an internationally televised baking contest. Someone else judged his ability to bake, according to ostensibly common standards. If I didn't consider myself a competent judge of baking -- and I don't -- then I could place faith in the published judgment of someone else who is recognized as an expert. Similarly my grandfather bartered his paintings for goods and services. Here again, someone else applied a set of standards my grandfather did not invent or control, and judged his work to be successful. If I knew nothing about his ability except that strangers paid or bartered to obtain his work, then this would be evidence that he had attained some objective standard of proficiency. None of this is to say there are indisputable, undebatable standards in either baking or painting. It's to point out that proficiency is most credibly determined by others according to standards the subject doesn't control.

You can't claim that. Despite repeated requests, you cannot name a standard you don't control. Indeed, you're now frantically trying to claim there shouldn't be any standard at all. You cannot show evidence of having met any standard by any judgment besides your own. You decide what the standard should be, if there should even be any, and you decide whether or not you've met that standard and what that means. And you demand that others give you full faith and credit for it. Even worse, you gaslight people according to this imaginary achievement. If they say that what you write doesn't make any sense, you tell them it's because they don't understand it and must not be as proficient in philosophy as you. That's plainly arrogant.

And now, with your bluff laid bare, you're begging for lenience. The answer, rightly so, is no.

As much as you want to lash out at others and try to put them on the spot, question their ability to judge your claims, or suggest that there should be no judgment, the world has already solved the problem of how people who are not themselves experts in a field can weigh others' claims to expertise for evidentiary purposes. And that solution does not rely on the claimant's say-so. That's why we have independent external standards that the claimants don't control. When you can supply that, you can make credible claims to proficiency. If you cannot, then you should not make arguments that require your critics first to accept you as an expert.

Gods, I hate you. Your posts are way better than mine, individually and on average.

 

[Belz...]

Science doesn't draw conclusions about supernatural explanations

Sure it does.

 

[JoeMorgue]

You conflate "we" as shared common, objective, physical, brute facts with "we" as a social fact. You and I share the first, but not the latter, no matter how much you claim a "we" for the latter.
I started out my political life as a libertarian, drop private property rights, became an anarchist and I can still do "the individual is not a member of a group no matter how much someone claims a we"".

I will never become neither "right" nor "wrong", just because you say so. And that you don't get that I do "right" and "wrong" differently that you, is your problem, not me. I can't live your life and you can't live mine.

Gibberish.

 

[JayUtah]

So any religious person can claim any variant of a supernatural god, he/she likes.

But he can't therefore claim it's real in the way he claims it to be real. And subsequently claiming that "real" means something other than how he first meant it doesn't fix the problem. A god that does all the things today's believers attribute to him is not an entirely supernatural god. The part he alleges results in change in the universe -- that exists the way he says his god exists -- is the natural part that is susceptible to science. When the religious person turns around says his god becomes only supernatural, and therefore inscrutable, only when science is looking is thoroughly immersed in special pleading.

 

[JayUtah]

I can't live your life and you can't live mine.

Denying that there are such things as facts doesn't make you a brilliant philosopher. Or solve the problem with your argument.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

...

We can absolutely judge. You suck at it.

Fun how you use an emotion. You judge with emotions. The rest of the universe as such doesn't care for your emotions and other humans only care if they do.

Some people judge me as one of the most rational human, they have ever encountered. Yet others claim I am not even at part of the shared reality as I live in my own. The latter seems problematic, because they keep telling me that as if I am a part of the shared reality.

Now I don't find the latter very rational and I doubt the former, because I can at times be irrational. But at other times I might be rational.
I am at least rational enough to know that even if some people keep telling me that I live in my own reality, it seems doubtful, because they keep telling me that, as if I am a part of the shared reality.

So the standard is that there is no standard, because to some people I am rational in some sense and to others I don't live in the shared reality.
I get that you use the emotional variant of the latter.

But I don't suck at it, just because you say so. If that was the case, then you would be using magic, because magically your words would cause me to "suck at it". And I very much doubt that this is how reality works.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Tommy I've told you this a dozen times. Having zero intellectual standards does not make you a better person than me.

"I'll just say nothing is real/facts don't exist/everything is a subjective opinion that way I'm never the 'bad guy' who has to tell people they are wrong" is intellectual cowardice, not intellectual civility.

 

[Belz...]

Fun how you use an emotion.

You are hopelessly confused. There was no emotion in my post. You're quite simply very bad at philosophy.

Some people judge me as one of the most rational human, they have ever encountered.

Idiots, the lot of them.

Yet others claim I am not even at part of the shared reality as I live in my own. The latter seems problematic, because they keep telling me that as if I am a part of the shared reality.

Gibberish.

But I don't suck at it, just because you say so.

You misunderstand: "you suck at it" is the conclusion, not the premise.

 

[JayUtah]

The rest of the universe as such doesn't care for your emotions...

Don't presume to speak for the rest of the universe. Your arguments are laughable, and they are being appropriately laughed at.

Some people judge me as one of the most rational human, they have ever encountered.

Yeah, my mom thinks I'm cool too. If you're going to invoke the specter of external adjudication, you have to do better than vague references to anonymous friends.

So the standard is that there is no standard...

No it isn't, as we discussed yesterday. You're frantically trying to argue the standard away because you know it's there and you know you can't meet it. Even in this post you're trying to split hairs between there not being a standard and your having met a standard in the form of your complimentary friends.

 

[Darat]

Denying that there are such things as facts doesn't make you a brilliant philosopher. Or solve the problem with your argument.

Especially when he is quite happy to claim there are facts, but apparently no one else can claim there are facts.

His responses are riddled with intellectual dishonesty and hypocrisy.