There is no faith involved in believing life is possible in this universe.
Split Thread Atheism and lack of belief in the afterlife
- Thread starter psionl0
- Start date
Mashuna
Ovis ex Machina
Ethan Thane Athen
Illuminator
- Joined
- Mar 1, 2007
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- 3,033
Or even more simply, we already have the example of myriad forms of life existing on one planet so it's a proven possibility. The two things would only be comparable if we already had a proven example of a god and were assessing the possibility of others of their ilk existing. In other words, they are not comparable at all.
I'm agnostic about that.....Ok, how about intelligent life?
jeremyp
Philosopher
Ok, how about intelligent life?
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure
How amazingly unlikely is your birth
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth
~~ Eric Idle
Steve
Penultimate Amazing
Hyperbole is not your friend. Remove that word and replace with " think it is possible based on current scientific knowledge". After all, we have irrefutable knowledge that life exists in the universe. What remains to be determined are the details of where.
And you'll hear it again and again and again as long as the same fallacies and bad arguments gets used, so I suggest getting used to it because I'm not dropping it.
The other thing that a lot of people (pretend to) get is that the in real world immediately the "Dragon in my Garage" scenario would devolve into "Wait.. why are we even looking for a dragon in the first place?"
It's not JUST about special pleading, falsifiability, and burden of proof. A lot of the point is the absurdity of looking for a dragon in a garage that has absolutely no reason to think contains one.
Again why I don't apply the label of atheist/agnostic to myself (and therefore tedious intentionally "Dare you to take the bait so I can hijack" hijacking hairsplits about the difference don't matter) is because "Is there a God" isn't a valid question. There's no reason to be asking it. And no historical inertia and appeals to popularity aren't reasons. And no a vague, glib "Well people can ask whatever questions they want you aren't the boss of them" is not a reason either.
Is there a god? Is there a dragon in my garage? Is there a teapot orbiting Saturn? Is there shaved bear in a jaunty hat dancing the Charleston in Fiji? I'm not atheistic/agnostic/believer about any of those things because there's bad, stupid questions we have no reason to be asking. The point is I'm not actually asking any of those questions because I have no reason to. I have no valid reason to either put either of those on.
I'll ask them where there's literally any logical reason to and THEN the identity of someone who has an answer can be applied to me, not before.
jeremyp
Philosopher
Actually there is a very good reason to be asking "is there a god?" and that is that many people believe the answer to be yes and claim to have rules that they got from this god and that we all need to follow those rules and, in some cases, if we don't follow the rules, we need to be put to death.
The dragon in your garage, the teapot orbiting Saturn and the dancing bear in Fiji have no impact on my life so the question of their existence is, at best, philosophical rambling. The question of whether there is a god or not is literally life and death to some people.
Again, I repeat.
"There's no reason to be asking it. And no historical inertia and appeals to popularity aren't reasons. And no a vague, glib "Well people can ask whatever questions they want you aren't the boss of them" is not a reason either."
There's really two approaches to this - one is what I always think of skeptic ginger's approach - and she absolutely believes in gods - which is that gods are fictional/mythical creations of humans to explain unfathomable phenomena and to provide social control and cohesion. And like her I am 100% convinced such gods do exist. The advantage of that definition for gods is that we have copious amounts of evidence that those gods exist.
The other approach is of course for someone to claim something "supernatural" is attached to their god definition (or as the motte they retreat to "we don't know everything, and science has been wrong in the past"). Of course as you point out this fails in the first instance because we have not one iota of evidence for such a defined god so there is no reason to think such a thing does exist. By the time they start with their god they've already missed out a link in the chain of reasoning.
You make a good point but all those gods are defined - by the religions - and therefore we can test them. That's why we do know the various gods contained within the Abrahamic religions, why the Roman, why the Greek and the Egyptian gods don't exist.
But if you follow the thread that's been linked to you will see psionIO objects to people saying their undefined god doesn't exist. We have to make a special case for them to have some kind of undefined, vague nothingness that we aren't allowed to say doesn't exist, which is why I penned the p-god - they are claiming we can't say p-god doesn't exist therefore we can't say gods don't exist. Despite no one even claims p-god exists.
I suspect a bit of personal history goes into the assumption Chris is making. His involvement in finding evidence of a certain crypto creature in 2nd growth forests in Georgia speaks.
He has lived and done everything he accuses others of.
Yet even in such a confined and highly populated area it's still all "faith" and "belief" it's in those woods because zero evidence has come out that clearly shown the monkey.
That aside, the god thing is literally nothing but a long tradition of a faith based belief. Where is any solid and irrefutable evidence about it? Old mythology doesn't count .
Our sciences grow, gods have less to do. Less aspects of our lives to influence.
Only in pocket communities where ignorance of sciences is held high as to not challenge god does he reign high.
He has lived and done everything he accuses others of.
Yet even in such a confined and highly populated area it's still all "faith" and "belief" it's in those woods because zero evidence has come out that clearly shown the monkey.
That aside, the god thing is literally nothing but a long tradition of a faith based belief. Where is any solid and irrefutable evidence about it? Old mythology doesn't count .
Our sciences grow, gods have less to do. Less aspects of our lives to influence.
Only in pocket communities where ignorance of sciences is held high as to not challenge god does he reign high.
Thermal
August Member
Even easier: a god is an explanation that can be arrived at for First Causes. Not so with a teapot orbiting Saturn, and it's exactly why the whiff of straw gets so strong in these threads.
Only with god is "A lot of people believe he exists" treated as a special, unique way of actually existing. Again it's what I'm talking about when I say we make "god" arguments that would be laughed out of any other discussion.
"God must be discussed differently because he is a special topic, and he's a special topic because we discuss him differently."
I'm aware that people believe in god and that has social effects. That has nothing to do with him actually existing. That's not a "Okay but he sorta exists THAT way" argument.
We don't have to point that something exists as an idea when discussing the actual existence of anything else and I see no reason to entertain it as anything beyond a meaningless truism here.
"God must be discussed differently because he is a special topic, and he's a special topic because we discuss him differently."
I'm aware that people believe in god and that has social effects. That has nothing to do with him actually existing. That's not a "Okay but he sorta exists THAT way" argument.
We don't have to point that something exists as an idea when discussing the actual existence of anything else and I see no reason to entertain it as anything beyond a meaningless truism here.
600 years since Aquinas and "The Watchmaker" is still the best excuse. Can we get some new apologeitcs.
Also the dragon in my garage is also the first mover, because I say so. There he now meets the same criteria as god with the exact same amount of actual reason behind it.
Reformed Offlian
Master Poster
...on another planet?
"What's that? We've discovered a planet full of clones of Eva Greene? And they are locked in a decades long war with a planet full of clones of Olivia Wilde? And the finally want to make a peace treaty? In a sex-off? And I get to be the judge?"
*Shakes my head* Sorry we were talking about god.
*Shakes my head* Sorry we were talking about god.
jeremyp
Philosopher
Repeating a fallacious point doesn't suddenly make it true.
And no, you are not the boss of people so they can ask whatever questions they like. If you believe it to be a waste of time or not interesting, well it's not compulsory to be reading this thread.
"You're only allowed in the thread if you agree with me."
No. Deal with it.
People can ask whatever question they like. I can point out the question is bad. Deal with it.
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