Split Thread Atheism and lack of belief in the afterlife

[Olmstead]

The hilite is intellectually dishonest. There is zero data for the existence of both.
One can neither prove nor disprove either with current data. The best you can hope for is faith in both, or one over the other if you choose.

No, you are intellectually dishonest.


Data for the existence of alien life:
Abiogenesis is possible in our universe. Abiogenesis has happened at least once. Circumstances of abiogenesis could be repeated based on size of the universe.


Data for the existence of god:
-


It is definitely possible that there is no alien life, but to compare the two is laughable.

 

[Leumas]

Ah, the Drake equation. That's a good one to impress first year Astronomy students but it relies on the addition of data that is unproven and unknowable.

Remember, according to SETI the correct number to consider when determining possible alien civilizations is "0". Any other number entered into the Drake Equation great than "0" is fudging. Science cannot rely on "fudging" evidence. That leads back to "faith".

I think you are EQUIVOCATING the word "faith" as used by god-hawkers with the process of hypothesizing and informed guessing which is the basis of all research.

Religious "faith" is blind gullible unquestioning acceptance of unfalsifiable codswallop that is 99.99999% PROVEN already to be lies and using rationalization and special pleading and moving the goals posts and red herring wafting and wishful thinking and all sorts of irrational fallacious nonsense in order to alleviate the Cognitive Dissonance caused by its lack of any basis in reality.

Scientific speculation... is the first step in the scientific method for researching and iteratively discovering Reality.

Equivocating the two is yet another casuistic chicanery used by apologists to obfuscate the intellectual and rational bankruptcy of god-hawking.

 

[Leumas]

One can neither prove nor disprove either with current data....

Arrantly not a true statement....

Current data proves LIFE exists already on a totally ordinary planet orbiting a totally ordinary star in a totally ordinary galaxy.

It does not take "faith" to deduce that in the billions of planets like this in the billions of galaxies like this one life would have resulted just like it did on this one.


Also you think the hypothesis "god(s) exist" has the same statistical weight as the hypothesis that "gods do not exist".

The hypothesis "gods do not exist" has been bolstered by every bit of gleaned REALITY throughout the conscious existence of humanity... and it is the NULL HYPOTHESIS.

The hypothesis "gods do exist" has been riven asunder by every bit of gleaned REALITY throughout the conscious existence of humanity.

So... no... the probability of any god existing has been for the last 5,000,000 Years of human existence been PROVEN to be Zero.... but what is even more clinching... is that the probability of any god NOT existing has been bolstered by all of REALITY.

So as you can see... there is data bolstering the hypothesis that there is life on other planets in the expanse of the cosmos.... and ... you may not know this... THERE IS DATA falsifying god hypotheses... all of them... plenty of data.

Equivocating the two is yet another casuistic chicanery used by apologists to obfuscate the intellectual and rational bankruptcy of god-hawking.

 

[ChrisBFRPKY]

A rather silly comparison, though typical of the drivel passed off as valid by god-botherers.
You may not have noticed but we know life exists in this universe, hence more of it elsewhere isn't that unlikely.
We have absolutely no evidence that any of the myriad gods that have been imagined
actually exist.

*We know that life exists on planet Earth.

We don't know life exists anywhere else. You can hope and pray for it to exist elsewhere though based on current scientific beliefs. You see where you're headed right?

 

[Resume]

We don't know life exists anywhere else. You can hope and pray for it . . .

Bwahahahahahahahahaha!!!

Stick with footie fantasy Chris; at least you're entertaining in that milieu.

 

[Thermal]

Heh, isn't the highlighted a textbook definition of the god of the gaps?

No, and that's why these discussions go round and round with everyone talking past each other.

Short version: god of the gaps means that you prove/infer that the god is or must be correct. That has nothing to do with the argument at hand, where an agnostic says it is not proven and unevidenced, but not disproven to any substantial degree either. So in a cloud it stays. That doesn't apply to the whole flowing white robes and stone tablets god, though. That one can be shown to just not be where he said he is, and not do what he claims he does.

Afraid the line you're taking with the prime mover thing is wrong, because to qualify as God, then surely it needs, at a minimum, to be conscious and intelligent? Isn't that dragon territory?

Why? I mean, most of us on the agnostic spectrum have a starting assumption that some kind of universal prime mover would be far beyond human comprehension by nature. It's not like it would be a can of beer in the refrigerator, which we know all the properties of.

 

[ChrisBFRPKY]

Bwahahahahahahahahaha!!!

Stick with footie fantasy Chris; at least you're entertaining in that milieu.

Show me the Alien.

 

[Leumas]

...
... despite having extensively searched for any such observations.

Arrantly not even close to approaching coming in the vicinity of possibly being a true statement.

We have a good idea how life on the Earth works, we can't create it out of the basic building blocks yet,

Because we have only existed as god-peddling species for less than 250,000 years and despite our abject arrogance we do not know everything with our severely limited miniscule window of time-space to look at the COSMOS.

Yet there is no evidence that life exists anywhere else in the Universe.

That is like an ant in my backyard telling another there is no evidence that there are anteaters.

Have we looked everywhere in the universe???

Though we can hope, and have faith that there may be.

No... only god-hawkers hope for a god despite not having had a single iota of any confirmation that there is one and OODLES of confirmation that there is not any.

Speculators about life on other planets only SPECULATE ... not hope... and their speculations are supported by solid evidence and science of reality.

Equivocating the two is yet another casuistic chicanery used by apologists to obfuscate the intellectual and rational bankruptcy of god-hawking.

 

[acbytesla]

Ah, the Drake equation. That's a good one to impress first year Astronomy students but it relies on the addition of data that is unproven and unknowable.

Remember, according to SETI the correct number to consider when determining possible alien civilizations is "0". Any other number entered into the Drake Equation great than "0" is fudging. Science cannot rely on "fudging" evidence. That leads back to "faith".

It's not faith. It's math. Granted, the results of the Drake equation is suspect because it depends on extrapolation. But we use extrapolated data for all kinds real world applications. It's not perfect, but it does serve us.

But I don't care. I'm not attached to the idea there is alien life. I don't worship it. I don’t depend on it. There are no rules that accompany this belief. I don't attend the church of alien life on Sundays. I don't tithe or put money in their collection plate. I don't carry the leather bound red letter edition of the Encyclopedia Galactica with me. Or wave banners that say Jupiter 3:16 at sporting events.

 

[Resume]

Show me the Alien.

Like I said, you're more entertaining elsewhere; here, you're analogy just sucks, and the more you flail at defending it, the suckier it gets.

Others have pointed out the flaw, there's no need to beat a moribund equine.

 

[pzkpfw]

*We know that life exists on planet Earth.

We don't know life exists anywhere else. You can hope and pray for it to exist elsewhere though based on current scientific beliefs. You see where you're headed right?

1) Alice says she has an invisible Dragon in her garage.
2) Bob says he has a 1957 Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa in his garage.
3) I say I have a 2015 Kawasaki Z750S in my garage.

There is no concrete evidence provided.

Is it your stance that therefore these claims are equally possible? Equally plausible?

 

[theprestige]

As long as you're not saying the dragon personifies an absolute moral paradigm that I must subscribe to in order to avoid certain and enduring torment, I don't really care what you say you have in your garage.

 

[Leumas]

Show me the Alien.

Aliens have not come to earth... just like Terrans have not yet left Earth.

Saying that there is a possibility for life on other planets is not the same as saying that this life also developed faster than the speed of light travel and traveled so extensively around the cosmos so as to find the needle in the haystack that is Earth.

But there is a needle in the haystack and there are scads of haystacks that could just as equally have a needle.... and this does not entail that one of those needles has managed to get out of the haystack and happen to find another.

 

[Thermal]

There's some actual science and data behind speculations on interstellar travel. There's math!

Let me put it like this, I'm as open to the possibility of a god as I am to the possibility of an invisible dragon in my garage. When someone shows me incontrovertible evidence pointing to an invisible dragon, I'm not going to close my eyes to it.
Does that make me "agnostic" with regards to the existence of an invisible dragon, or "gnostic" with regards to the non-existence of a god? I suppose that's semantics, but the two will always be the same until one of them has something, anything, to back them up.

Right, and I get that. The conflation problem is that we know what is in a garage and how to detect it, because within the four corners of time and space, there are rules that we plus or minus get. When the question goes beyond time and space, we don't have any rules that we get, because I don't think humans can conceive them. I don't even get how others can possibly claim to. Yet here we are. "The possible existence of a god is just like looking for a can of beer in my refrigerator".

"Special Pleading" some will screech. Well, duh. It's a one of a kind proposition. There genuinely is NOTHING else like such a speculation. A universal driving force beyond time and space that might have ******* created it is in fact not at all like being out of Budweiser.

 

[wareyin]

Remember, according to SETI the correct number to consider when determining possible alien civilizations is "0".

Source? Because you're saying that the organization which exists to search for extraterrestrial intelligence declared a priori that it wasn't possible that there were any alien civilizations. It'd be kinda dumb to put forth so much effort searching for something you claim can't possibly exist.

When I try to find something like your claim, all I can find is stuff about how despite looking for 50 years, SETI had only explored one glass of water out of the ocean of different ways a signal might manifest. That's not saying there's nothing to find, that's saying we haven't found anything because we have barely looked.

Dave if we apply Occam's razor you can use the same logic for alien life.

IE: Believing in Alien life requires the postulate that there is an entirely unknown class of alien life of which we have never directly observed a single one, with abilities and characteristics of a type we have never observed, despite having extensively searched for any such observations.

Why would alien life have to be unknown, with abilities and characteristics of a type that we have never observed? And no, we haven't even begun to search, much less have extensively searched. Space is so very, very vast and even light takes thousands of years to get here, or more. We've been looking for 60 years.

We have a good idea how life on the Earth works, we can't create it out of the basic building blocks yet, but we know how its put together. Yet there is no evidence that life exists anywhere else in the Universe. Though we can hope, and have faith that there may be.

If life exists here, why can't it exist anywhere else? And what does our not being able to create life ex nihilo have to do with anything? We didn't create ourselves, we evolved. Are we supposed to have created extraterrestrial life?

 

[JoeMorgue]

The fact that we have to keep continually defending the Garage Dragon analogy from people who seem to think Chris's alien one is fine sort of tips people's hand that they really aren't having a problem with the analogy, just its conclusion.

So we can all stop pretending not to "get" the Dragon in the Garage now.

 

[Steve]

Show me the Alien.

So naive. Extraterrestrial life does not have to be intelligent, or even sentient. Discovery of extraterrestrial microbes would be a huge event, and if extraterrestrial life is ever found, is likely to be the first example.

Just as life on Earth began with microbes. Adam and Eve springing forth fully formed by some god is just a myth, you know.

 

[Leumas]

*We know that life exists on planet Earth.

We don't know life exists anywhere else. You can hope and pray for it to exist elsewhere though based on current scientific beliefs. You see where you're headed right?

Again... you are equivocating the actions of god-hawkers with the informed speculation of scientific enquiry.

 

[Leumas]

Right, and I get that. The conflation problem is that we know what is in a garage and how to detect it, because within the four corners of time and space, there are rules that we plus or minus get. When the question goes beyond time and space, we don't have any rules that we get, because I don't think humans can conceive them. I don't even get how others can possibly claim to. Yet here we are. "The possible existence of a god is just like looking for a can of beer in my refrigerator".

So what you are saying is that god-hawkers have no idea whatsoever what it is they are hawking and thus their hawking is a special case of hawking unlike that peddling for fake imaginary things that we can concretely define???

"Special Pleading" some will screech. Well, duh. It's a one of a kind proposition. There genuinely is NOTHING else like such a speculation. A universal driving force beyond time and space that might have ******* created it is in fact not at all like being out of Budweiser.

So... special pleading for why the special pleading of god-hawkers is not special pleading...

 

[JoeMorgue]

That's all apologetics IS, special pleading away special pleading.

Everything, everything, everything being said "No it's not special pleading because it's god and he's special."