Proof of God

[Mobyseven]

Ugh. I was going to type out a reply but we've reached a stage where it's like arguing with a brick wall - I've already addressed the points you raise here, numerous times!

The answers to your questions are in these posts. No, I do not directly answer each specific one of your questions. Instead, the actual reasoning process is laid out there. If you still don't understand burden of proof, falsifiability, etc. after reading the posts again, feel free to ask a specific question. If you are so convinced that I am wrong, just go about things the simple way - my claims are falsifiable, so falsify them!

I'm honest to Ed sick of repeating myself here. This is why I said I'd just be lurking in the first place.

[setmode:lurker = 1]


ETA: As for your ridiculous claim that no scientific studies have been done whether god exists, despite the fact that there have infact been studies that would fall under that criteria: In 1900 there were no studies or papers written about the Theory of Relativity. Does that mean that the ToR was not within the realm of science in 1900?

 

[Herzblut]

I've already addressed the points you raise here, numerous times!

Wrong.

(1) Your claim "There is no proof for a negative claim" is self-refuting because it is negative itself and therefore - per content of your claim - unprovable!

(2) The statement "God exists" is outside the realm of science, esp. because it fails to comply to Popper's demand of falsifiability. If you still deny this, please explain!

You have failed to address the obvious flaws outlined above.

If you are so convinced that I am wrong, just go about things the simple way - my claims are falsifiable, so falsify them!

Insane. You have to give evidence to your claims - by your own standards!

ETA: As for your ridiculous claim that no scientific studies have been done whether god exists, despite the fact that there have infact been studies that would fall under that criteria:

What you call "fact" is a bottomless speculation. Where is the evidence?

In 1900 there were no studies or papers written about the Theory of Relativity. Does that mean that the ToR was not within the realm of science in 1900?

Exactly, because in 1900 the ToR was simply unknown to science. By now it is pretty well known and thousands of related studies have been published.

How will you get out of this?

Herzblut

 

[BillyJoe]

We've spent pages and pages explaining to you that our position is NOT a 100% assertive "God does not Exist", but that the very unknowability skews the odds heavily in that direction.

Please quote me exactly where you, or anyone else, besides myself, have stated this.
All I have read repeatedly is:

"THERE IS NO GOD"

Suddenly you're agreeing with I've been saying all along...

That's what those quotes from Dawkins are getting at too, and you're still questioning it? It still hasn't sunk in? You just don't seem to be paying attention!

...but claiming that I'm the one who hasn't understood!!!


I assure you I understand.
Just as I understand you are now in damage control.

 

[Mashuna]

Please quote me exactly where you, or anyone else, besides myself, have stated this.
All I have read repeatedly is:

"THERE IS NO GOD"

Suddenly you're agreeing with I've been saying all along...


...but claiming that I'm the one who hasn't understood!!!


I assure you I understand.
Just as I understand you are now in damage control.

The part where people are disagreeing with you is here:

Unfortunately he also puts himself in group 6 regarding faeries - hmmm, something to discuss with him when we meet.

You know, the part where there is no difference between saying 'I live my life as though I there is no God' and 'I live my life as though there is no Easter Bunny'

The part about falsifying a negative.

Have you lent your username to Dustin? This whole argument seems to be going in a very familiar direction.

 

[BillyJoe]

I place myself in category 6 - I have stated this implicitly many times...

You had better provide a reference to where you were implicit.
Here is what you have stated repeatedly and explicitly:

"THERE IS NO GOD"

Not in capitals and in bold - that was my device to make it crystal clear what exactly it was that you were saying that I objected to. Yet you made not the slightest attempt at a retraction.


Compare:

"THERE IS NO GOD"

with:

Category 6: Very low probability, but short of zero: De facto atheist: "I cannot know for certain but I think god is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that god does not exist"

Now compare with:

Category 7: Strong atheist: "I know there is no god"


You specifically stated that the fact that "you cannot prove a negative" allows you to say "there is no god", and I specifically stated that you are not allowed that conclusion.

...I cannot rememeber if I have explicitly stated it before now.

The answer is no.
Despite numerous invitations to do so, you have specifically refrained from making any such statement, and merely repeated your mantra:

"THERE IS NO GOD"

At no point have I implied that I belong in category 7.

Category 7: Strong atheist: "I know there is no god"
Mobyseven: "THERE IS NO GOD"

The whole, "You can't prove a negative," thing hasn't really sunk in with you yet, has it?

Oh, I think it's sunk in good and proper what has been going on in this thread.

 

[volatile]

Please quote me exactly where you, or anyone else, besides myself, have stated this.
All I have read repeatedly is:

"THERE IS NO GOD"

Suddenly you're agreeing with I've been saying all along...

Suddenly? Suddenly?You're going to pretend you haven't been in this thread and try and make it look like I'm the one changing my position?

Let's see, shall we?

That's exactly what we've been trying to explain - with formal logic, with analogy and with discussions of falsifiability. We all know that we can't prove or disprove God, and indeed that's entirely at the basis of what M7 and I have been going over in post after post. You're so nearly there. Yes, we are saying the same thing - that God can't be proven or disproven.

Well, that's once. Maybe you missed that one?

Where we differ is on what conclusions we can draw from this imprecision - and if you'd just re-read anything MobySeven or I have said in this thread, you'd see that its precisely the nature of the doubt which must, logically, lead us to conclude more strongly towards the "not exist" than "exist" position.

Oh look, I said it again.

Back to God: as already shown, "God exists" is not a falsifiable hypothesis [for your deistic definition of God], thus is useless. "God does not exist" is a falsifiable one, and, though it has not been conclusively proven, the preponderance of the evidence is on its side.

Three times.

I can't put it any simpler than this: a falsifiable statement is something that it is impossible to prove right but is possible to prove wrong. Negative statements are necessarily falsifiable, in that you can prove them wrong by proving a counter-example.

Verifiability and falsifiability are different things.

In the current context, Billie -Joe suggests we should all be agnostic about God (but not about faeries or unicorns, for reasons he has yet to logically explain). However, if we pose the God hypothesis in a falsifiable form - "God does not exist" - then instead of agnosticism, we are necessarily lead to consider that, given the lack of evidence *for* God, it is sensible to believe more strongly that he doesn't exist.

Dawkins talks about this at some length in The God Delusion, but the thrust of his argument is precisely upon these lines - just because something might be possible (yes, God *might* exist), the probability of it occurring is not equal to it not occurring.

Oh look, that's four. I only counted a few posts back, and only those by me.

You've just proved that you haven't understood a single word anyone in this thread has said to you, and you've made yourself look ridiculous by being smug about it.

------------

ETA: Just wanted to come back here and elaborate on something. Not only have we all been saying that we can't prove God exists, all of us have predicated our entire argument on this very matter. It's why we've been talking about aether, the tooth fairy and falsifiability. ALL OF THIS THREAD has been about the unknowability of the God hypothesis, and now you're claiming that we said that we could prove there was no God? Where have you been? What have you been reading?

It's so maddeningly frustrating to see that not a single thing we've written has sunk in, to the point that you make posts such as the one quoted above which misrepresent, misunderstand and misconstrue everything we've all been painstakingly trying to explain to you for the past few weeks...

 

[BillyJoe]

The part where people are disagreeing with you is here:

You know, the part where there is no difference between saying 'I live my life as though I there is no God' and 'I live my life as though there is no Easter Bunny'

The part about falsifying a negative.

The argument about "falsifying a negative" and the argument about the god not being as easily dismissed as other characters are completely separate issues.

There is the part of the argument where you claim that "falsifiying a negative" enables you to claim "there is no god".
That argument is false, as we all now seem to be agreeing.


Then there is the part about where I claim god is not as easily dismissed as the tooth faerie.
This is an entirely separate issue.
The tooth faerie is not posited as doing anything we don't already have explanations for (parents). The tooth faerie was not even meant to be anything other than a fantasy character to amuse young children.
God is posited as doing something for which we have, as yet, no explanation at all (time without beginning or something out of nothing). Also we have interpretations of reality that sound about as unlikely as god himself (eg the interconnectedness of every quantum particle with every other quantum particle in the universe; backwards in time causation; multiple worlds). And who'd ever have thought that time dilation would be a feature of reality?
Hence god is not as easily dismissed as the tooth faerie.
Pretty straight forward.

 

[volatile]

There is the part of the argument where you claim that "falsifiying a negative" enables you to claim "there is no god".
That argument is false, as we all now seem to be agreeing.

I swear I'm going to scream...

 

[BillyJoe]

volatile,

Your first two quotes are one post split into two.
And it was the start of your agreeing to what was my point all along
Here is the sequence of posts:

Volatile:
That's exactly what we've been trying to explain - with formal logic, with analogy and with discussions of falsifiability. We all know that we can't prove or disprove God, and indeed that's entirely at the basis of what M7 and I have been going over in post after post. You're so nearly there. Yes, we are saying the same thing - that God can't be proven or disproven.
Where we differ is on what conclusions we can draw from this imprecision - and if you'd just re-read anything MobySeven or I have said in this thread, you'd see that its precisely the nature of the doubt which must, logically, lead us to conclude more strongly towards the "not exist" than "exist" position.

That is your two quotes in one.
Here was my reply:

BJ reply:
Unfortunately, I don't need to re-read anything, I read everything and re-read everthing as I go along. I understand exactly what he has said. It's not exactly new territory. My concern is with his, and your, certainty.
But I see you now understand is as well as Mobyseven.
Mobyseven has his "conventional conversation", you have your "imprecision", "doubt" and "more strongly towards".
I think the two of you need to chew on those words for a while.

Clearly this is where I first began to realise that both of you were retreating from your no uncertain statement "There is no god"
You did not reply to this.
Your next post was this - posted today!

Probably because everyone else has gotten cross explaining these thigns over and over again. We've spent pages and pages explaining to you that our position is NOT a 100% assertive "God does not Exist", but that the very unknowability skews the odds heavily in that direction.
That's what those quotes from Dawkins are getting at too, and you're still questioning it? It still hasn't sunk in? You just don't seem to be paying attention!

Here you confirm your uncertainty that "there is no god"
Which was my point all along!

 

[BillyJoe]

volatile,

Your third quote:

volatile:
That's exactly what we've been trying to explain - with formal logic, with analogy and with discussions of falsifiability. We all know that we can't prove or disprove God, and indeed that's entirely at the basis of what M7 and I have been going over in post after
Back to God: as already shown, "God exists" is not a falsifiable hypothesis [for your deistic definition of God], thus is useless. "God does not exist" is a falsifiable one, and, though it has not been conclusively proven, the preponderance of the evidence is on its side.
This is where you seem to be going wrong. You seem to conflate unprovability with possible existence, but in fact the very lack of evidence or proof you use to keep God as a possibility actually more or less confirms his non-existence, in the same way as aether.

It seems I did not reply to this post which is unusual, because I usually do reply to any post directed to me. Still there were about four of you attacking at about this time and I had made a few detailed responses to other posts at this time. Perhaps I ran out of time.
Anyway, sorry about that.

But it is a mixed message:

...though it has not been conclusively proven, the preponderance of the evidence is on its side......the very lack of evidence or proof you use to keep God as a possibility actually more or less confirms his non-existence...

So does the very lack of evidence keep god as a possibility or does it more or less confirm his non-existence?
And still no clear rejection ot the statement "there is no god"
Your above statement should have led you to a rejection of this statement, but, despite many invitations, no such rejection was forthcoming.

 

[volatile]

I know it was one post split into two. I split them! But you said " All I have read repeatedly is: "THERE IS NO GOD"" which is obviously a lie.

Furthermore, it's you who seem to be getting to understand what we were saying all along (which was never "There is no God" - hence why we've been discussing faeries and aether!), but trying to wrap up your capitulation in smugness.

All you need to do now is actually learn WHY we've been using doubt as the very basis of our argument. It's not something we've come to recently because of your superb debating skills! Everything we've been arguing since the first post has been predicated on what the doubt can actually teach us, and how it should factor into our belief systems.

Read. Understand. Learn.

 

[BillyJoe]

volatile,

Your forth quote was directed to Herzblut.

I have to confess to following that discussion only superficially - though only because of time restraints.

 

[volatile]

And still no clear rejection ot the statement "there is no god"
Your above statement should have led you to a rejection of this statement, but, despite many invitations, no such rejection was forthcoming.

We've been telling you, for pages and pages, that this is impossible. Indeed, our entire argument is predicated on this impossibility. We've explained why, in various styles - explication, formal logic, and analogy. We've also explained why, although this is impossible, it is the most rational standpoint to take at the current moment, given the evidence.

That you're still asking for "a clear rejection" shows just how little attention you've been paying.

 

[volatile]

volatile,

Your forth quote was directed to Herzblut.

I have to confess to following that discussion only superficially - though only because of time restraints.

Keep digging, or retract your statement "All I have been reading is "There is no god"".

--------------------


As an exercise to prove you've read our arguments, explain to me in your own words what you think my, and MobySeven's, argument actually is.

Yours is "We can't prove a deistic God doesn't exist, so I remain agnostic 50/50 as to his existence or otherwise." Right?

 

[Mashuna]

Keep digging, or retract your statement "All I have been reading is "There is no god"".

--------------------


As an exercise to prove you've read our arguments, explain to me in your own words what you think my, and MobySeven's, argument actually is.

Yours is "We can't prove a deistic God doesn't exist, so I remain agnostic 50/50 as to his existence or otherwise." Right?

Interesting reading, as my interpretation of BJ's posts was that he was adopting a de-facto atheist position with regard to God, but was assigning a higher probability for God to exist on the basis of some kind of God-of-the-Gaps reasoning. The only disagreement in position was regarding the equating of the likelihood of God's existance with the likelihood of Sagan's dragon's existance. Here is where he also disagrees with what Dawkins was saying.

The only reason I can see that he holds to this position is because of his holiding to a God-of-the-Gaps position, which I consider to be pointless and unnecessary, but does at least provide a differentiation between his concept of God (as described in this thread) and the dragon.

Of course, I could be entirely wrong, that's just how I read it .

 

[volatile]

BillyJoe, I'm willing to explain this to you again. I'm going to try one last time, for the sake of politeness.


-------------------------------------------

Firstly, for clarity let me categorically state that we cannot prove that a deistic God doesn't exist.

However, does this mean we should remain 50/50 as to His existence or otherwise, as you seem to be claiming? I would strongly argue "No", and here's why:

It comes back to falsifiability, a concept at the heart of reason. I need to explain this again, as you don't seem to have quite grasped it. Unknowlingly, you base so much of your thoughts about everything from whether to jump off the top of tall buildings to whether you think evolution is true on falsifiability. You just need to understand why that's the case, and I'll try again to explain:

Nothing in science in ever "proved". Nothing. Karl Popper realised that whilst a thousand experiments can repeatedly provide the same result, it only takes one to disprove a hypothesis. Thus, all scientific hypotheses must be "falsifiable" - that is, there must be at least one conceivable result which would undermine the whole idea, and you must look for it. Only if a hypothesis is falsifiable is it useful in the search for knowledge.

An upshot of falsifiability is that precisely because you expend a great deal of energy looking to prove yourself wrong, every subsequent positive result strengthens a hypothesis. It does not "prove" it - the hypothesis remains susceptible to being falsified, as it must - but it becomes strengthened. Evolution, for example, remains falsifiable - fossil rabbits in the pre-Cambrian, anyone? - but the evidence points very strongly towards it happening. This is important - though doubt remains, the evidence points more strongly (and often very strongly) in one direction instead of the other. I take it, BJ, that you are not "agnostic" about evolution.

So, that out of the way, on to God. From Wikipedia, which I quoted in a previous post:

"If God is conceived of as an unobservable transcendental being, then one could not disprove his existence by observation. The assertion 'God exists' would be unfalsifiable because of the nature of God. On the other hand, the assertion 'God does not exist' is falsifiable. This assertion can be falsifiable by demonstrating the existence of God."

We can thus discard 'God exists' as our base hypothesis, as, being unfalsifiable, is useless in determining the 'truth' of God's existence. "God does not exist", however, is falsifiable, and thus useful as a hypothesis to start our investigations with. Doubt remains - this is not a conclusive proof or statement of "fact" such as you might construe it - but given the lack of evidence to the contrary, despite looking very very hard for it, it is not reasonable to conclude that it is false.

Falsifiability skews the probability of the veracity of a hypothesis away from the 50/50 point and towards a conclusion it is reasonable and rational to hold. This is why comparisons with aether, and with faeries, are valid ones, despite your protestations.

There. I tried. I hope you realise where you've been going wrong, and stop with the smugness, namecalling and grandstanding.

 

[Mobyseven]

BillyJoe, I'm willing to explain this to you again. I'm going to try one last time, for the sake of politeness.


-------------------------------------------

Firstly, for clarity let me categorically state that we cannot prove that a deistic God doesn't exist.

However, does this mean we should remain 50/50 as to His existence or otherwise, as you seem to be claiming? I would strongly argue "No", and here's why:

It comes back to falsifiability, a concept at the heart of reason. I need to explain this again, as you don't seem to have quite grasped it. Unknowlingly, you base so much of your thoughts about everything from whether to jump off the top of tall buildings to whether you think evolution is true on falsifiability. You just need to understand why that's the case, and I'll try again to explain:

Nothing in science in ever "proved". Nothing. Karl Popper realised that whilst a thousand experiments can repeatedly provide the same result, it only takes one to disprove a hypothesis. Thus, all scientific hypotheses must be "falsifiable" - that is, there must be at least one conceivable result which would undermine the whole idea, and you must look for it. Only if a hypothesis is falsifiable is it useful in the search for knowledge.

An upshot of falsifiability is that precisely because you expend a great deal of energy looking to prove yourself wrong, every subsequent positive result strengthens a hypothesis. It does not "prove" it - the hypothesis remains susceptible to being falsified, as it must - but it becomes strengthened. Evolution, for example, remains falsifiable - fossil rabbits in the pre-Cambrian, anyone? - but the evidence points very strongly towards it happening. This is important - though doubt remains, the evidence points more strongly (and often very strongly) in one direction instead of the other. I take it, BJ, that you are not "agnostic" about evolution.

So, that out of the way, on to God. From Wikipedia, which I quoted in a previous post:

"If God is conceived of as an unobservable transcendental being, then one could not disprove his existence by observation. The assertion 'God exists' would be unfalsifiable because of the nature of God. On the other hand, the assertion 'God does not exist' is falsifiable. This assertion can be falsifiable by demonstrating the existence of God."

We can thus discard 'God exists' as our base hypothesis, as, being unfalsifiable, is useless in determining the 'truth' of God's existence. "God does not exist", however, is falsifiable, and thus useful as a hypothesis to start our investigations with. Doubt remains - this is not a conclusive proof or statement of "fact" such as you might construe it - but given the lack of evidence to the contrary, despite looking very very hard for it, it is not reasonable to conclude that it is false.

Falsifiability skews the probability of the veracity of a hypothesis away from the 50/50 point and towards a conclusion it is reasonable and rational to hold. This is why comparisons with aether, and with faeries, are valid ones, despite your protestations.

There. I tried. I hope you realise where you've been going wrong, and stop with the smugness, namecalling and grandstanding.

Quoted for emphasis. Do you understand yet what we've been saying BillyJoe?

 

[Z]

I think there's been a vast general miscommunication in this thread, since as near as I can tell, BJ's saying the same general thing... and most of you are using a kind of double speak by saying that 'There is no God' is the same thing as 'There is a reasonably high chance that there is no God, and therefore we will treat the concept of God as if there were no God'.

Just my personal observations.

OTOH, BJ is refusing to acknowledge that, philosophically, you cannot prove a negative, which makes a deistic or pantheistic God concept scientifically non-falsifiable, and therefore rejectable in form. But honestly, if he hasn't grasped that by now, he never will.

Still, I think both sides are trying to say much the same thing, but the language used has resulted in some head-on collisions...

Oh well.

 

[volatile]

I think there's been a vast general miscommunication in this thread, since as near as I can tell, BJ's saying the same general thing... and most of you are using a kind of double speak by saying that 'There is no God' is the same thing as 'There is a reasonably high chance that there is no God, and therefore we will treat the concept of God as if there were no God'.

I have had the same niggling doubt that we might be arguing the same thing, but these are assuaged when you note he keeps coming back to demanding a "clear refutation" and the like, as well as harping on about not being able to prove God doesn't exist. The post above, in which he repeatedly said "All I keep reading is 'There is no God'" illustrates this quite nicely. He really hasn't followed the arguments at all, as from their foundation they have involved discussions of doubt. Indeed, questions of doubt about Santa Claus were what sparked his involvement in the thread in the first place IIRC.

He is saying that because we can't prove God doesn't exist, it is not reasonable to claim that this is so. MobySeven, in a previous, exasperated post, pointed out that nothing can be proven at all, but these kind of nuanced observations have been cast aside by BillieJoe, who seems to cling desperately to the idea of a deistic God being possible as the end point of the argument, ignoring probability and necessity clauses we've all been dissecting.

 

[Herzblut]

volatile, now that you fought so bravely here I will demonstrate to you that your argumentation is null and void.

Firstly, for clarity let me categorically state that we cannot prove that a deistic God doesn't exist.

We? Who is we? If you mean science: don't abuse science for your purposes. Your implicit notion that science even looks into the problem of God's existence is fallacious!

It comes back to falsifiability, a concept at the heart of reason.

Again mixing up incompliant areas, namely science and religion. A religious belief is a matter of belief, not reason.

Nothing in science in ever "proved". Nothing. Karl Popper realised that whilst a thousand experiments can repeatedly provide the same result, it only takes one to disprove a hypothesis.

This is irrelevant.

Thus, all scientific hypotheses must be "falsifiable" - that is, there must be at least one conceivable result which would undermine the whole idea, and you must look for it. Only if a hypothesis is falsifiable is it useful in the search for knowledge.

Your "God does not exist" is by no means any kind of scientific hypothesis. You fundamental flaw is believing that falsifiablity is necessary and sufficient for a scientific hypthesis. This is wrong.

Evolution, for example, remains falsifiable -

Evolutiontheory is a scientific theory, in contrast to e.g. christian belief.

So, that out of the way, on to God. From Wikipedia, which I quoted in a previous post:

"If God is conceived of as an unobservable transcendental being, then one could not disprove his existence by observation. The assertion 'God exists' would be unfalsifiable because of the nature of God. On the other hand, the assertion 'God does not exist' is falsifiable. This assertion can be falsifiable by demonstrating the existence of God."

We can thus discard 'God exists' as our base hypothesis,

No, "we" cannot "just discard" a belief, because:

1. Three billion people or so hold that belief
2. It is not a scientific hypothesis. You are extending the well-defined framework of science in an excessive manner.

"God does not exist", however, is falsifiable, and thus useful as a hypothesis to start our investigations with.

As explained already, you are hopelessly wrong. I repeat myself:

1. "God does not exist" is not a scientific hypothesis!

2. You cannot simply declare a hypothesis as falsifiable in science. You need to provide and exactly describe empirical observations that would lead to predictable results in order to decide whether the hypothesis is valid or not. It is scientific idiocy to say Hey, my "hypothesis" is negative, thus falsifiable! So - rush, rush and find a counterexample!

Falsifiability skews the probability of the veracity of a hypothesis away from the 50/50 point and towards a conclusion it is reasonable and rational to hold.

Since your reasoning is void from the very begining this conclusion is also invalid.

Also in a broader sense that you make a fundamentally wrong value judgment:

one should not hold a religious belief without scientific evidence for its metaphysical framework.

Here, you're mixing up - again - two non-compliant areas: science and religion. This is a fallacy.

The following valid statements can be hold:

(1) Transcendental entities are per se excluded from any scientific reasoning based upon the principal of economy of thought. No scientifc investigation will ever deal with the evaluation of transcendental religious claims. Science does not make any value judgment about the validity of such belief systems.

(2) God represents a predominant figure in certain belief systems.

That's it.

Herzblut