Is Atheism based on Logic or Faith?

[Tassman]

Those would work for a subset of gods that are claimed to be omnipotent, with a few others thrown in, too... but it's worth remembering that most god concepts, even of the ones that have been seriously put forth, are neither omnipotent nor creators of the universe. On the other end of things, both of the examples you named can be pulled off with trickery, especially when dealing with a much less advanced or more credulous population.

Potential for some subsets, sure. I really don't consider that to be particularly scientific, myself, though, especially when a generic term is being used that actually denotes more than just the subsets that could be reasonably addressed. That it's logical to not accept the gods to be the case given the lack of valid evidence for them, I wouldn't dispute. That's it's specifically scientific when encompassing completely unfalsifiable god concepts, though, is a point that I would disagree with. Certainly, numerous god concepts have been outright falsified and numerous other ones could be... but the examples you proposed would outright falsify numerous other god concepts where the god in question would simply not do those things, whether or not they had the ability.

Well this is what’s being questioned by those arguing for the possibility of god existing, hence the focus of my debate. But I confess to being parochial in only referring to the Abrahamic god when it comes to the possibility of falsification. I previously noted that the thunder god Thor has already been falsified and the same applies to all the nature gods and various dinky tribal gods etc.

 

[punshhh]

So, we have the material universe which has been demonstrated to be capable of incredibly complex behavior, and is the material from which our brains are made, alterations to which has been overwhelmingly demonstrated to result in alterations to our consciousness...

This appears to be the case and it is practical to treat it as real. But what we are discussing is not practicality in the material world, we are discussing existence and philosophically this entails the primary piece of evidence we are aware of, which is the personal experience of being. This experience is in the form of consciousness and includes thought and cognition. The physical material world is, from this perspective, essentially clothing that experience, as a medium of manifestation and may not be the primary form of existence. Leaving the personal experience of being as a potential universal eternal existence and physical temporal worlds as secondary, perhaps fabrications utilised in some way by the personal experience of being.

This philosophical perspective on our existence has been around for some time. Indeed in Hinduism it is suggested that there are two other worlds and humanity embodies all three in one person.

But instead you're arguing that consciousness might be a product of some previously undetected and possibly undetectable material which, despite having such an incredibly tenuous connection to the physical world that we are unable to detect it, is somehow manages to interact with living creatures?

The fact that we are present in a physical world and are not aware of other worlds does not mean there are not other worlds around. Also the fact that we are not aware of interactions with such other worlds does not mean either that they are not there, or that they are not connected in some unknown way.

 

[punshhh]

You go wrong as early as the highlighted portion, by completely misunderstanding the nature of the discussion. The question is not whether any given person believes X is possible, impossible or flurblegurble, but that Navigator is attempting to introduce it into the discussion without even the most basic prima facie case to support it, and then expects everyone to treat it as a possibility on a par with any other. As Russell's Teapot demonstrates, that not how it works.

Navigator has not introduced it. It is the atheists who deny the existence of god who introduce it. Navigator is responding to this by pointing out that a lot of these atheists actually believe that god doesn't exist.

There may be fairies at the bottom of my garden. There may be a huge dragon living at the centre of the Earth. There may be a particular species of earthworm which is actually a superintelligent alien refugee from another galaxy and could explain the whole nature of existence to us if we could only locate it and find a way of communicating. As I'm offering not the slightest hint of evidence to support this wild speculation, how seriously are you going to take it? The fairies could give you special blessings - will I find you hunting around my garden? The dragon could destroy the world - will you lead an expedition to find and kill it? The earthworm could answer all our questions - will you start collecting, categorising and testing all known worms around the world in the hope of finding the right one?

I am not going to take those scenarios seriously (although I don't dismiss the possibility) because they are human inventions.

No, you won't. For all your careful tiptoeing and special pleading, you understand the distinction between having proof of a claim and having just enough evidence to demonstrate that you haven't pulled it from your nethers. There is a burden of proof on anyone making a claim - if that person chooses to soften the claim to a vague "there might be X", that burden is reduced, but it doesn't disappear. It just means that the burden is to provide a prima facie case for taking the possibility seriously.

The only claim I can see is that it is ridiculous to consider the existence of gods or consciousness continuing after death. Myself and Navigator are simply saying that we don't know and can't know this and as such are not going to dismiss it as a possibility.

If you want to argue that there really might be a teapot floating around in the asteroid belt, at the very least you need to provide some evidence of one being sighted, or ejected from a rocket/shuttle at some point in the past. Not proof, just a reason to take you seriously. Otherwise, we must regard any crackpot theory as on an equal footing with our entire knowledge, and consider the possible existence of every conceivable object or being. That way madness lies.

I was saying it is possible (the possibility (technology) exists ) that there is a teapot up there, evidence of this is only required when a claim is made that there is a teapot up there.

 

[Navigator]

It's worth noting, then, that given science, the evidence is never absolute for anything. It can be considered to be overwhelmingly powerful, but never absolute. Does that make it any more or less reasonable to hold something as likely to be true and treat it as such for all intensive purposes?

In relation to belief, no - not for me. I am content with not knowing until absolute evidence comes along rather than feeling it necessary to express beliefs about things which are not absolutely proven. I am not in a position to be insecure about not knowing, and there is plenty to be curious about, speculate on, seek data about etc.

Since there are absolutes (as far as I see anyway) I don't see why science doesn't have evidence for these unless of course it is not necessary to involve science in regard to absolutes.

 

[Last of the Fraggles]

I am not going to take those scenarios seriously (although I don't dismiss the possibility) because they are human inventions.

.

as are all God hypotheses. In fact every hypothesis is a human invention.

 

[Aepervius]

I don't argue that it looks this way, but that it still might not be this way, because so little is known about the nature of consciousness, it is unknown whether god exists or not and whether consciousness continues after the body has died.

It is precisely why my position exists.

Because (as I did explain) it is assumed that consciousness is a product of the brain due to the fact that it cannot be verified not to be but is still possibly something that uses the human and other terrestrial forms.

As far as biology/medicine goes you are wrong. It is pretty much a fact which can be verified by altering the structure of the brain, and its impact on the emerging process of thought and consciousness. And do happens in many situation to unfortunate people to have brain damage. It is not an assumption, it is a verified hypotheses.

If you have an alternate better hypotheses (backed by fact) feel free to have it and presented in nature or something. Be aware that it must properly explain all the various effect of all localized brain damage. But until you have , rejecting the accepted fact based hypotheses is refusing scientific facts (well medicinal).

 

[punshhh]

as are all God hypotheses. In fact every hypothesis is a human invention.

Yes and more than this all concepts are human inventions.

 

[asydhouse]

As there are multiple god definitions and multiple styles of deity worship (monontheism, deism, polytheism, pantheism, etc.), how can anyone provide evidence that god doesn't exist?

You can test each and every definition. As each defined god fails to manifest, cross it off the list.

After a while, the definitions will be found to recycle various aspects of previous definitions, and so can be dismissed as already having failed.

I'm confident that eventually there will be no untested definitions. That's because all of the definitions of "god" will be the product of human imagination, and it has already become obvious that the actual universe is far more strange than the raw human imagination can match. (By the way, of course by definition of "prove" it is not possible to prove a negative, so strictly speaking you can not prove that anything does not exist… as has been explained exhaustively already in this thread, you can only prove the positive, so it is incumbent on the person making the claim that something exists to show that it exists. The null hypothesis is the default position. Define a god, test for it. If it manifests the properties you have defined it to have, you have demonstrated that value of "god". If it fails to manifest, that formulation was wrong, so it has been tested and failed. If one of your postulated formulations manifests, congratulations, you have proved it exists. Until then, since none of the definitions we have is plausible within the model of reality that we have, which has so far passed any attempts to test it, we can assume that they are so implausible as to be impossible. God does not exist, as far as we can tell so far.)

The only difficulty is that eventually we may come into contact with aliens whose technology is so strange that we won't be able to comprehend it. That will either be a great era for human science as it tries to explore the new physical possibilities/conceptual frameworks/maths required; or it will be an era in which humanity is sold into slavery by god-bothering illiterate-in-scientific-process "mystics".

 

[punshhh]

Nope! I've NEVER said that. I've said throughout that X is possible but improbable. In Navigator’s “god” example, I claimed its existence was possible by acknowledging that “god doesn't exist” was a falsifiable proposition. It can be falsified by producing substantiated evidence of god existing. The burden-of-proof rests with the one making the positive claim.

I have already pointed out that the probability of one unknown over another unknown is unknown.

I can see a difficulty in falsification here. I doubt physical proof would be adequate. If god appeared physically in front of someone, that may not actually be god, but an imposter, or a jester. The same with miracles, these could be performed by an advanced alien and fool us again.

I would think that to be really convincing god would be required to take the persons soul out of this world and place it in other worlds etc.

Anything from pixies to unicorns to gods may exist. But without credible evidence their existence remains improbable to a greater or lessor degree. “May exist” is meaningless in this context.

Not meaningless, it means that the person stating it does not rule out the existence of these and other things.Probabilities can only really be applied to physical matter.

It is not reasonable to claim without evidence that a teapot is orbiting in the asteroid belt. IF such a teapot was actually discovered then your explanations could be considered “reasonable”. But only then!

You're over egging it a bit here. I was talking of possibilities, not likelyhood.

Navigator was demanding that I provide evidence that such “possibilities” didn't exist and this is impossible. He seems to give equal weight to ALL possible things existing, whereas there are varying degrees of probability ranging from highly probable (e.g. the sun will rise tomorrow) to highly improbable (e.g. there’s a teapot orbiting in the asteroid belt).

Are you going to stop saying that a demand has been made now?

 

[Tassman]

Navigator has not introduced it. It is the atheists who deny the existence of god who introduce it. Navigator is responding to this by pointing out that a lot of these atheists actually believe that god doesn't exist.
I am not going to take those scenarios seriously (although I don't dismiss the possibility) because they are human inventions.

Just as god is probably a human invention; there is no substantiated evidence to the contrary.

The only claim I can see is that it is ridiculous to consider the existence of gods or consciousness continuing after death. Myself and Navigator are simply saying that we don't know and can't know this and as such are not going to dismiss it as a possibility.

No one is dismissing the existence of gods or consciousness continuing after death “as a possibility” that I can see. Merely that without credible evidence such notions are highly improbable.

I was saying it is possible (the possibility (technology) exists ) that there is a teapot up there, evidence of this is only required when a claim is made that there is a teapot up there.

Yes the technology exists to put a teapot in orbit but why stop at teapots? The technological capacity exists to put the Venus de Milo or Liberace's piano in orbit too but there are no claims that anyone has. The whole point of Russell's original analogy was that the burden of proof rests on those making an improbable claim, not the skeptics who question it.

 

[punshhh]

You can test each and every definition. As each defined god fails to manifest, cross it off the list.

After a while, the definitions will be found to recycle various aspects of previous definitions, and so can be dismissed as already having failed.

I'm confident that eventually there will be no untested definitions. That's because all of the definitions of "god" will be the product of human imagination, and it has already become obvious that the actual universe is far more strange than the raw human imagination can match.

The only difficulty is that eventually we may come into contact with aliens whose technology is so strange that we won't be able to comprehend it. That will either be a great era for human science as it tries to explore the new physical possibilities/conceptual frameworks/maths required; or it will be an era in which humanity is sold into slavery by god-bothering illiterate-in-scientific-process "mystics".

Mystics and slavery? Advanced mystics would have left behind the trappings of materialism by then

 

[asydhouse]

Q. What kind of god do you say doesn't exist?

A. What kind you got?

Basically that's what I was trying to say! Thanks tsig!

 

[asydhouse]

Mystics and slavery? Advanced mystics would have left behind the trappings of materialism by then

yeah yeah… so you say… I don't trust em myself.

 

[asydhouse]

While it's impossible to rule out all possible positives, one can prove a specific negative by proving a conflicting and mutually exclusive positive. So yeah, I'd need to know what kind of god.

By the way, where did mikeb768 run off to?

Maybe coincidence, but soon after I first posted that his god was a monster, he begged out saying he had to spend no more time here for awhile, and left us with some bogus religious benefictions.

Too soon… he might not have even seen my vow to defy his monstrous god to its face, were it to turn out to exist. Pity that.

 

[asydhouse]

<snip>

...Navigator was demanding that I disprove his claims of things possibly existing…

<snip>

I'll save Navigator the trouble of just interjecting here to remind you that Navigator never demands or says anything: if you scour his post carefully, you will always find that he has some weasel phrase in there to disavow his espousing or demanding any view or response at all. Your mistake. Perhaps you are even being dishonest by claiming that he said something, when if you had only read what he wrote ever so carefully you would have noticed that he never made any such statement or claim as you are ascribing to him.

 

[Aridas]

In relation to belief, no - not for me. I am content with not knowing until absolute evidence comes along rather than feeling it necessary to express beliefs about things which are not absolutely proven.

Well, it's true that you don't have absolute evidence that things will tend to change towards or maintain a particular temperature if one puts them into a powered, fully operational, and properly used refrigerator. Given that you don't have absolute evidence, obviously, you have no imperative to use a refrigerator, right?

More directly, you seem to have issues with the difference between accepting an idea to be true *because* it's useful to accept and accepting an idea to be true because it's 100% certain to be the case.

I am not in a position to be insecure about not knowing, and there is plenty to be curious about, speculate on, seek data about etc.

There's plenty to be curious about, speculate on, and seek data about, even when one accepts numerous things to be true for useful purposes. The efforts tend to be far more directed towards learning more useful information, in that case, no less.

Since there are absolutes (as far as I see anyway) I don't see why science doesn't have evidence for these unless of course it is not necessary to involve science in regard to absolutes.

Seriously? You're jumping from "absolute evidence" to "evidence of absolutes?" The two are very different things. Science has amassed lots and lots of evidence about what seem to be absolutes. There is still no such thing as absolute evidence when it comes to understanding reality.

 

[asydhouse]

This appears to be the case and it is practical to treat it as real. But what we are discussing is not practicality in the material world, we are discussing existence and philosophically this entails the primary piece of evidence we are aware of, which is the personal experience of being. This experience is in the form of consciousness and includes thought and cognition. The physical material world is, from this perspective, essentially clothing that experience, as a medium of manifestation and may not be the primary form of existence. Leaving the personal experience of being as a potential universal eternal existence and physical temporal worlds as secondary, perhaps fabrications utilised in some way by the personal experience of being.

This philosophical perspective on our existence has been around for some time. Indeed in Hinduism it is suggested that there are two other worlds and humanity embodies all three in one person.


The fact that we are present in a physical world and are not aware of other worlds does not mean there are not other worlds around. Also the fact that we are not aware of interactions with such other worlds does not mean either that they are not there, or that they are not connected in some unknown way.

In the first hilited part you are claiming that "consciousness" can come before physical manifestation: by saying consciousness is clothed in the physical, the clear connotation is that consciousness could be a nonphysical pre-existing condition or "substance" in itself. There is absolutely no logical reason to make such a supposition.

This is because the second hilited statement of yours is begging the question of undiscovered forces/matter. Given that all physical phenomena we are aware of are adequately accommodated within the model of physics we currently have, your positing of undiscovered forces/substances is exactly akin to the Russell's teapot. There's just no need to make the proposition. In fact, there is no room in the model for an undiscovered force. It's not required. It's idle speculation which has no bearing on actuality. It's a conceit!

 

[Tassman]

I have already pointed out that the probability of one unknown over another unknown is unknown.

Just saying "X is possible", without providing credible evidence will leave you with an unknown.

I can see a difficulty in falsification here. I doubt physical proof would be adequate. If god appeared physically in front of someone, that may not actually be god, but an imposter, or a jester. The same with miracles, these could be performed by an advanced alien and fool us again.

It wouldn't be easy, but the claim of no god existing is nevertheless potentially falsifiable. But, frankly it’s not my problem.

I would think that to be really convincing god would be required to take the persons soul out of this world and place it in other worlds etc.

You mean like Muhammad’s travels to the seventh heaven on his mighty steed Buraq or St Paul being “caught up to the third heaven"? And what do you mean by “soul”?

Not meaningless, it means that the person stating it does not rule out the existence of these and other things. Probabilities can only really be applied to physical matter.

No-one should rule out such possibilities but their existence remains improbable to a greater or lesser degree without supporting evidence . I don’t accept your limiting of “probabilities”.

You're over egging it a bit here. I was talking of possibilities, not likelyhood.

You were talking of “reasonable” possibility. My comment was that such a possibility is only “reasonable” if one has good cause to think that a teapot has been placed in orbit in the first place. Otherwise it joins the ranks of other improbable possibilities like pixies and unicorns.

Are you going to stop saying that a demand has been made now?

I’ll rephrase: Navigator was requesting that I provide evidence that such “possibilities” didn't exist and this is impossible. He seems to give equal weight to ALL possible things existing, whereas there are varying degrees of probability ranging from highly probable (e.g. the sun will rise tomorrow) to highly improbable (e.g. there’s a teapot orbiting in the asteroid belt).

I'll save Navigator the trouble of just interjecting here to remind you that Navigator never demands or says anything: if you scour his post carefully, you will always find that he has some weasel phrase in there to disavow his espousing or demanding any view or response at all. Your mistake. Perhaps you are even being dishonest by claiming that he said something, when if you had only read what he wrote ever so carefully you would have noticed that he never made any such statement or claim as you are ascribing to him.

All too true, O wise one! (Sigh!)

 

[Aridas]

You can test each and every definition. As each defined god fails to manifest, cross it off the list.

No, you really can't do that validly. If you think you can, you really haven't been paying attention to the diversity of god concepts and the inherent unfalsifiability of numerous god concepts. What one can do is demonstrate where the burden of proof is in the first place with regards to their claim for the unfalsifiable ones.

After a while, the definitions will be found to recycle various aspects of previous definitions, and so can be dismissed as already having failed.

This really does not follow logically at all. If they recycled impossible or falsified aspects you could have an argument for those, yes, but your statement is much broader than that.

 

[Brian-M]

It can be observed that causality and agency occur naturally in the world we find ourselves in.

Agency in the form of biological organisms whose functions are based upon chemical reactions, yes.

Therefore it is rational to consider that these two phenomena occur on a more universal scale,

You mean like alien-life forms? Sure, that's a rational possibility to consider.

But if you mean something that's not based on chemical reactions, no. That doesn't follow.

this would include the possibility of intelligent fabricators.

Hypothetical possibilities such as ancient aliens visiting earth, or that life on earth was seeded by aliens? Sure.

Such things could in certain circumstances equate to gods.

To inhabitants of primitive cultures, yes. But they wouldn't equate to gods from our point of view, nor would they be covered by the concept of god as used in this specific discussion.