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Author | Topic: I Know That God Does Not Exist | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Stile writes:
This strikes me as more of a talking point than an actual argument. You're sitting back with your arms folded and demanding, "Show me the evidence." If there is no evidence forthcoming, you claim victory. It may be technically valid but it's weak.
I, and many other people, have looked for where God is proposed to exist for almost the entirety of human history. It is possible that "God's existance" is the most looked for thing ever. But no data has ever been obtained that indicates God's existance.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Stile writes:
It's always better to "know" things based on positive evidence rather than lack of evidence.
Can you suggest a better way to "know" things? Stile writes:
I do have a problem with that actually. I think the likelihood of the Loch Ness monster existing is much higher than the likelihood of fairies or gods existing - simply because there are no unnatural attributes required. You have no problem saying "I know that the Loch Ness monster does not exist." Edited by ringo, : Xpelling.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined:
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subbie writes:
That could be because his expectations are unrealistic. If he expects to find an elephant in his living room and doesn't, it may be premature to conclude that elephants don't exist. He may need to broaden his scope.
Stile has investigated and found no evidence where such evidence would be expected to be. subbie writes:
Yes. Or do you maintain that we should stay in a constant state of agnosticism about any and all entities that do not exist? I think we should maintain a healthy state of agnosticism about things that do exist too.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined:
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subbie writes:
Allow me to tweak your example slightly. I have a book which purports itself to be an actual biography of James Bond. It tells what "really" happened in some of Bond's adventures and it also contends that some of them were just made up by Ian Fleming. You don't actually maintain an agnostic position on the existence of Sherlock Holmes as a real person. Nothing in the book suggests that it is fiction. So yes, I do maintain an agnostic position on whether James Bond was real. It's plausible that he was, just as it's plausible that Sherlock Holmes or Jesus was real. The one difference in Sherlock Holmes is that he was billed as fiction.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Stile writes:
How long did it take to find the Northwest Passage? We've only just begun to explore one little corner of the universe, so I think it's ludicrously premature to pretend that we've broadened our scope sufficiently.
If we have checked all testable proposals, wouldn't you say that we have broadened our scope sufficiently to rationally say that "I know God does not exist?" Stile writes: Do you know anything? I can say that I "know" how to do long division. I think we should leave it at that. Your idea of claiming we know something until we're proven wrong just seems silly to me.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Stile writes:
I'm claiming that you don't "know" He doesn't.
Are you claiming that God exists somewhere else in the universe? Stile writes:
Not "will" exist, could exist.
What rationally makes you think God will exist somewhere else in the universe? Stile writes:
It isn't just mathematics.I also know how to bake a cake. I know how to operate a table saw. I know how an airplane flies - to the extent that I could build one. I know how to get to France. ... then we most certainly cannot say that we know long division, or any of the rest of mathematics. I think you're misusing the word "know", diluting it from something that we can use on a repeatable basis to something that just hasn't been proven wrong yet.
Stile writes:
"All areas we're able to investigate" begins with nothing and we don't know where it ends. At what point on that continuum do you decide that you "know" something?
I claim that we know something until we're proven wrong after we've also investigated all areas we're able to investigate and analyze our resulting data set.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Tangle writes:
You're moving the goalposts. We're talking about "knowing" that God doesn't exist. Whether He exists "for practical purposes" is another question. If you can't find Him - and admittedly you've only looked in your own garden - that might mean that He doesn't matter but it has no bearing on whether or not He exists. As long as He could be "hiding", you can't legitimately claim that you "know" He doesn't exist.
If these snakes are invisible and leave no evidence of themselves, it makes no difference whether they exist or not - for all practical purposes they don't exist. And given the total lack of any evidence, only the delusional would continue to believe in them.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Tangle writes:
It's also an error to say that absence of evidence "is" evidence of absence. The proper approach is to say that absence of evidence can be evidence of absence. However, it is weak evidence at best, which is why the OP fails.
It's an error to say absence of evidence is not indicative of a simple absence.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined:
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Tangle writes:
The operative phrase there is "every feasible effort". As I mentioned earlier, evidence that there is no elephant in your living room says nothing about the overall existence of elephants. Evidence that there are no snakes in your garden says nothing about the overall existence of snakes. And evidence that there are no gods anywhere that we have looked says nothing about the overall existence of gods. If you've taken every feasible effort to establish evidence of presence, if it's not found, then it IS evidence of absence. Creationists use the same argument as the OP: Nothing we have tried has produced life in the lab, therefore they "know" that life can not arise by natural means. I don't like it when they use it and I don't like it when you use it either.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Straggler writes:
I did. How to bake a cake is known. How to get to France is known. The experiments are repeatable. Can you give an example of something you think we can legitimately describe as "known"....? Why can't we limit what is "known" to what actually is known instead of speculating that what is not known yet will never be known?
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined:
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Stile writes:
Step outside tonight and look at the third star from the left. It's thirty-nine boolagazillion light-years away. Some day, if and when we develop the capability to study the planets orbiting around it, we might find God on the far side watching a really big big-screen TV. I'm not asking for a lot, I'm not saying you have to produce God... just produce anything that even rationally points towards God. That's the same position we were in with regard to the Northwest Passage in the 1600s - and your great-great ancestor was claiming that he knew the Northwest Passage didn't exist.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Tangle writes:
So you're not just moving the goalposts; you're widening the goal to the point that kicking the ball in a vaguely easterly direction scores a goal. But your example becomes irrelevant to the topic.
My parameters were marked, the question was whether there where snakes in my garden, not the world or cosmos.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined:
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Straggler writes:
We don't know absolutely. We have a high level of confidence.
But how do you know that some unexpected anomolous result isn't around the corner? Straggler writes:
Nonsense. The snakes could be living in the neighour's yard and naturally retreat there whenever Tangle looks for them. He can not reasonably say, "I know there are no snakes in my garden." He can only have a high degree of confidence that they're not there when he's actually looking.
This is the equivalent response to your examples that the invisible snakes and gods that have yet to reveal themselves are to Stile's and Tangle's examples.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined:
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Stile writes:
A better quetion would be, "What makes it impossible? Or even unlikely?"
What is it about planets that we have learned that indicates that God might exist on one?
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Stile writes:
But that isn't a fact. I've proposed that God could be on a certain planet orbiting a certain star. You are not capable of testing that proposition any more than your ancestor was capable of testing a certain hypothetical passage through the ice in 1600. "What makes God's existance unlikely?" The fact that we have checked on every rational indication that's ever been proposed for God's existance (like being in the sun or protecting innocent people...) and they have all come up negative for God's existance. So again, what makes it unlikely that God is there?
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