Prove that God doesn't exist.

[Dr.Who]

This is a fine statement for certain aspects, for things that are logical. But when you start with stories talking snakes, seas parting, people turning into salt, and massive floods that formed when the earths legendary firmament was dropped from the heavens (Seriously, go look up what the firmament was). Science pretty much denies that ANY of this could happen. Animals don't talk, the earth was NEVER sealed inside of a large sphere of water, people don't turn to salt, and seas do not part.

Actually empiricism only tells us that we can verify what we have seen. It never says that what we have not seen is impossible.

Given the size of both space and time we as humans have seen barely a scratch of what is out there to be seen. We know almost nothing.

We don't even know much about what happened two hundred years ago.

Events that are described from thousands and thousands of years ago when we were not there are things we know little about.

Is there a spirit called Lucifer who can take the shape of a snake either literally or figuratively? As a spirit can it talk? the ONLY thing we know about that is what is written in the bible. IF we disregard that then we know ABSOLUTELY nothing at all about it. Outside of faith, it would be ridiculous to say that something we know absolutely nothing about did or did not happen. the most you can say about it is that you don't know. If you go beyond that then you are making a statement based on faith.

Do you really want to go on record as saying that something you know nothing about did not happen?

And what natural law describing only the natural world would contradict a description of a supernatural event? Now that would be ridiculous to use a natural law to discuss a supernatural event!

 

[Dr.Who]

Sure Jericho may have existed, but this doesn't lead any credence to the story on whole, in the bible. Only that a city of that name did indeed exist.

It allows us to say that if we list all the statements in the bible that we could theoretically categorize all of them either as verified or unverified.

If NONE were verified it would be more incredible. When some are verified it becomes less incredible. And if all were verified then it would be wholly credible.

Up until just now I did not say that verified events make the bible more credible. (and when verified events make it more credible they only do so as a matter of inductive logic not deductive) I just said that you can't use unverified events to decide that it is all made up. That would be illogical.

 

[Dr.Who]

We have tons of evidence that a lot of what is stated in the bible is simply impossible given the physics we all must abide by.

Science, physics, natural laws, etc. are all 100% based on inductive logic and are all really just assumptions about how the world works.

Basically it says that what we have observed is what we will always observe. But that is not deductively logical.

There have been thousand of thousands of times that what we thought we knew about physics needed to be revised because we saw something that we had never seen before.

If and when miraculous events described in the bible are later shown to be consistent with physics we will just revise the physics. Our lack of a complete understanding of physics does not mean that miracles are impossible. It just means we don't understand enough.

Are you going to say that our incomplete understanding of the laws of nature contradict a description of a miracle? That would be illogical. what you can say is that our present understanding does not support the miracle. There is a big difference between 'does not support' and 'contradicts'. 'Does not support' leaves open the potential time when it will later support it.

Are you also going to apply natural laws to supernatural events?

 

[Dr.Who]

It's not a huge leap to say that stories about turning water into wine and raising the dead, told at a time when mankind was even more superstitious and ignorant of scientific facts than is the case today, are not to be taken seriously.

Are you saying that the writers of the NT were so supestitious that they could not accurately describe a dead person and also a live person and be able to tell the difference? What evidence do you have that they are poor observers of what they see other than your pre-judgement of the possibility of the event? (because that would be circular) Today doctors rise people from the dead (withing minutes) all the time. I don't see why God could not do it in three days.

Nor is it a huge leap to believe that stories told half a century after the fact have most likely been embellished.

Other than you belief that something was embellished what evidence do you have that something was? Sure it could have been. But then again it might not have been.

But, you're right: There is no proof that these things didn't happen just as described. It is a huge leap of faith to believe that they did, but there is no way to prove definitively that they didn't.

Then I suppose we won't see you making positive statements that they did not happen. There is a world of difference between doubting that they did and saying that you know they did not.

 

[Dr.Who]

If you understand the nature of translations, then you understand that meanings can change in translation, and that translating even from modern languages often produces some twists. Translating from dead languages has even more pitfalls. When a document is translated, it is meanings that are translated, not words. Meanings are seen in a cultural context. Most of the time, words in one language have inexact counterparts in others. Sometimes, there is no word in one language that has the same meaning as one in another.

Try using an online translation service, one that does a literal, word for word translation and see what you get. Computers can match words, but humans match meanings. Matching meanings is not an exact science by any means.





Exactly. That's how we know that the word "virgin" was translated from a word that had a different meaning.

Another word is "forty", as in Jesus fasting forty days and forty nights, etc. That word is translated from a word that meant "many." That's why the number 40 appears so often in the modern text.



Which is exactly what happened: A whole doctrine was based on a translation. They didn't alter the original, of course, but then, no one can read the original anyway.

Yes. You are right. Now we can agree that the original was not altered by translations. Lot of other things can happen. Doctrines can misrepresent the originals and later translations can also not convey the original meaning best. But the original is still exactly as its most recent copy and is left untouched by translations.

 

[Dr.Who]

And what idiot tol[]out this:

'The ability to speak doesn't make one intelligent.'

quai-gon-jin

I think you have misread Top-Gun in part on this one and have become rude.

 

[top gun]

If I remove the elipses your sentence is left saying:


"NOPE! Because just like yours all made up."[/COLOR]

Did you mean to say that your hypothetical religion is all made up just like the bible is all made up?

If you did then you would be wrong again because we have just been discussing how some of it is not made up. If some of it is not made up then all of it cannot be made up.

If there is some part that you think was made up then put it out there for discussion.

I would assume you point to what you call hocus pocus. But just because you have not personally witnessed any miracles does not mean that they never happened. lack of evidence is not evidence.

I'm simply repeating what I've always said. I'm saying anyone can make up a brand new religion that has just as much weight of fact as any of today's man made religions.

The fact that there were people that passed down stories of miraculous things doesn't in any way make them proven. They are stories just like dragon slaying stories.

The only thing that is proven is...

A) There were people alive back then

B) Different groups traveled around with different and conflicting religious stories... Christian, Muslim, Jew, Pagan, Greek Mythology, Hindu, Buddaist... on & on...

The very fact of all the differences ALL so positive they are "THE ONES" in itself should be a red flag for a unbiased person.

I respect your right to believe. But there is no proof of it being anything more than a tale.

 

[top gun]

And what idiot told you that proving a negative isn't possible, hmmm?

Your ignorance about the things you speak of is quite clear, really.

I sincerely hope everyone is turning you in for these personal attacks.

They are unnecessary and I'm ALWAYS willing to clarify my statements. This would be the case here. This is the best textbook type explanation for the problem with "proving" or "not proving" a negative in the "God" discussion that I have found... and is what I believe is the case.

“You can’t prove a negative.”

People who are searching for excuses to believe silly things frequently make this statement. A theist makes a positive assertion, and then declines to provide a basis for it. You deny their assertion (rightly so, what with no basis and all), but your denial is deemed invalid because it is impossible to prove a denial.

There is so very much wrong with this situation, it will take a while to wade through it.

The rules of logic and science indicate that there must be some kind of basis (either in substance or in thought) for an assertion or else it must be denied. An assertion, without evidence, is not accepted as true. That is the default position, the position that defines what critical thought is. Critical thought means not believing things you are told unless there is evidence to back it up. And without critical thought, logic and science are abandoned, and this is the only kind of productive thought humanity has ever come up with. To reject critical thought is to turn one’s back on thinking and embrace the Dark Ages. That’s the answer to this statement in theory.

However, in practice, there is usually a lot more happening with the person who makes such a proclamation. The person who makes this kind of statement has a great many fundamental misunderstandings about the nature of logic, science, and productive thought.

First, many people who believe in God do not realize that in every discussion about theism, their assertion is implicit: God exists. They do not need to say it. Every argument they make is under the assumption that the statement “God exists” is true. The fact that they identify themselves as believers is enough to serve as an assertion that a deity or deities exists. No assertion is being made by an atheist (at least not a smart atheist). The word “god” hasn’t even been defined and the nature of belief in that god has not been described; these must take place before any substantial discussion about the nature of God can begin. Atheists have no reason to provide these descriptions – without any beliefs about God, they have no reason to do so. It must be presumed that this onus rests upon the theist. The mere mention of one’s belief in God serves as an assertion that God exists.

Secondly, a person who rejects an assertion does not need to provide any justification for it. The evidence has to be provided by the party making the assertion. The person rejecting the assertion needs to provide nothing at all. Many theists try to escape this basic fact of life by declaring (in opposition to common sense) that their assertions need to be justified only to themselves in their personal experience. Simply put, that what is true for others might not be true for themselves. But this is madness – this also turns its back on productive thinking. This idea is called “solipsism,” and it refers to the notion that every person lives in his own reality, and what is true in his or her life might not be true for others. This is an old idea and it was shown to be ridiculous many centuries ago. Think about it – if it solipsism really was real, there wouldn’t be any books, schools, learning, or science. And people would never be able to communicate effectively.

Thirdly, the statement that “you cannot prove a negative” is simply false. On the surface, it seems to be true: if Person A says “I think God exists” and Person B says “I don’t think God exists,” it’s pretty clear that Person B is going to have a hard time proving that there isn’t a God. However, if you look a little closer, it actually depends on the nature of the negative statement being made. Here are some negative statements that can be proven very easily:

Five is not equal to four
The ancient Egyptians did not watch Seinfeld
The tsetse fly is not native to North America

Clearly, it’s possible to prove a negative statement. The real problem here is clearly the nature of the positive statement being refuted. When a person asserts that God exists, he does not specify the nature of God – that is, is God small, large, blue, red? And where is he? Of course it is not possible to prove that God does not exist, if “God” is a thing that has no definition, no characteristics, and no location. In fact, you can prove just about any kind of negative you can think of – except for (surprise!) the non-existence of mystical beings. When you get right down to it, the statement “you cannot prove a negative” is really just a different way of saying “You can’t prove me wrong because I don’t even know what I’m talking about.”

Logical statements have to abide by certain rules and restrictions. In order for a statement to be logical, it must be falsifiable, which means that it has to be presented in such a way that it could be proven incorrect. A statement is not logical if it cannot be tested to make sure it is true. The existence of God is not a logical question at all, and is therefore nonsensical. Of course you can’t prove that God doesn’t exist – no one even knows what God is supposed to be.

Now you are talking about the bible when, from your own admission, the issue at hand is about proving that god doesn't exist -- hence stupidly assuming that the proof of god resides solely in the bible.

Proving that god doesn't exist simply requires you to prove that logic is complete and self-consistent without any reference to god. What I have proven is the exact opposite, that logic is incomplete and self-inconsistent without the underlying premise of god.

What I find simply idiotic is your reference to'100%', as if mentioning such irrelevant nonsense gives you competence to discuss probabilistic theory with me.

Duh?

No.

Your education is adolescent at best. The fact that you cannot even get past what negative logic actually is demonstrates it convincingly.

That is NOT what agnosticism means.

Of course you're not. You cannot make yourself believe something as self-evidently and intuitively true -- an ability even primitive man possesses. A fungus comes to mind.

Logic doesn't suffer your absurd objections, really. If ontology is simply beyond your comprehension, what can anyone say -- except 'duh'?

As far as logic is concerned, you answered exactly squat.

Oh, and I wouldn't worry about personal attacks. As far as I'm concerned, I only say what facts and logic conclusively say.

Duh?

You wouldn't know what to do with 'evidence' if it sat on your face and defecated -- much less 'obtain' it.

Get an education.

Nonsense.

How exactly do you mathematically quantify pain, eh????

And even if you arbitrarily assign numerical values to all sorts of pain, it would be idiotic indeed to presume that all people respond exactly the same to this numerical scale. You would suddenly have a promising career as a boxer or mixed martial artist and I'd happily watch someone bash your brains out.

You even stupidly use the word 'extrapolate' -- as if pain follows a fixed algebraic function in cartesian space that is the same for everyone.

Duh?

How about this:

'The ability to speak doesn't make one intelligent.'

quai-gon-jin

Again ranting PERSONAL ATTACKS & CHILDISH NAME CALLING. I've answered your questions.

 

[top gun]

I think you have misread Top-Gun in part on this one and have become rude.

Thank you Dr. Who.

Unlike you some cannot discuss this subject with nonbelievers. As I've said before I have a great respect for everyone to just be able to follow their own path.

Christian Catholic or Protestant, Atheist, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Agnostic, Buddhist, Scientologist, Jehovah's Wittiness, Pagan, Deist (like many of our Founding Fathers)... don't care. Now obviously I don't mind wading in if asked how I come to my conclusions.

But to me all have the right to believe whatever they want. As long as it doesn't force someone else to come along or try to hold out that they are somehow "better".

 

[numinus]

I think you have misread Top-Gun in part on this one and have become rude.

I have given topgun exactly the amount of rudeness he dished out.

Oh, and I haven't misread anything he said. After all, its not like he has anything new to say. He's been saying the same nonsense over and over, it would be quite impossible to misconstrue.

 

[numinus]

I sincerely hope everyone is turning you in for these personal attacks.

It isn't a personal attack if the statement made is factual, now, is it?

COLOR="navy"]They are unnecessary and I'm ALWAYS willing to clarify my statements. ....

“You can’t prove a negative.”[/COLOR]

And I have just educated you -- THE PRINCIPLE OF EXCLUDED MIDDLE. Stated formally in first order predicate logic -- [P, or not P].

Its not like this is the first time it was concocted. I believe its been known since the ancient egyptians, formally written by ancient greek mathematicians and logicians, and is now the basis of PREDICATE CALCULUS.

People who are searching for excuses to believe silly things frequently make this statement. A theist makes a positive assertion, and then declines to provide a basis for it. You deny their assertion (rightly so, what with no basis and all), but your denial is deemed invalid because it is impossible to prove a denial.

Nonsense.

The truth-value of any religious proposition is judged according to the same standard as the truth-value of a mathematical or scientific proposition -- BY FIRST ORDER PREDICATE LOGIC.

How does one logically deny a proposition? A false proposition will ALWAYS accrue to CONTRADICTION.

The proposition I have provided as PROOF of god's existence is the four-statement COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. Up until now, you CANNOT point out a logical fallacy in the argument and still deny its inevitable conclusion.

And yet, you have the cheek to claim that the argument is silly and that your own agnostic belief is rightly so.

The rules of logic and science indicate that there must be some kind of basis (either in substance or in thought) for an assertion or else it must be denied. An assertion, without evidence, is not accepted as true.

Do you deny the truth value of einstein's field equation? Do you deny that vacuum is indeed exerting a negative energy density AGAINST THE GRAVITATIONAL TENDENCY OF ALL MATTER AND ENERGY IN THE UNIVERSE, not only to retard space-time expansion, but to ACCELERATE IT.

It seems to me that you have applied logical rigor on just about everything except your own beliefs.

Duh?

That is the default position, the position that defines what critical thought is. Critical thought means not believing things you are told unless there is evidence to back it up. And without critical thought, logic and science are abandoned, and this is the only kind of productive thought humanity has ever come up with. To reject critical thought is to turn one’s back on thinking and embrace the Dark Ages. That’s the answer to this statement in theory.

Then its settled.

The cosmological argument is as much a product of critical thought than most scientific papers in theoretical physics -- and that your inability to grasp the fundamental truth in it is entirely your problem -- not from some agnostic crap.

First, many people who believe in God do not realize that in every discussion about theism, their assertion is implicit: God exists. They do not need to say it. .... No assertion is being made by an atheist (at least not a smart atheist). The word “god” hasn’t even been defined and the nature of belief in that god has not been described; ....

Nonsense.

It is not implicit. Otherwise, there wouldn't be any need for ontology.

You want to believe it is implicit because you want to ignore ontology altogether -- most likely, from your inability to understand it in the first place.

The truth however, is that the conclusions of ontology are so RUDIMENTARY, you might as well have said 'if a=b and b=c, then a=c'.

Secondly, a person who rejects an assertion does not need to provide any justification for it. The evidence has to be provided by the party making the assertion. The person rejecting the assertion needs to provide nothing at all.

Nonsense.

Logic is not some legal evidentiary procedure where burden of proof is ascribed to one and not the other. This is another of your spontaneous flights of fancy.

In fact, if you look at quantum theory, you'd be surprised that there are MORE theoritcal particles in the universe than real ones. And they are conditionally accepted, contrary to your 'default' analogy, on nothing more than that they provide some mathematically coherent 'fairy tale'.

Many theists try to escape this basic fact of life by declaring (in opposition to common sense) that their assertions need to be justified only to themselves in their personal experience.

Nonsense.

Theists accept a CREATED universe simply because it is intuitive and self-evident. What is personal is their relationship to this NECESSARY ENTITY.

In much the same way, people talk about 4, 5 and 11 dimension reality off-hand, without really being able to visualize such a thing. After all, there is nothing in the human experience that allows us to visualize 11 dimensions. We only have 5 senses, after all.

So, to explain this, some people imagine 3-dimensional objects (geometry), others use algebraic equations in so many degrees of freedom, some, who knows what they'd prefer imagining? Personally, I prefer to think in matrices with as much column as there are unknowns.

You could use cows, if that will help -- just as long as the outcome is the same.

Simply put, that what is true for others might not be true for themselves. But this is madness – this also turns its back on productive thinking. ....Think about it – if it solipsism really was real, there wouldn’t be any books, schools, learning, or science. And people would never be able to communicate effectively.

You have just performed your first thought experiment in metaphysics. In so doing, you have obliterated the materialist-mechanistic world view (agnosticism being one such world view) and exchanged it with an idealist one.

Certainly, no immutable truth-value can be had from material phenomena since they are entirely dependent on PERCEPTION -- and perceptions differ from one person to the next.

Only in the realm of IDEAS AND LOGIC can you discern EXISTENCE.

Thirdly, the statement that “you cannot prove a negative” is simply false. ....

Clearly, it’s possible to prove a negative statement. The real problem here is clearly the nature of the positive statement being refuted. When a person asserts that God exists, he does not specify the nature of God – that is, is God small, large, blue, red? And where is he? Of course it is not possible to prove that God does not exist, if “God” is a thing that has no definition, no characteristics, and no location. In fact, you can prove just about any kind of negative you can think of – except for (surprise!) the non-existence of mystical beings. When you get right down to it, the statement “you cannot prove a negative” is really just a different way of saying “You can’t prove me wrong because I don’t even know what I’m talking about.”

Absolute nonsense. You need not define god's nature in absolute terms in order for you to prove his existence or non-existence. As I said, one need only demonstrate that logic is complete and consistent without god to prove his non-existence.

Gravity exists -- whether as a curvature of space-time or particles called graviton.

Heck, even the big bang existed even if all mathematical equations breakdown within 1 planck-time after it.

And yet, you don't call that agnosticism, do you?

Logical statements have to abide by certain rules and restrictions. In order for a statement to be logical, it must be falsifiable, which means that it has to be presented in such a way that it could be proven incorrect. A statement is not logical if it cannot be tested to make sure it is true. ....

I honestly don't know how your meandering logic works. You have already falsified materialism in your thought experiment in much the same way that ontology does.

And yet, you insist on material evidence before you can claim something to be true.

What exactly is your 'material evidence' for the existence of pi, knowing that its actual value is A NON-REPEATING, NON-TERMINATING decimal that you can NEVER convey in an ARBITRARY DEGREE OF EXACTNESS???? You could write it in a billion decimal places and it still wouldn't be pi exactly.

And yet, IT EXISTS.

Again ranting PERSONAL ATTACKS & CHILDISH NAME CALLING. I've answered your questions.

Then by all means, report me to the moderators. Thats what 12 year olds do.

Just make sure to explain how is it that you are offended by personal attacks and childish name-calling when it doesn't offend you to dish them out.

Duh?

 

[numinus]

Thank you Dr. Who.

Unlike you some cannot discuss this subject with nonbelievers. As I've said before I have a great respect for everyone to just be able to follow their own path.

Christian Catholic or Protestant, Atheist, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Agnostic, Buddhist, Scientologist, Jehovah's Wittiness, Pagan, Deist (like many of our Founding Fathers)... don't care. Now obviously I don't mind wading in if asked how I come to my conclusions.

But to me all have the right to believe whatever they want. As long as it doesn't force someone else to come along or try to hold out that they are somehow "better".

Nonsense.

You have belittled the beliefs of others -- calling them 'fairy tales' and 'fanciful fables'. That is not 'great respect', as you would want others to think.

I am merely applying the same logical rigor to YOUR beliefs as you expect it applied to everything else. In the process, I have uncovered, from your own admissions, that not only is your belief inconsistent, it is also vague, nebulous and patently undefined. It certainly isn't agnosticism in the true sense of the word.

Duh?

 

[samsara15]

The Cosmoslogical Argument has been around forever, and has many refutations. It is neither universally accepted nor rejected.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmological-argument/

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theism/cosmological.html

And a host of other websites can be found, both supportive and non-supportive. Anyone can look them up. Numinus, you are presenting controversial POVs as established fact.

 

[Dr.Who]

The fact that there were people that passed down stories of miraculous things doesn't in any way make them proven. They are stories just like dragon slaying stories.

The only thing that is proven is...

And neither has it been proven that they are not true.

When I say I believe they are I am making a statement of faith.

When you say they are like dragon stories you are doing the same thing.

The difference is you don't understand that you are acting on faith. Or if you do then you are being disingenuous when you write here.

You are free to have your OPINION but every time you state it as scientific fact I will point out your error.

 

[Dr.Who]

I have given topgun exactly the amount of rudeness he dished out.

Irrelevant.