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@tomic
Administrator
USA
4607 Posts |
 Posted - 03/10/2003 : 12:18:04 [Permalink]
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quote:
Point taken.
Ok @tomic, do you have absoulte knowledge of the universe? If the answer is NO, you cannot argue that there are NO absolutes.
The point was not taken I see. You seem to think you can take a position with nothing to back that up because the mind is finite yet I can't say that there are no absolutes with just as much evidence as you have provided(which is zero). Go buy yourself a trophy (for valorious missing the point) "oh finite one".
@tomic |
Gravity, not just a good idea...it's the law!
Sportsbettingacumen.com: The science of sports betting |
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Ultramundane
New Member
16 Posts |
Posted - 03/10/2003 : 14:22:29 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by @tomic
I can't say that there are no absolutes with just as much evidence as you have provided(which is zero).
You appear to have missed my earlier point.
Again, not only would you have to have absolute knowledge of the universe to know that they are no absolutes BUT significantly, when you insist that there are NO absolutes you are in fact believing in an absolute. The statement is self evident. Do you fail to see the contradiction?
I never claimed that I had evidence of god...I was merely posing questions. I thought that was obvious? |
| Edited by - Ultramundane on 03/10/2003 14:23:06 |
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walt fristoe
SFN Regular
USA
505 Posts |
Posted - 03/10/2003 : 14:24:30 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Ultramundane
A human being, with a limited and finite mind, cannot make absolute negative statements.
There is no largest prime number. That is an absolute negative statement. It was made by a human being (Euclid). Perhaps his mind wasn't "limited and finite"?
And about this myth of it being "impossible to prove a negative" see this link. |
"If God chose George Bus of all the people in the world, how good could God be?"
Bill Maher |
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@tomic
Administrator
USA
4607 Posts |
Posted - 03/10/2003 : 14:42:50 [Permalink]
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quote:
Again, not only would you have to have absolute knowledge of the universe to know that they are no absolutes BUT significantly, when you insist that there are NO absolutes you are in fact believing in an absolute. The statement is self evident. Do you fail to see the contradiction?
Well nice try and thanks for playing the "I gotta have the last word" game but you yourself showed how silly it is to show God into the "I don't know" column but can't face up to it. Keep it coming. I can play a long time.
Oh, and let me refresh your memory. You did, in fact, make some rather lame arguments about there needing to be a God.
"You cannot have a law without a lawgiver."
Well, you said a lot more than that but that one line is quite a claim for someone claiming they make no claims and therefore don't have to back their shit up. Damn, you'll need more mouths to talk out of both sides of if you keep this up.
@tomic |
Gravity, not just a good idea...it's the law!
Sportsbettingacumen.com: The science of sports betting |
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Slater
SFN Regular
USA
1668 Posts |
Posted - 03/10/2003 : 14:55:18 [Permalink]
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I never claimed that I had evidence of god...I was merely posing questions. I thought that was obvious?
What was obvious was that you had already presupposed the answers to your own questions. Because if, Mr Innocent, if you were "only posing questions" then why did you become angry at the answers?
My question is; why don't you know high school level biology? Did you attend school in a state where evolution was removed from the curriculum, or go to a religious based school?
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Slater
SFN Regular
USA
1668 Posts |
Posted - 03/10/2003 : 15:40:28 [Permalink]
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| Walt , Richard Carrier talks about proving a conditional negative. You can do that with god because he is supposed to have the condition of being omnipresent. So he would have to be where you were or he wouldn't fill the conditions. The problem with Xians is that they will change the conditions --sometimes in mid sentence. That's why I've been calling this god "Space God" as he has a completely new set of conditions from Yahweh/Jesus. |
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Ultramundane
New Member
16 Posts |
Posted - 03/10/2003 : 15:53:38 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Slater
I never claimed that I had evidence of god...I was merely posing questions. I thought that was obvious?
What was obvious was that you had already presupposed the answers to your own questions. Because if, Mr Innocent, if you were "only posing questions" then why did you become angry at the answers?
My question is; why don't you know high school level biology? Did you attend school in a state where evolution was removed from the curriculum, or go to a religious based school?
Slater, I don't know why you think I became angry with reagrds to the answers related to the topic because that is simply not true. Could you give me an example? What did disappoint me was the hostility I have received through much of this thread & some of the childish responses e.g. my username 'Ultramundane' becoming a topic for comic relief.
You can mock me for not knowing 'high school level biology' & I admit that this is not an area that I am particularly strong in, since unfortunately I attended a religious school where evolution was not given much time. Nevertheless I see nothing wrong with posing the questions that I did. I have gained some good information & insights.
As for @tomic claiming that I simply want the last word...this is the kind of ridiculous, childish nonesense that I am referring to.
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Tokyodreamer
SFN Regular
USA
1447 Posts |
Posted - 03/10/2003 : 17:03:54 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Ultramundane
What did disappoint me was the hostility I have received through much of this thread & some of the childish responses
Unfortunately, I have to agree. Some of the responses in this thread are embarrassing.
I only bring it up because I care about the quality of this board. If new posters are always greeted with such unprovoked (IMO) hostility, new posters won't have any desire to post here.
Attack the idea, not the person. |
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walt fristoe
SFN Regular
USA
505 Posts |
Posted - 03/10/2003 : 17:23:36 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Ultramundane:
To clarify, withregards to my earlier comment - 'A human being, with a limited and finite mind, cannot make absolute negative statements.' - what I meant to say was you can't state for example, "There are no dogs in Alaska" unless you have ABSOLUTE KNOWLEDGE of Alaska...every home, cave, etc. You would be forced to say: "With the knowledge I have now and the evidence I have observed, I don't think there are any dogs there."
You don't have ABSOLUTE KNOWLEDGE of the universe to be able to argue that there are NO absolutes.
It has often been stated that "No one can claim that a God absolutley does not exist unless they can claim infinite knowledge of the universe".
I do claim that a God absolutely does not exist. I cannot offer 'proof' in the mathematical sense, but I don't think it is necessary to do so in order to claim knowledge. I also do not claim to have 'infinite knowledge of the universe', as I do not think it is necessary.
Anything that is just too absurd to exist simply cannot, and does not, exist. For example, the ideas that Santa Claus really exists in reality, or that the Easter Bunny really exists in reality, or that the Tooth Fairy really exists in reality, are just plain absurd, and so I can claim to know that they in fact do not exist, outside the imagination of some humans. I cannot prove this to be the case, but I don't think I have to. I also can't prove that invisible pink unicorns don't exist, and yet I can claim to know that they don't exist.
Therein lies the crux of my argument: the concept of God (any god) is just too absurd to have real existence, and so I feel justified in claiming that no [G]od exists.
Any being worthy of the title '[G]od' must at least be omnipotent (other 'omni's may or may not be necessary). Now, 'omnipotent' means having infinite power, which means having infinite energy.
According to the equation E=MC^2, energy=massXthe velocity of light squared. In other words, the more energy, the more mass, and infinite energy would equate to infinite mass.
We do not observe infinite mass in our universe, as there are only some 10^80 subatomic particles, which is certainly a very large number by human standards, but it is hardly infinite. I can therefore claim that no omnipotent [G]od exists.
I suppose some people play fast and loose with the definition of [G]od, since it is such an ambiguous term, e.g., '[G]od is Nature', etc., and so anything can be claimed as being [G]od, so 'a [G]od exists'. This is mere sophistry, and will not help the theist, (or agnostics) to advance a reasonable argument.
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"If God chose George Bus of all the people in the world, how good could God be?"
Bill Maher |
| Edited by - walt fristoe on 03/10/2003 17:27:47 |
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Ultramundane
New Member
16 Posts |
Posted - 03/10/2003 : 18:16:06 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by walt fristoe
Anything that is just too absurd to exist simply cannot, and does not, exist. For example, the ideas that Santa Claus really exists in reality, or that the Easter Bunny really exists in reality, or that the Tooth Fairy really exists in reality, are just plain absurd, and so I can claim to know that they in fact do not exist, outside the imagination of some humans. I cannot prove this to be the case, but I don't think I have to. I also can't prove that invisible pink unicorns don't exist, and yet I can claim to know that they don't exist.
This argument has already been dismissed on this forum but I'll repeat it here.
First of all, the biggest problem with this argument is that what people actually experience is NOT the same thing as what you have deliberately made up for satirical purposes. To compare the two is ludicrous and illogical.
Since you have never really experienced invisible pink unicorns yourself, it is obvious that you are deliberately making up something fictitious to put down something you don't believe in while the experiencer or claimant is not. Since you don't believe in invisible pink unicorns yourselfelf, it is pointless as well as inconsiderate to compare that to what people genuinely believe and experience. Of course, just because someone genuinely believes something doesn't make it true, but to compare an honest person to a deliberate fraud is not a valid comparison.
If like spiritual experiences for example, there were millions of credible intelligent people out there claiming to have seen or experienced invisible pink unicorns then this comparison would have some merit. But there aren't, so this comparison is without merit.
The significant difference between experiencing God, the divine, or the mystical, and the fictional example of invisible pink unicorns is that throughout history millions of honest, sane, intelligent people have experiences with the former which resulted in life changing effects, but the same can't be said for invisible pink unicorns.
Just because something is unprovable does not automatically put it in the same category as everything else that is unprovable. For example, I can't prove what I thought about 2 weeks ago. Without witnesses, I can't prove how high I scored in a video game either. But that doesn't mean that these things are in the same category as every story in the fiction section of the library.
The bottom line is that while it is true that no one can disprove the existence of invisible pink unicorns, the evidence to support god, for example, although mostly anecdotal, is vastly greater, more significant, more relevant, and more sincere than the evidence to support invisible pink unicorns and other fictitious examples that you deliberately make up.
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| Edited by - Ultramundane on 03/10/2003 18:17:59 |
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Ultramundane
New Member
16 Posts |
Posted - 03/10/2003 : 18:36:50 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by walt fristoe
[Any being worthy of the title '[G]od' must at least be omnipotent (other 'omni's may or may not be necessary).
Not necessarily true. Here is an example. Professor Andrei Linde of Stanford Universitry believes that the laws of quantumn theory may allow scientists to play at being God themselves, creating new universes in the laboratory - at least in theory.
Linde thinks that we wouldn't be able to enter this new universe to find out what has been created: the 'door' would be too small. But it might be possible to design a universe so that conditions within it would be suitable for the emergence of life.
Then perhaps that life might itself become sentinent, and begin to question its existence. Sounds familiar? The parallels with our own wonderings about how we got here are spookily obvious.
But would that render the scientists responsible, 'omnipotent' - infinite power, infinite energy? |
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Slater
SFN Regular
USA
1668 Posts |
Posted - 03/10/2003 : 18:42:46 [Permalink]
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You can mock me for not knowing 'high school level biology' & I admit that this is not an area that I am particularly strong in, since unfortunately I attended a religious school where evolution was not given much time.
I wasn't mocking at all, sorry if it seemed like that. One of the biggest problems with Fundamentalism in this country is its insistence on replacing science in our schools with its particular version of religion. Very often young people who have fallen into their clutches will tell you that evolution is false, period, the end. And when you talk to them further you find that the strawman they think is evolution is false. But they won't know what evolution actually is. There is no concept about what "natural selection" actually is. But this is very basic science, something everyone with a high school education should already know. The concept is pretty simple (if you're dead you won't have babies that look and act like you.) The fact that these young people are ignorant of how natural selection works doesn't mean that they are dumb. It means that they have been victimized. They have been lied to by the teachers that they trust and fed false information.
I see that I guessed right about the religious school.
Doesn't it make you angry that they pulled this on you and your fellow students?
Nevertheless I see nothing wrong with posing the questions that I did. I have gained some good information & insights
The version we gave you was very simplified. You might want to try a decent bookstore's science section. Richard Dawkins has made a career out of this very subject. Climbing Mount Improbable covers the subject of how strange and complex forms and behaviors evolved nicely. Even if you still don't agree you will at least know what the scientific side is really saying as opposed to what the Fundis claim they are saying.
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@tomic
Administrator
USA
4607 Posts |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26031 Posts |
Posted - 03/10/2003 : 20:30:08 [Permalink]
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Ultramundane wrote:quote:
Just because something is unprovable does not automatically put it in the same category as everything else that is unprovable. For example, I can't prove what I thought about 2 weeks ago. Without witnesses, I can't prove how high I scored in a video game either. But that doesn't mean that these things are in the same category as every story in the fiction section of the library.
The only real difference between the two, in terms of what category each goes into, is that most of the fiction section of the library is labelled "this is fiction." I feel perfectly fine with dumping uncle Al's "you should have seen the one that got away" fish stories into the same category as the stories I hear about people "experiencing God." Neither is labelled "this is fiction," but they're both as verifiable as God itself.
quote:
The bottom line is that while it is true that no one can disprove the existence of invisible pink unicorns, the evidence to support god, for example, although mostly anecdotal, is vastly greater, more significant, more relevant, and more sincere than the evidence to support invisible pink unicorns and other fictitious examples that you deliberately make up.
If millions of people take drugs and sincerely experience the exact same thing as people who "experience God," does that mean that God is a hallucination? Especially since we can repeat the experiment as many times as we like, and get the same results? There's nothing "made up" like the IPU in this example. Experiences of a divine or mystical nature occur within our brains, due to chemical shifts which can be brought on by drugs or a host of other influences. Until someone presents some evidence that people who "experience God" are truly doing so without any of these shifts occuring, no number of stories about these experiences will ever add up to more evidence than uncle Al has for the size of that fish, or you have for your unwitnessed video game high-score, which is zero. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Orpheus
Skeptic Friend
92 Posts |
Posted - 03/11/2003 : 00:45:02 [Permalink]
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The question of experience as evidence which ultramundane raised is an interesting one. It is probably one of the more sophisticated defences, since scientists too rely on experience to validate their results, albeit the experiences of a lot of other scientists using similar methods. Also, scientific theories tend to stay within the realm of falsification and testability, which "spiritual" ones do not.
I have to say that one cannot neccessarily dismiss the god hypothesis based only on absurdity, except when theists are kind enough to describe various properties of god, such as benevolence, which can be esaily countered. When it comes to a sort of "first mover" hypothesis, it becomes very difficult to argue it either way. How can we know that there was not an intelligent "mover" which started the big bang? I dunno. Does it have relevance to our present existence? Highly doubtful, given the necessary conditions of such an event (i.e. a "god" in the real universe is simply like a highly advanced alien, not the "god" of religion).
What Ultra needs to realise is that in positing an ethereal, non-substantive, supernatural "force" which somehow interacts with us material, natural folk, the old problem comes in of how non-material substances can interact with material substances (good luck with that one).
Can ultra come up with some sort of definition of "god"? Will this definition include substantive reasons for supposing that "god" is any more real than hallucinations, drug experiences, or simple old-fashoined lies? The guantlet has been thrown.. |
Find your own damned answers! |
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