Atheists: Why does theism still exist?

[Received]

Darned auto-correct.



The standards are fine for separating concepts into things we know and things that we don't.

Defining God as unknowable, again, doesn't make it more plausible. It only 'helps' in the minds of people who want to believe, such as yourself.

How are the psychological addendums relevant to this discussion?

And nobody is saying God is unknowable, unless you think basically everything is unknowable given the depth required in thinking about the bases of our own assumptions and metaphysics.

 

[Loudmouth]

And nobody is saying God is unknowable, unless you think basically everything is unknowable given the depth required in thinking about the bases of our own assumptions and metaphysics.

How do you move from belief to knowledge without evidence?

 

[variant]

I would hope that at the end of the day, instead of atheists being like, "religious people hold ridiculous beliefs, and science is the best," or whatever, etc., that they would be like, "well, there are really complicated philosophical underpinnings to all standards we use, and it's not like God really is too far out there a theory given this complication..."

Well then you're going to have to make God into a better explanation then (or an explanation at all).

 

[variant]

How are the psychological addendums relevant to this discussion?

It is my thesis statement on answering the question in the OP.

It is simple, religion is meant to be appealing.

Theists want to believe (or are afraid not to believe) for emotional, psychological and cultural reasons, and thus are generally incapable of looking at what religion is objectively.

Confirmation bias at it's strongest.

http://www.christianforums.com/t7843538/#post66377421

And nobody is saying God is unknowable, unless you think basically everything is unknowable given the depth required in thinking about the bases of our own assumptions and metaphysics.

Knowable things are testable, you can tell that they are true or untrue.

 

[quatona]

Received, please re-read my previous post(s).

I started responding to you in defense of the Invisible Supernatural Dragon comparison (a comparison with an open result - in case you would actually point out the significant differences between the two, instead of following your passion of the day: accusing everyone of "scientism", no matter what they say or write).

The ISD comparison is a chance and an invitation for you to actually show how "God exists" is different from other appeals to the unfalsifiable (beyond the fact that you don´t happen to believe in them). Appeals to popularity or irrelevant tu quoques are just side-tracking.

No magic, logic.

No, logic doesn´t lend credibility to "God exists". Logic only supports that which is undisputed: that claims which involve the "supernatural" are untestable, unfalsibiable.

See previous post about creators and how this means by definition they can't be constituted of the physical stuff like the creation is, which means the necessity for a "supernatural" (i.e., beyond the natural or physical) realm.

So the argument is: "If there is a Creatorgod it must be supernatural"?
If there is an ISV it must be supernatural, as well.

Which means any standard that utilizes the physical (science, empiricism, etc.) is misplaced when applying to this supposed supernatural entity.

Yes, that´s exactly what I have been saying.
Your current faible for handwaving away every argument by attacking "scientism" seems to have blinded you to the fact that my argument didn´t involve "scientism". I just stated the obvious, actually the same which you stated here: Gods and ISVs can´t be tested by science. That´s a very fundamental communality between the two.

I didn´t say God or the ISV should be testable by science - so please cut it with the irrelevant "scientism" whining.

There are things that can't be "tested" in a scientific or empirical sense which we know to be true if we don't go ultraskeptic and assume the world doesn't exist or that our senses are unsound, etc.

Such as? Please name some of these entities we know exist - without scientific or empirical evidence. I am all ears.
Please don´t forget to mention who "we" are in the cases, and first of all how "we" know these entities to exist.

As I said: The ISV comparison is your opportunity to outline your non-scientific objective method of determining the "truth values" of different supernatural claims.
I am totally willing to look into it, but instead of getting started you keep attacking the strawman "scientism" - which actually helps not one iota with establishing what you are trying to establish: That there is an objective (albeit non-scientific) method to determine that "God exists" has "truth value" while "ISV exists" or "Zeus exists" hasn´t.

You're equating the limitation of knowledge with empiricism, more specifically science.

No, you must be confusing me with someone else. I am the guy who invites you to outline your method of determining "knowledge", using the extremely well suited ISV comparison as a starting point.

There are other ways of knowing things.

Maybe instead of barking up several empty trees in the dark, you should already have started describing these ways and methods. Something seems to keep you from doing that would which help your case immensely - as opposed to attacking certain -isms, in the absence of which you´d still have to support your point.

 

[Received]

It is my thesis statement on answering the question in the OP.

http://www.christianforums.com/t7843538/#post66377421

Knowable things are testable, you can tell that they are true or untrue.

No, testability applies to a specific form of knowledge, and not all knowledge is testable. That's why we have a priori truth, and a posteriori truth outside of the scientific realm. This is a very important point.

And again my head is spinning: are you using "testable" in a scientific sense, and if not what on earth does it mean to say "testable"?

 

[Received]

Received, please re-read my previous post(s).

I started responding to you in defense of the Invisible Supernatural Dragon comparison (a comparison with an open result - in case you would actually point out the significant differences between the two, instead of following your passion of the day: accusing everyone of "scientism", no matter what they say or write).

The ISD comparison is a chance and an invitation for you to actually show how "God exists" is different from other appeals to the unfalsifiable (beyond the fact that you don´t happen to believe in them). Appeals to popularity or irrelevant tu quoques are just side-tracking.


No, logic doesn´t lend credibility to "God exists". Logic only supports that which is undisputed: that claims which involve the "supernatural" are untestable, unfalsibiable.

So the argument is: "If there is a Creatorgod it must be supernatural"?
If there is an ISV it must be supernatural, as well.

Yes, that´s exactly what I have been saying.
Your current faible for handwaving away every argument by attacking "scientism" seems to have blinded you to the fact that my argument didn´t involve "scientism". I just stated the obvious, actually the same which you stated here: Gods and ISVs can´t be tested by science. That´s a very fundamental communality between the two.

I didn´t say God or the ISV should be testable by science - so please cut it with the irrelevant "scientism" whining.



Such as? Please name some of these entities we know exist - without scientific or empirical evidence. I am all ears.
Please don´t forget to mention who "we" are in the cases, and first of all how "we" know these entities to exist.

As I said: The ISV comparison is your opportunity to outline your non-scientific objective method of determining the "truth values" of different supernatural claims.
I am totally willing to look into it, but instead of getting started you keep attacking the strawman "scientism" - which actually helps not one iota with establishing what you are trying to establish: That there is an objective (albeit non-scientific) method to determine that "God exists" has "truth value" while "ISV exists" or "Zeus exists" hasn´t.

No, you must be confusing me with someone else. I am the guy who invites you to outline your method of determining "knowledge", using the extremely well suited ISV comparison as a starting point.

Maybe instead of barking up several empty trees in the dark, you should already have started describing these ways and methods. Something seems to keep you from doing that would which help your case immensely - as opposed to attacking certain -isms, in the absence of which you´d still have to support your point.

Are you claiming the ISV created the universe, quatona? Because if you do, you're playing semantics by renaming God the ISV, but the latter has the neat advantage of sounding ridiculous. You can call God Sarah Palin's alcohol repository (SPAR). It doesn't matter. We're talking about phenomena and not what they're named.

Secondly, falsifiability and testability both imply a self-negating standard. Can falsifiability falsify itself? Nope, so that means we're looking at something else as a standard which itself justifies falsfiability as one legitimate standard for determining truth.

(And let's remember that no good scientist would ever make the leap from something be factual to something being true, given precisely because falsifiability prevents this leap in the sense that any fact in science could at any moment be unveiled as not a fact, which is exactly what falsifiability means.)

 

[Received]

How do you move from belief to knowledge without evidence?

That itself depends on our understanding of knowledge. The old school philosophical definition involves true, justified belief; and the big hitch with this theory is "justified" is completely relative, which renders knowledge in this sense useless.

So I consider knowledge to be, basically, representing something (through concepts, words) as it actually is, the strength of this knowledge being related to the degree of justification you (can) give. (Note the "can" in parentheses.) Belief, on the other hand, is (just) an attempted representation.

 

[Received]

"Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion."
The Dragon In My Garage

You might want to actually read it.



2,000 years ago we had no knowledge that our bodies were made up of individual cells. It was true that our bodies were made up of cells 2,000 years ago, but we had no knowledge of it.



Believing something to be true in the absence of evidence is the definition of faith.



That is not what I said. I said something CAN BE true, not that they ARE true. Do you understand the difference?



I just told you that it is a failed epistemology, and since you claim to believe anything anyone says, you must accept the claim.

loudmouth, I'm not going to read it, because the crux is on you to present a fair summary of the relevant points. Unless you're willing to read War and Peace to get some good arguments for God, I'd recommend not throwing down that argumentative standard. And the passage you quoted offers no rational explanation. Not a whit. It just says "you should do it, you know?" which is pure authoritarianism enshrouded with good prose.

The 2000 year ago statement is something we know now, so my point still stands. It could be something right now or a billion years ago; so long as we're talking about it now, we know it now, and therefore can't ascertain something we "only" believe to be true without knowledge.

And no, that's not a definition of faith; it's a Dawkinsian ad hoc definition blinded by the Enlightenment.

 

[Received]

Your claims require there the universe not come from previous universes. I am simply pointing out that you never support that claim. I showed that there is no reason to reject the hypothesis of multiverses which means that you can't make the claims you are making.

You haven't yet supported your claim. That's the problem. According to your own understanding of speculation, you're precisely speculating. There is no scientific justification for multiverses, given that they have no predictive validity, which is what you need for a scientific theory to be what it is. It is a metaphysical assumption, of course, and one that runs into the dangerous problem of an infinite regress, leading us to either reject the principle of sufficient reason (i.e., our reasoning processes) to justify it (which is faith, you know), or look to a better metaphysical explanation (which means your explanation is wrong).

I am not the one who has to call everything a religion or faith in order to feel better.

But you are the one who has to superfluously speculate on the intentions and motivations of your interlocutor to feel better.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Are you claiming the ISV created the universe, quatona? Because if you do, you're playing semantics by renaming God the ISV, but the latter has the neat advantage of sounding ridiculous. You can call God Sarah Palin's alcohol repository (SPAR). It doesn't matter. We're talking about phenomena and not what they're named.

Secondly, falsifiability and testability both imply a self-negating standard. Can falsifiability falsify itself? Nope, so that means we're looking at something else as a standard which itself justifies falsfiability as one legitimate standard for determining truth.

(And let's remember that no good scientist would ever make the leap from something be factual to something being true, given precisely because falsifiability prevents this leap in the sense that any fact in science could at any moment be unveiled as not a fact, which is exactly what falsifiability means.)

Why isn't falsifiability falsifiable?

 

[Received]

I understand that Thomas was allowed to touch Jesus. Does that mean Jesus was not god?

Speaking of dragons, how about Tiamat? She is a dragon (more or less) and also had a role in creating the universe. Maybe Sagan had Tiamat in his garage. Tiamat is by definition a creator, and a creator of a universe by definition transcends it, making her beyond the physical and therefore testability....

Anything you can say about the logical necessity of your creator god is equally applicable to the dragon creator goddess Tiamat.

See my SPAR point with my last response to quatona.

 

[Received]

Why isn't falsifiability falsifiable?

Because falsifiability means something can be proven to be false. Falsifiability can't be proven to be false. It's an assumption or standard with no truth value.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Because falsifiability means something can be proven to be false. Falsifiability can't be proven to be false. It's an assumption or standard with no truth value.

Yea...but falsifiability isn't some nebulous concept in practice...in practice it depends entirely upon the concept being shown true or false...

You-I believe this is true because of x-y-z.

Me-No, my method here shows you're wrong...

You-Your method is mistaken in this way, leaving my original statement true.

That would be a rather generic example of you falsifying falsifiability, thereby showing the concept of falsifiability trustworthy in determining truth.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

And you're committing the same blasted assumption you accuse me of doing in the second paragraph with your first paragraph. There is *zero* empirical support for multiverses; only fantastical and wishful thinking mathematical models which have absolutely *no* predictive validity and therefore no place in science.

Why don't you apply the same standard to the Goddidit hypothesis? Whenever scientists offer a naturalistic hypothesis for the origin of the cosmos theists are quick to dismiss the hypothesis out of hand because it does not rise to the highest epistemic standards. Yet their own hypothesis is subjected to no such scrutiny by them.

 

[quatona]

Are you claiming the ISV created the universe, quatona? Because if you do, you're playing semantics by renaming God the ISV, but the latter has the neat advantage of sounding ridiculous. You can call God Sarah Palin's alcohol repository (SPAR). It doesn't matter. We're talking about phenomena and not what they're named.

No, I didn´t claim the ISV created the universe. Just another strawman to avoid presenting your argument against the existence of the ISV.

Secondly, falsifiability and testability both imply a self-negating standard. Can falsifiability falsify itself? Nope, so that means we're looking at something else as a standard which itself justifies falsfiability as one legitimate standard for determining truth.

Well, firstly, this strategy of referring a concept upon itself - if spontaneously used to attack one particular view - is disingenious. While if consistently applied to everything it means epistemological nihilism. Do you really want to go there?

Secondly, and more importantly, "falsifying falsification" isn´t even a meaningful expresssion - unless you mean "falsifying a particular attempt at falsification" - which, of course, can be done. "Falsification", however, isn´t even a statement; demanding it´s falsifiability isn´t right...it isn´t even wrong. It´s word salad.

Thirdly, and even more importantly: as you keep ignoring conveniently, at no point I didn´t demand the falsifiability of "supernatural" claims. I explicitly stated several times that their falsifiability can´t be demanded. We are in complete agreement in this point.

What, however, I have been demanding is: Your method/standard that allows for the very distinction in "truth value" between different "supernatural" claims.

(And let's remember that no good scientist would ever make the leap from something be factual to something being true, given precisely because falsifiability prevents this leap in the sense that any fact in science could at any moment be unveiled as not a fact, which is exactly what falsifiability means.)

Back at the "scientism" strawman?

 

[quatona]

Edit function doesn´t work...
Should have read "at no point did I demand..." in fourth but last paragraph. Sorry.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

No magic, logic. See previous post about creators and how this means by definition they can't be constituted of the physical stuff like the creation is, which means the necessity for a "supernatural" (i.e., beyond the natural or physical) realm. Which means any standard that utilizes the physical (science, empiricism, etc.) is misplaced when applying to this supposed supernatural entity.

The "creation" you are describing here differs greatly from the "creation" we are familiar with. If the creator cannot be constituted of the same "stuff" as creation, then how is this creator able to interact with his creation?

There are things that can't be "tested" in a scientific or empirical sense which we know to be true if we don't go ultraskeptic and assume the world doesn't exist or that our senses are unsound, etc. You're equating the limitation of knowledge with empiricism, more specifically science. There are other ways of knowing things.

We often hear this claim of "other ways of knowing" from people like Deepak Chopra. What are these "other ways"?

Ex nihilo, loudmouth, not ex materia.

How do you know?

 

[quatona]

Received:
Now that the strawman are - hopefully - out of the way, I would appreciate it if you´d address my actual points and statements in post #125.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

No, Sagan is holding scientism, given this writing and others. You have a whole slew of bad philosopher scientists who hold this.

Misguided accusations of "scientism" are frequently made by people who refuse to have their assertions subject to any sort of scrutiny, philosophical or scientific. Asking someone how they know something to be true is not scientism.

See previous posts. I've answered this: incommensurable standards given intrinsic characteristics of a creator in relation to the physical universe, the latter which applies to verifiable, objective evidence in the empirical sense you throw down. Stop begging the question with your standard as the presupposed only one to use.

Which is exactly what we do when we have philosophical or metaphysical presuppositions in terms of creating the standards that we do, including here the standard that verifiable evidence is what counts (and/or scientism), both in terms of the unquestioned assumption as to their validity (e.g., because they work, because what else would we use, because that's just how things are, etc., all of which provide no further justification for these standards) and the assumptions themselves. That's how faith works.

What standard are you offering? From what I've read, your "standard" permits us to claim anything, including the existence of invisible fire-breathing dragons. If anyone asks us how we know that such a dragon exists we can simply accuse them of "scientism."