Philosophical arguments against the existence of God

[loveofourlord]

How do you know you are not a brain in a vat?

Prove through empirical means, that you are not a body lying in the matrix, or a brain in a vat of chemicals being stimulated by a mad scientist.

Prove through empirical means that the earth was not created five minutes ago with the appearance of age.

Prove through empirical means, that the speed of light remains constant as it travels between any two points.

Prove through empirical means that there are other minds besides your own.

You can't.

Do you therefore resort to throwing your hands up and saying I don't know !

Of course not.

Prove any of those in any method period, before you attack empercism better well have some method that can work in it's stead.

You see the problem is you want to attack emperacism, but then leave nothing to be used. So what would you use to prove your not a brain in a vat? Not in the matrix, that the earth wasn't created 5 minutes ago.

Because guess what you can't, you have no method for proving those things either, but the things we can prove, rely on it, and there is no other method. Prove to me in some other method other then emperacism that the sun exists, that anything you know to be true is a fact.

This is the problem with the method those like you want to use, you attack science and our knowledge for using the only thing we can. You know how we can verify things in the bible? Through science, it's not prayer, or personal experience it's through emperacism and such. Because otherwise you have no method to tell wether what you think is god, is just a delusion, or Satan or someone trying to decieve you or any other number of things, because Satan wants to trick you, he wants you to think you are right about something while all the while your wrong.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

We are talking about the ontological grounds for objective moral values and duties, not whether or not atheists can be moral or come up with and live by a system of ethics or learn from experience certain acts are without utility. Sure they can, and do.

The fact that they can do so successfully without invoking the supernatural should tell you something.

It is not my argument that atheists cannot recognize throwing battery acid in someone's face is evil, but rather there is no grounds for claiming that an act is "evil" in the first place. Why think that a particular act that causes suffering in a homo sapien has any moral dimension at all? Saying it just does is arbitrary.

In what sense is it arbitrary? Is it not less arbitrary than saying that something is immoral because a deity says so for reasons that are either obscure or totally arbitrary?

In fact your whole "consensus of the elders" ethic leads to absurdities. For example, if a tribe found that instilling fear in their neighboring tribe by taking from them it's women and burning their faces with acid resulted in an increase in the odds of them surviving, then the elders of that tribe could come to the consensus that it was morally obligatory for this acid burning to take place and issue the command to do so, since as you say, they would have learned from experience that such acts aid in their survival.

Wouldn't cooperation with the neighbouring tribe also aid in their survival?

Your whole view relies on a smuggled in concept of how tribes ought to survive and how tribes ought to go about growing and reproducing and assumes "this way" is true for all tribes. But there is no such "way" in a world without God. You just have a bunch of species of homo sapiens behaving like any other species of creature, i.e. according to brute instinct and natural conditioning.

Concepts of right and wrong, of good and evil are meaningless in a world without God.

You keep asserting that morality is impossible and unintelligible without God, but you stop short of actually supporting this assertion.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Right.

We differ on our view of God.

You do understand where the difference lies correct?

Given your willingness to commit horrible acts at the behest of your deity, the difference is sadly a lot smaller than you think.

 

[DogmaHunter]

Suit yourself.

Why do you only want to share your evidence in a "debate"?
What's wrong with a simple thread?

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Why do you only want to share your evidence in a "debate"?
What's wrong with a simple thread?

He wants the opportunity to sharpen his sword, much like Jeremy E Walker before him, and Elioenai26 before him.

 

[DogmaHunter]

How do you know you are not a brain in a vat?

We don't. You know why? Because you can't verify unfalsifiable negative claims.

Prove through empirical means, that you are not a body lying in the matrix, or a brain in a vat of chemicals being stimulated by a mad scientist.

Again, why do you ask us to prove negative claims?

Prove through empirical means that the earth was not created five minutes ago with the appearance of age.

Again... negative claims....

Prove through empirical means, that the speed of light remains constant as it travels between any two points.

That the speed of light is constant is a part of special relativity theory.
You can't "prove" this. You can only support it, validate it, through experiments, measurements, observation.

Prove through empirical means that there are other minds besides your own.

"other minds" are very much part of commonly observed reality.
How is that not empirical?

You can't.
Do you therefore resort to throwing your hands up and saying I don't know !
Of course not.

How do you assess the truth value of a claim, if not through some form of testability?

You have previously alluded that if a claim can't be tested, it's truth value should be assessed by "other means". I repeatedly asked what those "means" are. You never answered.

Please answer it. YOU said it, I'ld assume you actually had specific "means" in mind when you said it.

Why do you refuse to answer those questions?

 

[loveofourlord]

We don't. You know why? Because you can't verify unfalsifiable negative claims.



Again, why do you ask us to prove negative claims?



Again... negative claims....



That the speed of light is constant is a part of special relativity theory.
You can't "prove" this. You can only support it, validate it, through experiments, measurements, observation.



"other minds" are very much part of commonly observed reality.
How is that not empirical?



How do you assess the truth value of a claim, if not through some form of testability?

You have previously alluded that if a claim can't be tested, it's truth value should be assessed by "other means". I repeatedly asked what those "means" are. You never answered.

Please answer it. YOU said it, I'ld assume you actually had specific "means" in mind when you said it.

Why do you refuse to answer those questions?

Maybe he will reply to one of us eventually.

 

[DogmaHunter]

Right.

We differ on our view of God.

You do understand where the difference lies correct?

I understand where the difference lies. And it's not in the evidence. It's in the mythology.

The only thing you can say to an ISIS fighter concerning his "morals", is that he follows the wrong god. If he had the right god, then what he is doing would be correct and YOU would be immoral for speaking out against it.

That is how morally bankrupt your worldview is. So bankrupt, that you can't actually give a reasonable argument as to why ISIS is immoral. The only thing you can say is that they follow the "wrong" god. And then they'll say "no, it's the right god and YOU follow the wrong god".

And both your objections to eachother would be of equal worth. Since it's just word against word.


See? That's how it goes when claims aren't testable or verifiable.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

I understand where the difference lies. And it's not in the evidence. It's in the mythology.

The only thing you can say to an ISIS fighter concerning his "morals", is that he follows the wrong god. If he had the right god, then what he is doing would be correct and YOU would be immoral for speaking out against it.

+1. QFT.

 

[Eyes wide Open]

We are talking about the ontological grounds for objective moral values and duties, not whether or not atheists can be moral or come up with and live by a system of ethics or learn from experience certain acts are without utility. Sure they can, and do.

I stated that objective morality can be formed and I exampled how.

It is not my argument that atheists cannot recognize throwing battery acid in someone's face is evil, but rather there is no grounds for claiming that an act is "evil" in the first place. Why think that a particular act that causes suffering in a homo sapien has any moral dimension at all?

If you are defining evil as a gross act of pain and suffering induced upon another then I stated the grounds for how that is defined. Are you saying that experience and understanding of how an act can be grossly harmful to another is not grounds for the claim that it's bad? If the claim is made then a moral dimension has been formed.

Michael Ruse, an atheist, would say that thinking such things is simply an aid to survival and that there is no objective grounds for calling anything "evil" or "good". You may think you are referring to some law which transcends human opinion and is objective in that's sense, nevertheless such a reference is truly without foundation.

I think an aid to survival is a good thing. As stated, objective grounds can apply, and opinions that are based on experience of actions that are productive to the betterment of mankind and ones that aren't IS a foundation. My opinion of love and peace being the only foundation to build .... Is based on my own experience. Love and peace IS a foundation in and of itself.

In fact your whole "consensus of the elders" ethic leads to absurdities.

Potentially yes.

For example, if a tribe found that instilling fear in their neighboring tribe by taking from them it's women and burning their faces with acid resulted in an increase in the odds of them surviving, then the elders of that tribe could come to the consensus that it was morally obligatory for this acid burning to take place and issue the command to do so, since as you say, they would have learned from experience that such acts aid in their survival.

That's correct, but that doesn't make it right or good for the tribe having the women being taken away, and they will fight the other in response to that. That situation does not negate my point made about an objective framework being set for the betterment of those within it. When there's no more space to run and hide (as is the case today)
we are forced into working as a collective whole and the betterment of the species. We are not quite there yet, a secular democracy globally would give us that objective framework.

Your whole view relies on a smuggled in concept of how tribes ought to survive and how tribes ought to go about growing and reproducing and assumes "this way" is true for all tribes. But there is no such "way" in a world without God. You just have a bunch of species of homo sapiens behaving like any other species of creature, i.e. according to brute instinct and natural conditioning.

No that's not what I said at all, I said differing cultures would clash, as has been and is the case today. 'The way' is what works for us as a global community, love and peace would be a good start, we can ascribe that to God if you like?
Also brute instinct and natural conditioning would have been factor and its part of our evolved heritage. Then we formed larger communities and civilisations where those elements were not always conducive to harmonious living. We were just like any species of creature, instinctual, intuitive and then we evolved into high cognitive beings which is where you will find the moral framework being formed. These elements all interact today as expressive parts to our form.

Concepts of right and wrong, of good and evil are meaningless in a world without God. And "the concept of moral obligation is unintelligible apart from the idea of God. The words remain, but their meaning is gone." -Taylor

I disagree, meaning can be found where its defined and attributed. The word God is exactly that, a world without that word gets by just fine because If you can't apply a valid meaning to the word it will be discarded as just that, a word without meaning. If you mean a world without love and peace is meaningless then I'd be singing in your choir, is that what you mean?

Edit: I see the last bit I responded to were not your words, I still disagree with it.


lf.[/QUOTE]

 

[KCfromNC]

So, bottom line: In addressing the problem of evil, we also have to reconsider and possibly redefine what God is like in his or her own nature and we have definite choices here.

In other words, there's no good answer to the problem of evil.

The hiddenness of God crops up a lot. Good question: If there really is a God, how come we have no direct experience of him? Well, but who says we don't?

If you're talking about the Christian god, the majority of the world's population.

What about mystical experiences?

They're obviously evidence that Shinto is the one true religion.

If there was no God, if no one had ever experienced God, then we would have no such concept or idea of such a being.

Citation needed.

Also, I think we need to recognize that conscious, sensory experience is only the tip of the ice berg.

Same problem here.

So we have to be open tot he possibility that just because we do not perceive of God at one level of consciousness in no ways means we do not experience directly God in some other way, via purely unconscious , nonsensory, purely affective affective experience, for example. Note that I did not say this proves God exists, just that we shouldn't write off God just because we have no sensory awareness of him or her.

This same argument applies equally to anything we can possibly imagine.

In short, there is no way you can use the scientific method to verify that the scientific method is the true path to reality.

There's no way you can use any method to verify that anything is the One True Path[tm] to reality. That's a pipe dream for philosophers to waste their careers on, not something that has any practical application.

It just sets the stage better by recognizing that the scientific method rests on faith

No, it rests on a centuries-long track record of producing useful results. That's the exact opposite of faith.

 

[KCfromNC]

Concepts of right and wrong, of good and evil are meaningless in a world without God.

False. They're just not packaged as the opinions of an unknowable god.

 

[KCfromNC]

How do you know you are not a brain in a vat?

Prove through empirical means, that you are not a body lying in the matrix, or a brain in a vat of chemicals being stimulated by a mad scientist.

Prove through empirical means that the earth was not created five minutes ago with the appearance of age.

Prove through empirical means, that the speed of light remains constant as it travels between any two points.

Prove through empirical means that there are other minds besides your own.

You can't.

Do you therefore resort to throwing your hands up and saying I don't know !

Of course not.

Nope. It's perfectly reasonable to ignore questions like these since they are either impossible to prove and/or have zero consequences no matter what the answer is. If you're saying gods are in that same category I'm not going to argue with you.

Meanwhile, methods which have moved beyond this kind of nonsense and on to generating useful results are doing just that. Why religion is stuck playing childish word games rather than catching up is beyond me.

 

[bhsmte]

Why do you only want to share your evidence in a "debate"?
What's wrong with a simple thread?

He is trying to make Willy Craig proud.

 

[bhsmte]

He wants the opportunity to sharpen his sword, much like Jeremy E Walker before him, and Elioenai26 before him.

You know what they say; third time is a charm.

 

[anonymous person]

Prove any of those in any method period, before you attack empercism better well have some method that can work in it's stead.

You see the problem is you want to attack emperacism, but then leave nothing to be used. So what would you use to prove your not a brain in a vat? Not in the matrix, that the earth wasn't created 5 minutes ago.

Because guess what you can't, you have no method for proving those things either, but the things we can prove, rely on it, and there is no other method. Prove to me in some other method other then emperacism that the sun exists, that anything you know to be true is a fact.

This is the problem with the method those like you want to use, you attack science and our knowledge for using the only thing we can. You know how we can verify things in the bible? Through science, it's not prayer, or personal experience it's through emperacism and such. Because otherwise you have no method to tell wether what you think is god, is just a delusion, or Satan or someone trying to decieve you or any other number of things, because Satan wants to trick you, he wants you to think you are right about something while all the while your wrong.

I am not attacking anything.

I'm just saying that empirical methods of investigation have limits. They are limited to their domain i.e. the repeatable and observable.

Science is limited to the repeatable and the observable. Metaphysics is not limited to the physical, hence the prefix "meta", for example.

Theology is not limited to the physical. It deals with non-physical concepts.

Aesthetic judgments and claims do not fall within the domain of the empirical. Value judgements about good and evil are not subject to the empirical.

Beliefs like there are other minds besides my own, or I am not a body lying in the matrix, etc. do not fall within the domain of beliefs subject to the empirical.

How my ancestors migrated across continents millenia ago is not something accessible or repeatable or observable. Historiographers and sociologists utilize other tools to draw conclusions about the past. They use inductive reasoning for example. They use written records, artifacts etc.

So no one is attacking anything or anyone. I think science is one of the most beneficial things we as humans have at or disposal, but it is not the be all and end all source of knowledge. It is one source of knowledge.

 

[Loudmouth]

Read their work. If you desire to. It is available to you.

This is a discussion forum, not a suggested reading forum. If you refuse to discuss your references, please don't cite them.

 

[Loudmouth]

I am not attacking anything.

I'm just saying that empirical methods of investigation have limits. They are limited to their domain i.e. the repeatable and observable.

How would an unlimited method be better, one where made up deities are as real as the ground beneath your feet?

It would seem to me that the only methods worth using are those that limit your conclusions to the truth and eliminate fantasy.

Theology is not limited to the physical. It deals with non-physical concepts.

It would appear that it isn't limited to what is true, either.

 

[Loudmouth]

Read it or not. It's up to you. And yes I know what an atheist is.

I see no reason to read articles that even you won't spend time on. Seems that they would be a waste of my time as well.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Theology is not limited to the physical. It deals with non-physical concepts.

The question, which @DogmaHunter already raised on multiple occasions (1), is how the truth of such claims is established.