Proof???!!!!!

[Chalnoth]

As I stated earlier, I will gladly acqiuesce that an inherently self-contradictory thing cannot exist.

But that is not the only definition of God. (It certainly underlays most poorly constructed versions of God, but not a necessary antecedent to something being God).

I'd recommend this blog post as reading on this subject:
http://www.machineslikeus.com/cms/scientific-proof-of-gods-non-existence

I think Mano shows quite well why the logical position, when there is absolutely zero evidence, is tentative disbelief, not simple unbelief.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

As I stated earlier, I will gladly acqiuesce that an inherently self-contradictory thing cannot exist.

But that is not the only definition of God. (It certainly underlays most poorly constructed versions of God, but not a necessary antecedent to something being God).

I do not feel compelled to accept any kind of definition of a God.

 

[thaumaturgy]

I Kant read.

Thank you! Honestly. That was hilarious.

Nice to laugh right now as the county I live in goes up in flames and all I can do is sit, watch the news and debate people on the internet.

 

[thaumaturgy]

I do not feel compelled to accept any kind of definition of a God.

And that is my point. God is effectively a "definitionless" concept. The more well one defines God the more "testable" God becomes and usually that results in yet another reason to fail to reject the null hypothesis.

My point being that for whatever definition of God one gives, until it is well defined it cannot be tested for.

The null must be that there is no God. It is up to them to prove that there is a God.

So far no one has done that. As such I fail to reject the null hypothesis.

I fear I am not being clear on this. Hopefully someone is reading who may be able to more effectively make these points that some here seem to be missing.

Is there something from my logic class I am just bungling here?

 

[thaumaturgy]

I'd recommend this blog post as reading on this subject:
http://www.machineslikeus.com/cms/scientific-proof-of-gods-non-existence

I think Mano shows quite well why the logical position, when there is absolutely zero evidence, is tentative disbelief, not simple unbelief.

Tentative disbelief sounds like the colloquial version of "simple unbelief".

Zero evidence merely makes it impossible to reject the null. But since we don't have all data then we can only fail to reject the null with some nearly overwhelming assurity.

I am willing to place my p-value in this debate at near zero, but that is merely failing to reject the null.

If you want an informal statement I would then say "I don't believe there is a God." But formally and quite specifically

I fail to reject the notion that there is no God.

I have failed to reject the null hypothesis.

I hope you will understand the formalisms I am clinging to here are pretty well established. If I have made some mistake in presenting the logic and statistical forms, please correct me, point me to the source of my error and link me back to a better discussion of

Statistical hypothesis testing
Logic
Logic Fallacies

I actually would like to learn more. As I said earlier, I am still learning much of this and have made mistakes in the past.

 

[michabo]

No offense here, Michabo, I like your posts usually, but you are backing a dog on this one. Please point out to me where in any logic textbook you can "prove a negative".

We're disproving a positive, and that happens all the time. Do we need omniscience to say that no global flood occurred and wiped out all humanity except for a single family? Are we forced to say, as you seem to advocate, that we can just say that we don't believe there was Noah's flood when the truth is that we actively believe it did not occur, are almost certain it did not occur?

Next, I've stressed over and over that we don't need "proof". Gravity fairies haven't been disproven, yet still we believe they don't exist (not merely "I don't believe they exist.")

Maybe I've missed something, but I have always thought that was a glaring logic fallacy.

Which fallacy is that?

This is what I mean by rejecting the null hypothesis. If the animal can reasonably be expected to not evolve it would be irrational to assume it exists until proven not to exist. Because you can never prove it does not exist.

So what? You're dodging the question, trying to reframe it in terms of these absolutes which aren't applicable in any other domain.

Given our current state of knowledge, is it rational to believe that half-horse, half-eagles do not exist?

Agreed! The key is that a claim "There is no God" is a 100% claim. It does not leave any room for new evidence.

No, it isn't an absolute claim, I think that's just you reading into it. When I say "I believe that it is true that there is no God", I've said nothing about my confidence level. If these statements must be 100%, then it would be impossible to believe in anything, since virtually nothing can be proven 100%.

I don't think that is defensible.

While I am quite sure you are open to new evidence and you are willing to consider the information put out there, you are using the phrase "There is no God" colloquially in which you are merely staking your claim that you, too, have failed to reject the null.

No! It is more than merely rejecting an hypothesis.

In addition to there being no positive evidence supporting the existence of god, there is evidence supporting its nonexistence. Given that, the rational belief position is not "I neither believe nor disbelieve that God exists" but "I believe God does not exist."

Again, I don't know what your logic, philosophy, statistics or science background is. Unfortunately it is very necessary and perhaps overly pedantic but still required, in order to do a thorough job of it.

I have three semesters of logic and two semesters of stats and four years of science (physics, computing science, and psychology). I do not practice in a scientific research environment, but I can follow your arguments, I just think that you are not applying your skills to this question in the same way that you would apply it to other scenarios.

If we have a proposition P and we have no evidence to falsify it and we have evidence to support it, then why would you not say "I believe P", with the unspoken but completely understood subtext that you would change your mind if contrary evidence came to light and the strength of your belief P is not absolute but on a sliding scale which varies with the strength of supporting evidence?

According to what you're saying here, you would never say that you believe in anything unless it can be proven 100% which sounds absurd.

My atheism is a bit more grounded than that.

Fair enough. Then I suspect that your atheism is grounded in more than a mere absence of evidence.

And what you have lined out here is effectively weak atheism in broader terms.

Null: There is no God

The only thing you can do is REJECT the NULL or FAIL TO REJECT THE NULL.

I have failed to reject the null.

That is all I can do.

It's not all you can do. You can ask the question "do personal gods exist" and since they're inconsistent with observation, you can answer "no" definitively. You can ask "can a god exist" and answer with a high degree of confidence that they can not.


Since you brought up Dawkins early on, he used a scale from 1-7 of belief. 1 is "I know there is a god", 4 is split 50/50, and 7 is "I know there is no god". Where would you put yourself?

From what you're saying, you are attacking anyone that says actively disbelieves in a god, saying that 5-7 are logically indefensible. When presented with positive arguments against god, it is perfectly rational to adopt a 5 or a 6, which is all I've done. I believe there is no god, though I'm not 100% certain.

I hope I have stated this clearly. I see no problem with you making your claim, I just think it is relatively clearly a logic fallacy, but I also see from what you have actually said here, that you are not actually backing a pure strong atheist claim.

I believe that gods do not exist, and so I am a strong atheist, isn't that the very definition? I think your "strong atheist" as requiring 100% certainty is a fiction, created by theists who demand that we have 100% certainty if we ever have the temerity to doubt God.

 

[TheOutsider]

I thought that there was a rule on this forum against telling others what they do and do not believe in. At the very least, it is very rude and completely uncalled for.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

And that is my point. God is effectively a "definitionless" concept. The more well one defines God the more "testable" God becomes and usually that results in yet another reason to fail to reject the null hypothesis.

My point being that for whatever definition of God one gives, until it is well defined it cannot be tested for.

The null must be that there is no God. It is up to them to prove that there is a God.

So far no one has done that. As such I fail to reject the null hypothesis.

This might hold true de facto. Per se it might true that for all definitions of God a particular hard atheist is willing to accept God is contradictory.

 

[michabo]

I'd recommend this blog post as reading on this subject:
http://www.machineslikeus.com/cms/scientific-proof-of-gods-non-existence

I think Mano shows quite well why the logical position, when there is absolutely zero evidence, is tentative disbelief, not simple unbelief.

I compare the situation to homeopathy. In addition to there being no evidence supporting an effect, there is no plausible physical mechanism for it to work.

If there was no evidence but there had been no good tests and there was potentially some plausibility, I'd neither believe nor disbelief. I'd wait and see.

If there was no evidence but there had been good tests, then I would tentatively disbelieve.

If there was no evidence but there had been good tests, and there was no physical plausibility, then I would strongly disbelieve, and I think that's the rational response.


When dealing with gods, I think that's the situation. Not only have we looked for evidence for thousands of years and found nothing despite a reasonable belief that we should have found evidence (most gods wish for worship and have interacted with our world), but there is no physically plausible mechanism for a god to exist. Given that, I think the rational position is disbelief, not merely an absence of belief. No absolutism in anything, but disbelief all the same.

 

[AV1611VET]

Thank you! Honestly. That was hilarious.

Nice to laugh right now as the county I live in goes up in flames and all I can do is sit, watch the news and debate people on the internet.

 

[DeathMagus]

I hope you will understand the formalisms I am clinging to here are pretty well established. If I have made some mistake in presenting the logic and statistical forms, please correct me, point me to the source of my error and link me back to a better discussion of

Statistical hypothesis testing
Logic
Logic Fallacies

I actually would like to learn more. As I said earlier, I am still learning much of this and have made mistakes in the past.

Nah. You're doing well, and doing it correctly. As you've said, Michabo is making colloquial statements that draw unwarranted conclusions given what we know.

Which fallacy is that?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_proof

Michabo, have you ever taken a logic or formal debate class?

 

[michabo]

Nah. You're doing well, and doing it correctly. As you've said, Michabo is making colloquial statements that draw unwarranted conclusions given what we know.

I've explained myself several times. I don't mind if you disagree, but you could at least elaborate.

Michabo, have you ever taken a logic or formal debate class?

I've answered that already.

Instead of trying to attack my education, can you point out the flaws in what I'm saying?

 

[DeathMagus]

I've explained myself several times. I don't mind if you disagree, but you could at least elaborate.

I'm really not capable of explaining it more clearly and concisely than either Thaum or the wiki article I cited.

Essentially, as you've said yourself, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence in every definition of god. The two examples you gave specifically were deism and pantheism. A strong atheist is most commonly defined as stating "there is no god." Since this claim cannot be supported even by the absence of contrary evidence in all cases, the claim is not supportable. You could argue "The Christian god is contradictory, and therefor cannot exist," and you at least would have a defensible argument. However, since out and out atheism is equal-opportunity disbelief, you cannot back up your claim in all cases.

Instead of trying to attack my education, can you point out the flaws in what I'm saying?

I'm not attacking your education at all. Logic is a tough nut to crack, especially since the formal and colloquial versions of logic seem so similar, but in actuality have key distinctions.

 

[Gary51]

God loves all atheists...

 

[thaumaturgy]

I think I'm seeing your point a bit better. As a "Strong Atheist" you are not making the usual strong atheist claim that "God does not exist" but rather the more defensible "informal" claim that since you don't see any evidence for God you do not believe in him.

Indeed this is reasonable, if not formally stated. As you obviously know from your background, the formalisms matter. Surely in your logic classes you ran up against someone like my former room mate in college who would never let you "prove a negative".

We're disproving a positive,

No, look back at what my posts were responding to. I am responding to the claim "God does not exist." That is a negative claim.

Which fallacy is that?

Proving a negative. That is a logic fallacy. You cannot ask someone to prove a negative.

So what? You're dodging the question, trying to reframe it in terms of these absolutes which aren't applicable in any other domain.

I have been quite clear on this. I am not reframing. I am merely pointing out the very real formalisms of logic and hypothesis testing.

So far you have not told me how I have misrepresnted those formalisms.

No, it isn't an absolute claim, I think that's just you reading into it.

What is non-absolute about the claim "There is no God".

Honestly I am misisng something. One of us is completely missing the point of the other on this one, but it is an absolute statement.

If you were to say "There is likely no God" then it wouldn't be an absolute statement.

When I say "I believe that it is true that there is no God", I've said nothing about my confidence level.

While that is true, the statement "God Does Not Exist" does say something about confidence. And that is what I'm arguing against. Your claim "I don't believe God exists" is perfectly rational reasonable and carries with it no statement of confidence, in point of fact, it can be assumed to carry your implied level of confidence, which if pressed you could tell us. But that isn't the debate between Strong and Weak atheism. That is a debate between formal and informal language.

What kind of statistical analysis of data do you normally do in your line of work? How do you draw meaningful conclusions about your hypotheses?

If these statements must be 100%, then it would be impossible to believe in anything, since virtually nothing can be proven 100%.

That's my point all along. Since nothing can be proven 100% then it is irrational to make claims that others can interpret as being 100% claims.

While you are obviously fully cognizant of the limitations of the statements and it is abundantly clear you are speaking in an informal manner on this, you have to realize that when you say "There is No God" that does imply an absolute.

That is what I've been arguing all along. If I wish to make a defensible claim I am willing to place it in the context of an hypothesis test.

We never know anything 100%. We only draw conclusions and couch them in terms of probability of making a Type I or Type II error. That's all we can do.

Those are the limits of our limited knowledge.

No! It is more than merely rejecting an hypothesis.

Unfortunately this is where we part ways. As a professional scientist I will not accept that you are able to prove a negative. You are fully within your rights to reject a logically inconsistent construction as I would as well, but you cannot prove a negative. In fact unless you see all data all across the universe you never will have the entire data set and therefore you are stuck testing the hypothesis.

That's just the limits of our limited knowledge.

The only think you can do is say "I have set my p-value at 99.9999...9% that I am not making a Type I error if I reject the null.

If you are omniscient then I will gladly acquiesce that you can do more.

I have three semesters of logic and two semesters of stats and four years of science (physics, computing science, and psychology).

Well then, you come to the table with more organzied training than I have had.

So please tell me where I have made my errors in stating my position?

Proving a negative is pretty fundamental. Most logic texts will point out that this is a logic fallacy. Most logicians do not see the capacity to prove a negative.

(Source 1)
(Source 2)
(Source 3)

I do not practice in a scientific research environment, but I can follow your arguments, I just think that you are not applying your skills to this question in the same way that you would apply it to other scenarios.

How so? What have I failed to do in terms of crafting the null, testing the null or making the claims?

If I have made the claim incorrectly, of somehow failed, please educate me.

If we have a proposition P and we have no evidence to falsify it and we have evidence to support it, then why would you not say "I believe P", with the unspoken but completely understood subtext that you would change your mind if contrary evidence came to light and the strength of your belief P is not absolute but on a sliding scale which varies with the strength of supporting evidence?

That is precisely what one must do in science. That is what I am saying. I believe that the null hypothesis "God does not exist" should not be rejected.

What are you saying again?

According to what you're saying here, you would never say that you believe in anything unless it can be proven 100% which sounds absurd.

Did I say that? Where? I never know anything 100% ergo I will never have a 100% belief unless it is logically impossible (like an invisible visible thing)

It's not all you can do. You can ask the question "do personal gods exist" and since they're inconsistent with observation, you can answer "no" definitively. You can ask "can a god exist" and answer with a high degree of confidence that they can not.

With a high degree of confidence. That's the whole rub. That's what I'm talking about here.

Since you brought up Dawkins early on, he used a scale from 1-7 of belief. 1 is "I know there is a god", 4 is split 50/50, and 7 is "I know there is no god". Where would you put yourself?

Dawkins was laying out, in laymens terms, the same point I'm making here. I'd put myself at 9.9. A perfect 10 is a "Strong Atheist Claim". I disagree with Dawkins labelling 7="I know there is no God". That is 10. 9.9 allows me to set p=0.01 which is sufficient.

From what you're saying, you are attacking anyone that says actively disbelieves in a god, saying that 5-7 are logically indefensible.

Au contraire, I am merely saying 10 is logically indefensible. (cf above)

When presented with positive arguments against god, it is perfectly rational to adopt a 5 or a 6, which is all I've done. I believe there is no god, though I'm not 100% certain.

Then indeed we do disagree on what the term "Strong Atheism" entails.

"...believing that gods do not (or cannot) exist is known as 'strong atheism.'" (SOURCE)

To my understanding Strong Atheism (sometimes called gnostic atheism because of positive knowledge) is claim of non-existence.

I believe that gods do not exist, and so I am a strong atheist, isn't that the very definition? I think your "strong atheist" as requiring 100% certainty is a fiction

Certainly not by anything I've read but I think I understand your point. Perhaps you could point me in the direction of where the distinction between Strong and Weak is similarly blurred?

, created by theists who demand that we have 100% certainty if we ever have the temerity to doubt God.

I am not in the game of absolutes. Of course you know that. You have had more formal statistics training and more formal logic training than I. You are more than adequately familiar with the requirements and how the debate must go.

 

[michabo]

I'm really not capable of explaining it more clearly and concisely than either Thaum or the wiki article I cited.

And I've already said many times that I'm not proving anything, nor do I think that 100% proof is necessary to believe that gods don't exist. So your links come as a non sequitur. We both agree, but they're not relevant.

Essentially, as you've said yourself, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence in every definition of god. The two examples you gave specifically were deism and pantheism.

True enough, and since the pantheistic god is essentially no god (it's "nature"), we might as well deal with just the deistic god. We're left with no evidence of the deistic god and no plausible mechanism to account for its existence, so disbelief is justified.

A strong atheist is most commonly defined as stating "there is no god."

That's me and I think I've sketched out one way you could go about defending that. Just as long as you recognize that this belief, like any other, cannot be 100% certain.

Logic is a tough nut to crack, especially since the formal and colloquial versions of logic seem so similar, but in actuality have key distinctions.

I have two years of formal predicate logic, but have covered fuzzy logic and other systems in my fourth year. I don't think it's especially relevant here and when you bring it up, I have the unpleasant suspicion that you expect things to be proven 100%, deductively, which would be placing a burden of proof higher than any other scientific theory.

 

[Gary51]

One day all atheists will believe in God.

 

[thaumaturgy]

I have two years of formal predicate logic, but have covered fuzzy logic and other systems in my fourth year. I don't think it's especially relevant here and when you bring it up, I have the unpleasant suspicion that you expect things to be proven 100%, deductively, which would be placing a burden of proof higher than any other scientific theory.

But you see, no one is requiring 100% proof from the Weak Atheist side. In fact we recognize that 100% cannot exist for a claim like this.

That is precisely why I am a weak atheist. I think I have been clear in this point, and further I have provided a simple test for logical defensibility of the negative claim "There is no God".

Since that claim is, by definition, negative, the only way you can defend that claim is if you thereby prove the negative, which your training in logic surely has pointed up to you, is impossible.

You cannot redefine the claim as somehow a positive claim in a formal stance.

If you wish to claim "There is a God" and then disprove that claim then you have another matter altogether.

But we are discussing the usual interpretation of the Strong Atheist stance. The Strong atheist stance is almost never "It is highly unlikely that there is a God".

I am beginning to understand your stand better in that what you are actually talking around here is a rather measured and reasonable, but weak atheist, type of claim.

You are open that proof could come in and should be considered, but you currently find it highly unlikely that any such proof exists, therefore you feel quite confident in claiming that God does not exist.

We both arrive at about the same point, but the road I am taking here is really part of the training you have had in logic and scientific hypothesis testing.

Again, I would like to see what resources you have found to describe Strong Atheism as just a stronger wording of weak atheism.

 

[Gary51]

What is the point of two atheist arguing with each other... they are both wrong

 

[michabo]

I think I'm seeing your point a bit better. As a "Strong Atheist" you are not making the usual strong atheist claim that "God does not exist" but rather the more defensible "informal" claim that since you don't see any evidence for God you do not believe in him.

Not really. Close, but not quite.

I don't see any evidence for God (which itself falsifies many gods), there is no plausible mechanism for the existence of gods, and the properties of gods are contradicted by our understanding of physical laws. Therefore I believe gods don't exist, not just "I do not believe in him."

Surely in your logic classes you ran up against someone like my former room mate in college who would never let you "prove a negative".

Yes, and that is only relevant in a 100% certainty sense of "proof" which is not a barrier imposed upon any other belief. You do not need to prove gravity 100% before you believe; you do not need to prove gods don't exist 100% before you believe they do not.

Proving a negative. That is a logic fallacy. You cannot ask someone to prove a negative.

Yes, yes. When has "proof" (as in 100% certainty) ever been required for belief? A rational belief does not require 100% certainty.

What is non-absolute about the claim "There is no God".

Honestly I am misisng something. One of us is completely missing the point of the other on this one, but it is an absolute statement.

If you were to say "There is likely no God" then it wouldn't be an absolute statement.

What isn't absolute about this? I think you're trying to make it absolute. When someone says "the force of attraction between two objects is directly related to their mass and inversely related to the square of the distance", is this an absolute statement? You know full well that unspoken is the disclaimer that this is based on our current knowledge, it may be incorrect, and that our belief may be strong but is not 100%. It's unspoken because that disclaimer is attached to all of our beliefs.

You happily accept these statements about other areas, and for some reason switch to mathematical deduction-speak when it comes to theology, but you have no reason for this.

I believe there is no god. I agree with the statement that there is no god. Of course, my confidence level is not 100%.

You haven't answered my question where your belief in a half-horse, half-eagle, on a scale of 1-7.

Your claim "I don't believe God exists" is perfectly rational reasonable and carries with it no statement of confidence, in point of fact, it can be assumed to carry your implied level of confidence, which if pressed you could tell us.

Saying "I believe gods do not exist" carries with it the implication that I have some confidence which, if pressed, I could tell you. You seem to insist that before I express a belief that gods don't exist, my confidence must be 100% and that is unjustifiable.

That's my point all along. Since nothing can be proven 100% then it is irrational to make claims that others can interpret as being 100% claims.

I can't help what others misinterpret. I'm here to help correct them.

While you are obviously fully cognizant of the limitations of the statements and it is abundantly clear you are speaking in an informal manner on this, you have to realize that when you say "There is No God" that does imply an absolute.

Not my fault that you mistakenly wish to interpret this as an absolute. Since we're discussing observations about reality, the most reasonable context should be the same language we use to discuss any understanding about the universe. That is not a strict, deductive language, but an inductive language where conclusions are always tentative.

Unfortunately this is where we part ways. As a professional scientist I will not accept that you are able to prove a negative.

Yet again I will tell you that "proof" in the sense you're using it is an extreme burden that is not placed upon any other hypothesis. We should say that we believe God does not exist if we are reasonable confident, just as we should say we believe astrology doesn't work.

With a high degree of confidence. That's the whole rub. That's what I'm talking about here.

Exactly. You are arguing that it is indefensible to say "I believe X does not exist" under any circumstance. That's a mistake. By the same argument (of requiring 100% certainty), we cannot say "I believe X holds" either, whether X is any general theory, except in the extremely trivial cases of simple observations.

Dawkins was laying out, in laymens terms, the same point I'm making here. I'd put myself at 9.9. A perfect 10 is a "Strong Atheist Claim". I disagree with Dawkins labelling 7="I know there is no God". That is 10. 9.9 allows me to set p=0.01 which is sufficient.

So then you do believe that there is no God. What the hell is the problem with saying that?

Au contraire, I am merely saying 10 is logically indefensible. (cf above)

Yeah fine, no argument. The problem is your incorrect idea that believing there is no god is a 10, when anyone from a 6-10 (on a 10pt scale) believes there is no god and so are all strong atheists.

Certainly not by anything I've read but I think I understand your point. Perhaps you could point me in the direction of where the distinction between Strong and Weak is similarly blurred?

http://www.strongatheism.net/faq/#F2
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mathew/intro.html
http://atheism.about.com/od/atheismquestions/a/strong_weak.htm

These were just the top hits I found and they all hammer home the basic point. (The strongatheism.net FAQ's next two questions should reinforce what I've been saying about proof, especially with the unreasonable demands for proof.)