God & Falsifiability (discussion moved from other thread)

antiskeptic

Wicknight wrote: »

So "no" then :rolleyes:

Er...no. It's yes.

As soon as someone builds a detector of the spiritual that rules out someone simply imagining God in their head, then we might have something. Until then of course ....

Until then of course you've got no detector so can't really say one way or the other.

Let's not get to supposing I'm trying to prove God here. I'm countering the claim of someone who supposes God invisible just because they can't see him. They make a bald assertion and I make one back. Stalemate - not proof.

Genghiz Cohen

antiskeptic wrote: »

Hopefully what's going on in this thread is that the atheist concludes he can't prove no God. And that the theist concludes that he can't prove God. Which means the logical position for the atheist to occupy is agnosticism. That theist has all the evidence he needs to believe in God means he can go on believing in God. His not being able to prove it to the atheist is quite a different issue - and need not impact on his own belief.

I think you've hit the nail on the head, too bad you were welding...
Devout Christians will never be convinced no matter what evidence you put in front of them, it is the very nature of religion to be unprovable.

But I know the Christianity is a lie, you've all seen the Horus Vs. Jesus articles. We know that the people who created the Vatican did so 600 years after Jesus was supposed to have died. Seems odd that the people who killed him now worship him as god.
More likely they saw what L. Ron Hubbard saw, money.

antiskeptic wrote: »

If it was you who couldn't see the evidence that supports belief, wouldn't the problem be your own blindness and not with the faith of the believer. Theoretically I mean.

I spend 17 years as a Christian, while looking for god I never saw anything. I spent 2 years looking for anything one way or another, and only finding logic and truth, I am now Atheist.

Black Swan

velocirafter wrote: »

can you give an example of these experiments

Not sure the meaning of your question, but I will make an attempt to answer it in a couple of ways in hopes of addressing it...

If employing the scientific method in experimentation, often the researcher must review the scientific literature before proceeding with the experiment. This literature essentially summarizes the procedures and experiments of those scientists that led up to, and tend to support, the new experiment now to be conducted (that is, unless the experiment that is to be conducted is a replication study, which gets at the notion of "falsifiability" in this thread).

Grounding your research upon experiments conducted before you relies to some extent upon the intersubjectivity of scientists that research in your field, as well as the continuous peer review of the methodology of experiments, analysis, results, interpretations, and conclusions derived from that research. So to some extent you rely upon what is "accepted" by your field as being valid with existent theory and reliable in terms of methods and past experimentation; i.e., this "accepting" being consistent with the point made in my earlier post on this thread.

In science you don't typically reinvent the wheel from scratch each time you conduct an experiment, per se, but rather depend upon those "accepted" procedures and researches that came before you. This can at times produce a gross error, but the process of falsifiability through replication studies and peer review as a part of the scientific method should eventually disclose the error.

If you merely want a source of "examples of these experiments," thousands could be found summarized in the Dissertation Abstracts, especially those that pertain to the disciplines of biology, chemistry, physics, etc.

Zombrex

antiskeptic wrote: »

But in order for these "likelyhood models" to reflect reality we'd have to calibrate them off something absolute. Otherwise we're pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps.

Well yes, and humans are pretty absolute.

If we determine that nothing in nature so far needs God to explain it, nor even suggests a creator, and then you couple that with the large body of evidence that humans invent things like gods and supernatural experiences due to the way the human brain functions, it is not hard to conclude that supernatural religion is simply a product of the human mind and has little to no bearing on reality.

Now remember, you can't prove that, in the same way I can't prove Star Wars didn't happen. So I'm not claiming that this proves God doesn't exist, nor that it proves that humans invented him.

antiskeptic wrote: »

I'd go further and say that the atheist can't even begin to hang a probablity level on whether God exists or not. Which is why I suggest agnosticism.

The probably level that God exists is some what irrelevant. The probability that anyone who claims to have experienced "God" was imagining it is more relevant.

antiskeptic wrote: »

I'm not sure quite what you're saying here.

I'm saying that religious people are imagining it.

So when you say "God exists" I don't actually need to say "No he doesn't", simply saying "You are most likely imagining that" is enough to be atheist.

If you remove human claims about God from the discussion due to them being the product of the human mind then there is nothing left. There is a universe that has no indication of a creator. I can't say for certain there isn't a creator, but I see no reason to believe there is, or even that this is likely.

Some times blue fluff is just blue fluff, rather that red fluff died blue.

antiskeptic wrote: »

You have evidence that Star Wars is a story. What evidence have you that God doesn't exist.

Ah, two different things there.

I have evidence that Star Wars is a story. I don't have evidence that it never happened. How could I? Am I going to go to a galaxy far far away and find Hoth and determine that no Imperial Storm Troopers landed here?

What I do do, and what you do as well, is use the evidence that it is a story to conclude it never happened, that it was made up. But that is not the same thing. Heck even if Lucas made the whole thing up that still doesn't prove that by some amazing cosmic fluke the whole thing didn't happen anyway. But I certainly don't believe that, nor am I "agnostic" to it in anything but the most scientific sense.

Likewise with religion. I don't have evidence that God doesn't exist. I do have evidence that humans who claim gods and supernatural elements are imagining this.

Zombrex

antiskeptic wrote: »

Er...no. It's yes.

It is a yes by changing that "visible" means.

antiskeptic wrote: »

Until then of course you've got no detector so can't really say one way or the other.

Well no, that isn't quite true. I can (and scientists have) cause the sensations of the "spiritual" to appear in humans through manipulating the brain. Basically faking it.

This doesn't "prove" that the spiritual isn't real, but it certainly tips the scales in that direction, in the same way that studying pattern matching in the brain doesn't "prove" that there isn't actually an ocean in a sea shell when you listen to it and "hear" an ocean, but it does tip the scales in the direction that you aren't hearing an ocean, you are hearing air circulating that your brain pattern matches to the sound of the ocean.

antiskeptic wrote: »

Let's not get to supposing I'm trying to prove God here. I'm countering the claim of someone who supposes God invisible just because they can't see him.

Well that is generally what the definition of "invisible" means.

You are not demonstrating the opposite, you are simply changing what "visible" means to suit your own beliefs.

robindch

antiskeptic wrote: »

In the bandwidth of light called "spiritual" absolutlely.

And all the people who can "spiritually" see Allah, Ganesh and Zoroaster are right too?

Black Swan

Calibos wrote: »

This is just a flowery way of saying that atheists use as much faith in believing scientists as the theists do in believing in their God just because we didn't perform the experiments ourselves. Been done to death that one

Just because the argument has been repeated, does it make it any less valid; e.g., the scientific method is repeated, especially as pertains to replication and falsifiability studies? I hear the same arguments over and over again on this and other forums... those of "belief" and those that "accept" without direct experience in most cases, but consistent with their very different perspectives.

Genghiz Cohen

robindch wrote: »

And all the people who can "spiritually" see Allah, Ganesh and Zoroaster are right too?

And Zordon, don't forget Zordon.

mickeydevine

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

Really lads, don’t feed the troll. They are only worth feeding long enough to get evidence of trolling out of them and then to do no more. I for one will not be addressing this troll again.

I've had my suspicions for awhile now. Didn't wanna just come out and say it but fair play, you're spot on IMO. Antiskeptics hit the ground running tho hasn't he/she.:D

Mena

Wicknight wrote: »

in the same way that studying pattern matching in the brain doesn't "prove" that there isn't actually an ocean in a sea shell when you listen to it and "hear" an ocean, but it does tip the scales in the direction that you aren't hearing an ocean, you are hearing air circulating that your brain pattern matches to the sound of the ocean.

Apologies for dragging this OT but I thought the sound you were hearing in a sea shell was actually the blood flowing through your head. Must google that.

pH

I'm not at all sure that science and maths haven't already proved that God is non-existent.

Most Christians are happy to limit their God's power to not producing logical impossibilities, for example for any triangle drawn on a plane the 3 angles add up to 180, and *most* theists accept that not even God could draw one otherwise.

So on from that, physics and maths have produced some really fundamental laws limiting what is possible.

I'm thinking things here like Godel's incompleteness theorem, Turing's solution to the halting problem, Noether's theorem and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle to name a few. These seriously limit the power and omniscience of any God, these are basics constructs which are 'true' in the same way as angles of a triangle adding up to 180, not just true for us, or people of our intelligence.

If you accept that "god" has to be compatible with the above list (and there are lots more) then that God has none of the power that theists like to attribute to theirs.

CDfm

CerebralCortex wrote: »

No its probably you that bothers him. Why do you post so much in the A+A forum considering your beliefs?

Really CC - I post in A+A cos you get good discussions on issues that transend religion.

I will sometimes see an issue like stem cell research that I want to know more on or memes and want to get an unbiased opinion on something I might have seen elsewhere.If there is a stupid science question being asked its probably me:D

CDfm

CerebralCortex wrote: »

CDfm you're like the Evel Knievel of logic. If you think what that priest said was witty then I know why you're a theist. :rolleyes:

CC - if you didnt spot the blonde joke your an atheist

antiskeptic

JC 2K3 wrote: »

@antiskeptic
Do you believe in Zeus, Apollo, Mars, Leprechauns or Fairies?

Nope. And the reason why not is the same reason why I don't believe in Allah, Thor, Neptune and the IPU. I've no evidence to support belief in them - whereas I have evidence for belief in God.

The idea of believing something (anything) without a rational reason (such as having evidence to support the belief) strikes me as odd. That kind of belief is the kind of Blind Faith strawman that Richard Dawkins and his ilk are so fond of shredding.

More power to them

Zombrex

antiskeptic wrote: »

Nope. And the reason why not is the same reason why I don't believe in Allah, Thor, Neptune and the IPU. I've no evidence to support belief in them - whereas I have evidence for belief in God.

And how have you tested this evidence to rule out more plausible (and less supernatural) explanations?

Or to put it another way, how have you determined you are not imagining this evidence? Have you confirmed the evidence externally to your own mind?

JC 2K3

antiskeptic wrote: »

Nope. And the reason why not is the same reason why I don't believe in Allah, Thor, Neptune and the IPU. I've no evidence to support belief in them

But you accept the possibility that they might exist?

- whereas I have evidence for belief in God.

I'm not going to ask "what evidence?" or ask you to show me this evidence, as I'm guessing it's some kind of personal experience/anecdotal evidence. However, I will ask, why is this evidence only consistent with a Christian God?

antiskeptic

robindch wrote: »

And all the people who can "spiritually" see Allah, Ganesh and Zoroaster are right too?

That would depend on whether or not the laws of logic as we agree upon them are the way reality works in fact. If so then certainly not all can be right. Logically there are but two possibilities that I can think of

- one view is right (including in the bunch are of course, the non-theistic views)
- no views are right, something else is the case

If my view is right then the non-theists would be as wrong as the theists you mention above. What they thought was the case wasn't.

antiskeptic

JC 2K3 wrote: »

But you accept the possibility that they might exist?

Not anymore. The existance of God explains why they "exist" and are worshipped. And why they don't actually.

To accept the possibility would be to accept that God could be wrong. Making him god.

JC 2K3

antiskeptic wrote: »

Not anymore. The existance of God explains why they "exist" and are worshipped. And why they don't actually.

To accept the possibility would be to accept that God could be wrong. Making him god.

That's a direct contradiction to your reply to robindch above, where you seemingly accepted that there was a chance you were wrong...

Zombrex

antiskeptic wrote: »

That would depend on whether or not the laws of logic as we agree upon them are the way reality works in fact. If so then certainly not all can be right. Logically there are but two possibilities that I can think of

- one view is right (including in the bunch are of course, the non-theistic views)
- no views are right, something else is the case

If my view is right then the non-theists would be as wrong as the theists you mention above. What they thought was the case wasn't.

Think you missed the point

If the test you use for determining god exists also passes for other people with other gods, which logically can't all exist, that would strongly suggest that there is something wrong with the accuracy of the test, wouldn't it?

If you "see" God, and someone else "sees" Ganesh, and someone else "sees" Zoroaster, that would suggest that not only are none of them actually seeing anything but that the same mental phenomena is causing all 3 events.

How do you determine that what is happening to everyone else isn't what is happening to you?

antiskeptic

JC 2K3 wrote: »

I'm not going to ask "what evidence?" or ask you to show me this evidence, as I'm guessing it's some kind of personal experience/anecdotal evidence.

If you won't knock personal experience, I won't ask you how you know you're not a brain in a jar.

However, I will ask, why is this evidence only consistent with a Christian God?

Good question. If you'd consider the Bible as a map of a territory and God as the territory itself then congruency between the two (what the map says God is about and what God turns out to be about) leads you to suppose a unique consistancy.

Certainly the biblical explanation as to function and source of false gods sits comfortably with what I see around me. By false gods I include "Christian Religion" which very often has little to do with God.

antiskeptic

Wicknight wrote: »

Think you missed the point If the test you use for determining god exists also passes for other people with other gods, which logically can't all exist, that would strongly suggest that there is something wrong with the accuracy of the test, wouldn't it?

I'm not sure there's any test one can apply. Take the external reality I consider to exist around me. How do I test that it actually exists? Well it turns out I can't test that - I have to just assume that what I perceive to be the case is the case. I certainly can't turn to you for my confirmation - can I?

It's the same kind of thing with God.

Let me state at this point that my knowing that God exists doesn't mean he does. No more than knowing the external reality exists means it does actually.

If you "see" God, and someone else "sees" Ganesh, and someone else "sees" Zoroaster, that would suggest that not only are none of them actually seeing anything but that the same mental phenomena is causing all 3 events.

That's one possible explanation. There are others.

antiskeptic

JC 2K3 wrote: »

That's a direct contradiction to your reply to robindch above, where you seemingly accepted that there was a chance you were wrong...

I said the logical possibilities were what they were. I didn't say that I considered the other logical possibilites to be the ones that would apply. Logically, a cow can jump over the moon.

That said, it'd be worth reiterating this:

Let me state at this point that my knowing that God exists doesn't mean he does. No more than my knowing the external reality exists means it does actually.

That's the only nod I'd give to my being wrong. If God doesn't exist in fact - then neither do I. That's my level of certainty.

antiskeptic

Wicknight wrote: »

And how have you tested this evidence to rule out more plausible (and less supernatural) explanations?

Or to put it another way, how have you determined you are not imagining this evidence? Have you confirmed the evidence externally to your own mind?

Do you mind if I answer a question with a question?

Supposing God-of-the-Bible exists for a moment. Is he capable of altering the atoms in my brain so that I know he exists with the same certainty that I know I exist. And supposing he did just that - is there any need for me to test for more plausible* explanations?


*more plausible? What had you in mind -that this all came about from nothing?

Which is more plausible godidit or godknowswhatdidit?

Zombrex

antiskeptic wrote: »

I'm not sure there's any test one can apply. Take the external reality I consider to exist around me. How do I test that it actually exists? Well it turns out I can't test that - I have to just assume that what I perceive to be the case is the case. I certainly can't turn to you for my confirmation - can I?

Well yes you can. If I see something and you see the same thing that is more confirmation that you simply seeing it. Then someone else sees it as well.

Remember we are not trying to "prove" reality exists, or that the thing exists. It is still possible that all 3 of us are "brains in jars" and that we are seeing this thing because some matrix like computer says we are, but at the very least we are establishing that all three of our brains are "seeing" the same thing, and we can start to rule out that what one of us was seeing is a localised product of one of our brains. You can't rule it out completely, in the same way you can't prove something conclusively, but it is certainly better than nothing.

You don't have to conclusively prove one thing to build up support for it.

antiskeptic wrote: »

That's one possible explanation. There are others.

There are an infinite number of possible explanations, the question is how do you start weighing them up and ruling them out.

antiskeptic wrote: »

Supposing God-of-the-Bible exists for a moment. Is he capable of altering the atoms in my brain so that I know he exists with the same certainty that I know I exist. And supposing he did just that - is there any need for me to test for more plausible* explanations?

Well I would have thought so, since you imagining God exists and God existing will appear to you to be the same thing.

The only way to build a convincing assertion that God exists therefore it to confirm this externally to your own mind, which is inherently untrustworthy.

antiskeptic wrote: »

*more plausible? What had you in mind -that this all came about from nothing?

Well no, more plausible as in what you believe you are experiencing is a delusion, a delusion that is seemingly very common in humans given all the people who experience the same thing associated with gods or supernatural beings that can't all exist.

As for the argument that it is more plausible that the universe was created than it wasn't created, that is a deeply flawed argument because it relies on the universe adhering to a framework of reality that makes humans comfortable with how their brains work.

Given all the weird and wonderful things we have discovered in quantum physics over the last 100 years I see absolutely no reason to assert that the universe will adhere to a version of reality we find pleasing.

antiskeptic

pH wrote: »

So on from that, physics and maths have produced some really fundamental laws limiting what is possible.

I'm thinking things here like Godel's incompleteness theorem, Turing's solution to the halting problem, Noether's theorem and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle to name a few. These seriously limit the power and omniscience of any God, these are basics constructs which are 'true' in the same way as angles of a triangle adding up to 180, not just true for us, or people of our intelligence.

If you accept that "god" has to be compatible with the above list (and there are lots more) then that God has none of the power that theists like to attribute to theirs.

I'm not familiar with the workings of the theorems or principles above but reading between the lines I'd suspect that God would have to be confined to the extent of logic as we know it in order for you to conclude as you do.

Which doesn't deal with the possible extent of logic in dimensions unknown to us. To illustrate:

A two-dimensional being is walking along a path in the middle of which sits an enormous, 100ft-to-a-side cube. From our friends perspective there is no way to continue - he's faced with a sheer wall 100ft high. His three dimensional pal has no problem however - the added dimension permits him to walk around the cube and continue his journey.

I don't see how any theorem - which cannot take account of the actual extent of dimensions to reality - can hope to support the notion "no God"

Mickeroo

antiskeptic wrote: »

I'm not familiar with the workings of the theorems or principles above but reading between the lines I'd suspect that God would have to be confined to the extent of logic as we know it in order for you to conclude as you do.

Which doesn't deal with the possible extent of logic in dimensions unknown to us. To illustrate:

A two-dimensional being is walking along a path in the middle of which sits an enormous, 100ft-to-a-side cube. From our friends perspective there is no way to continue - he's faced with a sheer wall 100ft high. His three dimensional pal has no problem however - the added dimension permits him to walk around the cube and continue his journey.

I don't see how any theorem - which cannot take account of the actual extent of dimensions to reality - can hope to support the notion "no God"

If god exists in another dimension to us,then what has he got to do with us??

axer

Mickeroo wrote: »

If god exists in another dimension to us,then what has he got to do with us??

and how the hell do you know he is there?

JC 2K3

antiskeptic wrote: »

Good question. If you'd consider the Bible as a map of a territory and God as the territory itself then congruency between the two (what the map says God is about and what God turns out to be about) leads you to suppose a unique consistancy.

I'm lost....

Does the same not apply to other religious texts?

antiskeptic

Wicknight wrote: »

Well yes you can. If I see something and you see the same thing that is more confirmation that you simply seeing it. Then someone else sees it as well.

Remember we are not trying to "prove" reality exists, or that the thing exists. It is still possible that all 3 of us are "brains in jars" and that we are seeing this thing because some matrix like computer says we are, but at the very least we are establishing that all three of our brains are "seeing" the same thing, and we can start to rule out that what one of us was seeing is a localised product of one of our brains. You can't rule it out completely, in the same way you can't prove something conclusively, but it is certainly better than nothing.

There are two problems here - both resolved by the insertion of an unspoken assumption.

1) We can't suppose there are three brains in a jar. You could be as much part of the matrix-reality as this screen in front of me. A minor problem

2) 10,000 people with flawed sight will see an item in a flawed way. The one good sighted person sees the item differently. 10,000 wrongs don't make a right. A major problem

You don't have to conclusively prove one thing to build up support for it.

Grounding your structure on assumptions is always going to prove to be problematic. The Bible says that all are born blind with thinking skewed. You're supposing all born with varying degrees of 20/20 vision - and trust that a dash of scientific approach will sort out the blurry edges.

There are an infinite number of possible explanations, the question is how do you start weighing them up and ruling them out.

Indeed.

Well I would have thought so, since you imagining God exists and God existing will appear to you to be the same thing.

The only way to build a convincing assertion that God exists therefore it to confirm this externally to your own mind, which is inherently untrustworthy

.

My imagining the external reality exists and it existing will appear likewise. And I can't begin to appeal to that which is external to my own mind without arguing in a circle. Yet that inability doesn't cause me a moments problem. No more than my inability to test for God.

I'm not quite sure I consider the mind to be as untrustworthy as you suppose. Besides, give that it is the final arbitrator on submissions by (assumed ) external viewpoints I'd have to trust it's judgement at the end of day.

Well no, more plausible as in what you believe you are experiencing is a delusion, a delusion that is seemingly very common in humans given all the people who experience the same thing associated with gods or supernatural beings that can't all exist.

I suppose plausible is in the eye of the beholder. It's a loose phrase to be sure.

As for the argument that it is more plausible that the universe was created than it wasn't created, that is a deeply flawed argument because it relies on the universe adhering to a framework of reality that makes humans comfortable with how their brains work.

Given all the weird and wonderful things we have discovered in quantum physics over the last 100 years I see absolutely no reason to assert that the universe will adhere to a version of reality we find pleasing.

I'm not supposing the proposed version of reality will prove universally pleasing either.

It's said that no one truly understands quantum physics. If true is it not a little too soon to be supposing plausible?