But if the conclusion is "there's no reason to believe it to exist", it is neither "it exist" or "it doesn't exist", it's not even agnostic, it's a denial of any conclusion at all since you can't make one without facts, observations and correct correlations. You propose the conclusion to be a definitive answer to either existence or no existence by saying that the no-seeum argument concludes with a definitive answer. But to use the lack of evidence, burden of proof etc. as a reason not to arrive at a conclusion at all with "there's no reason to believe it to exist", is what the argument is about. — Christoffer

i understand your point now, but that is again trying to get the argument you want, not the one I am making, I promise to get back to Russell

My premise, the definition of the "no seeum" argument, is not false, because it is not worded the way you like. It is worded the way it is often argued. I stand by the definition - and the conclusion that follows.

If you want to acknowledge that no-seeum arguments, as i defined them say nothing at all about existence, we can get on to the argument you want - Russell

Sorry, meant p2 — Christoffer

p2. - these arguments basically say " we know what we are looking for, we have looked in lots of places, and we don't see it, therefore it does not exist. — Rank Amateur

this is my proposition on a definition of what a "no-seemum" argument is. I am making no conclusion in the proposition at all.

What I am saying is - people, maybe you, make statements like " there is no proof of God, or fill in the blank, therefore they, maybe you, because of lack of proof, chose to believe there is no God or fill in the blank. That is not a conclusion - that is a statement I am making that I propose is true. It says NOT ONE THING at all about if God does or does not exist. All is says is a definition of an argument some people make about if God does or does not exists. IT IS NOT ABOUT GOD, IT IS ABOUT THE ARGUMENT.

I asked about p1, your conclusion of the no-seeum argument.

If the conclusion you mention in p1 is instead "there's no reason to believe it to exist", then the conclusion to your counter-argument does not hold up since the conclusion you criticize isn't about either existence or non-existence. As I described earlier what "there's no reason to believe it to exist" is really about.

What I mean is that you propose a conclusion in p1 that I don't really see is the actual conclusion of the argument you are criticizing. — Christoffer

This is p1
p1. - people make no-seeum arguments

what in the world are you talking about ??

You proposed a conclusion to the argument you are criticizing. I asked if that is the actual conclusion or if the actual conclusion is "there's no reason to believe it to exist". — Christoffer

the actual conclusion is the actual conclusion I actually typed to actually conclude that argument I was trying to write a conclusion of - and for the third time now the actual conclusion is:

"conclusion - all no seeum arguments fail as proof of either existence or non existence of anything."

your point?

I'm asking if that conclusion is the actual conclusion you are arguing against or if your conclusion is changed to a definitive in order to make your arguments point? You proposed it to be the conclusion, could the conclusion just as much be "there's no reason to believe it to exist"? — Christoffer

not sure i could be any clearer - I am saying the no-seeum argument - SAYS NOTHING AT ALL about existence or non existence.

here was my conclusion to the argument:

"conclusion - all no seeum arguments fail as proof of either existence or non existence of anything."

but this

"I'm asking if that conclusion is the actual conclusion you are arguing against or if your conclusion is changed to a definitive in order to make your arguments point? "

may well be the most convoluted sentence i have ever read.

Why do you conclude it with "it does not exist" and not "there's no reason to believe it to exist"? — Christoffer

I did not conclude any such thing - i proposed that is what the no-seeum argument concludes - that i am arguing against !!!! that is twice now that you have misunderstood a simple statement by 180 deg. Slow down -

p3 is a true premise but does not really support the conclusion, since things like viruses have a direct correlation that can be observed. I've countered this in the virus analogy I made, which essentially points to how religion continuously changed their view of the world and universe to fit the results of scientific theories. The only thing that your p3 points to is that there are things we don't know the reason for in the universe, but when we do they will be proven facts and in the meanwhile, people will slap "God" onto the reasons why without any real correlation between them. — Christoffer

the point of the virus has nothing at all to do with the point you are making above, all it is saying is, that until we are aware of such things - our unawareness of them says nothing at all about there existence, or lack there of. Your point here just begs the question.

The criticism is not that it doesn't exist, it's that there's no reason to say that it exists if it cannot have observed correlation. This is the foundation of the Russel analogy. If you can make up whatever you want to exist and then "prove it" by saying that because no one can see it it must exist, you essentially just invent anything you want as existing, without any epistemic responsibility of any kind. You don't seem to understand the actual conclusion of Russel's analogy and instead, strawman it into a black and white "does not exist", which isn't the actual conclusion of the criticism through Russel's analogy. — Christoffer

this has nothing to do with P2 - put aside Russel for now - we can get to him. lets do no-seeum arguments first. The no seeum argumnet is " we looked we didn't see anything - it does not exist"

nothing to do at all with Russels tea pot. You are continuing to ignore the argument I am making and argue the one you want. Promise I will get to Russel - one point at a time

And you stop reading, don't understand the core conclusion of my counter-argument and use the missed point as your reason to ignore the counter-argument. That's called a fallacy fallacy. — Christoffer

that's called ignoring the rest, if my original point is ignored, misunderstood and dismissed

ok - thanks.

would you say a premise such as " best current scientific theory believes the universe is finite" is valid?

just wondering

in syllogism form.

p1. - people make no-seeum arguments
p2. - these arguments basically say " we know what we are looking for, we have looked in lots of places, and we don't see it, therefore it does not exist.
p3. - there are almost countless examples of things that people where unaware of, did not believe existed, but actually did exist.
p4. - all a no seeum argument shows is that there is something you can't see it

conclusion - all no seeum arguments fail as proof of either existence or non existence of anything.

If you want to directly answer this - happy to engage.

So i make a point, you get the point 180 degrees wrong, I point it out to you, and you say it doesn't matter you got it wrong - and then ask me why I don't want to engage.

if you want to take a deep breath actually show that you understand my point on no seeum arguments and make some comment that actually has something to do with the point - happy to engage. Or not - suit yourself

i did stop reading that after the second paragraph - and we are done.

i did - but no need to address the rest, when you have misinterpreted the entire point I was making by 180 degrees. Lets get on the same page there first -

A virus, atom and quark didn't exist until we named them? — Christoffer

NO, NO, NO - my whole point is they always existed. But they were not known to exist until they were.
which is my whole argument against no seeum arguments -

you are missing the point ot the entire argument - read again please -

the problem with "no-seeum" argument is an incredibly long line of
times they were wrong.

Until we find such a thing as a virus there is no reason to believe one exists -
Until we find such a thing as an atom there is no reason to believe one exists -
Until we find such a thing as a quark there is no reason to believe one exists
— Rank Amateur

Except no one believed any of them until they were conceived as viable hypotheses and when observed and tested, confirmed as true. You also Texas Sharpshot-picked things that were proven, while there's an even longer list of things that we today laugh at that people believed.

You cannot hypothesis God since no argument for any kind of God leads to a notion of specifically God as the end of that hypothesis. All of those had a clear hypothesis, but everything about God arguments is wild assumptions and individual concepts.

Burden of proof applies always. An argument that uses the "if you cannot disprove it, it's real" is a flawed argument and it's why Russel had such an impact on science to force it to stick to truths and not fantasies or pseudoscience.

Your post reads like a conspiracy theory rant, specifically because it's the argument they use. The conclusion of what you say; would mean we can just give up any kind of attempt at discussing the world and universe since everyone can neatly stick to their own world-view and beliefs. I see no room for such nonsense in philosophy. — Christoffer

Surprisingly almost none of this is true. Each of those things that did not exist, until they existed began as a thought, an idea, a concept. And without doubt all of those ideas where scoffed, and dismissed. The real start of the scientific method is the idea of something new that becomes the hypothesis.

Why can't one believe God is? Is there some fact I should know that says there is no God, and my belief is outside fact? Is there some overwhelming reasoning that says God is not a reasonable concept? And my belief is in conflict with reason? Why do you feel such a need to challenge ideas of others not in conflict with fact or reason? It smacks of fundamentalism.

There was no rant in my post at all. It was pure reason. It is just pointing out the reality that there are literally millions of obvious contradictions to all no seeum arguments. Yet remains as almost a dogmatic atheist argument. The only scientific claim any no seeum argument can make, is whatever it is is not seen. There is no scientific claim that a no seeum makes about the existence or non- existence of anything.

Russel's teapot is tactic, not argument. Russel desperately wanted a definitive argument that ended with, Therefore there is no God, he couldn't find one. He also wanted to deny the claim of others and make a positive claim that God is not. And he came up with the oldest and least valid argument of all time, and the basis of all ignorance, something doesn't exist until you prove it to me. Despite the thousands upon thousands of things that did not exist until they existed.

sure, but just turns into a big game of what if.

My favorite is, quantum mechanics would suggest that our perceived universe is not much more than a time space plane very much like some immense movie screen. And there are an infinite number of other screens. And once you buy into such a concept, what reason can anyone have for objecting to any possibility. With no kind of knowledge whatsoever of what some other universe could be, there is no valid argument against anything, and equally no basis to posit anything. A giant waste of time. Or in honor of just one big acid test, que the warlocks, get on Further and drive.

i specifically said the technical definition of scientific theory which is,

a coherent group of propositions formulated to explain a group of facts or phenomena in the natural world and repeatedly confirmed through experiment or observation:

One has to be careful when using scientific and theory in the same sentence, it has a specific meaning as above.

The multi universe concept is no where near a theory yet.

Such a theory, admittedly unverifiable, does resolve certain problems. No God needed, at lease on any scale that's comprehensible And the unlikelihood of our galaxy is answered in that ours is one of very, very many. — tim wood

Actually, multi universe while an alternative for the design argument other than God, does open an entire can of worms. If you allow for multi universes almost anything is possible. There are no pink flying unicorns? Well maybe there are on universe X, The garden of eden didn't exist, well maybe it did on universe Y. Every claim is now possible.

All that said, as has said, there is nothing even close to any kind of scientific theory (technical definition) that supports the multi universe.

For instance, he is shown as a genocidal and infantasidal God and most people would not ever follow his lead to those immoral extremes.

How Christians end in adoring such a prick I cannot fathom. How they can set their moral sense aside for their tribalism is beyond me. It also happens in politics. We have a perfect example of this when the Republicans publicly held their noses when voting for truth-less Trump. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

Once again - just one more iteration of the argument from evil.

And the theist response remains the same - compensating goods.

There are 2 type of evil, those done by man's acts of free will. In these cases theists would argue that free will is a compensating good. We can not have real free will without allowing for the prospect that some of those choices will be evil.

The second kind is natural disasters etc, not acts of man. And the theist response is the same response to all no- seeum arguments.

basically - you would say there are no compensating goods for these natural disasters, because you have looked around and have not seen any. With the underlying assumption that if there were such things, you would know where to look for them, you would see them and recognize them as such.

Skeptical theism would argue back you have no real basis to believe you would know any such thing as "God". Nor any basis to assert you have looked in all possible places in the realm of all abstractions, nor would be able to see or recognize these compensating good as such.

again - just the same theist response to the same argument from evil. Both positions are reasonable chose the one you like.

beliefs , even irrational beliefs, are not inherently bad or good, the just are. Even specific ideological beliefs such as Christianity or communism are not inherently bad or good.

Specific actions taken by individuals or groups can be evil, and often ideological beliefs are used as justification for such acts. Rarely on review are these justifications the unique, major or even the real motivation, they are just the best excuse.

Without even going into a premise by premise argument, it fails because

If a group of people jointly share a belief, And some of those people do good, and some do bad, it is illogical to assign the bad to the belief.

You point turns into many murderers like chocolate ice cream, therefore chocolate ice cream causes murder.

in my view, it is self evident that, as you say, science has no agenda. Science makes no truth claims that are not experimentally supported. And science makes no claim at all about anything else. All physics is, at every level, at its core is just a mathematical model of an observation. It is just taking the world in front of us, and turning it into numbers. Then we can change variables to predict results, than experimentally check to see if those results happen. That's it.

And every use, or belief, or argument that is made in the name of science that is outside this, is just an argument based on faith in science, not about the science.

agree and well put

A few random thoughts, and up front, I plead guilty as charged to most of this.

Often, I find there is an absence of epistemic humility on the board. The concept of epistemic humility is an understanding that in many of the questions we discuss on here there are no definitive answers. They are not factual matters. They are reasoned arguments in support of an idea or concept. It is possible that reasonable people, can have reasonable beliefs in opposition. Epistemic humility is an awareness of limits of our knowledge, and an understanding that much of what we think we know is filtered, constructed and interpreted. The ultimate right or wrong of much of what we discuss here is unknowable, yet we are all very fast to assign right to our view and wrong to the other.

This IMO is at the heart of this issue, are we debating to win, or sharing divergent views. And can we have the epistemic humility to stay aware that in most of these discussions there is no factual correct answer.

Please keep in mind I am by no means at all anti-God or an atheist or even agnostic. I simply reject the particular efforts of foolish people who try with foolish premises and foolish arguments to prove what cannot be proved, and if it were proved, would be without significance i.e. the material existence of God — tim wood

no issue with that.

If you're not seeing the problem, then you're like someone from the home out on a hayride to appreciate the colors - that is, on a fool's ride. But it's really easy to get off the hay wagon and stop being a fool. All you have to do is think, and not even too much of that! — tim wood

and the evidence that you are not just on a different hay ride is ???

So the logic of the thread is you disprove of people arguing for the existence of God that they define in one way or another.

You grant them that they can say their God exists, but they can't have their definition of Him

Than ask them to give this god with out definition attributes - solely from existence

Then declare some type of victory -

Still don't see the point, but don't need to - not that interested really. Seems rather meaningless to me.

Stop right there! — tim wood

more than happy to

because until we find a unicorn there is no reason to believe one exists. Same with God. — Bloginton Blakley

the problem with "no-seeum" argument is an incredibly long line of times they were wrong.

Until we find such a thing as a virus there is no reason to believe one exists -
Until we find such a thing as an atom there is no reason to believe one exists -
Until we find such a thing as a quark there is no reason to believe one exists

you get the point there are thousands of things that did not exist in until they did. All our not being aware of something proves, is we are unaware of it.

there is a significant epistemic difference between the the existence of such a thing as God, and the existence of such a thing as a unicorn.

While no one can state as a matter of pure fact, that either unicorns or God does or does not exist, the philosophical arguments for or against their respective existence is quite different.

i would argue it is reasonable to believe that unicorns ( flying horses with a horn in its forehead) do not exists on earth, because we know something about what horses look like, we know something about what it means to fly, and we know something about horns and foreheads. We can say with some amount of reasonable certainty that if we saw a unicorn, we would recognize it as such. Next we have looked in a lot of places, for a real long time, and we have not seen one. There for, I will conclude it is reasonable to believe there is no such things as unicorns.

Now for God, i would say that both the CA and some of the design arguments are reasonable. Specifically since big bang science the CA has strengthened, eliminating the " who created the creator argument" So while neither argument speak directly to the characteristics of such a being - the idea of a necessary, non - contingent being or an intelligent designer is reasonable.

now are the counter arguments that God does not exist that so powerful as to outweigh these arguments that make them moot? I would say not. The only arguments i know of are the argument from evil, which has a reasonable counter argument of skeptical theism, and various no- seeum arguments that are weak.

So I would conclude that it is without any reasonable basis to lump the possibility of unicorns as being equal to the possibility of such a thing as God.

The only rule here is that whatever you wish to attribute to God must be derived from his existence only. — tim wood

have to say I am perplexed by the question. Not that that is hard to do. Firstly it seems you are not defining what this "god" is that you are granting existence, but are arguing with when he tries to do so, i think arguing that he can't derive them from just existence. If i substitute "tim wood' for god in the o/p if i can't assign Tim Wood any characteristics not sure what is left to derive about you, based on your existence, other than you exist. By the simple granting of your existence I cant derive if Tim is a good man who loves well, or is a mass murderer or much or anything else of importance.

Could be lack of my intellect, but each time I try to answer with the way the O/P is worded - not sure what anyone could derive about anything by simply allowing its existence but not defining it or allowing other definitions about its characteristics.

the point is, yet again all that may be, but it is not anything near science right now, so you can't use it as science to prove or disprove anything. You are left with reason. It you want to make a case along the lines of the op that and un-created creator is reasonable, fine - but it was done a few hundred years ago and it still works. But you can't use it to say God is, only that it is reasonable to believe God is.

the point is, it is only a matter perspective, point of view, or a prejudice to one authority or another between what " many physicists " believe or an "un-created creator". At this moment in our understanding one has no more inherent weight than other.

It's the Big Bang theory with inflation that is regarded as the standard model of cosmology nowadays. And the multiple universes extension to that, Eternal Inflation is gaining credibility. That theory does address what happened before the Big Bang. — Devans99

My point was based on a technical definition of scientific theory which is:

"A scientific theory is an explanation of some aspect of the natural world that has been substantiated through repeated experiments or testing. "

neither infinite inflation ( inflation directly after the big bang to our finite universe is real theory) nor multi universe comes in any way at all remotely close to this requirement. And can only be generously called hypotheses. They are concepts, ideas, guesses - no better or worse than such a thing as an un-created creator. That may well change at some point. But they are not there now.

My point in this thread is to challenge those who argue relentlessly that God is at least, say, as real as a stone, to make clear what follows from that existence, it being granted — tim wood

got it - good hunting then.

by real, do you mean like a human form sitting in taverna in ios drinking coffee and staring at the fishing boats ?? or real as some being outside our senses, but real none the less ? such as love or truth ? Can you give me some sideboards on what you mean by real?

So it struck me to challenge any of these to make clear how it might matter if the existence of God were granted. — tim wood

well - faith based for sure - but because of that belief - i have been, with various degrees of limited effectiveness, been trying to live by this first principal for quite some time. Because this provides a meaning for my existence.

God created human beings to praise, reverence, and serve God, and by
doing this, to save their souls.

God created all other things on the face of the earth to help fulfill this
purpose.

From this it follows that we are to use the things of this world only to
the extent that they help us to this end, and we ought to rid ourselves
of the things of this world to the extent that they get in the way of this
end.

For this it is necessary to make ourselves indifferent to all created
things as much as we are able, so that we do not necessarily want
health rather than sickness, riches rather than poverty, honor rather
than dishonor, a long rather than a short life, and so in all the rest, so
that we ultimately desire and choose only what is most conducive for
us to the end for which God created us.

God in fact, in reality, and God in mind as idea, are two very different creatures. Which way are you? If fact, what can you get from that fact? — tim wood

I will try, I have never made any claim whatsoever about the nature of God, in fact I would challenge any one - theist or atheist on what possible basis one could have to make such a claim. God is a very real thing to me, and very much an idea.

but yet again - these are matters of faith, of theology, not philosophy

It is difficult to hold a belief and not have that belief influence your actions in some way. — Echarmion

agree

Not everyone accepts that faith has some unique epistemic standing alongside reason. — Echarmion

I would argue, that we all face situations continually that require our full commitment of something important, and have incomplete information on the possible outcomes. Proceeding in these situations to one degree or another requires a faith based action. Are these some type of epistemic knowledge or not - I think more semantic than important.

One might argue that faith is merely a label used to hide - and therefore sustain - cognitive dissonance. — Echarmion

I would counter as above that it is a natural part of the human belief system that is required when the application of fact or reason is insufficient, yet action is required.

On the other hand, religions are a real and powerful phenomenon, and so are various "cult like" groups. Contrasting faith and reason and asking for reasonable arguments to support beliefs is an important step towards curtailing the power of these groups. After all, if basing your beliefs on reason is not important, what are we all doing here? — Echarmion

agree - with a small change. Religion, is a man made institution with all that that entails. And there is no argument that there has been many awful things done in the name of God. Challenging religion is always healthy. Faith is not by definition either good or bad, it is just a belief that is not supported by fact or reason.

No issues with that at all.