• Gregory A
    96
    How can someone who does not believe that something exists, can prove that it doesn't exist?
    — Alkis Piskas
    Your confusion lies with conflating the second-order meta claim of atheism (theism is not true) with the first-order object claim of theism (there is at least one god). Evidence against theism? Theist's conspicuous failure for millennia to soundly demonstrate that "there is at least one god" is true (especially given the extraordinary scope of what's canonically-liturgically attributed to "god" whereby evidences, direct or not, should be ubiquitous and yet are wholly absent). This only "proves" that theism is just as unwarranted as interpreting fairytales or poems literally. Only imaginary things, after all, require "faith" (i.e. suspension of disbelief). :pray: :roll:

    Whether aware of it or not atheists attempt to silence theists.
    — Gregory A
    Sounds like you've got something of a persecution complex. Incel maybe?
    180 Proof

    Not even a good ad-hom. What am I to do to avoid Dick Dawkins and his crusades to silence theism then?
  • 180 Proof
    15.4k
    News flash: scientists seek "god" or inexplicable ("super-natural") lapses in the constants and regularities of physical reality that are entailed by every religious tradition. "Seek and ye shall find" ... nada nada nada for millennia and counting. In sum: absence of evidence that is entailed by "your god" entails the absence of "your god". Reality does not require "faith", only fantasies do. :fire:

    What am I to do to avoid Dick Dawkins and his crusades to silence theism then?Gregory A
    Yep, must be an Incel ...
  • Shwah
    259

    You can't deny a God-like being doesn't exist if you accept his proof is the point and the op is about atheism.
    Also I'm clearly not interested in talking about my religion with you lol
  • Shwah
    259

    But the domain of science can never speak about the supernatural deductively. It can only speak about its own limits and not even conclusively.
  • lll
    391


    In the USA, I don't see the silencing of theists or really any kind of supernatural theorists. You can even believe that extraterrestrial reptiles who eat children run the world and they won't lock you up. You can blog about the flatness of the earth as you fly around the globe. As far as I can tell, religious folks are often resentful of the intellectual minority who dare to challenge or mock not silence such theories.
  • Shwah
    259

    That "intellectual minority" would preclude Aristotle, Plato, Newton, Godel etc. In any case it doesn't speak to the propositions.
  • 180 Proof
    15.4k
    But the domain of science can never speak about the supernatural deductively.Shwah
    Tell me/us How You Know this. :chin:
  • Shwah
    259

    It would have to propose a supernatural entity from which to derive other supernatural entities from or it would have to prove supernatural entities derive from natural ones. Neither of these claims you would assert physics should/does make and no definition of physics I'm aware of includes them. Physics simply can't verify nor negate supernatural entities. It doesn't say whether supernatural entities exist or not just that physics is limited to natural objects (particularly defined).
  • lll
    391
    You can't deny a God-like being doesn't exist if you accept his proof is the point and the op is about atheism.
    Also I'm clearly not interested in talking about my religion with you lol
    Shwah

    I don't accept his 'proof,' and I'm trying to emphasize the absurdity of getting from symbols dancing on a page metamagically to your bag ditty gad from the fury tails in yore dirty old books.
  • Shwah
    259

    What don't you accept about his proof? It's valid.

    Frege's sense and reference distinction might help. For instance commentary can be written about God in particular ways and still refer to God in other commentaries (e.g. Aquinas can quote Augustine and still be speaking about the same catholic trinitarian conception of God). So a proof can have overlap as a sense with another sense assuming a similar reference.
  • theRiddler
    260
    Nah. Atheism is the belief in the disbelief of the existence of God. They believe it's the right mode of mind, just like the devout. And, by the way, agnostics don't believe in God, either.
  • 180 Proof
    15.4k
    As I've pointed out already
    News flash: scientists seek "god" or inexplicable ("super-natural") lapses in the constants and regularities of physical reality that are entailed by every religious tradition180 Proof
    aka "indirect observations". Science might not grasp the "supernatural" itself but any of its physical effects (e.g. scriptural claims of "miracles" that change physical things) are well within the scope of scientific investigations. Evidence of "supernatural" effects on the physical world are completely lacking and according to all of the extant religious traditions and their scriptures such effects must be ubiquitous yet they are not. Like "evidence" of dragons ...
  • lll
    391
    What don't you accept about his proof? It's valid.Shwah

    Turning the crank of tautology detector won't get you what you want. I happen to be trained in math, and it's the discipline in which one never knows nor needs to know what one is talking about, for only structural properties matter. If you want to leap from some formal exercise to a statement about reality, you need a justification of those formal principles, and of course you have to give your symbols a meaning in the world of flesh and blood. There's a difference between a king on a chess board and a king of the Jews.
  • Shwah
    259

    The epistemological positions (belief, know, makes you hungry when you read it etc) have nothing to do with the ontological position (does God exist). Already there's an issue with the framing of defining a position by one's belief. It introduces nothing except you don't believe and, in any case, would preclude almost everything about atheism including arguments against theism (which require an ontological position).
  • lll
    391
    For instance commentary can be written about God in particular ways and still refer to God in other commentaries (e.g. Aquinas can quote Augustine and still be speaking about the same catholic trinitarian conception of God). So a proof can have overlap as a sense with another sense assuming a similar reference.Shwah

    Theology is itself the god it seeks, I might metaphorically suggest. But, granting the poetic license of intending at least to further decorate a concept, you still need a bridge from a game of dead symbols to the throne of the cosmos.
  • Shwah
    259

    Sure but it can't ever tell what it is except that it's a natural phenomenon. The position was, since science cannot intuit any supernaturalism then any reference to science can never disprove supernaturalism.
    EugeneW then took it a step farther and said we need a new body of knowledge to speak of these things.
  • lll
    391
    That "intellectual minority" would preclude Aristotle, Plato, Newton, Godel etc.Shwah

    Geniuses can be superstitious or wrong. All it takes is a moment of innovation against the usual background of conformity and confusion.
  • Shwah
    259

    One doesn't need an experiment to do science otherwise pure physics is thrown out the door (and the higgs boson, as well as general relativity and all science shows this is not true).
    There's actually an issue with requiring an experiment or reference to a material object. It makes physics and math circular.

    7MB2JZl.jpg
  • Tom Storm
    9.1k
    Once again atheism trying to shove its leftist agenda down people's throats. YGregory A

    You seem to enjoy a phobic anti-atheist rant. Good for you! However, many atheists are conservatives. Some are fairly right wing. Ayn Rand was an atheist. Libertarians tend to be atheists. Many atheists are arseholes. They are not really a team. Some atheists believe in ghosts and astrology. The only thing they have in common is the lack of a particular belief. To say that atheists are all far left social engineers is to engage in a conspiracy theory. Many people like these conspiracy theories as they make it easier not to think.

    The worst bloodlettings in history have been carried out by atheist regimes,Gregory A

    Superficially true. But these regimes did not kill for the 'glory of atheism' the way The Inquisition, The Crusades, the Witch Trials, Putin, Islamic State, Isis, etc, killed or kill 'for the glory of God'. They killed as part of a cult of personality and in the name of political fanaticism and nationalism. I would agree that political fanaticism is as bad as religious fanaticism. But I wouldn't include Nazi's - they had the Catholic church and the sermons of Martin Luther to back up their thinking and the slogan, 'Gott Mit Uns' - 'God is with us' was very important in Nazi lore and old German nationalism.
  • Gregory A
    96
    Agreed, there's also a bias for being or existing things at least epistemologically.Shwah
    If we deny quantum mechanics then we epistemologically never deny/negate physics entirely (we could be extreme general relativists or string theorists) however if we assert quantum mechanics, then that entails mechanics (at least epistemologically).
    If atheism is defined as the negation of theism then I'm not sure how one ever gets to that position even given infinite negations of physical theories.
    Now physics can be shown to be an issue by attacking the premise of it (that the material universe is fundamentally matter and energy) but this doesn't seem to imply that physics has no validity or doesn't exist in this world (can't be talked about) or that we have the means to justify that we have exhaustive means to show it doesn't exist

    My older brother had pointed out to me (way back in the late 60's) that color, shade etc. are a product of our minds. The inference being that 'reality' itself is generated, and not truly analogous with an actual physical world (our shared genetics allowing a common reality). He backed that up by pointing to the fact that we can hallucinate, generating a reality that as an analogue device (receiver) we should not be able to do. We are more like a digital TV with its built-in 'studio'.

    I think atheism ends up throwing the baby out with the bathwater and theism, and even atheism, should be assumed that they are real but in terms of what they are like social constructs etc.
  • 180 Proof
    15.4k
    Reread my posts. I'll reply again when you respond to what I've actually written.
  • Shwah
    259

    I'm not sure what you're referring to. The social constructs which are the sense of the logic symbols can perfectly refer to an external object. This happened with Einstein theorizing black holes.
  • Shwah
    259

    I wouldn't be so brave to preclude them so easily particularly how necessary God is for their work.
  • Shwah
    259

    You can walk back your position but the point is if science can't refer to supernatural entities then everyone should figure out what means we are to do so so we can analyze these positions.
  • Shwah
    259

    I don't think I disagree. Even through our built-in "studio", it doesn't seem possible for us to ever approach atheism.
    In any case you entail something by even speaking of it so to say "God doesn't exist" is contradictory in a sense like saying "nothingness is blank".
  • EugeneW
    1.7k
    Argument from ignorance fallacy.180 Proof

    On the contrary. It's an argument from gniorance. I used some Occam's shaving gel. Which left me with a clearly shaven face of the universe, free from traditional and contemporary bairdgrow beneath which it got buried last century.

    Science concerns discomfirming evidence and not "proofs", lil D-Ker.180 Proof

    Says who? Theories need proof. Falsification is important but only for arriving at the final theory. If arrived, after a lot of shaving and falsifying, confirmation is all that's left. At the same time, proof of gods has been established.

    The truth-claims of theism have been repeatedly falsified by counter-evidences180 Proof

    If you talk about miraculous healings, vìsions of Mary, or whatever, yes. Though I'm pretty sure the ancient Greek didn't take scientific proof seriously. Nor will reli-folks who claim to have seen Mary. The scientific proof of gods is science's own shortcoming in explaining where the laws and ingredients of the universe themselves came from. You call that reasoning from ignorance. While in fact it's from gnorance.

    Loveya, 180 booze! :love:
  • Tom Storm
    9.1k
    In the USA, I don't see the silencing of theists or really any kind of supernatural theorists. You can even believe that extraterrestrial reptiles who eat children run the world and they won't lock you up. You can blog about the flatness of the earth as you fly around the globe. As far as I can tell, religious folks are often resentful of the intellectual minority ) who dare to challenge or mock not silence such theories.lll

    That is absolutely true and an important point.
  • lll
    391

    Thanks!
    <salute>
  • EugeneW
    1.7k
    If theism has no way of proving how the universe came into being, there is one possible explanation left.Hanover

    But theism has a way. The universe is work of gods. They were tired of eternal love and hate making. Created love and hate particles to eternally lay back in the heavenly jungles and eternally watch their creation work itself out. The human gods messed thing up a bit, to great discontent of the other gods. When you have found the basic stuff of the universe and the laws describing these workings, what else than gods are the conclusion of the origins of this matter and its laws,?
  • lll
    391
    One doesn't need an experiment to do science otherwise pure physics is thrown out the door (and the higgs boson, as well as general relativity and all science shows this is not true).Shwah

    At some point the rubber meets the road (experiments are done) or it's just theology or poetry. No doubt there's a 'formal' side to any mathematical science. I can mathematically derive implications from postulated laws and compare them with actual measurements. At the moment I like to think of science in terms of maps from uncontroversial entities to uncontroversial entities, passing through whatever theoretical entities turn out to make for reliable prediction. And I take mine black, with minimum ontological commitment.
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