Creator of the universe, who is raising humans out of ignorance, into intelligent bliss. Sorry about the bumpy ride, morons.
Ok... So your hypotesis, that this thing exists; how do you falsify it?
-
Features
The question of faith (and Bertrand Russell quote)
- Thread starter diana
- Start date
Ok... So your hypotesis, that this thing exists; how do you falsify it?
ronburgundy
Contributor
The ever growing mountain of evidence in neuroscience related fieds that consciousness, mind, and intelligence are all causal byproducts of very particularly arranged matter. This contradicts the notion of any immaterial mind, whether it be the survival of any meaningful aspect of oneself after bodily death or the existence of any notion of non-matter based mind.
The stories and grueling experiences we've all experienced? "God doesn't exist because life's perfection includes suffering. Wahhh. Why not God make life perfect without me having to help or suffer? Wahhh. snuffle, hiccup, wahh."
Any notion of anything like a loving God is contradicted by the problem of evil. Your intellectually vacuous reaction to this has no logical bearing on that fact.
Loving is an abstract concept whose entire meaning comes from kind and sympathic actions we observe and from which we construct the concept and then use those acts to infer its existence in someone. God can only be loving if his actions conform to that concept that gives the word "love" all of its meaning. The facts of the world are logically inconsistent with such actions by any diety with the power all monotheists ascribe to God.
The science of the cosmos from the Big Bang through the Earthly evolution of life and the recent and cosmically insignificant emergence of humankind are inconsistent with the notion of a powerful God for whom the creation of life is of central interest, and for whom human life is of any particular interest.
I am referring to the notion of a powerful, caring, human centric creator that nearly every monotheist believes in. The word God is itself meaningless, like all words, and only refers to meaning to the degree it refers to concepts in people's heads. OF course, one can arbitrarily attach the word God to anything, such as a rock, and claim there is evidence for God's existence. But that is just dishonest semantic games. Such a God would not be believed on faith, so the issue of faith requiring contradiction of reason would be mute.
You doubt this based upon non-reasoned faith alone, meaning you have an emotional preference to blindly presume a role of emotion in creation, which already presumes a creation, which presumes a creator, which is a non-rational idea with no support outside of emotional desire for it to exist. Oh yeah, and nothing in your statement has any sensical relationship to anything I said, so there's that.
Really? Where is your evidence that there is any positive relationship between emotional stability and theism? Did you leave it in your other pants along with your rational support for everything else you've said? If anything, the evidence suggest that highly religious believers are less emotionally stable and suffer from more mental disorders. Also, atheists tend to be more scientifically oriented than theists, so they are less likely to toss around such meaninglessly vague nonsense like "the way things are divided, instead of the way things are joined together". Science focuses simultaneously upon distinctions and connections among things since it is rationally impossible to do otherwise because they are two sides of the same coin. What your comment really shows is that your religious beliefs are rooted in an emotional need to feel connected to something, because apparently without your invented sky daddy, you feel all all alone in this big scary universe. IOW, you are a prime example of how faith is just emotional wishful thinking devoid of and/or in violation of rational thought.
People don't cease to exist when stories about them are discovered to be false (which is what I presume you mean by your incoherent gibberish), but God's certainly do because are not people or anything but an invented notion in the minds of people. Thus, God's only exist as beliefs of people and thus God's don't exist even at that level when people no longer believe in them. The ability to grasp that the imaginary daddy's that adult lie about are fake develops sometime before the mid-teens, but sadly all theists fail to apply most of their cognitive abilities to anything related to religion, because of emotional weakness.
The lack of belief in God's existence is not based upon inconsistent stories about "him". It is based upon the same thing that a lack of belief in the Easter Bunny is based in. There are varied tales of the Easter Bunny, but that variance isn't the problem. The problem is total lack of evidence for anything resembling any of the core features of the concept, and that the very concept is absurd, inconsistent with established fact and reason, and quite obviously a human invention.
The name for not believing in something for these reasons is called rational thinking. The names for believing in something despite all of this (besides theism) include irrationality, intellectual dishonesty, self-delusion, blind obedience to untrustworthy authorities, being objectively wrong, and mentally challenged.
Kharakov
Quantum Hot Dog
Why, pray tell, would you try to falsify the existence of a being that is guiding you from a state of ignorant bliss to a state of intelligent bliss?Creator of the universe, who is raising humans out of ignorance, into intelligent bliss. Sorry about the bumpy ride, morons.
Ok... So your hypotesis, that this thing exists; how do you falsify it?
I have no idea what that was suppose to meanb
But it seems that you misunderstood. I asked for how that hypotesis could be falsified.
A hypotesis that cannot be falsified is meaningless.
Kharakov
Quantum Hot Dog
Yes. There is no mind that is downwardly causal on neurons, and there is no greater mind that is downwardly causal upon human brains. You know, because you know everything about consciousness.
Really?
So?
Of course not, that's silly.
Reading comprehension seems to fail atheists and theists when they get caught up in their emotions.
"Emotionally unstable beings often become atheists if they focus on the way things are divided, instead of the way things are joined together, which is only a problem when they suffer due to their unfounded beliefs."
Tell my, calm anchorman, where in the preceding statement that I say atheists are less emotionally stable than theists.
James Brown
Suspended by Member Request
It's Pascal's Wager.
"Why try to disprove something that's going to make you happy? It's a safer bet to just shut up and believe it. That way you'll be happy."
ronburgundy
Contributor
You're formulation is a form of Pascals wager, but Kharakov's statement is just an irrational tautology. It presumes a priori that a being exists who can bring your from ignorance to bliss. The difference is that in your formulation the mere belief in the being brings the bliss, regardless of whether it exists. In Kaharakov's the being itself brings the bliss, thus it must exists to do so. Thus, his wording actually means "Why would you try to verify the existence of something, which because it exists it brings your bliss?" Its nonsense. Verification cannot impact whether it brings your bliss. If it exists, you'll verify it and have bliss. IF you fail to verify it, it doesn't exist and thus can have no impact on your bliss.
Back to your formulation, the best reply is that belief in the being doesn't bring bliss, and even if it did, bliss is not the only value in life. Mass murdering might bring personal bliss, but not a good reason to do it. A rather apt analogy, since theism promotes and enables the kind of authoritarianism, delusional beliefs and anti-rational values that help enable most mass murders.
Kharakov
Quantum Hot Dog
Nah, I just didn't feel like coming up with shitloads of imaginary scenarios with which to attack my own knowledge. That's what you're for.
bilby
Fair dinkum thinkum
- Joined
- Mar 6, 2007
- Messages
- 39,951
- Gender
- He/Him
- Basic Beliefs
- Strong Atheist
This word, 'knowledge'. I do not think it means, what I think you think it means.
Kharakov
Quantum Hot Dog
bilby
Fair dinkum thinkum
- Joined
- Mar 6, 2007
- Messages
- 39,951
- Gender
- He/Him
- Basic Beliefs
- Strong Atheist
How could you possibly be unaware that a statement can take the form of a rhetorical question?
Kharakov
Quantum Hot Dog
You obviously don't know what I know. In I go...
Kharakov
Quantum Hot Dog
It's amazing, isn't it?
surreptitious57
Junior Member
One could argue for the existence of God using just reason but one can not do that with regard
to evidence though. That is because the question of his existence is a meta physical one and so
is beyond the remit of the scientific method which uses evidence to determine the validity of its
hypotheses. And so even if God does exist this would still hold to be true. Incidentally if it could
be proven using reason alone that would not actually determine it in reality and which is why no
matter how reasonable a hypothesis may appear it still has to be tested to determine its validity
DBT
Contributor
An absence of evidence to support a proposition is the reason that a conviction (a belief) in the the truth of the proposition is unfounded.
No, just depressing. It is depressing to see the low standard you bring to this forum.
Sorry... how exactly are you coming up with a scientific experiement that demonstrates a causal link between matter and a subjective experience, without making asssumptions about the nature of subjective experience? It's not like you can measure it...
This idea that a hypothesis must be falsifiable in order to be acceptible? How do you falsify that?
What is the use of a non-falsifiable hypotesis?
Such a hypotesid is no more than mere fiction.
Kharakov
Quantum Hot Dog
A statement (which is either true or false) cannot actually be in the form of a rhetorical question. Better?
If you look at the exchange between bilby and I, you will notice the following.
Ask yourself this amazing thing: how can I be unaware of something that is untrue?
Here is a similar question: How could you possibly be unaware that 2+2=13.7?
Here is the same response, to that equally fucked up rhetorical question: It's amazing, isn't it?
How could you possibly be unaware that 2+2=13.7?
It's amazing, isn't it?
Get it? In other words, I am unaware of 2+2 = 13.7 and I am unaware that a rhetorical question can be a statement, because it can't.
Kharakov
Quantum Hot Dog
Yeah, I was asking one of our resident geniuses for reason and evidence to support their unfounded claim. Somehow, as usual, a purported atheist got their scatological thoughts confused with their logical thoughts and started writing shit without proper analysis.
God is the physical foundation of the universe as well, so really physics should point right at God like an arrow. Of course, if you're a moron, you can look at natural law and assume that natural law causes everything and everyone, rather than is caused by everything and everyone.
One can state that one who did not witness the founding of the universe can never know for a fact the order in which events occurred, but only believe through faith. Which is what douchebags use to attack positive statements that God is the creator of all, because only God can be absolutely sure.