I can easily prove that God does not exist, but...

[Lion IRC]

The law of excluded middle doesn't apply to atheist proselytising and counter-apologetics

That is not a good objection. Here, "proof" is about establishing something beyond a reasonable doubt, so in principle, that might happen...

How can two opposite, contradictory propositions BOTH be validly reasonable beyond doubt.
That's like saying there both is and is not reasonable doubt as to Jesus' Resurrection.
Schizophrenia?

 

[GenesisNemesis]

Now can we talk about the ubiquitous, corroborated eye witness evidence for discarnate consciousness which has existed since the dawn of time? Or are you going to dismiss billions and billions of your fellow humans as liars and lunatics just because you think you have 'proved' something to yourself by brute special pleading a contradiction of their sensory evidence?

News flash: "liars" and "lunatics" is a false dichotomy. They could simply be... wait for it... mistaken.

 

[Copernicus]

So, what you seem to be saying is that you have an open mind on the question of the existence of God, but not on the question the existence of Santa Claus. Is that correct? And the basis for this distinction is that most people believe that Santa Claus is mythical but God is real. Have I got that right? Can you clarify, if I've misconstrued what you are trying to say?

Poor argument.There is actually more evidence for Santa than god. Every Christmas NORAD tracks Santa across North America....

As you well know, that is not the real argument here, which you give the appearance of trying to dodge. Would you say that you have an open mind on the existence of Santa Claus as well as the existence of God?

 

[Copernicus]

The law of excluded middle doesn't apply to atheist proselytising and counter-apologetics

That is not a good objection. Here, "proof" is about establishing something beyond a reasonable doubt, so in principle, that might happen...

How can two opposite, contradictory propositions BOTH be validly reasonable beyond doubt.
That's like saying there both is and is not reasonable doubt as to Jesus' Resurrection.
Schizophrenia?

I never said that the arguments or their conclusions would be "validly reasonable beyond a doubt". My point is that the exercise of proving that God does or does not exist is trivial. It almost always involves hidden assumptions that the parties on opposite sides of the debate disagree on but fail to disclose. It is those hidden disagreements that can be reasonably debated. And they often have nothing to do with religion at all--e.g. the question of whether belief in disembodied spirits is a reasonable belief. Once you reduce the argument to its nonreligious elements, it becomes more interesting and more tractable as a topic of debate.

 

[skepticalbip]

Now can we talk about the ubiquitous, corroborated eye witness evidence for discarnate consciousness which has existed since the dawn of time? Or are you going to dismiss billions and billions of your fellow humans as liars and lunatics just because you think you have 'proved' something to yourself by brute special pleading a contradiction of their sensory evidence?

News flash: "liars" and "lunatics" is a false dichotomy. They could simply be... wait for it... mistaken.

But it is easier to argue against a strawman than to address an actual post. An accusation of ,"You are calling us liars and lunatics", is much easier to throw out than it would be to try to explain how they could not possibly be mistaken.

 

[abaddon]

Now can we talk about the ubiquitous, corroborated eye witness evidence for discarnate consciousness which has existed since the dawn of time? Or are you going to dismiss billions and billions of your fellow humans as liars and lunatics just because you think you have 'proved' something to yourself by brute special pleading a contradiction of their sensory evidence?

News flash: "liars" and "lunatics" is a false dichotomy. They could simply be... wait for it... mistaken.

Yeah. "Liars and lunatics" isn't the problem of religious experience. Mistaken interpretation is. People tend to lose sight of the difference between experience and its interpretation or rationalization. Maybe the experience is real enough, but it's the interpretation that needs justifying.

I wonder how many "religious experiences" are sightings of Jesus or God or angels or miracles -- experiences with religious content within them? If it's a strong feeling of love infusing one apparently from outside of oneself, then a religiously-inclined person might say it's "God's presence" or "Jesus fills my heart with love". But the experience in itself doesn't have religious content. It's the setting and interpretation that will make it religious. The point being that the experience itself is human... it's available (and I think desirable) for nonreligious persons to have some of these same experiences ("transpersonal" love, oneness experiences, celebratory states and other heightened states).

Even awe, wonder, reverence and similar get labelled "religious". Pantheistic sorts will say "the trees and rivers are my church" because of the prejudice that special states are religious in character. But there's nothing religious about the experience in itself -- rather, it's a human experience, available to atheists no less than theists. Here, again, it's entirely the choice to interpret their source as "religious".

And how many religious experiences are merely the fervor of belief? How many of those "billions and billions of [our] fellow humans" were actually just fervent believers?

There's no reason people need to turn to "hallucination" as an explanation of religious experience, when probably 99% of all religious experience is human experience that got turned religious by applying a metaphysical rationalization. Or is actually quite mundane experience being used by religious folk like Lion in the way theists will say "look all around you! the sensory evidence is everywhere!"

So, of the premises that might support the conclusion "God exists", experience isn't one until the interpretation of the experience is proved true.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

The law of excluded middle doesn't apply to atheist proselytising and counter-apologetics

That is not a good objection. Here, "proof" is about establishing something beyond a reasonable doubt, so in principle, that might happen...

How can two opposite, contradictory propositions BOTH be validly reasonable beyond doubt.
That's like saying there both is and is not reasonable doubt as to Jesus' Resurrection.
Schizophrenia?

First, "beyond a reasonable doubt" is not about validity. It's about epistemically proper probabilistic assessments on the basis of available information. And the key is the availability of information. I already gave an example, in my reply to excreationist.

Second, no, it is not the same as saying that. For more information, you can take a look at my reply to excreationist, where I provide an example, with details.

 

[atrib]

Now can we talk about the ubiquitous, corroborated eye witness evidence for discarnate consciousness which has existed since the dawn of time? Or are you going to dismiss billions and billions of your fellow humans as liars and lunatics just because you think you have 'proved' something to yourself by brute special pleading a contradiction of their sensory evidence?

News flash: "liars" and "lunatics" is a false dichotomy. They could simply be... wait for it... mistaken.

There are apparently billions and billions of people who get to see and hang out with discarnate consciousness entities all the time, but I have never seen one. What am I doing wrong?

The false dichotomy is the only way LIRC can try to maintain his position that billions and billions of people are visited by spiritual beings on a routine basis. The much more reasonable explanation is that our senses are easily fooled, especially if you are desperate to believe that your god or his spiritual representatives are trying to communicate with you. This option is left off the table because LIRC does not wish to deal with this inconvenient fact.

 

[atrib]

Now can we talk about the ubiquitous, corroborated eye witness evidence for discarnate consciousness which has existed since the dawn of time?

Damn those discarnate consciousness creatures! They drank the last beer in the fridge and forgot to put the toilet seat down. Again! When will they learn?

 

[excreationist]

....My point is that there is no logical problem with scenarios in which a person can establish beyond a reasonable doubt that X happens (in this case, the prosecutor can, with the aid of the victims, witnesses, etc.), and another person can establish beyond a reasonable doubt that it did not happen. The issue is that establishing something beyond a reasonable doubt is always establishing it to a certain rational agent(s), even if that is implicit (e.g., obviously, it would be reasonable for the actual perpetrator not to be persuaded by the evidence provided by the prosecution, but it need not be reasonable for the jurors not to be so persuaded).

So you're talking about a "proof" in one person's mind (that God exists) vs a "proof" in another person's mind (that God can not exist). Normally "proofs" about the existence or non-existence of God involve premises. If there are two simultaneous "proofs" they should be able to be looked at by both people. I'd assume there is a problem with one of the premises since it isn't logical for God to both be "proven" to exist and "proven" not to exist with shared knowledge.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Brain farts are not evidence.

 

[Keith&Co.]

I'd assume there is a problem with one of the premises since it isn't logical for God to both be "proven" to exist and "proven" not to exist with shared knowledge.

The OP said HE could prove one thing, someone else could prove another thing.
Not that he could prove two diametrically opposed things at once.

So, yeah, the argument would shift from 'is there a god?' to the premises, to wit: 'is complexity an issue?' or 'does morality absolutely require a lawgiver?' or 'just how bugfucking insane is the biblical flat-earth model?'

What I thought the OP was saying was that logic is a tool to evaluate ideas, which are attempts to model the universe, not necessarily tools to acquire actual knowledge from reality. So until someone comes up with actual evidence of a deity, then it's just a battle of ideas, and how well we support them.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

....My point is that there is no logical problem with scenarios in which a person can establish beyond a reasonable doubt that X happens (in this case, the prosecutor can, with the aid of the victims, witnesses, etc.), and another person can establish beyond a reasonable doubt that it did not happen. The issue is that establishing something beyond a reasonable doubt is always establishing it to a certain rational agent(s), even if that is implicit (e.g., obviously, it would be reasonable for the actual perpetrator not to be persuaded by the evidence provided by the prosecution, but it need not be reasonable for the jurors not to be so persuaded).

So you're talking about a "proof" in one person's mind (that God exists) vs a "proof" in another person's mind (that God can not exist). Normally "proofs" about the existence or non-existence of God involve premises. If there are two simultaneous "proofs" they should be able to be looked at by both people. I'd assume there is a problem with one of the premises since it isn't logical for God to both be "proven" to exist and "proven" not to exist with shared knowledge.

No, that is not at all what I'm talking about. As I said, this is not about a logical proof. It's about establishing that something is true beyond any reasonable doubt. And I'm not saying it's possible for someone to establish that God exists beyond a reasonable doubt. I'm saying it's possible (for example) in some scenarios, that someone can establish beyond a reasonable doubt that a person is guilty, but someone else can establish beyond a reasonable doubt that the person in question is not guilty (see my example), so in this sense of "proof", the logical objection raised by Lion IRC is unsuccessful. Whether this is doable in the case of God is another matter.

 

[Underseer]

Yes, I can prove that God does not exist, but it is also true that other people can prove that he does not. That's because "proof" in the context of such an argument is usually about whether or not God or deities are likely to exist, not whether there is some absolute logical proof of existence. (Exception: philosophical debates in the sense of scholasticism, which I am not interested in here.) We believe or don't believe because the concept of God seems credible to us, and we establish credibility on the basis of evidence. In my experience, most believers think that they have sufficient evidence to find God credible.

But how is it possible for me to prove something to exist, if someone else can prove it not to exist? Proof is always an exercise in logic. One starts with a conclusion that can be either true or false and then shows that it follows logically from a set of premises. The catch here is that the premises must themselves be true in order for the conclusion to be true. A conclusion that merely follows from premises is valid, but not necessarily true. A valid conclusion that follows from true premises is necessarily true. That is, the proof is sound.

Debates over the existence of God always seem to go nowhere. People on both sides of the debate are almost never persuaded to a conclusion that is opposite the one they started with. My point here is that the debate is never over the truth of the conclusion. It is almost always over the truth of one or more premises. The only way to win such a debate is to stipulate that all the premises leading to the conclusion are true.

So what is my "easy" proof that God does not exist? Right here:

1. God is a disembodied spiritual agency.
2. Disembodied spiritual agencies do not exist.
3. Therefore, God does not exist.

Too simple? Of course it is. Most people believe in the existence of disembodied spiritual agencies, so they reject the second premise right off the bat. Very few theists will deny the first premise, although I have rarely come across some who do. It is part of Mormon doctrine, I believe, that God does have a material body, although one would need to check on that with the individual Mormon, I think.

What about the second premise? Is it true or false? I believe that it is true. All agencies, whether you want to term them "spiritual" or not, require material brains in order to exist. The evidence for my belief comes from the observation that agents cease to exist when the brains that they depend on are destroyed. We know this, because consciousness is impaired when the brain is damaged, and consciousness is a key component of volition or agency. Now don't tell me that you disagree with that belief, or we'll have to have a debate over it, before we come back to my original ironclad proof that God does not exist.

I could obviously go on, but I invite others to comment on or critique my thesis: I can easily prove that God exists, but there are others who can easily prove he does not. The argument is almost always over the soundness of the proposed proof, not the validity. So the real debate is never really over whether the conclusion is true. It is really over whether other beliefs that the conclusion depends on are true.

How likely is it that god exists?

We can calculate the likelihood of bone cancer in a particular species of animal by performing autopsies on corpses and counting the number of corpses with bone cancer versus the number of corpses without bone cancer. Those probabilities come from evidence.

How in the actual fuck is anyone going to calculate the probability of a disembodied, all-knowing, arbitrarily-powerful, sentient, creator-being exists? Do you count the number of universes with gods and compare that to the number of universes without gods? I frequently hear theists argue that the existence of a god is likely, but they never show any reasonable stochastics/probability for calculating the likelihood of the existence of a god. In fact whenever you press them on this issue, you find that the "probability calculation" is just another argument from ignorance fallacy: "I can't explain the existence of X, therefore arbitrarily-selected explanation Y must be true." I can't explain echoes, therefore the ancient Greek story about a lonely disembodied spirit imitating anything people yell is the only possible (or likeliest) explanation.

 

[Copernicus]

I'd assume there is a problem with one of the premises since it isn't logical for God to both be "proven" to exist and "proven" not to exist with shared knowledge.

The OP said HE could prove one thing, someone else could prove another thing.
Not that he could prove two diametrically opposed things at once.

So, yeah, the argument would shift from 'is there a god?' to the premises, to wit: 'is complexity an issue?' or 'does morality absolutely require a lawgiver?' or 'just how bugfucking insane is the biblical flat-earth model?'

What I thought the OP was saying was that logic is a tool to evaluate ideas, which are attempts to model the universe, not necessarily tools to acquire actual knowledge from reality. So until someone comes up with actual evidence of a deity, then it's just a battle of ideas, and how well we support them.

Yes, Keith, that was my point. And the fact is that a wide range of different definitions of "God" become irrelevant, if that range depends on the same weak premise, e.g. that reality consists of two distinct "substances"--the material and the spiritual. If that is a bad assumption, then there is no point in arguing about different nuanced versions of "God" that all depend on substance dualism.

 

[steve_bank]

So, what you seem to be saying is that you have an open mind on the question of the existence of God, but not on the question the existence of Santa Claus. Is that correct? And the basis for this distinction is that most people believe that Santa Claus is mythical but God is real. Have I got that right? Can you clarify, if I've misconstrued what you are trying to say?

Poor argument.There is actually more evidence for Santa than god. Every Christmas NORAD tracks Santa across North America....

As you well know, that is not the real argument here, which you give the appearance of trying to dodge. Would you say that you have an open mind on the existence of Santa Claus as well as the existence of God?

I don't know the specific term for your logical fallacy here. Comparing apples and oranges perhaps. Both are fruits and both Snata and god ares
myths. Both are not the same.

I have no scientific hypothesis for Santa and the origin of the nyth is well known. There is no debate.

A non corporeal existence is possible in principle IMO. In the quantum entanglement experiments two particles are created. Change the spin on one and the other changes at a distance with the linkage I believe is yet unexplained. It points to the possibility our understanding of reality and connectedness may be very shallow. It points to an undetected layer of reality that connects at the particle level..


So again, it is about the way I look at problems. Take it or leave it as you see fit. I do not believe the Abraham god or any god exists by lack pf evidence. I do not entirely discount a possible existence beyond what we can detect. Self organization and replication only requires energy and a means. The mens are hypothetical.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

A non corporeal existence is possible in principle IMO. In the quantum entanglement experiments two particles are created. Change the spin on one and the other changes at a distance with the linkage I believe is yet unexplained. It points to the possibility our understanding of reality and connectedness may be very shallow. It points to an undetected layer of reality that connects at the particle level..


So again, it is about the way I look at problems. Take it or leave it as you see fit. I do not believe the Abraham god or any god exists by lack pf evidence. I do not entirely discount a possible existence beyond what we can detect. Self organization and replication only requires energy and a means. The mens are hypothetical.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement

I don't see how that would be non corporeal.

 

[bilby]

A non corporeal existence is possible in principle IMO. In the quantum entanglement experiments two particles are created. Change the spin on one and the other changes at a distance with the linkage I believe is yet unexplained. It points to the possibility our understanding of reality and connectedness may be very shallow. It points to an undetected layer of reality that connects at the particle level..


So again, it is about the way I look at problems. Take it or leave it as you see fit. I do not believe the Abraham god or any god exists by lack pf evidence. I do not entirely discount a possible existence beyond what we can detect. Self organization and replication only requires energy and a means. The mens are hypothetical.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement

I don't see how that would be non corporeal.

Whatever ideas are to be found at the cutting edge of science are always seized upon by the God Squad as being clearly the mechanism by which their favoured woo might well work.

This lasts until those ideas are sufficiently widely understood as to cause such claims to lead to hysterical laughter from the audience, rather than sage nods and chin stroking at the deep and profound possibilities being discussed.

'Quantum' is a great word. It 'explains' whatever anyone wants it to explain, because so few people know what it actually means. Add 'Entanglement', and the scope for wild and unsubstantiated woo nonsense batshit crazy nuttery is effectively unlimited.

So yes, without a doubt, God is possible because of Quantum Entanglement. At least, as long as the majority of those who use the phrase are clueless about what it actually implies (and more importantly, what it does NOT imply).

There may well be a huge area of unknown physics that underlies the Quantum Field Theory and Relativity - and perhaps that unites those two areas of understanding. However it is certain that any future knowledge of these current unknowns will NOT radically change the accuracy and value of the predictions made by these current theories.

Gods won't become possible due to undiscovered 'sub-quantum' physics, and more than it became possible for men to fly unaided, when Universal Gravitation was replaced by Relativity.

 

[skepticalbip]

.......snip.........

A non corporeal existence is possible in principle IMO. In the quantum entanglement experiments two particles are created. Change the spin on one and the other changes at a distance with the linkage I believe is yet unexplained. It points to the possibility our understanding of reality and connectedness may be very shallow. It points to an undetected layer of reality that connects at the particle level..

....snip....

Nope... Changing the spin or any of the other quantum numbers in one particle of an entangled pair will break the state of entanglement. It will have no effect on other.

The "strangeness" is in the nature of QM where the Copenhagen interpretation is that the state of a particle is in superposition until it is observed. Seperate an entangled pair and each are still in a state of superposition until one is observed which establishes the quantum states of both.

I don't understand how this would imply a non corporeal existence.

 

[excreationist]

Copernicus:
Sorry I didn't fully read your initial post. I see you are defining what you mean by "proof". You also talk about "evidence". I would have preferred you just talk about "evidence" rather than "proof". I didn't like you saying you CAN prove and others CAN prove that God does or doesn't exist. I'd rather you said people THINK they have proof.
edit: I see you call a series of premises and a conclusion a "proof". That sounds reasonable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existence_of_God#Nature_of_relevant_proofs_and_arguments
Here they tend to call them "arguments" rather than "proofs" of God's existence.