What would count as proof of God

[Jimmy Higgins]

But Learner wants to test for the soul, because it creates a gap to stuff faith inside

I say let him have it if it comforts him.
Personally I have no use for constructs that have no power of explanation or prediction, but YMMV.
If learner can detect souls in a manner that is both explanatory and predictive, I’ll be all ears and filled with admiration. If he only “detects” souls to his own satisfaction, I see little harm in that. (As long as he isn’t trying to sell his vaporware to innocent others).

Learner is free to have as much faith as they want. What I balk at is that his trap is just putting the dust under the rug, and the consideration should not be considered remotely persuasive.

 

[Elixir]

But Learner wants to test for the soul, because it creates a gap to stuff faith inside

I say let him have it if it comforts him.
Personally I have no use for constructs that have no power of explanation or prediction, but YMMV.
If learner can detect souls in a manner that is both explanatory and predictive, I’ll be all ears and filled with admiration. If he only “detects” souls to his own satisfaction, I see little harm in that. (As long as he isn’t trying to sell his vaporware to innocent others).

Learner is free to have as much faith as they want. What I balk at is that his trap is just putting the dust under the rug, and the consideration should not be considered remotely persuasive.

I struggle to imagine the pitiable one who considers anything Learner has posted to be “persuasive”. Rather than argue, it would probably be best to have life support standing by in case of such an event.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

But Learner wants to test for the soul, because it creates a gap to stuff faith inside

I say let him have it if it comforts him.
Personally I have no use for constructs that have no power of explanation or prediction, but YMMV.
If learner can detect souls in a manner that is both explanatory and predictive, I’ll be all ears and filled with admiration. If he only “detects” souls to his own satisfaction, I see little harm in that. (As long as he isn’t trying to sell his vaporware to innocent others).

Learner is free to have as much faith as they want. What I balk at is that his trap is just putting the dust under the rug, and the consideration should not be considered remotely persuasive.

I struggle to imagine the pitiable one who considers anything Learner has posted to be “persuasive”. Rather than argue, it would probably be best to have life support standing by in case of such an event.

It occurred to me the irony of Learner attempting to use doubt to support faith.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I agree with you that belief in gods is incompatible with science but not that science disproves the existence of gods.

It seems that either science is real or non-science, aka woo in all its facets including gods, is real. They cannot both be real. Science is about what can be observed. If something cannot be observed it is not real. Seems simple enough. Therefore gods and magic aren't real because by definition these things cannot be observed. If something isn't real to science it is not real, period.

 

[Jarhyn]

But Learner wants to test for the soul, because it creates a gap to stuff faith inside

I say let him have it if it comforts him.
Personally I have no use for constructs that have no power of explanation or prediction, but YMMV.
If learner can detect souls in a manner that is both explanatory and predictive, I’ll be all ears and filled with admiration. If he only “detects” souls to his own satisfaction, I see little harm in that. (As long as he isn’t trying to sell his vaporware to innocent others).

Learner is free to have as much faith as they want. What I balk at is that his trap is just putting the dust under the rug, and the consideration should not be considered remotely persuasive.

The biggest problem is that there are actually concepts of soul that are coherent and predictive.

Learner's garbage just muddies the waters on the subject insofar as it adds noise that makes the truth impossible to fish out of the morass of bad information.

I've discussed this before: circuit diagram is to circuit as soul is to human. A circuit physically diagrams itself just as a human physically embodies it's soul.

It has no weight, no mass, no particle. It is merely the sum of property descriptions of the thing.

It does not go anywhere, because it's not a thing tied to a place, it's really just an idea and image, and without something to translate that image into material form, with no machine to implement the soul, it's really just an imaginary thing, a "mere image" and not a "soul" at all.

Of course, earlier humans didn't have axioms of math and even modern humans don't have a good grasp or understanding on them, so while they correctly inferred that things had some nebulous "thing" that is somehow "the very idea of them", they inferred a lot of incorrect things about it too.

 

[atrib]

But I wasn't engaging in either kind of fallacy, because my words were used consistently

You may have been unaware that you were using the word "wrong" in two different ways, but you were doing so nonetheless, as I detailed above.

There's a big difference between the "wrong" of saying that Newtonian gravity predicts the wrong orbit for Mercury, and saying that Newtonian gravity is wrong, therefore it's possible that a dropped rock will fall sideways.

If the model predicts the wrong orbit for Mercury, then the model is wrong. In one case, the adjective is used as the modifier of a head noun. In the other, it is used as a predicate adjective. Other than that, it seems to have exactly the same meaning. Perhaps there is a nuanced distinction that you wish to make in defining its usage in one construction but not the other. I don't see it as a significant one.

Most models used in science are approximate solutions fitted to observed data, since the differential equations describing most natural phenomena, if they can even be written out explicitly, are too complex to be solved in closed form, i.e. to provide exact solutions. Newtonian gravity is one such approximation; it provides predictions which are very close to observed reality for most phenomena we encounter on Earth. For example, if Newtonian physics is used to model the oscillation of a pendulum, the theory provides an exact solution as long as the amplitude of oscillation is limited to arbitrarily small values (less than about 3 degrees in practice). The predictions for Mercury's orbit made using Newtonian physics are approximately correct, and it would take an educated astronomer with a series of rigorous observations to detect anomalies between the predictions and reality. So it is inappropriate to describe the model as "wrong". The model is a tool, and the accuracy of the predictions it makes are acceptable for the types of problems it is typically applied to. General relativity vastly improves the quality of the prediction for the orbit of Mercury, but again, the solution involves numerical methods that approximate reality and uses simplifying assumptions, so that too is not exact.

 

[Elixir]

Oddly, Jarhyn, that seems to have been the mainstream Christian view of “soul” before science began boxing gods into gaps.
Iirc, the very word has its origins in another word that referred to breath.
Somehow, the fearsome spectacle of an incredibly quickly shrinking god forced a new version of “soul” that placed it outside the realm where science could fuck with it.

 

[skepticalbip]

But I wasn't engaging in either kind of fallacy, because my words were used consistently

You may have been unaware that you were using the word "wrong" in two different ways, but you were doing so nonetheless, as I detailed above.

There's a big difference between the "wrong" of saying that Newtonian gravity predicts the wrong orbit for Mercury, and saying that Newtonian gravity is wrong, therefore it's possible that a dropped rock will fall sideways.

If the model predicts the wrong orbit for Mercury, then the model is wrong. In one case, the adjective is used as the modifier of a head noun. In the other, it is used as a predicate adjective. Other than that, it seems to have exactly the same meaning. Perhaps there is a nuanced distinction that you wish to make in defining its usage in one construction but not the other. I don't see it as a significant one.

Most models used in science are approximate solutions fitted to observed data, since the differential equations describing most natural phenomena, if they can even be written out explicitly, are too complex to be solved in closed form, i.e. to provide exact solutions. Newtonian gravity is one such approximation; it provides predictions which are very close to observed reality for most phenomena we encounter on Earth. For example, if Newtonian physics is used to model the oscillation of a pendulum, the theory provides an exact solution as long as the amplitude of oscillation is limited to small values (less than about 2 degrees). The predictions for Mercury's orbit made using Newtonian physics are approximately correct, and it would take an educated astronomer with a series of rigorous observations to detect anomalies between the predictions and reality. So it is inappropriate to describe the model as "wrong". The model is a tool, and the accuracy of the predictions it makes are acceptable for the types of problems it is typically applied to. General relativity vastly improves the quality of the prediction for the orbit of Mercury, but again, the solution involves numerical methods that approximate reality and uses simplifying assumptions, so that too is not exact.

Indeed. Saying that Newton is wrong is similar to saying that a ruler is wrong because it doesn't give as precise measurements as a micrometer.

Between Newton and Einstein, the decision of which model to use depends on how many decimal places are required to satisfactorily solve the problem.

 

[Copernicus]

...
Most models used in science are approximate solutions fitted to observed data, since the differential equations describing most natural phenomena, if they can even be written out explicitly, are too complex to be solved in closed form, i.e. to provide exact solutions. Newtonian gravity is one such approximation; it provides predictions which are very close to observed reality for most phenomena we encounter on Earth. For example, if Newtonian physics is used to model the oscillation of a pendulum, the theory provides an exact solution as long as the amplitude of oscillation is limited to arbitrarily small values (less than about 3 degrees in practice). The predictions for Mercury's orbit made using Newtonian physics are approximately correct, and it would take an educated astronomer with a series of rigorous observations to detect anomalies between the predictions and reality. So it is inappropriate to describe the model as "wrong". The model is a tool, and the accuracy of the predictions it makes are acceptable for the types of problems it is typically applied to. General relativity vastly improves the quality of the prediction for the orbit of Mercury, but again, the solution involves numerical methods that approximate reality and uses simplifying assumptions, so that too is not exact.

All true. How does this contradict anything I've said? Can you cite anything I've said that you think is inconsistent with what you've said here?

 

[Copernicus]

Indeed. Saying that Newton is wrong is similar to saying that a ruler is wrong because it doesn't give as precise measurements as a micrometer.

Between Newton and Einstein, the decision of which model to use depends on how many decimal places are required to satisfactorily solve the problem.

Exactly! The Newtonian model fails to account for all the data that we observe. Once you are in need of those decimal places, the Newtonian model is wrong. It's true that you don't need Einstein to solve artillery trajectories, but you do need it to explain the observed location of Mercury from Earth. You can also reliably say that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, even though that isn't really what Copernican astronomy tells us. Again, why do you think I've been saying anything different?

 

[atrib]

...
Most models used in science are approximate solutions fitted to observed data, since the differential equations describing most natural phenomena, if they can even be written out explicitly, are too complex to be solved in closed form, i.e. to provide exact solutions. Newtonian gravity is one such approximation; it provides predictions which are very close to observed reality for most phenomena we encounter on Earth. For example, if Newtonian physics is used to model the oscillation of a pendulum, the theory provides an exact solution as long as the amplitude of oscillation is limited to arbitrarily small values (less than about 3 degrees in practice). The predictions for Mercury's orbit made using Newtonian physics are approximately correct, and it would take an educated astronomer with a series of rigorous observations to detect anomalies between the predictions and reality. So it is inappropriate to describe the model as "wrong". The model is a tool, and the accuracy of the predictions it makes are acceptable for the types of problems it is typically applied to. General relativity vastly improves the quality of the prediction for the orbit of Mercury, but again, the solution involves numerical methods that approximate reality and uses simplifying assumptions, so that too is not exact.

All true. How does this contradict anything I've said? Can you cite anything I've said that you think is inconsistent with what you've said here?

I was adding context to your statement:

If the model predicts the wrong orbit for Mercury, then the model is wrong.

Its not black and white. We have no way to ascertain "the right orbit for Mercury" since we don't have a telescope that is perfectly accurate. Nor do we have a closed form solution for the universal wave function that provides an exact description of said orbit. If the difference between the prediction of a model and our (imperfect) observations of Mercury's orbit exceeds some specified tolerance, then the model is likely inappropriate for use in that specific application, but I wouldn't necessarily categorize the model as being wrong.

 

[blastula]

Rocks falling sideways are a vastly more plausible way in which physics could be wrong, than unknown forces acting at human scales.

Rocks fall downward everywhere but Australia because of intelligent falling.

 

[Copernicus]

...
Most models used in science are approximate solutions fitted to observed data, since the differential equations describing most natural phenomena, if they can even be written out explicitly, are too complex to be solved in closed form, i.e. to provide exact solutions. Newtonian gravity is one such approximation; it provides predictions which are very close to observed reality for most phenomena we encounter on Earth. For example, if Newtonian physics is used to model the oscillation of a pendulum, the theory provides an exact solution as long as the amplitude of oscillation is limited to arbitrarily small values (less than about 3 degrees in practice). The predictions for Mercury's orbit made using Newtonian physics are approximately correct, and it would take an educated astronomer with a series of rigorous observations to detect anomalies between the predictions and reality. So it is inappropriate to describe the model as "wrong". The model is a tool, and the accuracy of the predictions it makes are acceptable for the types of problems it is typically applied to. General relativity vastly improves the quality of the prediction for the orbit of Mercury, but again, the solution involves numerical methods that approximate reality and uses simplifying assumptions, so that too is not exact.

All true. How does this contradict anything I've said? Can you cite anything I've said that you think is inconsistent with what you've said here?

I was adding context to your statement:

If the model predicts the wrong orbit for Mercury, then the model is wrong.

Its not black and white. We have no way to ascertain "the right orbit for Mercury" since we don't have a telescope that is perfectly accurate. Nor do we have a closed form solution for the universal wave function that provides an exact description of said orbit. If the difference between the prediction of a model and our (imperfect) observations of Mercury's orbit exceeds some specified tolerance, then the model is likely inappropriate for use in that specific application, but I wouldn't necessarily categorize the model as being wrong.

The point is that "right" and "wrong" are scalar concepts. They don't mean anything independently of an explicit or implicit scale. Bilby had claimed that I was equivocating on the meaning of the word, but I wasn't. There is no ambiguity in my usage, but different contexts can imply different scales. So the same model can be right or wrong, depending on context. Anyway, all of this is beside the point. I had a minor disagreement with Bilby over whether science can be used to disprove the existence of God/gods. I can agree that science and theism are incompatible on philosophical grounds--physicalism vs spiritualism--but it strikes me as wrong to claim that science can disprove the existential claim. If he and others disagree with my reasoning, I'm ok with that. I've tried to explain my reasoning as best I could.

 

[TheItinerantAtheist]

So it's been asked here and within philosophy generally, what would qualify as convincing evidence of God to a skeptic not ideologically inclined to believe?

I thought of something that would be rather compelling. Suppose one day every person on the planet simultaneously saw the face and heard the voice of God in the sky. That voice simultaneously declared to every human some personal fact unknown to anyone but that person, then also told them some personal fact unknown to anyone about a total stranger they never met along with that person's contact information so they could verify it. It wouldn't be surprising to for those who already believe to claim both facts they were told are accurate. But this would mean that every non-believing human would also verify their unique facts, which means many millions of people worldwide. While mass hallucinations can occur, they do so b/c all the people are within a particular shared context and frame of mind. That would be impossible for everyone on the planet at the same moment. I can't think of any possible explanation that wouldn't entail some form of supernatural, either God or at least some moment of unified psychic type consciousness.

Would you find this convincing? If not, what alternative explanation could you give?

Lacking an alternate explanation is not proof of anything. If you look back at history, you will find many things for which people lacked an alternate explanation and assumed God, such as volcanoes. We now know that there is a better explanation.

'Evidence of God' consists of a number of steps. One must define what God is. We cannot search, logically or scientifically, if we do not know what we are searching for because we cannot demonstrate that it has been found. A search requires search criteria. And, based on the various schisms and denominations, we know that there is no clear consensus for what is God. If we assumed we could select one of the many versions of The Bible for criteria, it's HUGE. And, if any of it remains unproven, we could then argue we did not find God, or that even though something sort of like the Biblical God exists, it's not the god of the bible. So, that search would be doomed to failure because it's unlikely we could reach 100% certainty of every detail of the Bible - particularly since a rational person knows it's not a rational story - immaculate conception, two of every gazillion species loaded onto a boat, the pillar of salt, etc and so it would be impossible for these things to be proven. It's exactly why Christians call them miracles, and insist that in order to believe them one must have 'faith'.

Even if we reduced our search to some primary characteristics, each would require its own 'proof'. The Creator. The Omniscient. The Omnipotent. The Source of Morality. The Geography (Heaven, Hell, Purgatory). Let's start with The Creator. If you proved some entity created man, you still haven't proved that entity is a god, unless your definition of god is that all creators of man are god. Then you must stop to consider whether that makes every childbearing woman a god, and the complexities of whether sperm donation counts as 'creation'. You must also ask yourself if, when man clones a human being, does that make that man a god.

Then, we might move on to The Omnipotent. In order to prove omnipotence, you need to have some demonstration of it. It's unlikely that we will achieve that. The only way to move forward is sophistry, trying to argue that various random events around us are demonstrations of 'omnipotence' without any proof. But - omnipotence implies a god is worshipped not because it is worthy, but because we have no choice. It has the power to make us worship it. And, since some people don't worship it, then it must only choose certain people to worship it, and they are given no choice. It also suggests that it occasionally decides to release some people. This brings up the issue of predetermination. And, that's the end of the argument. We are going to believe what the omnipotent god forces us to believe, and do what the omnipotent god forces us to do. Or - we move on to deciding that the god has the power of omnipotence but doesn't choose to use it on us. In which case, how is omnipotence relevant, and how are you going to prove such power exists in the first place?

And, so it goes. Every one of of the major characteristics is going to lead us down a rabbit hole, and when we are done, we still have nothing to tell us what relevance any of those characteristics has to the supposed God, whether he must have only one of them, or all of them.

Assuming that you could define what it is that you are searching for, and that you can actually find that entity and prove it exists, there remains one more issue. If you present this entity to a person, that person must accept an entity as a god, choose to deify that entity and choose to accept a general deity as his own personal god. There are a great many posited deities, and people do choose different ones. Egyptians worshipped cats as gods. Once you find a cat, and prove the cat exists, you still just have a cat. You don't have a god. You didn't prove god exists to everyone in the world by finding a cat. In order for that cat to be any person's god, the person must agree to deify the cat, and classify it as 'a' god, and then as 'his own' god. These are choices. You cannot prove a choice. The idea of 'proving God' is the idea that one can come up with some argument that is so overwhelming that people are forced, that they have no choice, but to deify that entity and then accept it as their personal god. Let's get real. You can't even get every person on and off the planet to even admit that they, themselves, exist! People always have a choice and some of us are contrarian by nature. So, the only way to prove god is to eliminate free will and simply make them all agree on one conclusion at one time. If you have the power to give them visions and insert choices in their heads, you likely have the power to just control the choice. Why all the theatrics? If The Omnipotent God existed, then he, alone, could force every person in existence to simultaneously believe he existed, believe he was a deity and accept him as their personal deity. Why hasn't he done that? Even if he did, then you would have a zombie army of God worshippers who were not convinced but rather forced to accept The Omnipotent God as their own personal God. That entity could be Hitler, a cat, or whatever, but I'm not sure that counts as 'evidence'. There are no rational steps involved, just 'God' (or Hitler or a cat) waving a hand and making it so. And, the fact he can compel you does not mean he is the Moral God, only the omnipotent god. So, you are just a zombie under the control of god which may or may not be moral. It's not clear why you went to all the effort to prove God and how this understanding that you are a zombie whose fate is ruled by the arbitrary decisions of The Omnipotent God is going to in any way improve your life.

You cannot prove God definitively while Free Will exists.

 

[TheItinerantAtheist]

AIDS, might.
I mean, if the virus really did have a sexual-preference preference like Uncle Howard insists.

If AIDS could not be transmitted at all through moral behavior, but was 100% contagious across immoral lines. Like, you could contract the disease from sharing drug needles, but a surgeon who cut himself during surgery just never ever ever ever caught HIV from a patient. An AIDS patient who caught it from a gay prostitute could never pass it to their spouse. Blood donations never threaten ER patients, though blood-play in a BDSM session would be a suicide pact.

Something behaving that much like a cartoon villain as the faithful insist, that might be compelling. But then, we'd have to be living in the cartoon world of the evangelical, and this conversation would be moot.

You would have to have a universal concept of morality - which does not exist. Christians, for instance, vary in terms of some being pro-life and some pro-choice, or some are accepting of LGBT. Due to a lack of universal standard of morality, the proposed scenario would not be persuasive evidence because the infectious events would not sort themselves neatly into an 'immoral' category. Some scenarios would appear 'moral' to some people.

 

[TheItinerantAtheist]

So it's been asked here and within philosophy generally, what would qualify as convincing evidence of God to a skeptic not ideologically inclined to believe?

I thought of something that would be rather compelling. Suppose one day every person on the planet simultaneously saw the face and heard the voice of God in the sky. That voice simultaneously declared to every human some personal fact unknown to anyone but that person, then also told them some personal fact unknown to anyone about a total stranger they never met along with that person's contact information so they could verify it. It wouldn't be surprising to for those who already believe to claim both facts they were told are accurate. But this would mean that every non-believing human would also verify their unique facts, which means many millions of people worldwide. While mass hallucinations can occur, they do so b/c all the people are within a particular shared context and frame of mind. That would be impossible for everyone on the planet at the same moment. I can't think of any possible explanation that wouldn't entail some form of supernatural, either God or at least some moment of unified psychic type consciousness.

Would you find this convincing? If not, what alternative explanation could you give?

There is literally nothing that a determined skeptic could not find a "scientific explanation" for. If it really was that widespread a phenomenon, it would already be characterized as a "natural law" no more in need of a supernatural explanation than gravity or biogenesis. Laws just exist, positing a Lawgiver is an unnecessary multiplication of entities.

View attachment 21360

I mean, everyone knows that the mysterious knowledge thing happens every now and then, and it happens to everyone regardless of religion. Even if we accept that this is caused by "God", whose god is it supposed to prove the existence of? There are thousands of claimed gods, after all. Saying "God did it" adds no new information, and only leads to argument.

In any case, just because we don't understand the "mysterious knowledge phenomenon" now doesn't mean we never will. The God of the Gaps shrinks every single time a new scientific discovery is made, and there have been exciting experiments in neurobiology lately that might explain this odd quality of unprompted communal empathetic responses. Only theists think that everything strange or unexpected must necessarily be supernatural in origin.

The God of Gaps both shrinks and expands every time we learn something new. While we may explain one phenomenon that God was previously getting credit for, we open up another universe. When we discover another atomic level, the God particle - or that instead of just being candles in the sky that that there is an entire universe of unexplored stars out there - the God of Gaps expands yet again. The more we learn, the longer our list of unanswered questions.

 

[TheItinerantAtheist]

I'm not sure it would be possible to tell the difference, but as neither is in evidence, I don't really care

Well, seeing that the OP is asking, I do think it is relevant. We are incapable of telling if something is incredibly advanced or whether it is a deity.

But the question doesn't arise; We see neither, so needn't care.

If Q turns up, we can ask him. Though we may not want to take his word for it either way.

But until he turns up, the question is unimportant.

Except perhaps in the observation that we DON'T have a Q to ask - so his absence is strong evidence of the absence of both gods and advanced aliens, at least on our planet. Which squashes most theistic worldviews.

If people pray, and an advanced alien detects and acts on their prayers, then that alien is indistinguishable from a god.

But if people pray, they actually get the same response we would anticipate in the absence of either gods or aliens - so we can conclude that neither exists.

If I walk into a room and say my car won't start and someone comes and jumps it off, is he indistinguishable from a god? The fact that an entity responds to a need or an appeal does not indicate godhood. So, we are left with the fact that we 'prayed' and that an alien intercepted and understood this 'communication', suggesting that the only distinguishing characteristic of a god is that he hears and answers prayers. If this is the case, we can dispense with the whole 'creation' argument, morality (not all prayers are moral) and other proposed aspects of 'god'.

However, if we were being surveiled by aliens, their response might not be to the 'prayer' but rather to what they observed by surveilling us. Another possible explanation is what we call 'ESP' which might act through quantum entanglement. Either way, the alien might still be distinguishable from god, except that we have no defined way to distinguish god. We don't have a clear definition or a standardized test to assess godhood. (...or we would not be having this conversation).

 

[Keith&Co.]

AIDS, might.
I mean, if the virus really did have a sexual-preference preference like Uncle Howard insists.

If AIDS could not be transmitted at all through moral behavior, but was 100% contagious across immoral lines. Like, you could contract the disease from sharing drug needles, but a surgeon who cut himself during surgery just never ever ever ever caught HIV from a patient. An AIDS patient who caught it from a gay prostitute could never pass it to their spouse. Blood donations never threaten ER patients, though blood-play in a BDSM session would be a suicide pact.

Something behaving that much like a cartoon villain as the faithful insist, that might be compelling. But then, we'd have to be living in the cartoon world of the evangelical, and this conversation would be moot.

You would have to have a universal concept of morality - which does not exist.

But this is in the context of proof for a god. One absolute arbiter of morality....somewhere.
Like the bumper stickers say, "God said it, That settles it."
Whether we agree with it or not. And not subject to translation or transcription errors, a repeatable observation


I mean, really, if AIDS did behave this was, that would certainly establish the valued morality. If evidence accrued thst married couples did not transmit AIDS in the missionary position, but did thru blowjobs, that would be a definite clue no matter how many people like blowjobs.

 

[TheItinerantAtheist]

AIDS, might.
I mean, if the virus really did have a sexual-preference preference like Uncle Howard insists.

If AIDS could not be transmitted at all through moral behavior, but was 100% contagious across immoral lines. Like, you could contract the disease from sharing drug needles, but a surgeon who cut himself during surgery just never ever ever ever caught HIV from a patient. An AIDS patient who caught it from a gay prostitute could never pass it to their spouse. Blood donations never threaten ER patients, though blood-play in a BDSM session would be a suicide pact.

Something behaving that much like a cartoon villain as the faithful insist, that might be compelling. But then, we'd have to be living in the cartoon world of the evangelical, and this conversation would be moot.

You would have to have a universal concept of morality - which does not exist.

But this is in the context of proof for a god. One absolute arbiter of morality....somewhere.
Like the bumper stickers say, "God said it, That settles it."
Whether we agree with it or not. And not subject to translation or transcription errors, a repeatable observation


I mean, really, if AIDS did behave this was, that would certainly establish the valued morality. If evidence accrued thst married couples did not transmit AIDS in the missionary position, but did thru blowjobs, that would be a definite clue no matter how many people like blowjobs.

This is a circular argument.

We cannot conclude on observing a pattern of infection, that this pattern proves both God and a universal standard for morality.

Only after we have confirmed God, can we define morality based on what God says it is. But - that only holds true if a person recognizes the entity as God and as the universal standard for morality. If a person does not confer upon God the right to define his morality, then there is only a pattern of infection that strikes some and skips others.

If a serial killer chooses only to kill pedophiles, and not other people, that does make the serial killer God. And, whether his actions are moral could be hotly debated.

In this example, a likely scientific conclusion might be that AIDS is more readily transferred via saliva than semen. And, it would not be possible from a scientific standpoint to introduce a supernatural explanation, so science would not be able to confirm your hypothesis regarding a moral cause of AIDS under any circumstances.

 

[Jarhyn]

One absolute arbiter of morality ethics....somewhere.

So this is a very interesting definition for God, and I'm not so sure you're right in assuming there is not an absolute mechanism which bounds the stochastic range of "morality" in some general way.

I fairly well expect that there is some pathway from the axioms to "don't be a dick".

It's a long and convoluted pathway that I don't think humans could have figured out much earlier than now.

But that just means that the arbiter of ethics is the fact we live in a material universe describable by math, to the extent that it is so describable.

That doesn't entitle it to worship. I don't worship the fact that the radius of a circle is 2πR, either.

I will not deny such as the radius of a circle is 2πR, either. I just kind of accept it and continue doing what I do, modified so as to obey this understanding of necessary fact.