What would count as proof of God

[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.

Another question is whether humans are even capable of accepting an external definition of morality. If an entity struck people dead for having blowjobs, and spared people who had Missionary style sex, that is my definition of a deranged psychotic serial killer - and many would share that view.

If humans cannot except an external definition of morality, and if humans' internal definitions of morality differ (as they demonstrably do) - then that would throw the theory of a universal standard for morality right out the window. In my view, a universal standard of morality is toast. Not happening, not unless The Omnipotent God starts the Zombie Worshipper Apocalypse....


...we're still waiting.

 

[TheItinerantAtheist]

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.

I had one person tell me that worship is not a necessary characteristic of a god (may be right, may be wrong). So, this also goes back to the eternal question, that we can't prove a god until we can define one.

I have concluded that a deity is an entity that I personally choose to classify as a deity, and is my God only if I choose for it to be my God. If you can define an entity, you can prove it exists (you cannot, however, prove it does not exist with absolute certainty, only with reasonable certainty). This ability to choose one's god is demonstrated by the fact that many people do, in fact, choose many different gods. Therefore, there can never be a proof for my personal god, only evidence of the choice I've made (testimony, affidavit, etc). I have made the choice, and because that choice is grounded in my personal morality (the meaning of the word that is NOT religious based), I can be quite certain that I will not change that decision. This is demonstrated in the fact that the decision has remained rock solid for more than half a century.

Many entities have been discovered in my lifetime, various new species, and I have not chosen to deify any of them. I have no reasonable expectation that I would deify the next entity that comes along, either.

And, as a rock solid rule.... I don't deify. Ever.

 

[TheItinerantAtheist]

I think that we are in violent agreement about how science works, and I don't think that anything I have said about epistemology or plausibility resonates with you. We both have arrived at the same conclusion that science rules out the existence of gods but have different ways of characterizing the epistemological significance of that conclusion.

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say "science rules out that gods are necessary"? Science can't rule out whatever is past the universe, if such a thing exists.

Science to this point has managed to explain a lot without god ever entering the conversation. What remains is not understood... and not defaulted to god. Much to the point that god(s) existence appears to be irrelevant for our widescale observations of the universe, hence, gods are not necessary.

Learner wants to suggest a test to look for intervention. We have explained a boatload of processes that have no intervention. As for our "souls", I think brain trauma (where as people become different people after massive head injuries) is quite possibly the easiest way to debunk the soul. But Learner wants to test for the soul, because it creates a gap to stuff faith inside. If we can't disprove a soul... there can be a soul. Which is a desperate plea, as it requires failure to disprove instead of act to prove in order to propagate it.

Whether we can disprove the soul isn't relevant. It is just a minor pigeonhole trap created by an ever evaporating dogma of religion that attempted to explain science. The dogma went from an expansive encyclopedia set that explained god did everything, to a single book explaining god was the cause of the big stuff, and now remains as a pamphlet with a just a few bullet points:

• Origin of Universe
• Soul
• Order from disorder

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.

I think that we are in violent agreement about how science works, and I don't think that anything I have said about epistemology or plausibility resonates with you. We both have arrived at the same conclusion that science rules out the existence of gods but have different ways of characterizing the epistemological significance of that conclusion. So maybe we should just let it rest at that. It's not worth spending our few remaining heartbeats in trying to resolve the dispute. I agree with you that belief in gods is incompatible with science but not that science disproves the existence of gods.

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.

The stochastic range of 'morality' might be defined by the human tolerance to empathic response in which the brain observes a situation and tries to mimic the experience, and the ability of humans to be aware of and predict the suffering of others through this mechanism. It would vary from individual to individual (as it clearly does), and would be similar in concept to the range of human visual or auditory capabilities. Our logical brain then tries to develop generalizations based on painful empathic experiences, just as we try to draw generalizations from sensory touch experience like - 'Don't stick your hand into any fire, anywhere. That hurts.'

Morality fails in situations where one human's brain cannot 'see' the other creature's experience. One example would be what we call an 'invisible illness'. Another might be an empathic human observing the behavior of a psychopath (or vice versa). The differences in brains make them unable to mimic one another. Or, we may encounter situations we have not experienced before, so our brain wasn't able to predict the painful experience and model it for us until it experienced it for the first time. In a similar vein, a person might still burn his hand on a hot surface that he does not recognize as 'fire', like a steam pipe - until the brain learns to recognize the steam pipe as a source of painful heat. And, so, as we discover these new sources of real and empathic pain that we were not previously aware of, we continually update our models resulting in evolving moral understanding and... axioms that lead to a conclusion of 'Don't be a Dick'. But our moral understanding remains limited within the bounds of what humans can or have experienced, what we can perceive and what we can thus predict.

C. J. Cherryh's Foreigner series explores the linkage between morality and physiology. I thought she made a compelling case. Her conclusion was that a different physiology must naturally lead to a different morality.

None of this requires a God, though I'm sure a Creationist would argue that God built the empathic response into the brain. In all likelihood, though, empathy exists because being able to recognize another's pain helped us to predict our own pain, avoid painful experiences and increase our chances of survival and that of other members of our social unit. And morality is just a logical construct that we've built based on our empathic response, utilizing our natural intelligence to increase the effectiveness of a more basic reflex - like studying kinesiology so we can throw a baseball faster or more accurately.

 

[TheItinerantAtheist]

The dogma went from an expansive encyclopedia set that explained god did everything, to a single book explaining god was the cause of the big stuff, and now remains as a pamphlet with a just a few bullet points:

• Origin of Universe
• Soul
• Order from disorder

I don’t particularly want to get involved in the current discussion on the question of how we know what we know, but reading through the thread reminded me of something. Years ago (like thirty plus) I found myself in a situation where I needed to contemplate the nature of god-hood, if any. I hit upon the following:

Given that any omnipotent god would be transcendent by definition, then any entity that can be defined cannot be god.

That satisfied me for a while, almost, although in the end it seemed a bit vacuous to pass muster, to say the least. Recalling that pronouncement just now made me smile to myself a little ruefully.

My take on an omnipotent god is that the god either utilizes his omnipotence on humans in current times, or he does not.

If god does not use his omnipotence on humans in current times, then omnipotence is irrelevant. Stop. It doesn't matter if it exists or not, in general. If there is no manifestation of it for us to detect then we will never detect it.

If god does use omnipotence on humans in current times, then Free Will evaporates and omnipotence leads directly to predestination, which makes musings on an omnipotent god irrelevant. God decided you will muse on omnipotent gods and god will decide what you think about god, what you do, what you say next, and whether you will understand or not understand God. Whatever God makes you perceive, you perceive and reality itself is irrelevant because you will only perceive it if God so allows. So... what's the point in pursuing philosophy? God will tell you what to think.

But, if you look at human experience, it's impossible for the human mind to comprehend why any omnipotent God would choose to create an irrational mess like this! So, if an omnipotent God does exist, he's either completely incomprehensible to the human mind - or he's insane. Either way, from a human's perspective, he's useless as a 'god'.

(update) This last touches on the experience of Holocaust victims. If an omnipotent god exists and his 'morality' allowed for him to let The Holocaust happen and for him not to intervene on behalf of the victims - then either the posited god does not actually exist, or he is not worthy of deification. He's just a powerful entity, and an oblivious, disinterested, or cruel and immoral one at that. Note the assumption that morality is even an issue with an omnipotent god. Maybe he is just ominpotent. This touches on the lack of a clear definition of god in the first place.

 

[TheItinerantAtheist]

The dogma went from an expansive encyclopedia set that explained god did everything, to a single book explaining god was the cause of the big stuff, and now remains as a pamphlet with a just a few bullet points:

• Origin of Universe
• Soul
• Order from disorder

I don’t particularly want to get involved in the current discussion on the question of how we know what we know, but reading through the thread reminded me of something. Years ago (like thirty plus) I found myself in a situation where I needed to contemplate the nature of god-hood, if any. I hit upon the following:

Given that any omnipotent god would be transcendent by definition, then any entity that can be defined cannot be god.

That satisfied me for a while, almost, although in the end it seemed a bit vacuous to pass muster, to say the least. Recalling that pronouncement just now made me smile to myself a little ruefully.

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.

If you don't know what morality is, then you don't know it when you see it.

People wouldn't notice that all the cases were 'immoral' because they don't yet know what moral is....
... because God hasn't told them what the universal standard of moral is
... because God had not yet introduced himself
... because God was going to introduce himself by showing us that a bunch of immoral people got sick and moral people didn't
... but... (go back to the beginning)

People would be evaluating the viral cases based on their own perceptions of morality which differ from other people, and necessarily differ from any one universal God Standard. So, it would just be a bunch of random sick people.

Also - no one would know when exactly when they caught AIDs how they they caught it, what they were doing when they caught it. They wouldn't even know from whom they caught it without a whole lot of tracking and tracing and genetic sequencing of AIDs virus - which would never happen..

 

[TheItinerantAtheist]

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).

Even if a soul existed, that does not mean there is any connection to God. It would just be an avenue of research for scientists to determine whether they can download the soul into some sort of alternative containment device when the mortal body dies -- sort of like the famous heads in jars in Futurama. 'Heaven' might be a jar on a shelf.

 

[Keith&Co.]

But that still makes humans the arbiter of human ethics.

I'd certainly like to think the arguments against dicktitude are more compelling, and long-run profitable than dickish behavior.

But if we're talking about looking for a reason to think there's a god, why would it take this long?
If there is a god, and a religion with even a slight grasp on its desires, i'd expect to have seen trends develop by now, at the very least.

Certain faith's churches thst never, ever get bombed during war. That cannot be set on fire by heretics. That never run out of money, maybe, or a roof that never leaks even with holes poked in it.

Acts that ALWAYS get punished. No appeals to an afterlife justice for criminals that never got identified, if you break the Church of Zog's 4th Commandment, you WILL be caught. Zoggian or not.

Hell, if i were god, anyone deciding to commit rape would find themselves with a four-foot dick, two feet around. Then everyone would know what they tried to do. "Ah. So, what, you got her drunk or what?" Ghislane Maxwell would have a tough time accessorizing that....

 

[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.

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.

You're still trying yo apply this god to the universe you live in.
I am saying if there were a god who cared about our behavior, our history would have been drastically different.

 

[Jarhyn]

But that still makes humans the arbiter of human ethics.

I'd certainly like to think the arguments against dicktitude are more compelling, and long-run profitable than dickish behavior.

But if we're talking about looking for a reason to think there's a god, why would it take this long?
If there is a god, and a religion with even a slight grasp on its desires, i'd expect to have seen trends develop by now, at the very least.

Certain faith's churches thst never, ever get bombed during war. That cannot be set on fire by heretics. That never run out of money, maybe, or a roof that never leaks even with holes poked in it.

Acts that ALWAYS get punished. No appeals to an afterlife justice for criminals that never got identified, if you break the Church of Zog's 4th Commandment, you WILL be caught. Zoggian or not.

Hell, if i were god, anyone deciding to commit rape would find themselves with a four-foot dick, two feet around. Then everyone would know what they tried to do. "Ah. So, what, you got her drunk or what?" Ghislane Maxwell would have a tough time accessorizing that....

No, the things of game theory that come together to form these ethical requirements don't require humans. They are much more, and function equally among chimpanzees or robots or aliens.

As I have said, I don't call this thing a "god" any more than "2πR" is a god. It's just a fact of any flat, regular topology.

Similarly, there is a "best general strategy for open-goaled game theory". It just has to revolve around a general, rather than specific goal. It is not a god, but it is most certainly true that it may be derived.

Humans don't get to arbitrate what is the product of game theory. Strange, I know, but we don't. Game theory is a set of relationships demanded of systems which conform to certain constructions of math.

If the system conforms to the construction, it is valid anywhere, not just in this universe but any universe that hosts that form of construction of set relationships.

 

[steve_bank]

I think that we are in violent agreement about how science works, and I don't think that anything I have said about epistemology or plausibility resonates with you. We both have arrived at the same conclusion that science rules out the existence of gods but have different ways of characterizing the epistemological significance of that conclusion.

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say "science rules out that gods are necessary"? Science can't rule out whatever is past the universe, if such a thing exists.

Science to this point has managed to explain a lot without god ever entering the conversation. What remains is not understood... and not defaulted to god. Much to the point that god(s) existence appears to be irrelevant for our widescale observations of the universe, hence, gods are not necessary.

Learner wants to suggest a test to look for intervention. We have explained a boatload of processes that have no intervention. As for our "souls", I think brain trauma (where as people become different people after massive head injuries) is quite possibly the easiest way to debunk the soul. But Learner wants to test for the soul, because it creates a gap to stuff faith inside. If we can't disprove a soul... there can be a soul. Which is a desperate plea, as it requires failure to disprove instead of act to prove in order to propagate it.

Whether we can disprove the soul isn't relevant. It is just a minor pigeonhole trap created by an ever evaporating dogma of religion that attempted to explain science. The dogma went from an expansive encyclopedia set that explained god did everything, to a single book explaining god was the cause of the big stuff, and now remains as a pamphlet with a just a few bullet points:

• Origin of Universe
• Soul
• Order from disorder

That is generally my view. Some people at times say 'science says..' as a generality much as theists say 'the bible says..'.

Science can dispute specific claims such as Young Earth Creationism and subjective evidence offered as a proof of god, but I know of no scientifc theory that says or infers a god can not exist.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

But that still makes humans the arbiter of human ethics.

I'd certainly like to think the arguments against dicktitude are more compelling, and long-run profitable than dickish behavior.

But if we're talking about looking for a reason to think there's a god, why would it take this long?
If there is a god, and a religion with even a slight grasp on its desires, i'd expect to have seen trends develop by now, at the very least.

Certain faith's churches thst never, ever get bombed during war. That cannot be set on fire by heretics. That never run out of money, maybe, or a roof that never leaks even with holes poked in it.

Acts that ALWAYS get punished. No appeals to an afterlife justice for criminals that never got identified, if you break the Church of Zog's 4th Commandment, you WILL be caught. Zoggian or not.

Hell, if i were god, anyone deciding to commit rape would find themselves with a four-foot dick, two feet around. Then everyone would know what they tried to do. "Ah. So, what, you got her drunk or what?" Ghislane Maxwell would have a tough time accessorizing that....

Of course, on the other hand, we might have all been asses during our actual lifetime and we are actually in hell.

 

[Keith&Co.]

With just enough beer andand bratwurst to give us hope...?
Diabolical.

 

[TheItinerantAtheist]

But that still makes humans the arbiter of human ethics.

Yes, it does. Because humans are the arbiter of human ethics. And wolves are the arbiter of wolf ethics - which are the different from human ethics because they are based on wolf physiology.

 

[bilby]

I think that we are in violent agreement about how science works, and I don't think that anything I have said about epistemology or plausibility resonates with you. We both have arrived at the same conclusion that science rules out the existence of gods but have different ways of characterizing the epistemological significance of that conclusion.

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say "science rules out that gods are necessary"? Science can't rule out whatever is past the universe, if such a thing exists.

Science to this point has managed to explain a lot without god ever entering the conversation. What remains is not understood... and not defaulted to god. Much to the point that god(s) existence appears to be irrelevant for our widescale observations of the universe, hence, gods are not necessary.

Learner wants to suggest a test to look for intervention. We have explained a boatload of processes that have no intervention. As for our "souls", I think brain trauma (where as people become different people after massive head injuries) is quite possibly the easiest way to debunk the soul. But Learner wants to test for the soul, because it creates a gap to stuff faith inside. If we can't disprove a soul... there can be a soul. Which is a desperate plea, as it requires failure to disprove instead of act to prove in order to propagate it.

Whether we can disprove the soul isn't relevant. It is just a minor pigeonhole trap created by an ever evaporating dogma of religion that attempted to explain science. The dogma went from an expansive encyclopedia set that explained god did everything, to a single book explaining god was the cause of the big stuff, and now remains as a pamphlet with a just a few bullet points:

• Origin of Universe
• Soul
• Order from disorder

That is generally my view. Some people at times say 'science says..' as a generality much as theists say 'the bible says..'.

Science can dispute specific claims such as Young Earth Creationism and subjective evidence offered as a proof of god, but I know of no scientifc theory that says or infers a god can not exist.

Yes, you do. You just don't understand that theory, and despite attempts here to explain to you that it really does say that gods cannot exist, you haven't taken steps to learn the theory so you can see for yourself.

You are choosing to remain ignorant, and then claiming that your personal ignorance must be shared by all; Your claim here is "I don't know, therefore nobody knows" - which is nonsensical.

Quantum Field Theory, as demonstrated experimentally, cannot be sufficiently wrong as to allow for any god that intervened in human affairs to exist. It's less reasonable to reserve judgment on this fact than it is to reserve judgment on the claim that the Moon is not made of Stilton.

Your ignorance isn't an argument for anything.

 

[Jarhyn]

But that still makes humans the arbiter of human ethics.

Yes, it does. Because humans are the arbiter of human ethics. And wolves are the arbiter of wolf ethics - which are the different from human ethics because they are based on wolf physiology.

I disagree. Ethics are ethics no matter what entity you are looking at.

I would say the MORALITY of both are vastly different, however.

I think that we are in violent agreement about how science works, and I don't think that anything I have said about epistemology or plausibility resonates with you. We both have arrived at the same conclusion that science rules out the existence of gods but have different ways of characterizing the epistemological significance of that conclusion.

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say "science rules out that gods are necessary"? Science can't rule out whatever is past the universe, if such a thing exists.

Science to this point has managed to explain a lot without god ever entering the conversation. What remains is not understood... and not defaulted to god. Much to the point that god(s) existence appears to be irrelevant for our widescale observations of the universe, hence, gods are not necessary.

Learner wants to suggest a test to look for intervention. We have explained a boatload of processes that have no intervention. As for our "souls", I think brain trauma (where as people become different people after massive head injuries) is quite possibly the easiest way to debunk the soul. But Learner wants to test for the soul, because it creates a gap to stuff faith inside. If we can't disprove a soul... there can be a soul. Which is a desperate plea, as it requires failure to disprove instead of act to prove in order to propagate it.

Whether we can disprove the soul isn't relevant. It is just a minor pigeonhole trap created by an ever evaporating dogma of religion that attempted to explain science. The dogma went from an expansive encyclopedia set that explained god did everything, to a single book explaining god was the cause of the big stuff, and now remains as a pamphlet with a just a few bullet points:

• Origin of Universe
• Soul
• Order from disorder

That is generally my view. Some people at times say 'science says..' as a generality much as theists say 'the bible says..'.

Science can dispute specific claims such as Young Earth Creationism and subjective evidence offered as a proof of god, but I know of no scientifc theory that says or infers a god can not exist.

Yes, you do. You just don't understand that theory, and despite attempts here to explain to you that it really does say that gods cannot exist, you haven't taken steps to learn the theory so you can see for yourself.

You are choosing to remain ignorant, and then claiming that your personal ignorance must be shared by all; Your claim here is "I don't know, therefore nobody knows" - which is nonsensical.

Quantum Field Theory, as demonstrated experimentally, cannot be sufficiently wrong as to allow for any god that intervened in human affairs to exist. It's less reasonable to reserve judgment on this fact than it is to reserve judgment on the claim that the Moon is not made of Stilton.

Your ignorance isn't an argument for anything.

QFT says no such thing. QFT only demands that there can be no such god composed of the stuff of our universe. But similarly to the fact that I cannot possibly exist "within" the universes I create, and while it is impossible for the stuff of that universe to interact in such a way to do the things that I cause to happen there on its own, I can nonetheless just instantaneous change the configuration of a field in that universe willy-nilly.

Does it obey the observable laws of physics in the universe I'm modifying? NOPE!

Does it have to obey such laws for it to work? NOPE!

QFT does not rule such malarkey and touches out, it just says that WE cannot so touch.

 

[bilby]

Does it have to obey such laws for it to work?

Yep.

It takes two to tango. Not only must a hypothetical unknown influence be able to affect particles; Particles also need to ba able to be affected by unknown influences. And we now know they cannot be.

 

[Jarhyn]

Does it have to obey such laws for it to work?

Yep.

It takes two to tango. Not only must a hypothetical unknown influence be able to affect particles; Particles also need to ba able to be affected by unknown influences. And we now know they cannot be.

Except it really doesn't.

I can crack open any universal simulation and just go about changing numbers on the fields.

No "internal physics" necessary there.

The laws of the physics only control things bound by the physical process. Not bound within the physics? Then you can do "whatever", which is only bound by host physics not client physics.

 

[steve_bank]

Some theists conflate theology with science to serve their view point. Some atheists conflate science with science fiction to serve a view. Both interpretations, uising the word loosely, are based in ignorance.

I watched part of a Christian show on how science actually proves theology.

Going back to Popper science objectively is an experiment. As interpretations expand around experiment it becomes progressively subjective. For something to be objective science it must be testable.

In the end objective science is an equation and quantifiable measurable variables. Plug in numbers and yiu get outputs wih the bounds f the theory. Anything beyond that is interpretation and leads into philosophy.

QM has spawned books and followers of a mysticism on what it 'means;'. In practice to me it means equations to design transistors and lasers.

If a scientific proof of god either way was reducible to testable science we would either all be atheists or all theists depending on the outcome of a repeatable experiment.

In the 70s-90s there were many controlled experiments on ESP. None yielded results better than statistical averages. It can not be said it does not exist or is precluded by any theory, it can be said there is no demonstrable evidence to support the claims.

 

[skepticalbip]

Does it have to obey such laws for it to work?

Yep.

It takes two to tango. Not only must a hypothetical unknown influence be able to affect particles; Particles also need to ba able to be affected by unknown influences. And we now know they cannot be.

Except it really doesn't.

I can crack open any universal simulation and just go about changing numbers on the fields.

If you have access to the simulation you could but it would no longer be a representation of the universe so no longer useful.

 

[Jarhyn]

Does it have to obey such laws for it to work?

Yep.

It takes two to tango. Not only must a hypothetical unknown influence be able to affect particles; Particles also need to ba able to be affected by unknown influences. And we now know they cannot be.

Except it really doesn't.

I can crack open any universal simulation and just go about changing numbers on the fields.

If you have access to the simulation you could but it would no longer be a representation of the universe so no longer useful.

The simulation is "a universe", here. Not "a representation of" but "a genuine article".

I have a game. I change the memory outside the rules of the process (flip the bits), now Urist's strength is "100" when it used to be "10".

Nothing physically happened to Urist that he became so strong. He just is now, courtesy of a memory hack.

Something impossible and incomprehensible within the laws by which Urist's reality is formed allows for this, mostly on account of the fact that while "client" physics disallow such malarkey host physics is more permissive.

Nothing in our physics prevents this.