Any other atheists here? Some frustration

[SadisticNature]

My point isn't that its not necessary. My point is that Dawkins common arguments against god reduce to:

Assume there is no god (as per assuming the Scientific Method)
Therefore there is no god.

So aren't actually strong arguments against the existence of god.

[FirstBorn]

So aren't actually strong arguments against the existence of god.

Other than the fact that the devine entity insists on not showing up for lab tests.

Now id say assuming the scientific method by itself does not exclude the excistence of a god. But the room where gods could be hiding is shrinking as more and more of the natural world is explained and formulated by science.

Should science eventually bump into some entity fitting the description of a god it would obviusly be recognised as such. But at the moment god is a hypothesis with no experiments defiantely proving or denying existance.

Religius texts however (as far as im informed) have all been proven wrong. That does not finally prove that there is no god, it just says that no human is able to explain the nature and wishes of such an entity.

[Thorne]

Assume there is no god (as per assuming the Scientific Method)
Therefore there is no god.

No, the way it actually works is:
1. Assume there are no gods.
2. Do our models and theories about the working of the universe still apply?
3. Yes, they do.
4. Then there probably are no gods.
5. Is there any evidence to show that there are gods?
6. No verifiable evidence at all. Only wishful thinking and anecdotes.
7. Then, to the best of our knowledge, there are no gods.

So aren't actually strong arguments against the existence of god.

We don't need any arguments against the existence of gods, any more than we need arguments against the existence of fairies, or leprechauns, or golems, or any other such superstitious claptrap. The point is that there is no credible evidence that gods exist. It's not up to science to prove that gods don't exist: it's up to believers to prove that they do, in a testable manner.

[SadisticNature]

If your definition of truth is scientific truth then in order to prove god exists you would likely have to do a series of experiments that verify the presence of god. My definition of truth is scientific truth and on that basis I don't believe in god. However, this is still a matter of premises, you have assumed that the only form of truth is scientific truth, by which you have already asserted the non-existence of god through experimental invariance or other similar properties that postulate results don't happen through miracles or divine intervention.

As for the other point about accumulating evidence based on god not interfering, this is also problematic. You have already assumed a theory which requires the non-existence of god to set up an empirical framework in which experimental results can discover general laws about the universe. Any experiment within this framework cannot then provide evidence for the non-existence of god as it is already assumed.

[FirstBorn]

My definition of truth is scientific truth and on that basis I don't believe in god.

Truth by scientific standards have nothing to do with belief. Should a deity show up in testing idt be a fact thus eliminating the need for beliving in it.

Since no deity has cared enuff to show up as of yet, nobody knows of its existance and any argument for beliving in it is looking rather dodgy. But not definately proven right or wrong.

So if someone set up a god measuring experiment and was able to prove beond dispute that the result would be final and correct. Whatever result came out would have to be the fact wed all have to accept from then on.

Science doesnt work that way thou. When making an experiment you go by whatever you have handy at the moment and work on your current hypothesis. Proving a scientific theory or law wrong in whatever specific case your working, is just good as proving it right.

That is you may with contemporary equipment set out to measure gods non existence (if thats the theory you decide). But if the experiment is supposed to have any merit atall. Any unexpected result would then prove your first assumption about god wrong.

Beliving in god or intelligent life on other planets (any planet including earth in my case) Is well good for the beliver. But without any evidence thats all it is.

Soon as SETI picks up some alien x-factor program, or a deity decides to show up and set the facts straight. Science FACT will get in line and give it the thumbs up.

Belief however is still pointless.

[Thorne]

you have assumed that the only form of truth is scientific truth, by which you have already asserted the non-existence of god through experimental invariance or other similar properties that postulate results don't happen through miracles or divine intervention.

I assert (not assume) that there is only one truth. Something is either true or it is not. It is the purpose of science to ferret out that truth, and to inform us of the rules under which that truth applies. For example, pure water will boil at 100ºC and freeze at 0ºC (the temperature scale being a construct of human measurement, not of the universe itself) under standardized conditions. If you change the conditions you change the temperatures. Science tells us why this happens, and how it happens, and lets us calculate the new temperatures. And science shows that results don't happen through miracles or divine intervention.

As for the other point about accumulating evidence based on god not interfering, this is also problematic. You have already assumed a theory which requires the non-existence of god to set up an empirical framework in which experimental results can discover general laws about the universe. Any experiment within this framework cannot then provide evidence for the non-existence of god as it is already assumed.

That's not true! All the gods have to do is perform a miracle, something which defies the framework of natural laws. Cure all the children born with AIDS; regrow an amputated limb; make the water in our experiment freeze at 20ºC without altering the standard conditions. These things should be child's play for a being that can create the whole universe!

But regardless, the "truth" is that science, or anything else, cannot prove that gods do not exist. All we can show is that, except for that brief period of time at the very beginning of the universe, everything in the universe can be explained without having to resort to divine intervention. So if there are gods, they are irrelevant.

[SadisticNature]

How do you know that Water isn't supposed to boil at 90 degrees and every time god stops it from boiling till it gets to 100. This seems pretty unreasonable but its not provably false, and its certainly not experimentally verifiable. So here is an example of something that could be true if a divine being were to exist that could not be shown by science. This also covers the non-interference problem, as if some divine being interferes in 100% of the experiments scientific truth could be entirely wrong.

As for truth, type matters. If you go with a radical doubt approach, its difficult to know much more than your own existence, because you can't prove that you aren't being deceived about the world. You can't even prove that people other than you exist. This is covered extensively in Philosophy, largely coming from the work of Descartes, but revisited by others. Other, more rational approaches start from different axioms and derive different results. In particular, the scientific method itself requires certain axioms.

Furthermore, no one has proven anything beyond a reasonable doubt in science, new experiments change and expand on previous laws. Even something as basic as gravity could behave radically differently from what was previously thought for something as yet untested. For instance, the gravity between two objects whose relative velocity is greater than the speed of light. For all we know the theory of gravity might be a tiny special case of the general picture. No experiment has proven it to be the be all and end all, just like no "god measuring" experiment would have a final word.

As for the 7 step argument Thorne postulates, step 4/5/6/7 is invalid as you have already assumed no gods, and consistency of one assumption does not imply the inconsistency of another.

1. Assume there are gods.
2. Do our models and theories of the universe still apply?
3. Yes, they do.
4. Then there probably are gods.
5. Is there evidence for gods?
6. Gods exist by assumption 1 so in this theory absolutely.
7. Then to the best of our knowledge there are gods.

If one of these theories was inconsistent or created problems it would be easy to reject it, but both are valid so someone needs to devise an experiment to show one or the other to be incorrect before outright rejecting either. In other words, neither "God exists." nor "God does not exist." is a statement of science, much like neither "The flying spaghetti monster exists." not "The flying spaghetti monster does not exist." is a statement of science. When we reject these things as implausible we aren't using scientific evidence we are making hypotheses from the entirety of our entire life experience about the plausibility of something we can't verify.

If I believe P is not equal to NP, I'm not asserting that computer science shows P is not equal to NP, I'm expressing a belief about an unproven conjecture. The fact that no one has demonstrated an algorithm for an NP-hard problem in polynomial time, is not enough to reject P = NP, even if an arbitrary large time window is used, a proof is still required.

[Thorne]

How do you know that Water isn't supposed to boil at 90 degrees and every time god stops it from boiling till it gets to 100.

Because we (mankind) have developed the Celsius scale of temperature using the boiling and freezing points of water under standardized conditions. So any god who wishes to fuck with us can simply cause the water to boil at any random temperature while maintaining those standard conditions, thereby negating our own science. Simple enough, isn't it?

As for truth, type matters. If you go with a radical doubt approach, its difficult to know much more than your own existence, because you can't prove that you aren't being deceived about the world. You can't even prove that people other than you exist. This is covered extensively in Philosophy, largely coming from the work of Descartes, but revisited by others. Other, more rational approaches start from different axioms and derive different results. In particular, the scientific method itself requires certain axioms.

I'm not going to debate philosophy. I have no understanding of it, and no taste for it. To me, it's a jumble of nonsensical excuses for believing whatever one wishes to believe.

Furthermore, no one has proven anything beyond a reasonable doubt in science, new experiments change and expand on previous laws. Even something as basic as gravity could behave radically differently from what was previously thought for something as yet untested.

I have never denied this. Science develops theories, which are basically models of the universe as we know it! If the model fails, the theory is wrong and must be either corrected or discarded. New devices, new technologies, new information, all help to improve the focus, to sharpen the spear point of science, to more accurately explain the real world around us. No reputable scientist would claim that he knows everything, or that we've explained anything absolutely. All we can say is that our models are as accurate as we can make them at this time.

As for the 7 step argument Thorne postulates, step 4/5/6/7 is invalid as you have already assumed no gods, and consistency of one assumption does not imply the inconsistency of another.

1. Assume there are gods.
2. Do our models and theories of the universe still apply?
3. Yes, they do.
4. Then there probably are gods.
5. Is there evidence for gods?
6. Gods exist by assumption 1 so in this theory absolutely.
7. Then to the best of our knowledge there are gods.

I disagree absolutely! Statement 6, above, is just plain wrong. The assumption of gods does not constitute evidence of gods. It's about as silly as claiming that we know the Bible is the "True Word of God" because the Bible tells us it's the "True Word of God!"

I would reword statement 6 to say, "No, there is no such evidence." Then statement 7 must become, "Then there may not be any gods. Our assumption at #1 may be wrong. Let's assume there are no gods and see where that takes us."

In short, if there is no evidence that gods exist, and no difference between a universe with gods and a universe without them, then why bother with them? They are, if they exist at all, irrelevant! They make no difference at all.

[FirstBorn]

1. Assume there are gods.
2. Do our models and theories of the universe still apply?
3. Yes, they do, in absolute indifference to our assumption 1.
4. Then we cant tell if there are gods or not.
5. No evidence supports the existence of gods.
6. We belived in god back at 1 but nothing supports that assumption.
7. There is no devine influence, possibly because theres no god.

[SadisticNature]

Up to 4 your argument makes sense. However once you have asserted by assumption an axiom is true, you can either show it false by contradiction, or you have a model of the universe in which its true, so within that model 5 is certainly wrong. 6 is true, however the same argument can be made about assuming gods don't exist.

7. is a reach that doesn't follow from 1 to 6 at all. It isn't even provably true, as how would you identify divine influence if it were happening in 100% of experiments.

As for the temperature scale:

My point is the actual temperature we identify as 100 celcius may in fact be different from the true temperature at which water boils if some divine entity were causing the true laws of nature to be violated in all instances. In this case we would discover false laws based on the violations.


As for philosophy if you choose not to debate it that's fine, but truth has long been consider in the realm of philosophy by both mathematicians and scientists. Scientists discover truth about the physical world, these aren't the only types of truth.

You continue to misunderstand point 6.

My point is consider two models of the universe.

Model A is the model you gave before where the assumption is that no gods exists.

Model B is the model where god exists by assumption.

Neither model is inconsistent, so you cannot rule out either model as a state of the universe. The only way in which an assumption can prove anything about itself is a proof of falsity by contradiction.

In Model A god does not exist is a true statement by assumption, this isn't evidence however because in Model B god exists is a true statement also by assumption. If you wanted to show god does not exist, you'd have to show that model A is consistent, while model B is not.

Model A provides evidence for god not existing as within Model A the statement god does not exist is true. Model B provides evidence for god existing as within Model B the statement god exists is true. None of this evidence is useful however as it is all circular reasoning and as neither of these models is consistent assuming a statement doesn't result in its proof.

Con (AoS) -> Con (AoS + 'God does not exist')
Con (AoS) -> not Con (AoS + 'God does exist')

would say that if one assumes the axioms of science are correct then one is forced to conclude god does not exist. This means any argument for the existence of god would have to argue the scientific method was wrong. However these statements have not been shown and from a logical standpoint are not derivable unless there are axioms of science that imply statements about god.

If you propose to advance a rigorous argument I suggest you use Models properly. If you'd like I could suggest a formal logic text or a model theory book, I've studied both.