Quote Originally Posted by SadisticNature View Post
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.