It's good enough at it to establish that a species is extinct.
You agree that that is within the purview of science, right?
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Atheism is not scientific
- Thread starter Ostronomos
- Start date
You agree that that is within the purview of science, right?
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
The test is to see if people can produce what they claim. So far nobody has produced anything substantial enough in order to proceed further.
Science can prove negatives. Why couldn't it?
An extinct species has evidence that it once existed. They are dealing with positives, fossils, etc. That's not proving a negative, that a species never existed at all. That's what the claim that science proves God does not exist amounts to. Proving a species never existed. That cannot be done. You cannot prove a negative.
As I asked before, specifically what has science looked at that says God does not exist? What did they look for? Noah's Ark? Apples in the Garden of Eden? The tablets of the 10 commandment? What specific things were they looking for? And where is the published and peer reviewed article which concludes the evidence shows God does not exist? Anything at all? Even one study?
What are you talking about. Science deals with specifics. What experiments have been done to deal with whether God exists or not? Someone's ideas about God, is not God. That's their ideas. Disproving an image of Jesus in one's toast, and saying that is the same as disproving God exists, is absurd, and hardly what anyone could honestly claim is scientific in nature.
Sounds like you don't have a firm grasp on what "proving a negative" means. It's any case where a positive claim (e.g. "living dodos exist today," "God exists," or "there is an elephant in my refrigerator") is proved to be false.
As for the specific type of proving a negative you're talking about, do you seriously think that science has nothing yo say about, say, crypids and mythical creatures? Do you seriously think "minotaurs never existed" or "manticores never existed" is an unscientific claim?
Depends on the God.
You tell me what your hypothetical God is like and things that he supposedly did, and we'll figure out what signs we should expect to see if this God were real.
RestlessSoul
Well-Known Member
Is that something you often hear from people of faith, that homosexuality is sinful? Bit of an extreme position for anyone to hold in this day and age, I'd have thought. And, rather like gender inequality, more of a wider cultural phenomenon than a religious one.
No. Why would I expect proof? I don't have proof of a spherical Earth, the germ theory or heliocentrism, yet I believe in them, because they're well evidenced.
Thus far, I haven't come across any real, empirical evidence for a God.
many religions cite fulfilled prophecies, miracles, &c.
Fulfilled prophecies are usually nonsense. Interpreting a Biblical passage, post hoc, to refer to a later event is a common -- and facile -- tactic in many religions; even in non-religious contexts, like Nostradamus. The prophecies are never specific. They're almost always vague and ambiguous; applicable to multiple interpretations. or so broad they could apply to anything. I may see camels in the clouds, or weasels, or whales, but they're my own invention.
I need hard evidence, not subject to interpretation. I need consistent, observable, testable, falsifiable, predictive evidence.
Yes, but it is created from something outside the brain impacting a working nervous system. The experience of a god, however, is likely completely made in the head, and is not indicative of something real that exists outside of the brain and mind, but just a mental state misinterpreted.
Easily. Suppose you or I were red-green colorblind. People frequently tell us that they see two different colors where we see one or none. Suppose one day, you question whether this is some kind of collective deception like Santa Claus. Maybe you were just taken out snipe hunting at night with a bag and a flashlight, and realized that people might be pranking you on the colors they claim to see as well. So you perform a test. You have a friend who claims to see red and green, and who tells you that he sees two colors of sox. You number all of the socks, make a list of which ones were said to be green and which are called red, then take ten people individually into a room. You put the socks into a bag, and let the subject pick socks and identify their color. You write down the 20 numbers and either red or green after it. Then you discover that they all got all 20 correct. Now you know. They see colors you cannot.
Turns out, they're all theists as well, claiming just as emphatically that they experience a god. You're suspicious that they are all only experiencing their own minds and misinterpreting the significance of the experience, so you do the same test. Have each individually tell you what they are experiencing. When no two can provide the same description of what they think is out there that they are experiencing, then you know that they weren't experiencing something objectively existent like the color of the socks.
That's also true for Bigfoot and the Kraken. If they could be caught by logic or a camera or by any other means, they wouldn't be Bigfoot or the Kraken. There is no reason that anything that actually exists and can affect the things around you cannot be detected by those effects. That's how we detect gravity - not directly, but by its effect on matter. Dark matter as well. That's how we know the composition of the earth and sun without opening them up - by their effects on what we can experience.
Anybody can make up just-so explanations for why gods are real, but undetectable, just like Sagan's dragon in the garage, which to me, is religious apologetics encapsulized, just like your comment above:
"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage"
"Show me," you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle — but no dragon.
"Where's the dragon?" you ask.
"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."
You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints. "Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."
Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire. "Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."
You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible. "Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick."
And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.
"Show me," you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle — but no dragon.
"Where's the dragon?" you ask.
"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."
You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints. "Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."
Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire. "Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."
You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible. "Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick."
And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.
Actually, the belief you expressed here is a dogmatic idea. Atheism is cannot be dogmatic, because it makes no claims beyond not believing theists.
Also, yet another theist and critic of atheists who doesn't understand what atheists believe. I'm an atheist, and do not believe what you dogmatically insisted I do. Quantum mechanics demonstrates otherwise, and as always, my belief set adapts to evidence. Not really that dogmatic, wouldn't you agree?
"I always flinch in embarrassment for the believer who trots out, 'Atheism is just another kind of faith,' because it's a tacit admission that taking claims on faith is a silly thing to do. When you've succumbed to arguing that the opposition is just as misguided as you are, it's time to take a step back and rethink your attitudes." - Amanda Marcotte
Yet here you are running around with your hair on fire in attack mode, trying to convince others who don't think like you and in fact reject your beliefs for themselves, what terrible and inferior people they are. I don't feel the need to do that with you. I just rebut your ideas unemotionally. So who has the inferior world view? Yours doesn't seem to bring you much equanimity. You'd be happier with a worldview that reality and evidence don't contradict. You wouldn't need to be making up explanations why your god cannot be found.
Saying science has proved God does not exist, when it doesn't even define what God is, is obviously a bogus claim. Saying "there's an elephant in my garage" is easy to disprove. Saying "there is no God" is hardly comparable to the former. It's too general. You don't even have a starting definition, so it's not scientific, or rational at all. It's religious or philosophical.
Those are not scientific claims. No. They are statements of belief. The best science can say is we don't have any evidence that would support that belief. That's not the same as concluding or pronouncing, "They never existed".
For fun, sure. Let's try this. God is the Source of all that is. Disprove that.
I hear it enough to be meaningful, yes.
I've posted here before about how the best man at my wedding believes both me (atheist) and his sister (lesbian) are going to hell.
Intellectually, I could care less. But his sister suffers from MS, and could use brotherly support, not judgement.
To worship a God he believes would send his sick sister to hell for seeking comfort in the arms of a woman is not something I can respect.
Wavelength can be measured. How it's experienced -- color -- is an individual qualia.
Not everyone experiences the same thing when they see something. Color perception varies a lot.
Normal humans are trichromic, they have three types of photorectptive cels in their retinas. Numbers of each and spectral sensitivity of each varies individually. What I experience when I see red or yellow is not what you experience.
There are many kinds of color blindness, color enhancement, and even rare instances of tetrachromic women who see into the ultravioet.
Tetrachromacy - Wikipedia
And this is just in humans. Other animals see a whole different palette when they look at the world. Some see no color at all. Other's experience a world we can't even imagine. Mantis shrimp have 12 different photoreceptors, for example.
Color is a personal, individual experience.
Yes like i said, how colour is perceived is subjective. However what and how they see can be measured and placed in precific slots in the visible colour spectrum.
I have a form of colour blindness in which red bleeds. Any red has a quite large red halo around it making it very difficult to, for example read (in my case impossible without green tinted eye glasses). Even black ink contains red, white paper or screen background contains red. That red is always at a wavelength of around 650nm
A Vestigial Mote
Well-Known Member
I am much more sorry it is that way, believe me. I do not care about my "feelings."
Brian2
Veteran Member
Why would you want empirical evidence for a God?
The Biblical prophecies aren't all vague, some are quite precise.
That sounds as close to proof as we could get without having proof.
But at least you don't want proof.
True.
I never needed science to disbelieve in
the various sky fairy myths offered to me.
I also never needed them to be happy....
Religion 'ISN'T the secret to happiness', global study claims | Daily Mail Online
jonathan180iq
Well-Known Member
Lol. This has to be a troll account or something, right?
One thing at a time. Right now, we're just trying to make sure that we aren't talking past each other by using the term "proving a negative" in different ways.
So you think saying "manticores never existed" is about on par with "God never existed" in terms of how scientific the claim is?
Would absolutely anything that's "the source of all that is" qualify as God for you?
If yes, then why would you call this "God"? If no, then you'll need to be more specific.
The idea is to provide as much detail as possible about the god in question: when you say "God," what do you mean by this? What do you think God is? Just as importantly, what do you think God isn't?
If the Flying Spaghetti Monster were real, it would be "the source of all that is." Is the Flying Spaghetti Monster what you mean when you say "God"?
We Never Know
No Slack
Birds fly
Spaghetti exists
Some people are monsters
There is belief in a god
Therefore all those components show the flying spaghetti monster could exist.
I think religious would be more like believing that black holes exist without sufficient evidence. It's interesting that when you encountered what you thought was bad thinking, that made it religious.
Science differs from religion in that it is evidence based. There was no concept of black holes until evidence surfaced that was better explained by positing their existence, because there was no value in such a concept until it was needed to account for various mathematical and empiric discoveries. The level of confidence that black holes exist varies with time. It's commensurate with the current quantity and quality of evidence available, which confidence is amenable to new evidence that makes the likelihood that black holes exist greater or less. It's a completely different way of thinking than faith.
Science isn't looking for gods. That's bad science. That's what the Intelligent Design people do, and their work to demonstrate the existence of their god has been fruitless, just like that of the astrologers and alchemists, and likely for the same reason - a false premise underlying the program.
Science looks at nature, and currently has no use for a god hypothesis. Injecting gods in any scientific law or theory does nothing to increase its explanatory or predictive power, so why do it? The situation is analogous to the black hole - science has no reason even to consider the existence of such a thing until evidence surfaces that is best explained by positing an intelligent designer of superhuman ability.
This is how good science is done. One examines the evidence and lets it direct what is currently hypothesized to account for it, going where that evidence leads it however unexpected or counterintuitive those tentative conclusions may be - not the other way around, beginning with a faith-based belief as in a god and looking for evidence to support that belief. Look at how that turned out for the ID people, the whole program having been embarrassed by the repeatedly refuted claims of irreducible complexity, the lack of positive findings, and a trial that stigmatized the whole idea of nature being intelligently designed.
Incidentally, the sine qua non of a correct idea is that it accurately maps some portion reality. Correct ideas are those that allow one to successfully predict outcomes, as when one successfully sends a manned spacecraft to the moon and back. We know that the principles underlying that effort are valid because they generate inductions that are useful in predicting what will happen if we do this, that, and the other.
The flip side of that is that ideas that cannot be used to predict outcomes such as the beliefs underlying creationism, horoscopes, and tarot card reading cannot be used for anything constructive. I don't consider any positive psychological effects of such beliefs a reason to hold them given that if one is raised outside of religion and learns to accept that there may be no god looking after him or answering his prayers, no afterlife, no objective morality, etc., then religion offers no comfort. In fact, it's disruptive in a life where it is not needed. What good does a god belief do in a life that is going well without one? I'm certainly not going to any faith-based holy book for direction.
I hear that frequently, but that's not relevant. You also don't hear the racists saying that people of color are inferior as often as they embody it in their actions and words. As far as I can tell, Christianity is the principle if not only source of homophobia in the West, and Islam in the East.
It's not the Seinfeld show spreading homophobia, nor the Post Office. It's not Major League Baseball, it's not the universities, not Domino's Pizza, and not Microsoft. The only people telling people that homosexuality is wrong in the West are the preachers in pulpits. I've heard it preached the last time I was in a church, when a friend coaxed me into attending a Baptist Easter service about 2004. I have no reason to believe such a thing because I'm not a Christian and therefore there is nobody telling me that a good god considers homosexuals abominations fit for extreme punishment except Christians. There is no other reason to arbitrarily demonize and marginalize such people.
So, I guess that you can't convince me or any other secular humanist to similarly disesteem homosexuals unless you can first convince me that a good god thinks as much and expects me to think that way as well, and being a skeptic, and being that nobody can produce convincing evidence for such a thing, I have no reason to believe it.
My world view crystalized into one that makes sense and that experience doesn't contradict as soon as I eliminated faith-based thinking and beliefs from my repertoire. How much easier it is not to condemn homosexuals and trying to convince myself that I was being good doing so (former Christian here, left it about 1980). There was a cognitive dissonance with my conscience, that was never comfortable with that attitude. That went away with Christianity. I think one would have to undergo that transition himself to understand the benefit of adopting a world view that doesn't offend the conscience or the reasoning faculty. You just no longer need to justify what feel like wrong and immoral ideas with just-so stories.
I wouldn't, unless one exists and there is any benefit in knowing so. What if the deists are correct, and it could be demonstrated that they are. OK, so the source of the universe was an intelligent designer and not a multiverse for example. Great. Nothing changes, so no practical benefit in the knowledge. The agnostic atheist thinks and lives exactly like the one who is certain no gods exist apart from making that claim.
Yes, in some cases you can prove a negative, such as saying "There is no gun in that drawer". Open the drawer and look. If it's not there, you proved the negative claim. But everyone knows what a gun is. So that's easy. When someone says God does not exist, and science proves it, which is what I was objecting to that was directly claimed by someone here, that's not comparable at all. You cannot say science disproves God, when you don't first scientifically define what God even is.
I'm saying science doesn't make absolutist statements. The best they can legitimately say is, "Based upon what we have a descriptions of manticores, we have not seen any evidence of their existence to date." That's open ended, and accurate. To say, "Science proves they never existed", is not scientific. It's absolutist, and a non-scientific opinion.
To be accurate, we should say, "I don't believe they are real", and leave it at that. To drag science into that, is like the true believer abusing the Bible saying, "It's not my words, but God's! The Bible proves I'm right!" It's really doing the exact same thing in reverse, the flipside of the same coin.
If there were multiple sources, then that would not be "the source of all that is". That would be "sources". So no. Only one. But we do need to be careful with language here, as when we attempt to speak of God, we're not going to be able to use dualistic language, and have it be accurate. God is both the one and the many, for instance. It's paradoxical.
Science doesn't deal with nonduality. It's a disciple that uses a dualistic, subject/object perception of reality to do its thing. Hence why I balk at anyone claiming science proves anything at all regarding God. It's the wrong toolset, the wrong set of eyes to see the whole with. It's like trying to understand swimming with only a book.
Can you be specific about the Absolute? Can you define infinity? Where is the beginning of a Mobius strip, for instance? Can you be specific and point to one spot and say, here? Or would that just be arbitrary for the sake of being able to conceive mentality about something that cannot be defined concretely?
That's kind of my whole point. Science cannot be specific about what God even is, let alone be qualified as the arbiter of truth regarding its existence or not. To say "Science proves God doesn't exist", is absurd. Hence I asked which scientists say this, where is their study, and who peer reviewed it?
If FSM is the Source of All That IS, then why does it look like a plate of spaghetti?
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