Too Many Extremes in Disbelief

[The Hammer]

I should only believe that a god exists if I have some form of objective evidence that it does.

Why would the gods want that?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

I disagree. They are simply not objective, but subjective judgements. I am not saying that subjective ideas aren't important. Quite the contrary. They just don't constitute truth.


Yes, of course. I am searching for truth and that is a value judgement. Those that are not searching for truth will find other things important and truth as of less value. We are each on our own quest.

The problem is that all defintions of truth are subjective.
You use one version that only subjectively accept objective.
I use several versions that differentiate subjectively between different aspects of the world.

We are both subjective, we just do it differently. And yes, a part of the world is objective, but not all of the world. Or even the universe as per your belief system.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Objective evidence. That which can been shown to physically exist regardless of whether you believe in its existence or not.

The problem is if God is not physical then God can't be proven to exist. All of us non-dual physicalists are unfortunately stuck with being unable to believe in a non-physical God.

Or if one postulates a physical God then asking for the objective evidence is the correct course.

Yeah, but that is not all existence. You as always try to make everything indepedent of how you think, but that you think that only objective existence is real, is not objective existence.
You don't have to consider the non-physical supernatural, you just have to learn that it is another human behaviour than claiming objective existence.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

ThThe appearance of a god, or any other sensory evidence, would amount to objective evidence.

No, how do you know what objective evidence is? I am doing meta on you. How do you know that you know? That is a standard skeptical question. Not that you say you know, but how you know that you know?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

God, or One, is real.

...

And so is Two.

 

[Aupmanyav]

Why would the gods want that?

No problem if God does not produce any evidence of his existence. I will continue to be an atheist.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

No problem if God does not produce any evidence of his existence. I will continue to be an atheist.

Yeah, you have your faith and I have mine.

 

[Zwing]

Defend such disbelief? Weird.

In defense of @Rival’s OP, I think if is suggesting that disbelief may lead to extreme comments or extreme views, not that the disbelief itself is extreme.

 

[Zwing]

Why would the gods want that?

Well, it is said of YHVH that “he” (anthro again) desires that all worship him and place no other gods before him. Indeed, pertaining to any god that might exist, if that god wanted a relationship with either a particular man or with mankind, then an introduction would seem prerequisite, for how can a relationship precede an introduction?

 

[Zwing]

Evil is the antithesis of religion and God.

When the Puritans in old Salem burned women for being “witches”, or when Catholic clergy burned Jews for being Jewish during the inquisition, was that not evil? It is said that Satan is evil, is the religion of the Satanist antithetical to evil? Religion and evil, then, are perhaps not antithetical?

 

[Zwing]

Have you ever seen air? I haven't.

I have tactile evidence for the existence of air with every breath I take. Sight is merely one of the senses by which I perceive the world and the things in it. @Hammer, why does the notion that one should believe in what one has evidence for and reserve judgment regarding things for which one has no evidence make you sad? My atheism is merely a reservation of judgment upon an astonishing supernaturalistic proposition while I am awaiting evidence supporting that proposition. Is this saddening? I am sad that I have made you sad…

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

I have tactile evidence for the existence of air with every breath I take. Sight is merely one of the senses by which I perceive the world and the things in it. @Hammer, why does the notion that one should believe in what one has evidence for and reserve judgment regarding things for which one has no evidence make you sad? My atheism is s merely a reservation of judgment upon an astonishing supernaturalistic proposition while I am awaiting evidence supporting that proposition. Is this saddening?

Yeah, yours is one possible belief system. But if you want to claim that it is not and that you can solve the problem of methdological naturalism go ahead.

 

[Zwing]

Yeah, yours is one possible belief system. But if you want to claim that it is not and that you can solve the problem of methdological naturalism go ahead.

I live within my subjective experience, for I can live nowhere else.

 

[Zwing]

You seem to have a problem with reality and existence. See my previous thread 5 Planes of Existence.
Real gods can't be proven, they need evidence. Unreal gods need to be proved or at least consistently defined.

We are not even dealing with gods, as there are no gods evident. We are dealing with propositions about gods. The rest is semantic claptrap…proof is the provision of evidence.

 

[Nakosis]

Yeah, but that is not all existence. You as always try to make everything indepedent of how you think, but that you think that only objective existence is real, is not objective existence.
You don't have to consider the non-physical supernatural, you just have to learn that it is another human behaviour than claiming objective existence.

Objective evidence doesn't have to be the only thing that is real. It is only necessary when you want modify another's human behavior.

 

[Audie]

Have you ever seen air? I haven't.

Really? No dry ice, no lox or liquid nitrogen?

It's awful easy to prove air is real.

 

[RestlessSoul]

I live within my subjective experience, for I can live nowhere else.

Exactly. And since no privileged position, no Archimedean point from which to view the world objectively, is available to we humans, the closest we can ever come to objective reality is through our collective experience. It is objectively so, because we confirm it collectively. Which makes any argument for objective reality an ‘argumentum ad populam’, and therefore fallacious.

 

[Zwing]

…the closest we can ever come to objective reality is through our collective experience.

I agree except for this. I think that the findings of science have rendered the clearest view of objective reality, as it produces a clearer view of the nature of the material world.

 

[RestlessSoul]

I agree except for this. I think that the findings of science have rendered the clearest view of objective reality, as it produces a clearer view of the nature of the material world.

The natural sciences have been brilliant at observing, recording, analysing and predicting the behaviour of natural phenomena. They have enabled us to manipulate nature, to the point where man in his hubris boasts of having subdued and conquered her. Actually, I’m being unfair; science has certainly allowed us to “lift a corner of the veil”* and to catch a glimpse of “something deeply hidden.”* These are noble goals and venerable achievements.

How much it really explains the natural world however, as opposed to describing it’s functions, is another question altogether. At some point science needs philosophy, and physics certainly needs a metaphysics, if it is to fulfil Stephen Hawking’s goal, of “nothing less than a complete description of the universe we live in.”

Einstein expressed a similar ambition thus; “the programmatic aim of all physics is the complete description of any real situation, as it supposedly exists, irrespective of any act of observation.” Quantum contextuality, however, appears to rule this out.
“There is no way to define a reality that is independent of the way we choose to look at it.” - Chris Ferrie.


* both quotes are Einstein’s, from different contexts.

 

[Polymath257]

Have you ever seen air? I haven't.

I have seen liquid nitrogen. I have seen liquid oxygen. They can both be produced from air by cooling it enough. I have seen the oxygen and water in the air taken into account for chemical reactions: the results are wrong if they are not. I have *heard* the motion of the air (hearing is another sense and is a legitimate way to detect things). I can *feel* the air in quite a number of situations (and touch is yet another sense). I can set up a wind vane and determine the direction that air moves. I can set up a barometer and measure the pressure of the air. I can set up a device to measure how fast the air is moving. I can weigh the air, determining how much mass it has. And that becomes relevant for weather prediction.

And, if I use a different part of the light spectrum, I can measure the spectrum of the air, which is a way to 'see' the air.

How many of those can you do with deities?