Why "God does not exist" is a positive claim

[PureX]

Alex Jones invented a lie about the Sandy Hook shootings. Some people believed that lie. They then went on to make another group of people miserable.

Are you seriously suggesting that belief had no part in that? If he hadn't lied, there would be no conspiracy theory to believe. If the theory wasn't believed, the persecution of the parents would not have occurred.

My point is that debating with those people would have changed nothing.

Anyway, you now have to people to respond to on the same subject, so I'll leave it to @TagliatelliMonster to continue it, if he wishes.

 

[InvestigateTruth]

Obviously "God does not exist" is a hard atheists assertion.

True.

Maybe this is not a big topic but I thought it should be brought out and some feedback is nice.

Ok.

In some discussions, people claim that it's not a positive claim and that it's a negative claim.

What do you mean by "positive vs negative claim"?

who gets to define this?

"God does not exist" is a positive claim because it asserts a specific proposition about the nature of reality,

so is, when you claim, God exists.

akin to other existential claims.

Not sure, what you mean you "akin"

The confusion often arises from a superficial reading of the grammatical negation rather than understanding the nature of ontological assertions. With this understanding I believe some Atheists unintentionally commit the burden of proof fallacy.

if someone claims God does not exist, then the question is, which God? What is God. First define what God is, and then next can discuss if that God exists or not.

this is very important to realize.

While grammatically, it might appear to be a negation because of the word "not," philosophically it is an assertion. Philosophically, a claim's positivity or negativity is about whether it asserts something about the world, not just its grammatical structure. The statement is about the state of reality, not about avoiding a claim. It posits that the world lacks a particular entity (God), which is a substantive assertion. Thus, it's not a negative claim.

Again, what you might be missing here, is, you need to define what God is.
it seems in your imagination, you think there is a God.
When Atheists say, God does not exist, they also have an imagination of a God.

Without definition of God, it is impossible to say if the God exist or not.

When someone says "God does not exist," they are making a claim about the state of the world. This is in contrast to a merely skeptical position or a lack of belief. A positive claim involves taking a stance that something is true or false, rather than simply withholding judgment or being uncertain.

• Assertion of Reality: It affirms a particular view of the world, similar to how saying "Unicorns do not exist" is making a positive assertion about the nature of reality.
• Burden of Proof: Just like with any other claim about existence or non-existence, it carries a burden of proof. The person making this claim must provide arguments or evidence to support why they believe this to be the case.

Cheers.

I tell you what. You define what God is first, then we will go to the next step and see if that God can possibly exist even.

 

[HonestJoe]

I didn't present anything.

Yes you did. You presented the statement "God does not exist" and established it as a positive claim. I suggest that your purpose was to criticise and push back against those who challenge religious beliefs. I agree that the core point is valid and you have some justification but I am challenging the purpose more broadly because the same point applies to the statement "God does exist" too. Your criticism of hard atheists focuses on the "atheist" when the core issue is the "hard", regardless of the object.

And if you are making a certain claim, you should present exact methodologies.

I agree but I'm not making any specific claims about any deities here. My point is that anyone who does make specific claims about the non-existence or existence of any gods does indeed need to present the exact methodologies they're using for their specific hypothesis. The problem is that most believers (and, to be fair, many non-believers) don't even present a hypothesis, so nobody can establish the methodologies to test it.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Yes you did. You presented the statement "God does not exist" and established it as a positive claim. I suggest that your purpose was to criticise and push back against those who challenge religious beliefs. I agree that the core point is valid and you have some justification but I am challenging the purpose more broadly because the same point applies to the statement "God does exist" too. Your criticism of hard atheists focuses on the "atheist" when the core issue is the "hard", regardless of the object.

I agree but I'm not making any specific claims about any deities here. My point is that anyone who does make specific claims about the non-existence or existence of any gods does indeed need to present the exact methodologies they're using for their specific hypothesis. The problem is that most believers (and, to be fair, many non-believers) don't even present a hypothesis, so nobody can establish the methodologies to test it.

Good post. As a skeptic, I simply ask if any claim of existence is tied to what objective reality is. If that is the case, then so far in recorded history nobody have solved the "hard" version of knowledge in effect.

 

[Tomef]

Of course not. It's very simple. It's everyday preaching. But it's irrelevant.

Preaching about what? This positing of god in the realm of the real seems like special pleading. Why should any god character from ancient literature be treated differently to any other fictional character? You could put god into a certain fictional character subset type, but claiming that ‘god does not exist’ is a hard claim about the nature of reality is putting the cart before the horse. First, you have to have some kind of starting point involving a discussion of what might be considered to fall within the category of real, e.g. a book about timeless children’s games might include the real-world example of Pooh sticks, whereas the stories the game comes from are fiction, full of fictional characters doing fictional things. Sentient stuffed toys are in the same category as gods, i.e. things people have not externally verifiable experience of.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Preaching about what? This positing of god in the realm of the real seems like special pleading. Why should any god character from ancient literature be treated differently to any other fictional character? You could put god into a certain fictional character subset type, but claiming that ‘god does not exist’ as a hard claim about the nature of reality is putting the cart before the horse. First, you have to have some kind of starting point involving a discussion of what might be considered to fall within the category of real, e.g. a book about timeless children’s games might include the real-world example of Pooh sticks, whereas the stories the game comes from are fiction.

Well, if you know what objective reality is other than independent of your mind, please explain.
Because we end in the limit of epistemology in general and not just gods.

 

[Tomef]

Well, if you know what objective reality is other than independent of your mind, please explain.
Because we end in the limit of epistemology in general and not just gods.

Mikkel you conflate too much! Fiction is part of human experience of the world. Whether or not that experience is ‘objectively real’ by whatever standard it is you are considering, fiction is still a subset of that experience. I, for example, am self aware. If I write about fictional characters doing fictional things, those characters have no awareness of their own, they form part of my awareness.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Mikkel you conflate too much! Fiction is part of human experience of the world. Whether or not that experience is ‘objectively real’ by whatever standard it is you are considering, fiction is still a subset of that experience. I, for example, am self aware. If I write about fictional characters doing fictional things, those characters have no awareness of their own, they form part of my awareness.

Yeah, evidence for the real please.
This is philosophy in the end and not just your subjective belief and faith in the real.
I have never seen any evidence for the real and I have found no text with evidence for it.

The real is as much an idea as god.

 

[PureX]

True.

Ok.

What do you mean by "positive vs negative claim"?

who gets to define this?

so is, when you claim, God exists.

Not sure, what you mean you "akin"

if someone claims God does not exist, then the question is, which God? What is God. First define what God is, and then next can discuss if that God exists or not.

That's not how the atheist sees it. They mean all gods don't exist. They have no idea of God, themselves. They are rejecting everyone else's. It's why atheism is an absurdly indefensible position, philosophically.

this is very important to realize.

Again, what you might be missing here, is, you need to define what God is.
it seems in your imagination, you think there is a God.
When Atheists say, God does not exist, they also have an imagination of a God.

But they deny this. And they claim they are only rejecting the theist's idea of God, whatever that idea is.

Without definition of God, it is impossible to say if the God exist or not.

Likewise without a definition of existence, which is equally beyond any human's ability to define beyond a personal ideation as "God" is.

I tell you what. You define what God is first, then we will go to the next step and see if that God can possibly exist even.

Sure ... God is the great mystery source, sustenance, and purpose of all that is.

 

[Tomef]

Yeah, evidence for the real please.
This is philosophy in the end and not just your subjective belief and faith in the real.
I have never seen any evidence for the real and I have found no text with evidence for it.

The real is as much an idea as god.

What makes you think I’m laying claim to objective reality?

The real is as much an idea as god.

This makes no sense. What do you think it means?

Reality is not an ‘idea’ - an idea is something a person has, ideas are part of the experience commonly referred to as reality. Calling reality an idea is like saying a pedal is a bicycle. Reality, as experienced by humans, is an interpretation (largely shared, in its broad strokes) of sensory input. For example, we are both expressing ideas by typing words onto a screen that is part of the technology used to communicate remotely. These things are part of what is generally referred to as reality. Whether that fits whatever it is you mean by ‘objective reality’ is an irrelevant point; it doesn’t change according to our categories of ‘real’, regardless of what you think about it, nothing in your everyday experience is incompatible with the general experience that humans all over the world have been experiencing, talking and writing about and so on since we first evolved the ability to. I might find another person’s interpretations of that interesting, different, confusing etc, but even the hallucinations of someone having a psychotic episode are congruent with the parameters our shared understanding of ‘reality’ as we variously and diversely experience and understand it.

Fictional writing is a part, a subset, of that reality. A recipe in a cookbook is an example of something that corresponds to one element of reality - if I follow the recipe, I produce something I can eat. Again, whether you define that experience of reading, cooking and eating as ‘objectively real’ or not is totally irrelevant. What do you even mean by that? A fictional story, however, is not the same as a recipe in a cookbook. If I read about the phantom tollbooth, I might learn some life lessons from it, I might enjoy vicariously experiencing things that are impossible in my everyday world, like talking dogs that cameo as timepieces, dancing letters and so on. However you might want to define these things, the events in a book of fiction like the phantom tollbooth are not part of the experience of what we call reality. They are part of fictional worlds created by humans, and in that sense yes, they are part of our shared reality - but not it the same way that a cheese sandwich is. Claiming that a fictional character is the same as a cheese sandwich has nothing to do with claims about ‘objective reality’, it has to do with what things are as we experience them.

There is nothing that links the idea of a god to the cheese sandwich category, i.e. the category of things we have direct sensorial experience of. The idea of gods lies firmly, historically, literally, culturally, in the realm of fiction. Gods didn’t come into our cheese sandwich eating world, we made them up and wrote about them, and continue to write about them. Hence gods fit into the fiction category. The fiction category is a subset of the diverse human experience of reality.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

What makes you think I’m laying claim to objective reality?


This makes no sense. What do you think it means?

Reality is not an ‘idea’ ...

Yeah, the problem of objective reality as per the evil demon by Descartes or a Boltzmann Brain universe is not something you consider.

 

[Tomef]

Yeah, the problem of objective reality as per the evil demon by Descartes or a Boltzmann Brain universe is not something you consider.

What difference would either scenario make?

Whether I’m experiencing the world as a Boltzmann Brain or something else has nothing to do with the point. As a brain in a vat, cheese sandwiches and fiction still fit into different categories of what I experience as reality.

What is the point you are making? What is it that Descartes or Boltzmann had to say that makes you think cheese sandwiches and fictional characters are undifferentiated in the experience of people/brains/people deceived by demons?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

What difference would either scenario make?

Whether I’m experiencing the world as a Boltzmann Brain or something else has nothing to do with the point. As a brain in a vat, cheese sandwiches and fiction still fit into different categories of what I experience as reality.

What is the point you are making? What is it that Descartes or Boltzmann had to say that makes you think cheese sandwiches and fictional characters are undifferentiated in the experience of people/brains/people deceived by demons?

That the rest of the world is not the same and the rest of humanity doesn't exist for e.g. the case that if you are in certain variants of a Boltzmann Brain universe.
In effect the computer screen you are watich this on, is not there as in itself as a computer screen, if you are not in the real universe.

 

[Tomef]

That the rest of the world is not the same and the rest of humanity doesn't exist for e.g. the case that if you are in certain variants of a Boltzmann Brain universe.
In effect the computer screen you are watich this on, is not there as in itself as a computer screen, if you are not in the real universe.

What does that have to do with the point?

In which scenario is a cheese sandwich (real, digital, something else) in the same category as a fictional character in a book?

 

[Tomef]

That the rest of the world is not the same and the rest of humanity doesn't exist for e.g. the case that if you are in certain variants of a Boltzmann Brain universe.
In effect the computer screen you are watich this on, is not there as in itself as a computer screen, if you are not in the real universe.

Every time I get a response from you to the ne if my posts, you go off on a similar tangent to talk about something that has only some loose connection with the point made in the post you’re responding to. Maybe you should think through the point you want to make more before posting?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

What does that have to do with the point?

In which scenario is a cheese sandwich (real, digital, something else) in the same as a fictional character in a book?

You are assuming that reality outside your experince of it is real as reality. That is not a given.
Thus you example for known is not the same for real reality and unreal reality.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Every time I get a response from you to the ne if my posts, you go off on a similar tangent to talk about something that has only some loose connection with the point made in the post you’re responding to. Maybe you should think through the point you want to make more before posting?

Yeah, you assume that reality is real as a fact. That is not a given as a fact.

 

[Tomef]

You are assuming that reality outside your experince of it is real as reality. That is not a given.
Thus you example for known is not the same for real reality and unreal reality.

?

Nothing I have said assumes anything is real. What you are saying bears no relation to the difference between a cheese sandwich and a fictional character. Whether or not the sandwich or work of fiction actually exist has nothing to do with it.

 

[Tomef]

Yeah, you assume that reality is real as a fact. That is not a given as a fact.

?

You have some kind of internal dialogue going on here.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

?

Nothing I have said assumes anything is real. What you are saying bears no relation to the r difference between a cheese sandwich and a fictional character. Whether or not the sandwich or work of fiction actually exist has nothing to do with it.

What is the real?

Well, the problem is that if you don't know if objective reality is real or not, then you can't know if there is a God or not.
Your argument is a cognitive process in your mind and says nothing about objective reality as such, because your argument doesn't determine if there is a God or not.