Why "God does not exist" is a positive claim

[mikkel_the_dane]

“This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!'​

~Douglas Adams

Yeah, to counter one rational arguement with another rational arguement as if the second one is not rational.
To make a rational case for God is not the same as evidence for God. And to make a rational arguement for a natural universe is not the same as evidence for a natural universe.

 

[ratiocinator]

His 'faith' seems to serve social or psychotherapeutic function, rather than paint an accurate picture of physical reality.

Yes, and it obviously does work in that sense, at least for some people, some of the time. The problem is that he then conflates this sense of 'works' with the way science works.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Yes, and it obviously does work in that sense, at least for some people, some of the time. The problem is that he then conflates this sense of 'works' with the way science works.

Well, science works in the excactly same for this universe and a Boltzmann Brain universe, because you say so. In effect that works for you but not it doesn't works as per science works.
So you do it too. And I do it. I am just honest and admit it.

 

[ratiocinator]

Okay, you’ve referenced the anthropic principle, a tautological argument often cited to refute the ‘fine-tuning problem’.

It's the same reasoning that we find ourselves in a statistically unlikely part of the known universe - the surface of a planet with liquid water, rather than in virtually empty space, which, on raw statistics, is far, far more probable.

We don't know the extent of reality, nor do we know enough to understand what laws and variations are possible. You're trying to draw an extraordinary conclusion from the flimsiest of speculation.

That doesn’t alter the fact that, in a universe increasingly shown to be probabilistic rather than deterministic in nature, our existence here is a statistical miracle.

Again, you are jumping ahead of what is tested theory into the hypotheses you would prefer. If laws are probabilistic, then that would suggest they could easily be different elsewhere, bringing back to the anthropic principle.

Even if we are a 'statistical miracle' any God would be a far greater statistical miracle. It is also a basic law of probabilities that the probability that a statistically unlikely universe exists must be greater than the probability that it exists and was created by a some God. The general law is Prob(A and B) ≤ Prob(A). This is true regardless of the values of Prob(A) and Prob(B).

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

It's the same reasoning that we find ourselves in a statistically unlikely part of the known universe - the surface of a planet with liquid water, rather than in virtually empty space, which, on raw statistics, is far, far more probable.

We don't know the extent of reality, nor do we know enough to understand what laws and variations are possible. You're trying to draw an extraordinary conclusion from the flimsiest of speculation.


Again, you are jumping ahead of what is tested theory into the hypotheses you would prefer. If laws are probabilistic, then that would suggest they could easily be different elsewhere, bringing back to the anthropic principle.

Even if we are a 'statistical miracle' any God would be a far greater statistical miracle. It is also a basic law of probabilities that the probability that a statistically unlikely universe exists must be greater than the probability that it exists and was created by a some God. The general law is Prob(A and B) ≤ Prob(A). This is true regardless of the values of Prob(A) and Prob(B).

Yeah, it makes sense as reasoned or if you like rational. But that is not the same as it is a fact one way or another.

 

[Ajax]

‘God does not exist’ is a positive claim. but is made purely in response to the theists' initial unsubstantiated positive claim that ‘God exists.’ If theists had first provided evidence supporting their claim as they ought to, there would not be a need for the atheists' claim.
As far as I know, most atheists say 'I don't believe in God's existence' or 'God's existence is highly unlikely'.

 

[McBell]

Okay, you’ve referenced the anthropic principle, a tautological argument often cited to refute the ‘fine-tuning problem’.

That doesn’t alter the fact that, in a universe increasingly shown to be probabilistic rather than deterministic in nature, our existence here is a statistical miracle.

Are you going to be the first one in the history of RF to show the math?

 

[McBell]

Yeah, to counter one rational arguement with another rational arguement as if the second one is not rational.
To make a rational case for God is not the same as evidence for God. And to make a rational arguement for a natural universe is not the same as evidence for a natural universe.

I merely presesnted why I disagree with the argument I disagree with.
You are free to add all the fluff and window dressing you like.

 

[PureX]

I'm convinced I'm unconvinced.

Yes, practiced dishonesty causes that kind of confusion.

 

[PureX]

What does "work for us" mean, exactly?

It means that when we act on an idea we hold about the truth of reality, the action bears results that afirm that view of truth and reality.

 

[PureX]

Usually I find that "faith" refers to faith in the reality of God, and in some particular behavior or doctrine sourced from God.

Well, you should broaden your mind, then. (Let go of religion as the big bad boogeyman.) Because we can put our faith in a great many ideas about what is real and true, and then act on those ideas to see if they "work for us".

Faith is unfounded belief; belief with insufficient evidence. Faith and intuition never "worked."

You maintain a very narrow and biased definition just so you can slander any methodology that isn't "scientific". This should bother you, if you're being honest with yourself.

Belief is practice?

Belief is a cognitive practice, yes.

Bees practice pollen harvesting. Tulips practice photosynthesis.. What are their beliefs? No. A belief is an intellectual construct.

Again you hold to a very narrow definition of 'practice' so you can disparage any view of anything that you think conflicts with your scientism. You should find this an alarming intellectual practice in itself. But will you? Or will you just 'double down' to protect yourself from having to open your mind?

 

[ratiocinator]

It means that when we act on an idea we hold about the truth of reality, the action bears results that afirm that view of truth and reality.

Example...?

Different theists, who believe different ideas about God and "the truth of reality", as well as faith positions without a God, tell us that they are right and it 'works'.

The contradictions between the different versions of "the truth of reality" mean that, at the very least, most of them do not have the correct "truth of reality"....

 

[Valjean]

Well, can you establish that the universe is real?

No, but that's not an issue here. This is a level 3 discussion -- assuming the reality of the perceived world.
You keep mixing levels of reality.
If you want to bring in alternate reality metaphysics, fine, but don't do it in material-world based discussions.

Yes, science takes the laws and constants of nature as axiomatic. even if they cannot be explainedAs for work - work has 2 meanings relevant here - how to get something as things to work versus how to get a life to work.
What objective reality as real as independent of the mind is, is unknown.
That is how you ger methodological naturalism and this:

Philosophy of science - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

"... According to Robert Priddy, all scientific study inescapably builds on at least some essential assumptions that cannot be tested by scientific processes; ..."
I can't help it that you are unaware of the philosophy behind science.

Science assumes perceived reality. It bases its method on the known laws and constants of nature.
We may not understand the genesis or mechanisms of these, but we know they're robust, predictable and testable. They reliably predict and describe the reality we perceive

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

No, but that's not an issue here. This is a level 3 discussion -- assuming the reality of the perceived world.
You keep mixing levels of reality.
If you want to bring in alternate reality metaphysics, fine, but don't do it in material-world based discussions.

Science assumes perceived reality. Any variations therefrom must still be founded in testable, level 3 observations

What ever.
You assume and then it is real. But other assumptions are not allowed, because you decide what assumptions are correct.

 

[shunyadragon]

It’s not solipsism, it’s clarity. Whatever we may consider objective reality to be, our experience of it is necessarily subjective.

False, the bold above is solipsism, maybe best described as anti-realism.

Failure to recognise this, is to deny one of the defining limitations of our human experience.

No. There are indeed limitations to our fallible human existence, but if we could not recognize a reasonable difference between the objective and subjective reality we would not have science. It is true that many live in denial of the human ability to perceive the objectivity of our reality based on a misguided religious or philosophical delusions.

The following describes a more realistic perspective of objectivity without resorting to delusional extremes.

George Orwell, objectivity, and the reality behind illusions

Illusions are commonly defined as departures of our percepts from the veridical representation of objective, common-sense reality. However, it has been claimed recently that this definition lacks validity, for example, on the grounds that external reality ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Illusions are commonly defined as departures of our percepts from the veridical representation of objective, common-sense reality. However, it has been claimed recently that this definition lacks validity, for example, on the grounds that external reality cannot possibly be represented truly by our sensory systems, and indeed may even be a fiction. Here, I first demonstrate how novelist George Orwell warned that such denials of objective reality are dangerous mistakes, in that they can lead to the suppression and even the atrophy of independent thought and critical evaluation. Second, anti-realists assume their opponents hold a fully reductionist metaphysics, in which fundamental physics describes the only ground truth, thereby placing it beyond direct human sensory observation. In contrast, I point to a more recent and commonly used alternative, non-reductive metaphysics. This ascribes real existence to many levels of dynamic systems of information, emerging progressively from the subatomic to the biological, psychological, social, and ecological. Within such a worldview the notion of objective reality is valid, it comes in part within the range of our senses, and thus a definition of illusions as kinds of deviations from veridical perception becomes possible again.

Conclusion​

Orwell has made us aware of the falsehoods, inconsistencies and tricks played on us by unscrupulous politicians. Denial of objective reality in perception research could lead to conceptual problems analogous to those caused by the denial of objective reality in wider culture and world affairs. Believing one denial without the other would be inconsistent. Hence belief in objective reality by perception researchers, and thus in the possibility (if not the uncontroversially defined existence) of perceptual illusions, is both justified and mandatory.


Interesting application of this delusions of reality in politics is extreme Trumpism.

This also is representative of the vague nebulous unrealistic delusional view of reality by @mikkel_the_dane,

 

[RestlessSoul]

It's the same reasoning that we find ourselves in a statistically unlikely part of the known universe - the surface of a planet with liquid water, rather than in virtually empty space, which, on raw statistics, is far, far more probable.

We don't know the extent of reality, nor do we know enough to understand what laws and variations are possible. You're trying to draw an extraordinary conclusion from the flimsiest of speculation.


Again, you are jumping ahead of what is tested theory into the hypotheses you would prefer. If laws are probabilistic, then that would suggest they could easily be different elsewhere, bringing back to the anthropic principle.

Even if we are a 'statistical miracle' any God would be a far greater statistical miracle. It is also a basic law of probabilities that the probability that a statistically unlikely universe exists must be greater than the probability that it exists and was created by a some God. The general law is Prob(A and B) ≤ Prob(A). This is true regardless of the values of Prob(A) and Prob(B).

It comes down to perception in the end, as all things do.

To some of us everything is miraculous, to others nothing is; time and space, stars, galaxies, entropy, black holes, biological evolution, consciousness; I see God in all of that.

“God reveals Himself in all there is. All reality, to a greater or lesser extent, reveals the purpose of God. There is some connection to the purpose and order of the world in all aspects of human experience.”

- Arno Penzias, codiscoverer of Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation

 

[RestlessSoul]

False, the bold above is solipsism


No

When faced with something you don’t understand, simply saying “no” to it won’t enlighten you in any way.

 

[Valjean]

Here’s one I borrowed from two professors of particle and theoretical physics;

“The argument for a Creator appears to be bolstered by another remarkable aspect of the natural world: the laws of physics seem to be perfectly adjusted in order to produce a Universe that is hospitable to life. To apply the fundamental laws of physics, as encoded in the Standard Model and General Relativity, it is necessary to first specify the values of around thirty numbers, which include the strengths of the forces, the masses of the particles and the size of the cosmological constant…Changing these numbers, even by a few percent, gives rise to theoretical universes that have no chance of supporting life. It is very easy to end up with theories in which stars never form, or burn out in millions rather than billions of years, leaving no time for biological evolution…
…it appears to be extremely difficult to pick values for the strengths of the forces and the particle masses such that heavier elements including carbon and oxygen, are produced in stars and remain stable against radioactive decay. The expansion rate of the Universe is also ‘just so’…
…There would be no stars or galaxies if there were too little dark matter or too much light. Even the way that supernovae explode, scattering the heavy elements necessary for life across interstellar space, would be significantly affected if the weak nuclear force was just a little weaker or stronger than it is.”

- Prof Brian Cox, Prof Jeff Forshaw, “Universal - A Journey Through The Cosmos”

I disagree. What was the sample size Proff. Forshaw drew this conclusion of hospitality from? What alternatives did he consider?
It's an anthropic argument from design.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Are you going to be the first one in the history of RF to show the math?

Obviously not. But better minds than mine have had a shot at it.


https://accelconf.web.cern.ch/e06/papers/thespa01.pdf

 

[Valjean]

Okay, you’ve referenced the anthropic principle, a tautological argument often cited to refute the ‘fine-tuning problem’.

That doesn’t alter the fact that, in a universe increasingly shown to be probabilistic rather than deterministic in nature, our existence here is a statistical miracle.

We don't have the sample size or possible variables to make a statistically valid judgement.