It is not close-minded to demand reasonable kinds of evidence


Close Up Of Smoking Black Candles

Greta Christina has followed up on EbonMuse’s challenge to theists, listing the kinds of evidence that would convince them that their beliefs were true.

If I’m such an open-minded atheist — if I really am an atheist because I think the God hypothesis is unsupported by the evidence — what evidence for God would I accept? What would it take to change my mind?

I’m going to take a rather different approach: I’m going to tell theists to not bother.

It’s not that I’m unwilling or unable to change my views, or that I think I’m absolutely right about everything (I already know I’m not). Physicists, for instance, frequently explain things to me that make me toss out a lot of preconceptions. It’s just that I know theists are wrong. I’ve been through these arguments many times before, and I know what they’re about, and I know what approaches the true believer will take, and I’m not going to accept any of their arguments, so we might as well not waste time with them.

Basically, I have a set of simple prerequisites that theists can’t meet — their beliefs fundamentally contradict any reasonable expectations. Here’s what I would demand:

  • They must accept the evidence of the natural world. What that means is that the first thing they have to do is acknowledge the validity of scientific explanations, because they are based on empirical knowledge. You don’t get to advance your hypothesis about how the universe works by throwing out the entire body of accumulated human wisdom!

  • They have to accept that they don’t know any more than I do about the nature of entities outside this universe. Deities and afterlives and all that crap are outside human experience; you don’t get to sashay in and announce that you personally have direct knowledge of the mind of god that I am not allowed to have. We have to restrict ourselves to information that is universally accessible. Which, of course, means that most theists claims are bogus, because they are unknowable.

  • They have to recognize that extant religions are all false. We know enough about the history of religion to recognize their idiosyncratic and human origins. If you can see that Scientology and Mormonism are frauds, then you should be able to see that Christianity and Islam are similarly the product of deluded human minds. Don’t waste our time trying to persuade me that debunked beliefs are really true.

  • They must define their god or supernatural property clearly and unambiguously. Inevitably, every faith-head fails on this criterion: go ahead, try to get a Christian to give a consistent description of Jesus’ role in their life. I guarantee you that every time an atheist tries to pin them down on something concrete, they’ll rapidly fall back on Karen Armstrong-style platitudes, which are all empty noise. “God is Love” is utter bullshit.

I think that even asking for things like miracles and prophecies and consistent holy books and deities manifesting on earth is conceding way too much — it’s treating their claims of the kind of phenomena that would validate their faith as reasonable forms of evidence. They’re not. Those are the things theists tell each other to “prove” their beliefs, and they’re bogus — they’ve never demonstrated anything.

Break the cycle of lies. Stop framing atheist questions in theistic terms.

Comments

  1. Lofty says

    When rational and logical thinking isn’t your thing, then everything ends up being a miracle, including getting your shoes on their correct feet.

  2. says

    Religious people don’t do well with epistemological challenges. The short form is “how do you know that?” repeated over and over. Someone who’s being rational will respond to that with evidence or ideas constructed on evidence. “God is love”? How do you know that?
    (crickets)

  3. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Theists don’t pay attention when you ask for evidence, and give them clear guidelines about the evidence that you will accept. They give the “evidence” *sic* that they accept, usually presuppositional acceptance, and point, and say “ah, god”. And I point at their “evidence”, and laugh, and say “scientifically explained, you lose”. They just can’t comprehend why they were dismissed. Simple, listen, don’t preach. Which requires them to take their fingers out of their ears and open their minds.

  4. rietpluim says

    Excellent article. I’d like to add:

    They must be willing to leave their position if it turns out to be false.

  5. says

    They must define their god or supernatural property clearly and unambiguously.

    It’s the universal prerequisite for any discussion to take place: You have to be willing to clearly explain what you’re actually saying.

    Without that, we can’t even disagree. There’s simply no position to engage with.

  6. Holms says

    I’m going to take a rather different approach: I’m going to tell theists to not bother.

    Same here, but for different reasoning. If the christian account of life, the universe and everything is true, and the god they worship truly is omniscient, then he knows my mind more intimately than even I do. It follows that he knows precisely how to convince me if he so desired, I don’t need to specify shit. The real question thus not ‘what would convince me’ but rather ‘why has god not bothered?’

  7. says

    BTW, isn’t it odd when someone who has already made their mind up criticizes atheists for being “closed-minded”?? What’s up with that? They are already acknowledging that being “closed-minded” is a bad thing to do, while doing it.

  8. aziraphale says

    But, my dear Holms, that would give you no choice but to believe and therefore would violate your free will.

  9. tulse says

    that would give you no choice but to believe and therefore would violate your free will.

    I know, right? He’s so lucky that the Christian god hasn’t spoken directly to his heart like so many Christians claim, as they are S.O.L. as far as free will is concerned. Poor sods.

  10. says

    The point I tend to make is look, even if you did have some actual, undeniable, irrefutable, unquestionable, non-ambiguous proof that the Christian god existed, I still wouldn’t be getting down on my knees and praying to the murderous, irrational, and downright arrogant tyrant.

  11. grumpyoldfart says

    What evidence would it take for me to believe that god exists?

    I wouldn’t accept a miracle as evidence because, no matter how spectacular it may be, I would just assume that I was hallucinating. I would never regard it as a miracle performed by god.

    I’d start with the Millennium Prize Problems of the Clay Mathematics Institute. I would ask the Christian to pray for solutions to the problems and if the mathematicians were able to verify those solutions — well I’d be impressed.

    Or I might ask god to write down the pin number to my bank account. I’ll give him three tries.

  12. says

    YOU CAN’T PROVE GODS DO NOT EXIST

    As mentioned earlier in the thread, without definition there is no argument.

    I have read the “Holy Books” quite carefully and all of them read like a bunch of made-up shit. The very idea of some all-powerful supernatural entity is preposterous; water walking, rising from the dead, flying to heaven on a winged horse, it’s all ridiculous. The claims of religion are so obviously made-up they deserve no benefit of any doubt.

  13. leerudolph says

    The point I tend to make is look, even if you did have some actual, undeniable, irrefutable, unquestionable, non-ambiguous proof that the Christian god existed, I still wouldn’t be getting down on my knees and praying to the murderous, irrational, and downright arrogant tyrant.

    Well, exactly. I mean, petitionary prayer is disgusting on the best account of who it’s addressed to; but when it’s addressed to a “murderous, irrational, and downright arrogant tyrant”, it’s far, far more disgusting.

  14. a_ray_in_dilbert_space says

    The critical point in PZ’s list–as noted by LykeX@5–is the definition of “god” or “gods”. Until there is a clear and unambiguous definition of the object of inquiry, it is impossible to state what would constitute evidence for or against it. I am not going to step onto a field of play where I am in mortal danger from all the goalposts zooming back and forth.

  15. simulateddave says

    The point Greta made at the end was very good. It’s easy to imagine a universe that was just obviously under the control of an intelligent agent who was engaged in moral reasoning and was interested in pursuing a relationship with human beings. However, since I have personally accumulated 39 years worth of experience that our universe looks nothing like that universe, it’s very difficult to think of any one piece of evidence that would outweigh all of the previous evidence I’ve experienced.

    To use one of her examples, if an ancient religious text was discovered that reliably predicted future events with inexplicable specificity, and continued to do so as time went on (thus ruling out a hoax), then I’d consider that to be pretty convincing evidence of the existence of … time travel. Or at the very least, I would certainly suspect “Marty McFly” before I suspected “disembodied omniscient megamind.” At least we have some framework in physics to sort of understand a closed timelike loop.

    So what evidence would convince me? I can’t think of one big piece of evidence. It would have to be a million little (or not so little) pieces. It would have to become obvious.

  16. jnorris says

    I fully exspect the Christian God to know and deliver the evidence I would require.

  17. Gregory Greenwood says

    I would like to echo the various other commenters on this thread who point out that, before we even get to the point of discussing what kinds of evidence may be in any way persuasive in support of the existence of a hypothetical godhead, first theists must consistently and intelligably define their terms. Until they can at least agree on a definition of what they mean when they say ‘god’, and until that definition is more specific than vague platitudes like ‘god is love’ or meaningless word salad like ‘god is the ground state of all existence’, then further discussion is pointless.

    Their definition must also falsifiable – a definition of a god that is conveniently utterly undetectable by any scientifically verifiable means is indistinguishable from a god that doesn’t exist, in which case non-existence is the more pasrimonious explanation.

    No theologian has ever succeeded in fulfilling those criteria in the entire recorded history of religious belief, and I don’t expect them to start any time soon.

  18. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    No theologian has ever succeeded in fulfilling those criteria in the entire recorded history of religious belief, and I don’t expect them to start any time soon.

    If they don’t presuppose their deity, they can’t reach it with evidence or logic. There is always a Leap of Faith™ somewhere.

  19. says

    simulateddave @16:
    I’ve had the same problem trying to come up with evidence that would convince me of the existence of a deity. I’m open to the idea that I could be convinced by sufficient evidence, but I have no idea what form such convincing evidence would take.

  20. dõki says

    I’d imagine that, as the supreme being of the universe, God’s existence would also be the most extraordinary claim of all. Unless there’s an upper bound on the time it takes to prove a claim, presenting the complete proof of god — the most difficult proof in existence — would take infinite time. A perfectly rational donkey, thus, would be long dead before it is convinced.

    Also, I’m drunk, thanks for asking.

  21. R Johnston says

    I seem to recall a certain PZ Myers writing a classic post on this point a few years back:

    I have been challenged by Jerry Coyne, who is unconvinced by my argument that there is no evidence that could convince me of the existence of god. Fair enough, I shall repeat it and expand upon it.

    1. The question “Is there a god?” is a bad question. It’s incoherent and undefined; “god” is a perpetually plastic concept that promoters twist to evade evaluation. If the whole question is nebulous noise, how can any answer be acceptable? The only way to win is by not playing the game.

    2. There’s a certain unfairness in the evidence postulated for god. I used the example of a 900 foot tall Jesus appearing on earth; there is no religion (other than the addled hallucinations of Oral Roberts) that ever proposes such a thing, so such a being would not prove the existence of any prior concept of god, and will even contradict many religions. It’s rather like proposing a crocoduck as a test of evolution.

    3. Many of the evidences proposed rely for their power on their unexplainability by natural mechanisms. There isn’t much power there: the vast majority of the phenomena that exist are not completely explained by science. For instance, I don’t understand every detail of Hox gene regulation (no one does), and I don’t understand all of the nuclear reactions going on inside a star (maybe someone does), and pointing at an elegantly patterned embryo or at our Sun will get me to happily admit my ignorance, but my ignorance is not evidence for a god.

    4. Often when people try to convince me that I’m wrong on this, they add increasingly elaborate, detailed intricacies to an invented scenario, piling up improbabilities until they’ve got an event so wildly unlikely to be as close to impossible as possible, and then, aha, I’m expected to admit that if that happened, I’d have to be convinced that the extremely unlikely explanation of a deity must be the best explanation. But I’m not arguing from probabilities at all; personally, I’m ridiculously improbable, being the product of random recombinations of complex strands of DNA and a personal history full of accidents and coincidence, but I’m not god, nor do I think any other peculiar set of accidents amount to a god.

    5. These elaborate proof-scenarios also have another problem: they haven’t happened, yet people believe in god anyway. We have millennia of history of devoted god-belief, but now you’re trying to tell me that loud voices from the heavens, flocks of angels, healed amputees, and personal messages direct from a manifested Jesus would be sufficient to convince me of a deity’s existence? Well, if that’s our standard of proof, then all existing religions have been disproven.

    6. One other odd feature of the proposed evidence for god is that it is all so petty and superficial. Remember, this omnipotent god we’re talking about has been called “the ground state of all being” and is supposed to be omnipresent and essential to the maintenance of the universe, so I expect the evidence for god to be rather more fundamental. No one seems to think to invent a property of nature that is supernatural; even the terms are self-contradictory. But shouldn’t a god be as ubiquitous and consequential as bosons? Despite calling some particles “god particles”, though, the fact of existence makes them natural and immediately disqualifies them from godhood.

    7. The case for the non-existence of god is not simply a negative one, drawn from the absence of evidence, which can be corrected by throwing in evidence for a miracle. We are atheists because we have a scientific understanding of how the universe works, and the phenomena we observe do not seem to require divine intervention to function. So sure, show me a tap-dancing Jesus poofing loaves and fishes into existence with a snap of his fingers…and I’ll ask how his existence influences chemistry, how the silly bearded man matters in the last few billions of years of evolution, and why he isn’t publishing in the physics journals, where his omniscient insight into the machineries of the world might be better appreciated. Even there, though, I’d question whether adding tap-dancing Jesus to the long list of existent phenomena really helps us understand anything.

    8. There are always better explanations for unexplained phenomena than god: fraud and faulty sensory perception cover most of the bases, but mostly, if I see a Madonna appear in a field to bless me, the first thing I’d suspect is brain damage. We have clumsy, sputtering, inefficient brains that are better designed for spotting rutabagas and triggering rutting behavior at the sight of a curvy buttock than they are for doing math or interpreting the abstract nature of the universe. It is a struggle to be rational and objective, and failures are not evidence for an alternative reality. Heck, we can be fooled rather easily by mere stage magicians; we don’t need to invent something as elaborate as a god to explain apparent anomalies.

    That last point does imply, though, that there is one path that could convince me of the existence of god: major brain damage. I don’t think that wacking me in the skull with a ball-peen hammer counts as evidence, however.

    Some of you are already disagreeing with me in the comments. This is pointless, because I do have a trump card that I can play against all the nay-sayers. I learned it from the theists.

    If you do not concede to me, it’s because my arguments are too subtle and sophisticated for you. Hah, take that!

  22. says

    Despite calling some particles “god particles”, though, the fact of existence makes them natural and immediately disqualifies them from godhood.

    oh god, PZ actually said such a ridiculous thing? Yes, that’s him, October 2010. I hope he’s developed better thinking on the subject of godhood nowadays…

  23. Azkyroth, B*Cos[F(u)]==Y says

    oh god, PZ actually said such a ridiculous thing? Yes, that’s him, October 2010. I hope he’s developed better thinking on the subject of godhood nowadays…

    …what’s actually wrong with it?

  24. Al Dente says

    If you do not concede to me, it’s because my arguments are too subtle and sophisticated for you. Hah, take that!

    But you’re using sophistry as a closing argument. That’s cheating! Only theists and philosophers are allowed to use sophistry.

  25. Saad says

    Tony, #21

    Same here. I know it would have to be something that couldn’t possibly be an advanced hoax.

  26. anbheal says

    There are a few other pre-requisites I’d add as well:

    * They have to argue without insisting it’s crucial to my welfare and happiness that I agree with them, even if they’re right; biologists and physicists never wring their hands and whine “you’ve got to get right with Darwin” or “you’ve got to get back on the right side of Einstein”….if I choose to reject their ironclad evidence, they do not wail that my life is a failure.
    * As a corollary, even if their proof of God is overwhelmingly convincing, they must not then make the silly epistemological leap to demanding I worship It. The proof that Obama is President and that the Patriots won the Super Bowl is very convincing. I admire both Obama and the Patriots. Other people don’t. That’s okay. Something being so doesn’t make it necessary to revere it….my mother used to say that even if Jesus DID rise from the dead, why would that be the most important thing in the Universe to dwell on?
    * They have to agree IN ADVANCE that if the proof turns out to be for a God different from theirs that they will accept the new God. So let’s say aliens dropped by and shared a documentary videotape they’d made 2000 years ago…it shows 12 gay conmen fleecing widows and Samaritans so that they can walk around all day doing no work at all but simply drinking wine and going to parties and discussing philosophy (which actually sounds like a fun gig to me, I probably would have liked to hang with these dudes)….and then it shows Zeus and Apollo up on Olympus pointing and laughing at the credulous fools who buy into the conmen’s low-rent theology. The Christian debater has to agree not to then say “ah, the counter-evidence is merely the work of Satan!!!”

  27. says

    @25, Azkyroth

    existence makes them natural and immediately disqualifies them from godhood.

    oh god, PZ actually said such a ridiculous thing? Yes, that’s him, October 2010. I hope he’s developed better thinking on the subject of godhood nowadays…

    …what’s actually wrong with it?

    It seems to be a statement that if something exists then it is by definition not a god. No matter what the thing is. And this makes the statement “god does not exist” trivially true by definition, not true based on evidence or reason or anything else.

  28. Drolfe says

    This isn’t PZ’s fault though- nearly all definitions of God include “supernatural” as a quality. Can anything be both natural and supernatural? Are we to presuppose supernaturalism? Or…

    What’s a natural God, and if it’s natural and exists, where is it hiding while still intelligently designing stuff here on Earth? Natural stuff is bounded by the universe, how can it be omni-anything?

    It’s looks trivially true because definitions of God are usually contradictory or incoherent (as mentioned over and over).

  29. says

    Drolfe what are you going on about natural/supernatural in the definition etc.?

    And no, we aren’t supposed to “presuppose supernaturalism” or naturalism or anything else. We are supposed to rely on evidence and reason. Then we can see which is true. Instead of presupposing, and instead of playing word games with definitions.

  30. Azkyroth, B*Cos[F(u)]==Y says

    “Reason” dictates that the categories of “ineffable,” which is a property attributed to most god-concepts, and “things that have been effed,” do not overlap.

  31. Zimmerle says

    All of these “what evidence would convince me?” stuff from the theists is predicated on a fairly absurd premise: that they are on an intellectual level with us.

    Global warming “skeptics”, 9/11 truthers, Bigfoot hunters – like theists they’re all the scions of bankrupt ideologies and we should treat them as such.

    Any conversation with them isn’t a debate, because a debate implies they might win. It’s instruction. We’re teaching a class that doesn’t want to listen.

  32. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    @brianpansky:

    Azkyroth is saying that if you’re insisting that your god does NOT exist (is not in or part of the universe, which is the set of everything that exists) AND that your god DOES exist …

    …you don’t really need to look for evidence before concluding that a god with both those properties does not, in fact, exist.

  33. Drolfe says

    Weird that Azkyroth and Crip Dyke knew what I was saying, and also weird that brianpansky finds us all intelligible.

    Is it me?

  34. consciousness razor says

    Azkyroth is saying that if you’re insisting that your god does NOT exist (is not in or part of the universe, which is the set of everything that exists) AND that your god DOES exist …

    …you don’t really need to look for evidence before concluding that a god with both those properties does not, in fact, exist.

    I guess that sort of works, if “existence makes them natural” were true. But why would that be true?

    If you say “I believe natural things exist and not supernatural things,” the suggestion is that the things which exist match certain kinds of descriptions and not others. What are those? Things like gods, souls, ghosts, witches, wizards and magical forces don’t exist. That’s what a naturalist thinks, and a supernaturalist thinks at least one thing like that does exist. (Instead of simply listing diverse things in the category, we could of course describe what’s important for inclusion in either category, but you can get the point either way.)

    The point is that if you found out that there exist such things as ghosts, then you would have found out that naturalists are wrong and supernaturalists are right. They are both capable of being wrong, and that depends on the actual existence (or non-existence) of ghosts — not on what we know or think or observe or how we manipulate words. If you find there are ghosts, it’s not as if you would be discovering anything about what the word “natural” meant to everyone. First of all, it’s a discovery about the world. Secondly, we already had a good idea about what that means and what it doesn’t mean; and what that is is not even in the same category as words like “existence” or “the universe.”

    If that actually happened, you would have discovered some new thing in the real world (a ghost), and you knew (implicitly at least, if we’re being honest with ourselves) that things like ghosts weren’t meant to be included in the category “natural stuff.” You shouldn’t act as if this was no big deal and it fell right in line with what we already thought we knew about the world before the discovery of ghosts, continuing to use the same language as before — it definitely would be a big fucking deal which would overturn all sorts of ideas we have about the world and how it works. I don’t think there are such things, and it’s not as if it’s a very deep problem to just say more or less what I honestly mean by that. If there were any ghosts, they would be radically different from the kinds of natural things I do think there are. I would be very surprised, and I wouldn’t keep talking about the world the same old way I had been all along, when I thought only natural stuff was real, as if I must somehow be right about everything no matter what I might discover next.

  35. says

    I’ll be honest, I don’t know what would convince me. I certainly tell myself I could be convinced to believe, but I can’t think of any specific thing that would do so. I’d know it when I see it? It would have to be unlike any experience I’ve yet had, of course.

    simulateddave @ 16

    if an ancient religious text was discovered that reliably predicted future events with inexplicable specificity, and continued to do so as time went on (thus ruling out a hoax), then I’d consider that to be pretty convincing evidence of the existence of … time travel. Or at the very least, I would certainly suspect “Marty McFly” before I suspected “disembodied omniscient megamind.”

    Even without an explanation* I’d treat that as strong evidence of the accuracy of as yet unmet predictions. I just wouldn’t go beyond that on just that evidence.

    *Beyond convincing proof that the book indeed existed before the events it’s said to have predicted.

  36. says

    brianpansky #34:

    And no, we aren’t supposed to “presuppose supernaturalism” or naturalism or anything else. We are supposed to rely on evidence and reason. Then we can see which is true. Instead of presupposing, and instead of playing word games with definitions.

    I don’t get your objection to ‘presupposing’ supernaturalism as a property of ‘god.’ Supernaturalism is, after all, part of the definition we’re usually presented with when we ask what a god is. All PZ was saying was that any god described as ‘supernatural’ cannot exist within nature; and since we know of no way for anything to exist outside nature, such a god cannot, to the best of our knowledge, exist.

    But okay; if you don’t want to play word games, can you come up with a definition of ‘god’ which is entirely non-supernatural, but which we couldn’t dismiss as naught but a highly powerful or advanced alien?

  37. a_ray_in_dilbert_space says

    This discussion is a perfect example of why it is pointless to debate the existence or nonexistence of god or gods until the properties of said god or gods have been unambiguously defined. Saying “God is love,” is meaningless until you can define how the properties of love equate to the properties of God identically.

    The first thing I require as evidence for a God is you being able to define said God in terms that leave both of us with straight faces.

  38. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    @brianpansky:

    It was supposed to correct:

    1: your confusion about:

    what are you going on about natural/supernatural in the definition etc.

    and
    2: your apparent belief that “evidence” is at all relevant to evaluating the existence of something which is defined as not part of the set of everything that exists…and simultaneously defined as existing.

  39. says

    @44, Daz

    And no, we aren’t supposed to “presuppose supernaturalism” or naturalism or anything else. We are supposed to rely on evidence and reason. Then we can see which is true. Instead of presupposing, and instead of playing word games with definitions.

    I don’t get your objection to ‘presupposing’ supernaturalism as a property of ‘god.’

    That wasn’t my objection. I meant presupposing in general which was true of reality: naturalism or supernaturalism. If the person I was responding to only meant presupposing what properties are required of a “god”, then I misunderstood what I was replying to.

    All PZ was saying was that any god described as ‘supernatural’ cannot exist within nature; and since we know of no way for anything to exist outside nature, such a god cannot, to the best of our knowledge, exist.

    I don’t see how that is what PZ is saying, though maybe he is assuming something like what you say here. I don’t think you or PZ know what is meant by “supernatural” (I recommend this article).

  40. says

    @46, Crip Dyke

    [Azkyroth said:] “Reason” dictates that the categories of “ineffable,” which is a property attributed to most god-concepts, and “things that have been effed,” do not overlap.

    [Brian said:] If you’re trying to address anything I said, Azkyroth, I can’t tell what.

    It was supposed to correct:

    1: your confusion about:

    what are you going on about natural/supernatural in the definition etc.

    and
    2: your apparent belief that “evidence” is at all relevant to evaluating the existence of

    Nitpick here: I said reason and evidence. Not just evidence.

    something which is defined as not part of the set of everything that exists…and simultaneously defined as existing.

    As I said to Daz, I don’t think you or PZ know what is meant by “supernatural” (I recommend this article). This lack of understanding must be why you bunch are pulling these word games.

  41. says

    Also, Azkyroth’s comment was about eff-ability. Which is a different matter.

    According to wikipedia ineffability gets used to describe religious experiences. Which shouldn’t be surprising, because even everyday normal experiences (like colors) are ineffable, but no one ever notices because we don’t have to describe yellow to each other, until a colorblind person comes along and asks us. The same problem happens when people try to describe their drug trips.

    This also has nothing to do with my dispute with PZ’s statement (as far as I can tell). Hence my subsequent response to Azkyroth.

  42. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    your apparent belief that “evidence” is at all relevant to evaluating the existence of

    Nitpick here: I said reason and evidence. Not just evidence.

    You also said your ‘nym is brianpansky. And “instead of”. And “true”. And “the”.

    Neither the use of reason nor your ‘nym nor your use of “instead of” nor your use of “true” nor your use of “the” were being criticized. So, the nit you choose to pick is that there were so many things you’ve said in the past but I only cited the ones relevant to the critique at hand?

    Conversations must get long in brianpansky-land.

    As for your addendum:

    Also, Azkyroth’s comment was about eff-ability. Which is a different matter.

    Wait – in attempting to clarify something Azkyroth did not merely repeat verbatim the statement that you previously failed to understand but that remained in storage for you to read as many times as you like?

    Azkyroth, in attempting to clarify, used brand new words???

    Well, that was devious and inappropriate of him.

    Bad Azkyroth! Naughty Azkyroth!

  43. says

    Crip Dyke, you said I have an apparent belief about “evidence” being relevant to evaluating the existence of a contradiction. But that belief couldn’t have been apparent.

    And I never said Azkyroth was bad for trying to rephrase. In my post #49 I was pointing out that they were actually (accidentally, I suppose, in their attempt to rephrase) speaking on a very different topic than the original topic.

  44. says

    @Menyambal

    I missed the meeting where we decided that Richard Carrier was the definer.

    We didn’t. Nor did I. But his article is helpful, well reasoned, and accurate.

  45. consciousness razor says

    It’s not original to Carrier. Mental things reduce to non-mental things. That’s essentially what “physicalism” or “naturalism” has meant, in philosophy-speak, ever since there were people speaking about it. The opposite of that, that some such mental things don’t reduce, is supernaturalism. You can even consult the work of anthropologists like Pascal Boyer, and they (independently?) have observed it corresponds with actual human behavior, concerning what distinctly “religious” or “supernatural” beliefs are about, in a wide array of different cultures and traditions. Indeed, just ask random people on the street enough pointed questions about what supernatural beings are supposedly like, and you will get answers which support that. No one person in particular had to “be the definer,” in order for that to be the case.

  46. Ellenna Mcghie says

    I think it would greatly help
    if people stopped thinking that they have to persuade anyone to change their religious stance. I don’t care what you believe in as long as your behaviour is conscientious and compassionate towards others. That should be the focus.

  47. consciousness razor says

    I think it would greatly help
    if people stopped thinking that they have to persuade anyone to change their religious stance. I don’t care what you believe in as long as your behaviour is conscientious and compassionate towards others. That should be the focus.

    I don’t understand. The way people behave is a consequence of their beliefs. Changing someone’s mind is a way (a peaceful and responsible and intelligent way) to get better actions from them. I have no idea how it would help if we stopped doing that. What other options are we supposed to be considering, if we want them to act differently?

  48. says

    Ellena Mcghie @55:

    I think it would greatly help
    if people stopped thinking that they have to persuade anyone to change their religious stance. I don’t care what you believe in as long as your behaviour is conscientious and compassionate towards others. That should be the focus.

    Are there any other false beliefs about the world that you think we should not persuade others to reject?
    Homeopathy?
    Faith healing?
    Ancient Aliens?
    A 6,000 year old Earth?
    Black people should pick themselves up by their bootstraps and improve their lives and quit whining that institutional racism is having a detrimental effect on their lives?
    Homosexuality is immoral?
    Trans women just want to use women’s restrooms to attack our women and girls?

  49. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    @Ellenna Mcghie, #55:

    I don’t care what you believe in as long as your behaviour is conscientious and compassionate towards others. That should be the focus.

    Well. This is quite a useful little statement. Let’s explore, shall we?

    There is a very broad spectrum of unprovable beliefs and even a lesser variety of beliefs that are unevidenced that one could hold without affecting how I feel about a person. The conscientious and compassionate criteria would be much better in these circumstances for determining how I feel about any individual.

    However, I do care if you believe that wheelchairs are “really” self-aware, artificially-intelligent, space-alien-colonization devices that create psychological dependencies in people with disabilities as a way to slowly infiltrate our government and prepare the way for our destruction. If you are conscientious and compassionate, then you will likely fight like hell to prevent wheelchair manufacture and destroy those wheelchairs that currently exist. You may stalk wheelchair users, obsessively documenting private lives to find examples of “decisions made in a colonized mindset,” using that documentation privately to harass someone into giving up a wheelchair or publicly to undermine a person’s ability to hold high-level jobs for fear of the shadowy “colonizer’s influence”.

    Hmmmmm. It seems that there are a great many wrong (or at very least unevidenced) beliefs that become much, much worse, if acted upon conscientiously and compassionately.

    Well. That’s a downer.

    Okay, you say, but what does that have to do with the substance of my criticism, which is actually about anti-theism and its inappropriate prioritization?

    Well, there’s this:
    If you truly believe we spend a few decades living – at most – and then a god judges you, delivering an eternity in a place of either joy or torment, the conscientious and compassionate thing to do is spend the money you would have spent on anti-cancer programs in an effort to save souls. Who gives a shit about death and disease, unless it takes children too young to have qualified for eternal awesomeness? Fight causes of infant and childhood death (don’t bother with disability – many of those actually make it easier to make the child a captive audience for soul-saving) …but the moment that medicine benefits people who have already won eternal awesomeness, cut it off. The longer that person lives, the greater the likelihood that the person will “slip” and lose the Awesome previously won. It wouldn’t be conscientious to ignore that possibility, and it wouldn’t be compassionate to fail to prevent such a possibility.

    In the real world, believing in god-granted, infinite, post-death Awesome-or-Torture actually has dramatic consequences for how one acts, for what “conscientious and compassionate” look like.

    Okay, but, you start again, in the real world religious people don’t actually act like that.

    Right. In the real world, people have to separate such a belief from their compassionate and conscientious instincts OR learn to behave less compassionately (I suppose, technically, one could “conscientiously” ignore all the things sending people to hell if one lacked the compassion to care about those folks).

    Well then: giving up the belief frees compassion and conscientious action to have the positive effects that lead you to label them desirable in the first place. It also upends a dynamic that leads to less compassion for a certain subset of people.

    So if you want your world where people are all kinds of conscientious and compassionate in the midst of human diversity…you want a world where people reject the defeatist notion of god-granted, infinite, post-death Awesome-or-Torture.

    Congratulations! If you are conscientious and compassionate, you are an anti-theist!

    Also, you’ve now given your name to a helpful variation of Lewis’ Law. With the vast memory of the internet, you can go anywhere you desire and always be known or discoverable as having provided the first rigorous proof of Ellenna Mcghie’s law:

    Any comment thread arguing for eliminating or downplaying anti-theism demonstrates the need for a strong anti-theist movement.

    May every corner of this virtual world conscientiously and compassionately recognize this achievement of yours every single day of your life.

  50. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    @brianpansky, #52:

    Crip Dyke, you said I have an apparent belief about “evidence” being relevant to evaluating the existence of a contradiction. But that belief couldn’t have been apparent.

    What?

    Apparent, from Oxford:

    1. Clearly visible or understood; obvious:
    2. Seeming real or true, but not necessarily so:

    So then, you’re assertion is that it could not possibly be so that any (or all) definition(s) of “apparent” applies to the possibility of you holding a belief that evidence is necessary for these evaluations?

    Please parse the bolded phrase for me:

    Drolfe what are you going on about natural/supernatural in the definition etc.?
    And no, we aren’t supposed to “presuppose supernaturalism” or naturalism or anything else. We are supposed to rely on evidence and reason.

    Perhaps, while you are parsing – just for clarity’s sake – you could also contrast it with an alternative phrase, also parsed. Perhaps useful would be the phrase:

    We are supposed to rely on evidence and reason

    When you’re done with that exercise, use some reason and evidence to show how it would be completely unreasonable to say that you may very well believe in examining evidence in these cases, while holding out some level of doubt that this is true.

    And when you’re done with that, maybe you could bake me a cake.

  51. consciousness razor says

    Crip Dyke, I don’t get what you’re doing or why. Is it just trolling? Do you have anything to say about the points concerning the meanings of “naturalism” and “supernaturalism”?

  52. consciousness razor says

    Just to clear it up (even though I think you’re arguing in bad faith and play silly wordgames, instead of merely being confused). Reasoning is enough to spot logical contradictions and dismiss them appropriately. Evidence (generally) isn’t required to do that. And Brian didn’t say it was. You argued as if he did, even though nothing he did say appears in the thread (nor is it implicit) and makes such an assertion. So, it “couldn’t have been apparent,” in the sense that you were strawmanning: nothing Brian did made apparent a view which you thought should be countered or questioned, because he doesn’t have that view and didn’t say so. In other words, you couldn’t have been responding on the basis of something apparent here, because in fact it doesn’t appear.

  53. says

    brianpansky #47:

    I don’t see how that is what PZ is saying, though maybe he is assuming something like what you say here. I don’t think you or PZ know what is meant by “supernatural” (I recommend this article).

    Yeah, I’ve read that before, and frankly I’m unimpressed. I take my definition of the word from usage by those who, when pressed on their meaning, define their god as being ‘outside nature.’ Actual believers, attempting to describe what they actually believe.

    Since to the best of my knowledge the term ‘outside nature’ represents something which is not even possible, let alone actually existent, the being thus defined is, again to the best of my knowledge, neither existent nor possible.

    I note you make no attempt to define a god without recourse to such terms.

  54. khms says

    I suspect it would be vastly easier to convince me of the existence of one of various gods from contemporary fantasy novels, than those of traditional real-world religions. Because, frankly, creating concepts that look coherent to contemporary readers is pretty much in their author’s job description. (It’s part of “world-building”.) Authors of those real-world religions typically worked under no such restrictions.

    There are a number of different concepts I’ve read over the years, which would probably need fairly different lines of evidence. (There are also, I’m sad to say, concepts of gods just as confused as those of real-world religions, which pretty much no amount of evidence could make believable.)

    Then, of course, the next problem is where to derive moral authority of any kind, and so on.

  55. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    So, it “couldn’t have been apparent,” in the sense that you were strawmanning: nothing Brian did made apparent a view which you thought should be countered or questioned, because he doesn’t have that view and didn’t say so. In other words, you couldn’t have been responding on the basis of something apparent here, because in fact it doesn’t appear.

    Holy fuck, CR, did you even read the definitions of apparent?

    brianpansky is attempting to paint other people as idiots. Other people are making reasonable points.

    I believe that he’s implicitly claiming that he doesn’t hold the belief that evidence is necessary in the cases discussed earlier by others, but that flies in the face of his “evidence and reason” comment.

    he didn’t say “evidence or reason”. He said “evidence and reason”. It could not be more reasonable to say,

    Humans being imperfect as they are, I would happily say that brianpansky’s “evidence and reason” phrase looks like it requires applying evidence in situations where, in fact, reason is actually sufficient …BUT it’s possible that he doesn’t hold that belief.

    brianpansky comes along and says that it literally isn’t possible to make that statement. That provisionally ascribing that belief to him literally could not be done.

    When someone plays on the equivocation fallacy to keep up the pretense that others are being unreasonable when, in fact, you’ve been writing badly and don’t want to admit that your phrase was reasonably interpreted by your critics who would be happy to join you in agreement if you just stopped maintaining a bullshit facade that it ***literally isn’t possible*** to think that brianpansky’s words might be interpreted in their English language senses while holding out hope of careless wordcrafting or misinterpretation.

    it is possible. I fucking did it, so I should know.

    brianpansky is belittling the contributions of others on this thread by portraying them as unreasonable and his writings as flawless.

    i fucking object.

  56. consciousness razor says

    Yeah, I’ve read that before, and frankly I’m unimpressed. I take my definition of the word from usage by those who, when pressed on their meaning, define their god as being ‘outside nature.’ Actual believers, attempting to describe what they actually believe.

    And you’re impressed with that? Do you ask them any more questions? For example: Does this god think about anything or intend anything? Does it love or hate? Is it a person, or are there many personal gods? Does it have any mental properties whatsoever? They generally have views about that. They do generally say a god is not natural or physical or material (not made of matter in spacetime) but they say a lot more about it than that, if you actually press them about it. They say it’s supernatural in exactly the sense that we’ve talking about: it’s mental and not made of any parts which aren’t mental. It’s not some big powerful alien race that made everything, but is instead a magical entity of pure thought or some such horseshit like that. It’s not some nebulous thing, of whatever description, but is more specifically an immaterial mind. I’m not seeing any substantive criticism about that point.

    Since to the best of my knowledge the term ‘outside nature’ represents something which is not even possible, let alone actually existent, the being thus defined is, again to the best of my knowledge, neither existent nor possible.

    There’s no logical contradiction in saying that there is something other than the natural universe that we live in. Or the spacetime that we live in. Or the “normal” matter that we’re composed of. That’s what would be required if it were impossible, but despite your protestations, you don’t know any such thing and you haven’t said what the contradiction is supposed to be.

  57. says

    consciousness razor #66:

    And you’re impressed with that? Do you ask them any more questions? For example: Does this god think about anything or intend anything? Does it love or hate? I[…]

    Of course I did. That’s ‘arguing with theists 101’ after all. Those other properties are not what’s under discussion though. The term ‘supernatural,’ by which they mean ‘outside nature,’ is. It’s possible their etymology is screwed, but addressing what the dictionary—or Richard Carrier—tells us they ‘should’ mean by the word, rather than what is meant when people actually use it, would be kinda dishonest.

    There’s no logical contradiction in saying that there is something other than the natural universe that we live in. Or the spacetime that we live in. Or the “normal” matter that we’re composed of. That’s what would be required if it were impossible, but despite your protestations, you don’t know any such thing and you haven’t said what the contradiction is supposed to be.

    Find me a way to test such a proposition—that we can actually know about a particular being which lives outside spacetime, and that it can somehow interact with things inside spacetime—and this may be worth revisiting. Until then ‘It doesn’t exist’ seems a reasonable statement to me. Or, if we want to be really nitpicky about language, I’ll go with ‘there’s no point in speculating on its existence, and certainly none in trying to guess what its wishes might be concerning human behaviour.’

  58. says

    @Daz

    define their god as being ‘outside nature.’ Actual believers, attempting to describe what they actually believe.

    Since to the best of my knowledge the term ‘outside nature’ represents something which is not even possible, let alone actually existent, the being thus defined is, again to the best of my knowledge, neither existent nor possible.

    Well then I don’t think you understand what they mean. I’m not going to argue this, because I don’t have time, and because this discussion doesn’t look like it will be fruitful. But just fyi.

    I note you make no attempt to define a god without recourse to such terms.

    I just did. I provided that article. If you think that is recourse to the same terms, then you are equivocating, or not understanding the article, or something.

  59. consciousness razor says

    Of course I did. That’s ‘arguing with theists 101′ after all. Those other properties are not what’s under discussion though.

    What’s under discussion is what theists believe there is. If they think “God hates fags,” they believe their god is not just some abstraction like the number twelve, nor is it some mindless physical entity or process. That sort of god (which is by far the most common sort of god people believe there is) is an immaterial mind, in particular one with hateful opinions about our sex lives. Or maybe it loves everyone. Or it wants us all to be rich and prosperous. Or whatever the fuck. That’s what people honestly think about the gods they honestly believe exist.

    It’s possible their etymology is screwed, but addressing what the dictionary—or Richard Carrier—tells us they ‘should’ mean by the word, rather than what is meant when people actually use it, would be kinda dishonest.

    I have no idea what makes you think that, and it isn’t about appealing to any authorities like dictionaries or even Carrier. (It’s a much older issue than he is, for fuck’s sake.) As I mentioned before, Pascal Boyer’s Religion Explained, for example, does some good work, looking at what people around the world actually believe about supernatural entities. It’s at least more work than you did, introspecting about what a handful of believers have supposedly told you before writing your confusing and evidence-free comments.

    Some people are also fond of speculating about “overactive agency detectors” and so forth, but even that requires talk of agents, and if these agents by hypothesis aren’t agents which are made of matter in spacetime, then it’s not hard to figure out what the alternative is. Even if many people don’t use such fancy terms to accurately or consistently characterize their own beliefs, that is what they are actually thinking and how a person careful with terminology would use it to describe those beliefs as accurately as possible — which is what we ought to be doing if we’re being honest.

    Find me a way to test such a proposition—that we can actually know about a particular being which lives outside spacetime, and that it can somehow interact with things inside spacetime—and this may be worth revisiting. Until then ‘It doesn’t exist’ seems a reasonable statement to me. Or, if we want to be really nitpicky about language, I’ll go with ‘there’s no point in speculating on its existence, and certainly none in trying to guess what its wishes might be concerning human behaviour.’

    We’re not testing things here. You said it’s impossible, and it isn’t, because in fact there’s no contradiction. What you claimed is false.

  60. says

    @Crip Dyke

    claiming that he doesn’t hold the belief that evidence is necessary in the cases discussed earlier by others, but that flies in the face of his “evidence and reason” comment.

    eh, the “and” does make it look like both parts are necessary, maybe even in the case where reason alone is all that is needed. I’ll have to be more careful about that in the future.

    brianpansky is belittling the contributions of others on this thread by portraying them as unreasonable and his writings as flawless.

    I said it was a nit pick, because it was a small misunderstanding, not worthy of accusing you of being unreasonable or whatever.

  61. says

    Uhuh. I’m writing confusing posts. Of course I am. Okay:

    If it exists outside nature, we—who can only work within nature—have no way to show that it exists, and have no grounds upon which to base the statement that it does. We may speculate that it does, but nothing more. And speculation regarding a particular being, with particular tastes and wishes is, frankly, absurd.

  62. consciousness razor says

    I’m not saying they’re in a reasonable or justifiable epistemic situation, because (1) they’re not, (2) I know they’re not, and (3) you should know very well by now what my perspective is about that.

    That doesn’t make the thing impossible, meaning that it can’t exist or its existence is contradictory. Yes, saying so is confusing*. Those two very different things shouldn’t be fused together into some absurd fucking mess of a statement.

    *And speaking of bad epistemic situations, that’s not something we could figure out about the world by playing some stupid word games.

  63. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    @brianpansky:

    I was using “unreasonable” in the sense of believing/articulating things that are literally impossible to be correct/true.

    I don’t mind that you failed to grasp the import of saying “evidence and reason” as opposed to “evidence and/or reason” or some other alternative.

    I mind that you started saying that others’ statements “cannot possibly be true”. The definition of “apparent” isn’t that tricky. It’s no 17th century obscure/archaic slang preserved pro forma by the Oxford English Dictionary.

    And I am articulating this now not to prolong outrage or conflict, but because you seemed to be also unclear on this use of “unreasonable”, and so I felt it necessary to – given recent commenting history – clarify at length.

  64. Ellenna Mcghie says

    Whether or not you behave like a complete arsehole to people is likely to have absolutely nothing to do with your religious beliefs or lack thereof, so, if I wanted to persuade you to interact with people in less harmful ways, your religious stance is not what I would focus on. As soon as I meet an Atheist who isn’t a nice person, I don’t think “if only they had God” so I don’t understand someone thinking “if only they didn’t have God, they’d be different”. That’s why it really isn’t important to me what someone else believes. What is important is how they behave. That’s the most important thing to me. I don’t associate with homophobes, abusers, prudes and zealots regardless of whether they are Christian, Muslim, Atheist or whatever.

    If I meet someone who is really nice and they said part of what makes them really nice is the little pink pony that lives in their ear, great! I’d want more people to believe they have a little pink pony in their ear. I’m far more concerned with how people behave and perhaps why they behave that way rather than wanting to challenge their religious beliefs and get them to align with my own. I just don’t see the priority. I don’t see the point when religious people try and spread the good word and convert others so I certainly don’t think it’s apt the other way.

    The idea that compassion and conscientiousness makes a person Anti-theist is the type of thing I would expect from some sort of fundie. Those qualities don’t make anyone anything that they don’t want to be or feel applies to them. I realise that’s what one is dealing with on this particular thread – fundies. I don’t do extremists, I don’t do Islamic extremists in planes with suicide bombs, and I don’t do hippy dippy Lefty ones in Birkenstocks either.

    But just to play your little game, why would I cut off the lifesaving medicine of someone who has let’s say performed five big feats, all of which get them that golden ticket to Heaven? They might perform another ten things before they die so it’s best I keep them alive. Why not use them for all the awesomeness they can give? Keep the fuckers alive at all costs!

    What analogy may have worked is if we cut off medical assistance to people we know are bad because there isn’t much hope for them anyway. They are going to Hell according to us so why not sort of speed up the process? See that analogy would have got me quoting from scripture and painting pictures and shi. But that’s what happens when you reach, you often lose your balance and fall.

    But yeah, to sum up and end my contribution to this fundie org, whether people believe in God or not really isn’t the issue. The real issue is that some people treat others without compassion and conscientiousness. So far, I haven’t found atheist spaces to be all that great at demonstrating these qualities.

  65. EnlightenmentLiberal says

    @OP
    I can take their question at face value. They asked for evidence that would convince me some god exists. That means I get to pick the god.

    Suppose some humanoid appeared in New York Times Square every weekend who called himself Bob. Every weekend, Bob healed the sick, cured the blind, etc., etc., seemingly through sheer force of will, what would appear to be magic straight out of Dungeons and Dragons. Then, every week, give the best scientists in the world full access to the miracle healings, and augment them with the best magicians in the world. Suppose further Bob, in this condition of observation with the best tools and people we can muster, every week demonstrated the ability to transmit a signal faster than light, demonstrated the ability to prime factorize very large numbers, and demonstrated the ability to transmute kilograms of one atomic element into any other desired atomic element. If the scientists and the magicians from across the world find absolutely no tricks going on, no natural materialistic technological tricks going on, and this state of affairs continues for several years, then I would make the following conclusions.

    * 1- There is a sometimes-physical being who sometimes goes by the name “Bob”.
    * 2- Bob has the power to teleport, or become ethereal, or leave this timespace, or something, with seemingly no access to any technology.
    * 3- Bob has the power to heal the sick, cure the blind, etc., with seemingly no access to any technology.
    * 4- Bob has the power to break seemingly any of the rules of reality by simply willing it, with seemingly no access to any technology.

    Is this evidence of the supernatural? I don’t care about the answer to that question. Bob has the power. It really doesn’t matter if you want to attach the label “supernatural” or not.

    Is Bob a god? I would be ok with that claim. It definitely matches very clearly the idea of gods of Greek and Roman myth of powerful supermen. Last I checked, the definition of a mere god didn’t require all-powerful and all-knowing, concepts which may be logically inconsistent or at least woefully underspecified.

    In this scenario, we at least have something to discuss. No one would have reasonable doubts about my conclusions 1-4. After that, it’s all semantics, and IMHO largely useless and confusing semantics. Worse, these kinds of arguments over semantics cause us to make wrong conclusions, like the flaws of intrinsic methodological naturalism. Please see:
    > How not to attack Intelligent Design Creationism: Philosophical misconceptions about Methodological Naturalism
    > Maarten Boudry, Stefaan Blancke, Johan Braeckman
    https://sites.google.com/site/maartenboudry/teksten-1/methodological-naturalism

    I agree with PZ with one minor fix. I would tell them to not even bother, but I would also tell them why they should not bother. They should not bother because I know that they don’t have any evidence even remotely as compelling as the evidence in my Bob scenario, and I think that is close to the minimum amount of evidence I would require to form a positive belief that there is a god.

    PS: To all of those people who want to say “what if it’s actually an alien using sufficiently advanced technology?”. That is exactly the same kind of epistemological nihilism present when a Christian argues “what if all of those fossils were put there by Satan?”. That kind of reasoning – absent any supporting evidence and contrary to a mass of overwhelming evidence to the contrary – is sophistry and solipsistic. Maybe it’s true that the really real world is like that, but I don’t live in the really real world. I live in the accessible world that we experience. I don’t experience this really real world, and so it does not matter. Unless and until something changes. Unless and until some new evidence arises which would allow me to tell the difference. For example, I might be a brain in a vat in The Matrix, but my hunger is still real, and I still need to take the same virtual steps to obtain virtual food to sate my very real hunger.

  66. EnlightenmentLiberal says

    @Ellenna Mcghie

    But yeah, to sum up and end my contribution to this fundie org, whether people believe in God or not really isn’t the issue. The real issue is that some people treat others without compassion and conscientiousness.

    I think that people with patently false beliefs, with magical thinking, with dogma, and without critical thinking skills are more likely to act as if they did not have compassion and conscientiousness. I think that the best way to produce good actions are to be knowledgeable about the likely consequences of these actions.

    I want to destroy religion and replace it with reason, skepticism, science, and humanism, because I think that would make the world into a better place for everyone.

    So far, I haven’t found atheist spaces to be all that great at demonstrating these qualities.

    This is a problem. It would be nice if it was better. I am trying to make it better as best as I can.

  67. EnlightenmentLiberal says

    @Daz

    If it exists outside nature, we—who can only work within nature—have no way to show that it exists, and have no grounds upon which to base the statement that it does. We may speculate that it does, but nothing more. And speculation regarding a particular being, with particular tastes and wishes is, frankly, absurd.

    Invariably, the god of the god hypothesis of the common believer sticks its hand into nature from time and time, and it cannot help but come out dripping in physics. The only kind of god that exists completely outside of nature, outside of space-time, is the non-interventionist deist god, and that is not the subject of the discussion. Most believers believe in a god that does something with regard to human affairs, especially in particular incidents a few thousand years ago.

    For any kind of interventionist god, it is detectable in principle. By definition, when we say “interventionist”, we mean a break of the usual rules of material reality, a break of the usual rules of physics. By definition, that kind of break is detectable in principle. If it wasn’t detectable even in principle, then it wouldn’t be a break of the usual rules of physics, and thus by definition it wouldn’t be an intervention.

    Of course, you might go to a Cartesian Demon as an example of an intervention which is not detectable even in principle, but that’s just a solipsistic argument, and I don’t deal in solipsism. I don’t deal with the really real reality. I only deal with the observable reality which I experience, and in the vein of positivism, I don’t see a meaningful difference between a god which does intervene in a completely undetectable way vs a god which doesn’t exist.