Perhaps "God" however you perceive your deity is extremely difficult to observe because he/she/it is governed by quantum mechanics and the act of observing changes his/her/its state from omnipotent/omniscient/omnipresent to simply human. Maybe you may only measure his/her/its velocity or position but not both at the same time.

/just sayin

Wolf_Blitzer: Bevets: Standard MO for atheists. Strawmen and Ridicule make up 99% of their comments in any forum. Consider this tread Exhibit A.

Evolutionism is the tinfoil hat atheists wear to keep God out of their brainwaves.

Pot, kettle, etc...

I prefer the more poetic form: "Do not listen to the raven," said the crow, "for he is a ill-manned eater of carrion, and black feathered besides."

Antimatter: Prove to me, without quoteing the bible, that the bible is true, in such a way that can't be used to prove the others true as well.

Been there, done that, had his reasoning ripped to shreds, didn't get a T-Shirt. Part of the problem is he's trying to persuade others to accept the absolute axiomatic truth of Biblical Inerrancy, but then abandons the axioms used for that task once this has been "established". Someone with a degree in religious studies could probably point out a good parallel between this and the ascension of the soul from the material world, and connections to Gnosticism and other nifty "heresies".

chard: science is one way of obtaining answers to questions, but it is not the only way, since some questions lie outside of what science can answer.

More accurately, "Science" at the heart is a way of testing multiple answers against each other for how well they match to existing observations; the methods of search for such answers (experimental scientific research) and the resulting answers currently accepted as "best" (scientific theories) are related but of much lesser importance to the nature of Science. And while there are some questions outside of the realm of science, I would be interested in an example of one with both material evidence and material consequences.

Samsaran: They want to force their views down YOUR throat in exactly the same manner they accuse of others of doing.

Evangelicals are all this way, whether Atheists, Christian, or some other flavor of fundie nut. Some atheists don't have as pushy an agenda. Some of us even quietly practice a religion we don't believe in while near our families, since religion is a good tool for inculcating basic morality into small children and other sociopaths. Religion helps keep the neighborhood rednecks from adding long pig to the venison in their freezer.

Furthermore, diversity is usually a good thing from an evolutionary standpoint. Minimally domesticated religious zealots are useful for a society to have to insure enthusiastic willing cannon fodder for response to attacks by feral religious zealots, somewhat like dogs to drive off wolves. It's only when we encounter fundie whackos who figure the environment isn't important because Jesus is coming next Tuesday that we start getting antsy.

ah3133: By attempting to disprove that God exists, atheism implicity assumes that God exists, since reason, thinking, knowledge pertain only to that which exists.

And that's your error right there. Go study the proof for the Banach-Tarski sphere dissection, and tell me it has some connection to "existence". (As near as I can tell, it's the mathematician's equivalent of the gootse pic.)

As another example, while Turing Degree complexity of any natural number (or Cantor ordinal, as far as I can tell) is allowed mathematically for a system, the observed universe seems to match the Strong Church-Turing Universe Thesis - Turing Degree zero, and no higher.

The idea of God does not make God "real", any more than the idea of lunch will keep you from starvation.

Bevets: John 14.6 Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me."

Yes, yes:

Bevets: There can be no higher source for Truth than the Word of God.

Nuff said.

TKPMM5: Religon can be used for good or evil.

"With or without religion, good people will do good, and evil people will do evil. But for good people to do evil, that takes religion." - Steven Weinberg

sarcastrophe: You can't mix philosophy and science. Once is purely conjecture and one is purely evidence.

No. Science is a subset of philosophy. Science takes the axioms for mathematics - Propositional logic (such as the Robbins axioms) and Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory - along with some assumed bounds on the character of the universe - the Strong Church-Turing Universe Thesis is sufficient. They aren't very exciting Philosophy (except to mathematicians), but they're there at the underpinnings. Once Science has this philosophical foundation, THEN it starts whacking at the evidence with hopes for explanation.

Philosophy, on the other hand, need not rely on evidence, logic, or even self-consistency. However, the results of abandoning the latter two tend to be strange.

Q: Is Eris true?
A. Everything is true.
Q. Even false things?
A. Even false things are true.
Q. How can that be?
A. I don't know, man. I didn't do it! - From "The Principia Discordia", the holy book of Discordianism

KiltedBastich: Cogito, ergo sum. As far as I know you're a figment of my imagination, so why should I bother?

Existence of other people may be presumed as a minimal explanation since while you laugh when tickled, you cannot tickle yourself.

KiltedBastich: This is a direct violation of the principle of parsimony, which states that all other things being equal, you accept the hypothesis that explain all the observable evidence with the least number of terms. Occam's Razor. Adding God increases complexity, and does not increase explanatory value. Therefore, God is discarded from the argument.

The Principle of Parsimony (aka Occam's Razor) is a philosophical principle that may be accepted or rejected. I point you to the Wallace/Dowe and Vitanyi/Li papers on the topic; they reduce Occam's Razor to a formal mathematical form (with edge cases elaborated). This allows you to take the simpler principles of the validity of the Robbin's Axioms, the self-consistency of Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory, and the Strong Church-Turing Universe Thesis for foundations.

(I'm not disputing your result, mind you, merely your method of reaching it.)

Samsaran: They do not even begin to address the question of consciousness and human self awareness.

Self-referential approximations via Turing theory. Like 99.99% of humanity, you are woefully ignorant of mathematics.

Sabyen91: There is no proof of psychological or social benefits of religion.

I would disagree; that it is a universally (and generally independently) evolved trait of all human societies suggests that it has some survival benefit. I refer you to David Sloan Wilson's Darwin's Cathedral for more details.

Samsaran: Large and small ... these terms are meaningless in the face of the infinite.

I repeat: you need to study more math. There are bigger and smaller infinities in mathematics.

KiltedBastich: Erm, this whole post of yours supports atheism, Bevets. I'm really starting to wonder about you.

I'm fairly certain a large percentage of his postings is on an intellectual par with output from the I Ching.

letrole: Atheism is a Religion.

Merely a religious position; it lacks the rites and practices of religions, such as Christianity, Islam, Star Trek, or Discordianism. (The scholars are still arguing over whether the Church of the FSM is really a religion or not.)

letrole: Hitler was a nominal Catholic, the same as John Lennon. When challenged on this point, your further qualification of "true Christian" shows that you are aware that Hitler wasn't a Christian.



Hitler was a nominal Catholic.
Catholics are Christians.
Ergo, Hitler was a nominal Christian.

KiltedBastich: I freely acknowledge that I don't have the background in math to properly understand the formal proofs. But then unfortunately most of the people here share that lack. In any event the principle of parsimony is a heuristic used to choose the best answer from those available based on the evidence. It is not ultimate truth - how can it be when new evidence also changes which theory the principle supports?

Yeah, and I consider it a Farking pity I've yet to encounter anyone who has the math to follow it, even well enough to really understand the results.

Still, the validity of the principle stands, as "best answer" is a sloppy approximation for "most probable to correctly predict the character of new information, given the existing information", which in turn is a sloppy approximation for the exact mathematical symbolism, exception cases, and whatnot.

But as long as you remember it's a somewhat sloppy quick-and-dirty approximation, you don't go too far astray. When you need rigor, you need to go back to mathematics.

KiltedBastich: Faith is a positive belief in the existence of something lacking any evidence of that thing, often but not necessarily something purportedly supernatural. In fact, evidence obviates faith. If you have evidence for it, your belief is no longer faith, it's theory.

More exactly, Faith is a belief in something lacking testability. The connection between Evidence and Reality is one such... which is why evidence does not completely obviate faith. However, most people are willing to agree to this (or some equivalent group of propositions, such as my preference for Robbins, ZF non-contradiction, and SCTUT).

letrole: Nominal means "in name", so it's dishonest to use anything Hitler that did or said in a discussion of Christian belief or practise.

Why? How does one distinguish a Nominal Christian from other forms of Christian, while avoiding the "True Scotsman" fallacy - or, for than matter, excluding most people today generally considered "Christians"? (Pat Robertson, say.)

KiltedBastich: Atheists, as part of their system of belief, assume there is no God, and leave it at that.

Or in some cases, assume other things, examine the evidence, conclude the hypothesis of God's existence is insufficiently supported, note this, and proceed from there.

letrole: Atheism becomes a Religion when the lack of belief changes from a simple description to a Profession of Belief.

So, does my stating my belief in Robbins, ZF consistency, and SCTUT qualify as Religion and Profession of Belief, if rejection of God is merely tentative based on observation?

For what it's worth, the usual scholarly definition of Religion requires not merely Beliefs, but Practices. So are you dismissing the taxonomic requirement of Practices, or considering Profession itself to be a sufficient to constitute Practice?

KiltedBastich: The most rigorous mathematics possible has some degree of inaccuracy, incompleteness, and error, however vanishingly small, when compared to the actual universe it is intended to describe.

Actually, it's the other way around. Mathematics is as rigorous as it is possible to get; the question is, how closely does any mathematical representation of the data resemble the universe we observe? The rigor of math merely is just an approximation to the sloppy limits of observable reality - Heisenberg's uncertainty being the best-known formal limit, although there are related ones elsewhere. And, of course, one can describe the quality of the approximation to a finite data set... mathematically. Heh.

(Wallace and Dowe came to their results by expressly considering the concept of measurement error and data representation.)

KiltedBastich: Agreed, the connection between evidence and reality is in fact an assumption. But throw that one out and you're back to solipsism. As far as defensible assumptions go, I think that one's about as strong as they come.

While there are a few alternatives to solipsism at that point, I think most of the alternatives (EG, the nature of the universe can only be known by direct divine revelation) are comparably straightjacket worthy. However, from my background in mathematics, I always try to make sure these kind of assumptions are stated clearly up front... if only because people look really, really silly when they reject them. Someone who doesn't accept "'P OR Q' is equivalent to 'Q OR P'" gets funny looks in public debate.