Any atheists in here?
POSTED BY: BlackCollarBrowncoat
UPDATED: Sunday, March 12, 2006 20:19
VIEWED: 38267
PAGE 14 of 18
Quote:
Originally posted by christhecynic:Quote:
It's also relatively meaningless, because it's impossible to prove a negative.
I can prove that there is no finite set containing all primes, I can prove that there is no dog at my left elbow, I can prove a hell of a lot of negitives.
How would you prove the non-existance of God?
(The Dog could be invisible by the way
Quote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_proof
This article is about a logical fallacy. The term negative proof can also refer to a proof of impossibility.
The fallacy of appealing to lack of proof of the negative is a type of logical fallacy of the following form:
"This exists because there is no proof that it does not exist."
Non-fallacious ways to prove something include the use of logical syllogisms and/or the incorporation of empirical observations. But it is not logical to argue that something exists simply because there is no proof to the contrary; one cannot say, "No one has proven that aliens do not exist. Therefore, based on that alone, they must exist, notwithstanding that I have no evidence that they do exist". Given (as it is above) that it was not proven that aliens do not exist, they might exist, but this alone does not prove them to exist.
The issue here christhecynic is that you claim to be championing logic but you are continuing to espouse a logical fallacy.
Practice what you preach
...................................
Hurrah, hurrah, when things are at their worst
With cries of “Death or Glory” comes the mighty Twenty-First
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Quote:
Originally posted by Hotpoint:
How would you prove the non-existance of God?
I wouldn't, I'm taking issue with the fact he is claiming an absolute which is not true, I agree on the topic of god. It's the vast sweeping generalization I disagree with.
Quote:
(The Dog could be invisible by the way
It would have to be more than simply invisible, for example would need to have no body heat, and thus not be warm blooded, and thus not be a dog.
I can't prove that there is no living thing there, but I can prove there is no dog. (I should point out that I meant “live dog” I suppose. The lack of air displacement indicates a lack of respiration which is also a pretty damning thing for the pro-dog camp.)
Quote:
The issue here christhecynic is that you claim to be championing logic but you are continuing to espouse a logical fallacy.
Which one exactly? Because I never used the argument you just pointed out was a fallacy. Why don't you read my posts? I never argued that the lack of proof against god is proof of god. I argued that absence of proof is not proof of absence.
I have not once argued for god in this entire thread. So, taking that into account, and assuming that you really did read my posts, when do you think I used that fallacy?
Quote:
Practice what you preach
I'd love to.
Please help me by telling me when I was not.
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Quote:
Originally posted by christhecynic:Quote:
Originally posted by Hotpoint:
The issue here christhecynic is that you claim to be championing logic but you are continuing to espouse a logical fallacy.
Which one exactly? Because I never used the argument you just pointed out was a fallacy. Why don't you read my posts? I never argued that the lack of proof against god is proof of god. I argued that absence of proof is not proof of absence.
Come off it! The basis of your argument is that Atheism is a Religion/has religious undertones because it requires faith in the non-existance of God.
This as an argument is utterly refuted by the fact that you do not need proof of the non-existance of something, but merely the existance of it.
Not believing in something for which no evidence exists is not faith.
Quote:
Originally posted by christhecynic:
I have not once argued for god in this entire thread. So, taking that into account, and assuming that you really did read my posts, when do you think I used that fallacy?
How about your quote here:
"I believe in god and you believe in a lack of god, that means we both believe something with no hard evidence, those that don't believe have the only intellectually defensible position."
Or here:
"What I wanted to make sure you know is that everything is based on belief."
Or here:
"The belief that there is no god is a belief about god."
Or here:
"I mean come on, if holding a belief about the nature of god is not religious than what is religious?"
There is a running theme in your posts that tries to equate a belief in the non-existance of God with a belief in the existance of one. You have even purported that Atheism is a religious belief based upon that.
Your entire premise is undermined by the fact that non-existance does not require proof. That is where you have fallen into the trap of the logical fallacy of equating belief in God with non-belief. One is inherrently a faith position which requires proof, the other is not because non-existance does not logically require proof.
Quote:
Originally posted by christhecynic:Quote:
Practice what you preach
I'd love to.
Please help me by telling me when I was not.
Re-read your posts
...................................
Hurrah, hurrah, when things are at their worst
With cries of “Death or Glory” comes the mighty Twenty-First
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Just butting in to say this is a pointless argument. You're time cna be better spent by hand painting all those little gravel bits in the driveway different colors. Just saying.
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Debate is never pointless, even when no conclusion can be reached it still has worth. It drives one to think, maybe to think in ways one never did before.
That is a valuable thing.
--------------------------------------------------
Who do you suppose is in there?
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Anyway, what I got out of the discussion was this (and everyone, please forgive me if I misstate your positions, this is just my understanding):
There is the position that human observation and thought have been pretty good (so far) at regularly linking observable phenomena to other observable phenomena in time and space. (This is with the caveat that human senses and therefore human thought are inextricably limited.) Therefore, since these things seem to be linked to each other there does not seem to be any evidence for another agency - a god. Additionally the condition of intellectual self-awareness and the history of the development of the idea of god(s) (traceable through religion), mean it is possible that the idea of god is an outgrowth of language development.
The counter to that is that you can't use what you assume to prove what you assume. I would state it differently. I would say that perception and logic may be a closed system, and that god may be outside of that closed system. However, that definitely puts god in a non-testable category, outside of human experience and therefore in the realm of faith.
The other argument was, restated, if you can't prove to me that god doesn't exist, then your belief in god's non-existence is a matter of faith. I have some issues with that argument, which are that: it is logically impossible to positively prove a negative (therefore requiring such proof is fallacious); and also, if god is definitionally outside of perception any proof, no matter how formulated, is impossible.
I did want to add comments about emergent properties from simple rules, evolution, and the balance of existence - which has to do with the search for god in the physical world.
The mere presence of this universe in its current form may naturally result from the condition that anything else is unstable. And that that is why the universal constants are so finely balanced. It's from physical natural selection in that nothing else lasted very long.
I wish I could remember the name of the book or the name of the author - maybe someone can supply it for me. What he did was demonstrate that by applying simple invariant rules you can develop complex, asymmetrical, non-repeating patterns if you follow them long enough. In other words, complexity invariably emerges from simplicity.
And, everything is in evolution, including life. Darwin never said 'survival of the fittest''. What he proposed was natural selection of existing variations.
If variation is an emergent property and selection a natural consequence, then there is no point to looking to the 'creation' for evidence of god.
Finally, it's strange to me that people stumble over the question 'who created the universe', but glide over the question 'who created the creator'.
This is not to claim a definitive answer to is there a god(s) or not, it's just an outline of my thoughts.
Nearly everything I know I learned by the grace of others.
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Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
Finally, it's strange to me that people stumble over the question 'who created the universe', but glide over the question 'who created the creator'.
People like to work backwards from the present. For example:
Why are we human?
We evolved.
But why did we evolve?
A changing climate made it so that what we previously were was not as fit for survival as certain variations produced by random mutation.
Then why did the climate change?
...
So why is the earth here?
When the sun was being created an uneven distribution of matter caused some things to ...
But why was the sun created?
...
What caused the big bang?
Until an answer is placed here people won't want to move to the next step, many people who believe the answer is "god" have gone into great lengths to figure that out though.
The common answer is that the universe is made of space-time and since before it existed neither space nor time had meaning it is pointless to talk about cause and effect before it was created because there was no "before" until it was created.
Kind of an annoying argument, not gratifying in the least.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Hotpoint:
Come off it! The basis of your argument is that Atheism is a Religion/has religious undertones because it requires faith in the non-existance of God.
No the basis of my argument is that anything taken without proof is on faith and anything taken without evidence is blind faith. It works for cats too. Watch:
"Hey there's a cat over there?"
Do you believe it? Truth is I don't even know if it's true. I have a cat, and she has been known to be there (over by my TV to be more specific) but I can't actually see there right now.
I could believe that she is not there (on faith), I could believe that she is there (on faith), or I could reserve judgment till I have a reason to believe one way or another. These three positions are different, especially if I decide to do something based on a position, like pet the cat.
(If she is there, for example, and I believe that she isn't and then go to pet her I'll never find her because when I look for her there will be no reason to check there. After all if I checked in all of the places I believe she isn't, Westminster Abby for example, we might both die of old age before I found her.)
Quote:
This as an argument is utterly refuted by the fact that you do not need proof of the non-existance of something, but merely the existance of it.
Not believing in something for which no evidence exists is not faith.
Which I have said I agree with how many times?
Again:
When someone says:
"I do not believe in U."
I believe that they do not need to offer proof.
However when someone says:
"I believe U is false."
I believe they should either offer evidence, or admit that they believe it on faith.
It is what I was taught and the reasoning went like this:
(Eunuch = A man without functioning testicles.)
(The room contains at least one man.)
Assume that if there is a lack of any evidence for something we can conclude that it does not exist.
Statement: "I believe that there exists a eunuch in this room."
Response: there is no evidence that there is a eunuch in this room.
Thus there is not a eunuch in this room.
Statement: "I believe that there exists a working testicle in this room."
Response: There is no evidence that there is a working testicle in this room.
Thus there is not a working testicle in this room.
Because there is a man but not a single working testicle the man must be a eunuch.
Therefore
1 There is not a single eunuch in this room.
2 There is at least one eunuch in this room.
This is a contradiction. This contradiction was arrived at because we assumed that absence of proof for something was sufficient to believe that the thing in question does not exist.
-
I would have brought up this example earlier but I really didn't want to have to use the word testicle repeatedly.
Of course by changing the words I can do the same thing with your argument.
Quote:Quote:
Originally posted by christhecynic:
I have not once argued for god in this entire thread. So, taking that into account, and assuming that you really did read my posts, when do you think I used that fallacy?
How about your quote here:
"I believe in god and you believe in a lack of god, that means we both believe something with no hard evidence, those that don't believe have the only intellectually defensible position."
I wasn't arguing for god I was saying that I personally believe and that to believe in anything without evidence is faith. (Even when I'm the one doing it.)
Let me repeat: To believe anything without evidence is faith. That is very different than saying that a lack of evidence against something is proof of it.
Quote:
Or here:
"What I wanted to make sure you know is that everything is based on belief."
That’s not about religion or god. Is true though. Science and math, my two favorite ways to model reality, are both based on beliefs. In math we call them axioms. In philosophy they cal
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I was unaware it was possible to double post while editing an already posted message. I'll be more careful the next time I try to fix formating.
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Quote:
Originally posted by christhecynic:
No the basis of my argument is that anything taken without proof is on faith and anything taken without evidence is blind faith. It works for cats too. Watch:
"Hey there's a cat over there?"
Sorry but you are just completly ignoring the issue at hand and are now trying to back peddle because that is not just what you were saying earlier, you were trying to equate belief or non-belief in God as being equally a matter of faith which they are patently not because of the need for evidence for one but not the other.
Quote:
Originally posted by christhecynic:Quote:
This as an argument is utterly refuted by the fact that you do not need proof of the non-existance of something, but merely the existance of it.
Not believing in something for which no evidence exists is not faith.
Which I have said I agree with how many times?
So you're admitting that your earlier arguments were logically false?
Or are you saying you didn't say what you said earlier?
Or that you didn't mean what you said?
Quote:
Originally posted by christhecynic:
"I believe U is false."
I believe they should have to offer proof, or evidence, or admit that they believe it on faith.
But that is not quite what you were saying earlier is it (be honest now)
In any case the burden of truth vis a vis the existance of God must lie primarily with the Theist wouldn't you say?
Quote:
Originally posted by christhecynic:
I wasn't arguing for god I was saying that I personally believe and that to believe in anything without evidence is faith. (Even when I'm the one doing it.)
Let me repeat: To believe anything without evidence is faith. That is very different than saying that a lack of evidence against something is proof of it.
You are still utterly missing, or perhaps avoiding, the point. YOU EQUATED BELIEF IN A GOD WITH NON-BELIEF IN THAT YOU MAINTAINED THEY BOTH REQUIRE PROOF. THIS IS THE LOGICAL FALLACY YOU DENIED MAKING.
The fact that there is no proof of the non-existance of God is utterly irrelevant to the debate. The burden of proof lies solely with the theist.
Quote:
Originally posted by christhecynic:Quote:
"The belief that there is no god is a belief about god."
Are you claiming that it isn't? Then what is it a belief about? Fish?
Obfuscation. The point was that you were still trying to make it seem like it was an equal matter of faith, or proof, on both sides which is patently false.
Quote:
Originally posted by christhecynic:Quote:
Your entire premise is undermined by the fact that non-existance does not require proof. That is where you have fallen into the trap of the logical fallacy of equating belief in God with non-belief. One is inherrently a faith position which requires proof, the other is not because non-existance does not logically require proof.
Then I guess there exists no universe without a god.
After all there is no proof that a universe without a god exists, and non-existence does not require proof, so it's ok to believe that it doesn't exist but requires faith to believe that it does. So I’m justified any you‘re acting on faith. YAY!
Total drivel. There is evidence for the existance of the Universe itself which would be the starting block of such an argument on existance. How the Universe came into existance would be a subsequent question and it would be at that point that the issue of whether a creator was required would come up
Quote:
Originally posted by christhecynic:
That is if you are right about non-existance not requiring proof.
Nice try but since you started out on a false premise (bringing the causation of the universe in before establishing its existance) the rest of your chain of logic (such as it was) fell apart.
Quote:
Originally posted by christhecynic:
Of course since iNOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME