Arguments and empirical evidence that no god exists

Discuss philosophical questions regarding theism (and atheism), and discuss religion as it relates to philosophy. This includes any philosophical discussions that happen to be about god, gods, or a 'higher power' or the belief of them. This also generally includes philosophical topics about organized or ritualistic mysticism or about organized, common or ritualistic beliefs in the existence of supernatural phenomenon.
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Post by Alun »

Scott wrote:Alun, I don't see how your points are more useful in terms of believing or disbelieving god's existence than some epistemological skeptic or nihilist claiming in any other discussion that anything is possible, even that which violates logic rules, with some explanation why we supposedly can't know anything... This type of argument is a dime a dozen in epistemological discussions. I have no way to prove anything to a nihilist or anyone else claiming to be that epistemologically skeptical... And without agreed epistemological footing (i.e. an agreement to accept the usefulness of logic and empirical evidence), I think there is no point in discussing anything.
I am not a skeptic, I am a contextualist. Our every-day knowledge can be translated in terms of statements that can be reduced to logical objects and predicates, and in terms of statements that refer, at least indirectly, to phenomena we experience. The reason the example of metaphysics, especially all-powerful gods, is in a different epistemic context, is that statements about god and metaphysics are not assigned phenomenal meaning or constricted by logical rules. It is not just a supposed explanation that can be extended to any sort of discussion, because in most discussions the statements in question presuppose phenomenal meaning and logical guidelines, whereas statements about metaphysics go beyond them.

The reason why metaphysical statements, and statements about all-powerful gods, are in a different class, is because they refer to or try to describe something about everything. Not everything so far as we could ever perceive. Not everything so far as we could ever understand. Everything.
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Post by Abiathar »

The problem, in both threads, Scott, is that there IS no emperical evidence that can be had to prove or disprove God. The only evidence that those who do not believe in an entity known as God have is that they cannot see or hear it. The only evidence that those who DO believe in an entity known as God have is that they claim to have seen or heard it. Thus we find both positions are moot by default.
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Post by Abiathar »

Scott, the problem with both of these topics is that there is no emperical evidence for either side. Atheists do not believe because they cannot see, hear, taste, touch, or smell God. Theists believe becaue they believe the exact opposite, or because they find inferred proof of the existence of God. Science does not even have proof to infer the lack of existence, yet still they demand proof to the contrary.

Religion has been around for a vast number of eons longer than science, and one always says that "The Burden of Proof lies with the person attempting to prove smoething." Therefore, the Burden of Proof lies with science in disproving God, not the other way around, as scientists came second.

Hence this argument can never be answered, because even if there was an Entity that we find one day that is vastly powerful and claims to have created us, Science will merely state that it is not Omnipotent and thus not God, even if it created the universe.
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Post by Eckhart Aurelius Hughes »

Here is the argument of divine hiddenness as presented by Schellenberg:
Schellenberg wrote:1. If there is a God, he is perfectly loving.
2. If a perfectly loving God exists, reasonable nonbelief does not occur.
3. Reasonable nonbelief occurs.
4. No perfectly loving God exists (from 2 and 3).
5. Hence, there is no God (from 1 and 4).


***

Here is the most relevant part of Dawkins' Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit argument:
Richard Dawkins wrote:The temptation [to attribute the appearance of design to actual design itself] a false one, because the designer hypothesis immediately raises the larger problem of who designed the designer. The whole problem we started out with was the problem of explaining statistical improbability. It is obviously no solution to postulate something even more improbable. We need a "crane" not a "skyhook," for only a crane can do the business of working up gradually and plausibly from simplicity to otherwise improbable complexity.
In the argument, I think Dawkins proves that the skyhook hypothesis of an intelligent designer is self-defeating. In other words, one would have to be illogical to accept both the premise that the existence of intelligent life must be explained by a figurative skyhook such that an intelligent-being-entailing-reality just wouldn't happen to exist (or is extremely improbable) and that there is a even more intelligent/powerful being that us who doesn't require an even more intelligent/powerful being. Either it is reasonable to believe something which entails intelligent consciousness can just happen to exist (and has) or it can't be. Thus, to be logical, we must take this as evidence that no god exists.

***

In his book God: The Failed Hypothesis - How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist, Victor J. Stenger offers this scientific argument against the existence of God:
Victor J. Stenger wrote: 1. Hypothesize a God who plays an important role in the universe.
2. Assume that God has specific attributes that should provide objective evidence for his existence.
3. Look for such evidence with an open mind.
4. If such evidence is found, conclude that God may exist.
5. If such objective evidence is not found, conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that a God with these properties does not exist
The interesting thing above is that Stenger requires readers of the argument to only think about a god that is scientifically meaningful--essentially, in my analysis, taking theological noncognitivism out of the debate and the confusion arising from people alleging to believe in a cognitively or scientifically meaningless claim (i.e. one of which there would be no evidence either way by definition). In other words, the above argument makes use of the fact that in science, a statement like "X does not exist," is actually shorthand for "this alleged entity has no place in any scientific equations, plays no role in any scientific explanations, cannot be used to predict any events, does not describe any thing or force that has yet been detected, and there are no models of the universe in which its presence is either required, productive, or useful" (source).

***

Abiathar, your comments about the burden of proof are off-topic, IMO. Your comments about whether or not there is evidence that god exists is off-topic, IMO. On topic, you say there is no empirical evidence that god does not exist, but I disagree. In post #3, I have provided empirical evidence such as scientific studies to support some of my premises in my arguments in the OP, which when coupled with even just the probable truth of the other premises would be convincing evidence that god, as defined in the OP, does not exist.

***

Alun, epistemologically I consider myself a contextualist also. But logic is different than knowledge. Logic is a necessary aspect of thought and communication, resulting from the way language means. Fundamentally speaking, I think logic is descriptive not prescriptive, like saying that a rule of computing is that all information stored on a certain computer must be a series of 1s and 0s in sets of 8 digits. It describes the way we store information not the way the universe or things in it behave. Actual events and tangible things in the universe don't behave logically anymore than they behave in binary. Logic refers to the rules of our language, the system we use to translate observations into our language like a computer scanner translating a document into binary that obeys certain rules (like having 8 bits per byte). Binary becomes more practical when represented in an emergent language like C++ or JAVA just as logic becomes more practical when represented in an emergent language like English or Spanish. If you watch a movie with your eyes and ears, your mind will translate it into logic-as-English or logic-as-Spanish (you will literally almost hear someone in your head speaking that verbal/written language) just as if you put a sheet of paper in a computer scanner it might translate it into binary-as-C++ or binary-as-PDF. It is meaningless to say that the thing being scanned by the human eye or the computer scanner can violate the rules of logic or violate the rules of the computer system because those 'rules' are our description of qualities of the system translating the sensory data and then storing it as information and the language it uses. To say, -X = Y must mean X = -Y is like saying the scanned file must have a .PDF extension. It's a descriptive rule and doesn't refer to the nature or ability of the piece of paper being scanned or in this case an alleged god. Illogicality is senseless and thus meaningless to us, like trying to put a VHS tape in a CD drive of a computer. It simply has not been translating into the right language. You may say, well some things can't be translated into our language. Of course. But then it is meaningless to try to talk about then. It's neither true or false in the way a VHS tape is neither 101 or 010. It doesn't obey the rules of logic in the way a mountaintop doesn't obey the rules of C++ coding; it has nothing to do with them. It's meaningless to us like a VHS tape jammed in the CD drive of a computer is meaningless to the computer. By translating sensory input into meaningful words, you are putting them into a system that obeys logic, that is translating them into a logic-based language for information-storing and processing. Nothing we refer to with words, observer or otherwise think about can behave illogically, just as no information put into my computer could not be in binary.

We can talk about everything because everything only refers to things that have thinghood. If this 'god' you talk about is not a thing, and thus no more bound to logic than a VHS tape or a mountaintop to the rules of a particular binary-based system, then it is not even an idea. You could just as well be talking about whether or not ateiahfea exists. It's just meaninglessness.

But in this thread I have given a definition of god. I mean something by the word, and logic precedes meaning. And everything must be logical just like every computer program on my computer is in binary and made of 8-bit strings and so forth. Neither logic nor illogicality are traits of that which is being translated into our logic-based language.

In any case, closer to the topic of the thread, let me make it clear, my points and arguments only apply to that which is covered by logic. I'm not talking about non-things which we can't talk about and can't put into our language (like a computer can't put the movie stored on a VHS tape into binary if you try to jam the VHS tape in its CD drive). For instance, when I say "X is omnipotent" I don't mean "X can make a sandwich so big even X can't eat it," as that latter feat is not logical. Such an illogical being--a non-thing--is not what I am referring to. I am referring to something, a logical thing, a logical being. This thing, this logical being, that I refer to as a 'god' is defined more specifically in the OP. But it is a logical thing I am referring to. I am not referring to an illogical thing, i.e. a non-thing, like referring to 'the day after tomorrow but before yesterday.' That's a non-thing. A being more powerful than logically omnipotent such that he can do anything even do non-things like illogical things such as making a sandwich so big he, the omnipotent one, can't eat it. That's a non-thing. It's non-sense. Nonsensical statements are neither truth nor false. It's not what I am talking about in my arguments and it's not what I am referring to in my arguments. I am using words in meaningful ways. In other words, my arguments do not apply to the non-thing you are trying to talk about, Alun.
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Post by Marabod »

By its sense the term "exist" is applicable to the material entities of the Objective Reality. If something exists objectively, then this something is always available for examination. The existing entities of Reality "can be photographed or anyhow else copied, perceived by our senses and exist independently from us" (W. Lenin, Materialism and Empiriocriticism, 1903).

God, as defined by monotheistic religions, cannot be perceived by our senses or by devices designed to extend them, it cannot be copied or photographed or located somewhere independently from us. There is simply no and cannot be an entity in the Objective Reality which possesses the full set of "divine attributes". So, if we apply "God" to something which had this Universe created, then this something does not belong to this Universe as an object of it - and thus cannot "exist". It is the same as an author of some book does not exist within this book, so it is impossible to find this author somewhere between the pages. Neither this author has a power to change anything within the book already printed - his omnipotence only goes to the point when the book as such is created, starts to exist objectively, as then it continues existing already independently from its author.
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Post by Alun »

Thanks for your reply, Scott.
Scott wrote:It is meaningless to say that the thing being scanned by the human eye or the computer scanner can violate the rules of logic or violate the rules of the computer system because those 'rules' are our description of qualities of the system translating the sensory data and then storing it as information and the language it uses... We can talk about everything because everything only refers to things that have thinghood.
Does existence have "thinghood"? If so, what does it logically mean for something to exist?
Scott wrote:But in this thread I have given a definition of god. I mean something by the word, and logic precedes meaning.
I should clarify; I do not think that the entire conception of an all-powerful being is impossible to logically parse, especially not in the sense you're using 'logic.' But the statement, "An all-powerful being exists (or not)," is impossible to logically parse, because many of the features of the world which make us understand logic (such as our brains) are things, so something which had power over all things would also have power over (our) logic. Saying anything logically entails from the existence of such a being is impossible, so concluding that such a being exists or not is impossible.

What I mean is, there is no way to talk about omnipotence that does not end up preceding the very axioms that allow us to use logic in the first place--especially not if you're using a first-person characterization of logic. From what it sounds like, there is no way, by your definition, for there to be an omnipotent thing.
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Marabod, does your consciousness exist? Thoughts? Feelings? What about the asteroid we won't discover for 10 years? What about the planet we'll never see on the other side of the universe?

It seems to me that people usually mean something more non-empirical when they say, "exists."
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Post by Marabod »

Alun wrote: Marabod, does your consciousness exist? Thoughts? Feelings? What about the asteroid we won't discover for 10 years? What about the planet we'll never see on the other side of the universe?

It seems to me that people usually mean something more non-empirical when they say, "exists."
These are invalid questions/examples. My conscience is objectively established by the independent observers, who liaise with me - can the same be done to God? And this conscience has a material carrier, me myself, my body. My conscience is bound to this carrier and cannot be observed separately from it, same as the electric currents inside the radio receiver cannot be observed or measured without the actual receiver. Conscience is the evaluation of the observed pattern of my (or anyone's) behaviour, and it sure exists as the behaviour exists.

An asteroid, which we haven's discovered does not exist for us, same as the planet on the other side of the Universe - despite they both are expected to be material objects, possessing mass, velocity, orbits, and potentially even coordinates on the map. God lacks all these attributes.

If you state that "A" exists, I can rightfully ask "where does it exist?" - as there is nothing non-empirical in the definitions of the used word. Everything existing can be observed and located somehow. Not the God though...
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Post by Alun »

Marabod wrote:An asteroid, which we haven's discovered does not exist for us
This does not work. It is not helpful to say, "God does not exist for us," when what you mean is, "We do not observe God," or "We cannot locate God." Most believers in God would accept the statement, "We do not observe God." You've changed what it is that the discussion is about by using a purely empirical definition of existence.
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Post by Marabod »

Alun wrote:
Marabod wrote:An asteroid, which we haven's discovered does not exist for us
This does not work. It is not helpful to say, "God does not exist for us," when what you mean is, "We do not observe God," or "We cannot locate God." Most believers in God would accept the statement, "We do not observe God." You've changed what it is that the discussion is about by using a purely empirical definition of existence.
I did not notice me changing anything! "To exist" means "to belong to Objective Reality" in the sense of some entity or a property of some entity. There is no existence beyond Objective Reality - you can easily challenge this my statement by providing a single example of something existing, but not belonging to Objective Reality we observe.

Santa does not belong to Objective reality - means Santa does not exist. Here I mean "Santa" as per common perception of this name, a red-nosed St Nicholas, sled, Rudolph, chimney, presents etc. This means when claiming non-existence of something, we need to define what exactly does not exist. Same refers to God - the "existence" of God is based on the definition of God we mean. God in Abrahamic religions is defined as Omnipotent, Omnipresent, Omniscient, non-created, eternal, indestructible, having no name, size, shape or form, Origin of all things existing. The object with such attributes obviously does not belong to Objective reality we observe, so when one says "there is no God" this addresses God in the above sense, not any other God.

This commonly-admitted God projects on our Reality as Nothing, Zero, Zilch, Void, Absolute Vacuum. It is studied theoretically by Physics and Mathematics, and certainly does not require any "following", "worshiping" or "sacrifice". Nothing does not exist by its definition, and certainly cannot be located or created anyhow, so in some sense it does not have size, shape, name or form, and is eternal and indestructible, as it is hard to destroy something which is non-existent.

If you insist that there is some form of God, existing, belonging to Objective reality - then you need to show the coordinates, where this God can be found and observed.
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Post by Eckhart Aurelius Hughes »

Alun wrote:Does existence have "thinghood"?
Every thing is a thing or in other words has thinghood. So yes, assuming you are using the word in a meaningful way.

But nonsensical bungles of words or pseudo-ideas do not refer to anything. "The day before tomorrow and after yesterday" does not refer to a thing or a concept; it's nonsense; it's a non-thing. "A being so all-powerfully powerful he can make a sandwich so big he cannot eat it" is not a thing or a concept; it's nonsense; it's a non-thing. More to the point, it's not what I am talking about. I'm talking about things. If you are using the word god in an attempt to refer to such non-things, then you are not using the word to refer to what I refer to when I use the word, and we have simply had a misunderstanding resulting from equivocation. I'm sorry in that case that the definitions I provided in the OP were unclear. I, at least, only intend to refer to and discuss things and not nonsensical ideas or what I would call non-ideas (e.g. 'the day before yesterday and after tomorrow').
Alun wrote:If so, what does it logically mean for something to exist?
I don't understand what you mean by "logically mean." Again, the essential rules of logic are a quality of meaning, i.e. translating sensory data into categorical information (e.g. a stream of thoughts from multiple observations like "dog, not dog, not dog, dog, dog, not dog"). We create the concept dog, the concept to be, and a quality of these creations is that either a dog exists or no dog exist but not both. It has nothing to do with what we happen to be referring to by dog or exists, but by the very process of using a categorical system to process sensory data as information by inventing meaningful concepts. Ignoring equivocations, if the statement, "a dog exists" and the statement, "a dog does not exist" can both be true, then they are meaningless, which incidentally also negates truth or falsehood. You can't have any truth or falsehood without logic. Statements like 'the bachelor is married' are not really false but are actually meaningless. It doesn't matter what the particular definition of dog is or the definition of "exists" is. The necessities of logic are part of the inherent qualities of meaning without which we would not think at all. Our thought system simply is the creation and use of meaningful concepts that obey logic as a way to categorize sensory input and setup the foundation for processing information. There is no meaning without logic, and thus to ask what something logically means as such seems redundant.

To answer your question, my dictionary defines exist as:
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language wrote:1. To have actual being; be real.
2. To have life; live: one of the worst actors that ever existed.
3. To live at a minimal level; subsist: barely enough income on which to exist.
4. To continue to be; persist: old customs that still exist in rural areas.
5. To be present under certain circumstances or in a specified place; occur: "Wealth and poverty exist in every demographic category"
Alun wrote:An all-powerful being exists (or not)," is impossible to logically parse, because many of the features of the world which make us understand logic (such as our brains) are things...
We don't understand logic so much as we invent the sensory data processing system that uses logic and this is how we have a constant stream of meaningful words or other symbols flowing in our heads as opposed to being a mentally silent, logicless rock. We can logically parse any meaningful statement the same as any other. That's why why logic works with variables. For instance we can say, insofar as X is a meaningful concept then, logically it is true that not not X is the same as X. It doesn't matter whether X refers to a meaningful concept 'god' or to a dog or whatever because that logical rule that makes the statement "not not X is X" true is a function of meaning not a quality of the alleged thing-in-itself being categorized.

What you call 'god' may be impossible to logically parse if it is a nonsense, or in other words, if it is not a non-thing or non-concept, which depends on the definition of god, namely on whether it is a meaningful definition or nonsense. The statement 'widget exists' is logically impossible to parse insofar as widget is defined as 'the day before yesterday and after today.' Logic applies only to meaningful concepts because it is simply the aspect of their meaning. When we look at 5 different pictures from our eyes, and we classify two of them in one group and label it with a word like 'beautiful' (consider the first animal to invent such a concept) but not the other three, logic stems from the the act of classification, i.e. that 'beautiful' has to be different than not beautiful or else we are not actually doing anything. In other words, the rules of logic stem from the act of classifying two of those 5 pictures as a category with a label, a label that can be used to further describe future pictures. This is the source of thought, i.e. categorization. To have a category, a.k.a. an idea or concept or type of thinghood, is to have logical rules (i.e. either it is this or it is not this). Even cats and dogs and human babies can think to that degree. Either something is food or it is not food. It's all categorizations which entail logical rules. It is food I very tasty good or is not very tasty food. It is either tolerable food. Or it is not tolerable food. Thought is categorization and the symbolic labels thereof, and logic is the syntax. Logic is not some natural law that we inductively don't believe could happen because we've never seen a supernatural creature or simply lack the ability to observe. Logic is simply an extension of meaning. If deductive logic says X follows from Y, then it is saying that at a fundamental level X is synonymous with Y or at least with X + Y. That's why in a way deductive logic never gives us new information, it just tells us what we already know in new words in whatever complicated language we are using like English or Spanish, like the difference between looking at the same binary code in one 8-bit-per-character text format as opposed to another. afdfa = okiep could be simply that they each represent the same binary code. Just as saying 'the dog is red' as opposed to saying 'the dog is not not red' represent the same thought, and the thought is simply a complex categorization of sensory input.
Alun wrote:What I mean is, there is no way to talk about omnipotence that does not end up preceding the very axioms that allow us to use logic in the first place--especially not if you're using a first-person characterization of logic.
That depends what you mean by omnipotence. If it is a non-thing (e.g. 'the day before yesterday and after tomorrow' or 'the bachelor's wife') or a non-proposition (e.g. 'this sentence is false') then I guess you could say talking about it precedes the axioms of deductive logic. In any case, I think that it is nonsense and can't imagine honestly trying to talk about nonsense like that.

However, like I said in my last post, I am talking only about logical things. Thus when I say X is omnipotent I do not mean X can make a sandwich so big he cannot eat it or to say X can beat the bachelor's wife. All-powerful entails having all powers but excludes nonsense like that in the way 'all the time' entails all times but not nonsense times like the day before yesterday but after tomorrow. Naturally, if we are talking about a nonsense idea, i.e. non-idea/non-thing, and calling it 'god' then the only position we could take is a theological non-cognitivist position. That may be what you refer to by god, but it is not what I refer to by god in this thread.
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Post by Alun »

Marabod wrote:
Alun wrote:...You've changed what it is that the discussion is about by using a purely empirical definition of existence.
I did not notice me changing anything! "To exist" means "to belong to Objective Reality" in the sense of some entity or a property of some entity.
It seems to me that you've just changed the definition again. Unless you are saying this statement is coherent:

"An asteroid, which we haven's discovered does not [belong to objective reality] for us"

If you think that statement is coherent, please explain how.
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Scott wrote:You can't have any truth or falsehood without logic
I agree with this. What I am now questioning is how you can say a thing (by your definition) is "omnipotent." Even defining it as, "Having complete power over all things," you make the word logically unverifiable. As I said above, it means that all of the things we require in order to perceive according to logic are dependent on the omnipotent thing. This in turn means that we cannot verify that the omnipotent thing is a thing in the first place, which I guess makes it a non-thing.
Scott wrote:We don't understand logic so much as we invent the sensory data processing system that uses logic and this is how we have a constant stream of meaningful words or other symbols flowing in our heads as opposed to being a mentally silent, logicless rock
This does not avoid the problem. The processing system is a thing over which an omnipotent thing would have complete power.
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Post by Eckhart Aurelius Hughes »

Alun,

As I use the term, an omnipotent being could not make 2 + 2 = 5. He could not make a bachelor be married. He could change the meaning of the words or symbols we use, such that the word bachelor no longer referred to the idea that we know refer to with the word bachelor, but the pseduo-information in so-called a priori knowledge, because it is inherently redundant without regard to informational content, cannot be changed even by what I would call an omnipotent being if such a being existed. He can no more make '2 + 2 = 5' or make 'the triangle have 4 sides' than he could make 'gobla yks feaif' because it's nonsense. It's not something he can't do it. It is not even a thing. It's not a thing that doesn't exist; it's just not a thing. It's not in the subcategory of things that exist or the subcategory of things that don't exist. It isn't even an it. Nothing no matter how powerful can change the foundation of our thought to make us think '2 + 2 = 5' or 'bachelors are married' because those are not things we can think, things we can perceive or things we can conceive. They aren't things at all. They are aren't that exist or things that don't exist. They aren't things that happen to be the case or things that don't happen to be the case.

The category omnipotent things is a subcategory of things. An omnipotent thing cannot be a non-thing. If you using a non-nonsensical definition of omnipotence, then the psuedo-idea you are calling 'omnipotence' itself is a non-thing/non-idea/non-concept. Any question containing that idea (e.g. 'does an omnipotent being exist?') would also be nonsensical like asking 'is the statement, this statement is false, false,' or 'where is the bachelor's wife?'

I repeat I am not referring to such nonsense. When I use the word god and by extension the word omnipotent I am referring to things, i.e. concepts. If when you say 'god' or 'omnipotent' being you are attempting to pseudo-refer to a non-thing allegedly able to make 2 + 2 = 5, then you are not talking about what I am talking about and none of my syllogisms apply. We have simply had a misunderstanding resulting from equivocation. In regards to such a pseudo-concept pseudo-referring to a non-thing, I can only take a simple noncognitivist approach. I can only respond by pointing out the nonsense and lack of an answer for questions attempting to connect or reject qualities of non-ideas such as "Does the bachelor's wife have blond hair or blue hair?" "Is the being who is able to make 2 + 2 = 5 fictional or does it exist?" "Is the day simultaneously before yesterday and after tomorrow a holiday or not?" It's not that I don't know the answer to such questions; it's that such questions are nonsense, they make the mistake of treating non-ideas as ideas and thus assuming the have qualities or lack of qualities like blondness, existence, or holidayness, but to try to say those so-called things have anything is nonsense because 'they' are not things, not concepts, not ideas. The definition in the OP was not clear, I guess. I am using the words 'god' and 'omnipotence' to refer to a concept, not making some sort of pseudo-reference to a non-concept/non-thing.
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Post by Marabod »

Alun wrote:
Marabod wrote: I did not notice me changing anything! "To exist" means "to belong to Objective Reality" in the sense of some entity or a property of some entity.
It seems to me that you've just changed the definition again. Unless you are saying this statement is coherent:

"An asteroid, which we haven's discovered does not [belong to objective reality] for us"

If you think that statement is coherent, please explain how.
_________________________________
Alun, stop "trolling", please! Just make a web search for what "Objective Reality" means. It has certain agreed properties - it can be observed, sensed, copied, photographed etc and must exist independently from the Observers, but this existence must be verifiable by these Observers through their senses. Your non-discovered asteroid cannot be sensed, touched, photographed etc, means it is not a part of Objective Reality. O.R. is a well-defined Philosophical Category, its definition cannot be twisted either way depending on your mood or plans. Re-read Scott's post about the definitions what means "to exist" - it mentions "to be real", which exactly means "to belong to Objective reality". Your God is surreal, not it only does not have an existence, it even has no definition, so when speaking of "god" you speak of something you cannot explain to the others, as you yourself do not know what it is.
Wowbagger
Posts: 649
Joined: July 19th, 2010, 9:46 am
Favorite Philosopher: Peter Singer _ David Pearce

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Post by Wowbagger »

About a year ago I've come across an article that I found worth bookmarking. I think it's intriguing, but I still don't really know what to think of it. In a way it does sound convincing. Read it yourselves:

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/110595
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Alun
Posts: 1118
Joined: July 11th, 2009, 8:55 pm

Post by Alun »

Scott wrote:As I use the term, an omnipotent being could not make 2 + 2 = 5.
What an omnipotent being could do to the actual concepts of 2, +, =, and 5 is not the issue. It seems clear to me that any being who you or I would be willing to call "omnipotent" would, at the very least, be able to make you believe, and view as self-evident, that 2 + 2 = 5. Likewise for any other perceptions you view yourself to have, regardless of the logical necessity you attribute to them. It will always be true that such a being may manipulate the very basis of any evidence you acquire, by definition. Therefore it seems meaningless to say that there might be evidence which counts for or against the likelihood of such a being's existence, even if we use your definition of "omnipotent."
_________________________________

Marabod, I am not posting just to try and get a rise out of you, I am posting what I believe to be legitimate considerations about the topic of discussion. If you do not want to talk to me, then you are free to stop.

My original point was that most people would consider an asteroid, which is as of yet undiscovered and may never become discovered, to nevertheless exist, and for this existence to be a fact--even if it may only be proven or disproven hypothetically.

When I personally assert the existence of something A to someone, I usually mean to indicate that phenomena strongly correspond to A as an explanation of the world. But that's an unusual sense of "existence," and clearly not what's being used in this discussion (neither in this thread or in general).

Likewise, I do not think your definition of existence fits this discussion, as it seems clear to me that most people who believe in God view His existence to be epistemically similar to the existence of one particular asteroid on the other side of the universe: A fact that humans are probably never going to verify.
"I have nothing new to teach the world" -Mohandas "Mahatma" Gandhi
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