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).
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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.