Alun, please forgive me for breaking your post into so many pieces of quotes to respond below.
Alun wrote:That said, I can still interpret your argument as if 'omnipotence' does not include the power to distort meaning (in the above way or any other way).
I thank you for being able and willing to disregard our disagreement about meaning to interpret my argument and discuss the matter at hand.
Scott wrote:Premise 1: If there was an omnipotent creator god, we would be very intelligent designed.
Premise 2: We are not very intelligently designed.
Conclusion: There is not an omnipotent creator god.
Alun wrote:I think my rebuttal to this particular argument mostly stands as it was: Even if the god is very logical, and incapable of intruding on our logic, it's still impossible to fathom what he might consider a good idea for a design. Sure, you can think of many standards of success which life on earth and which the rest of the universe does not meet, but how do you decide what standard of success god must use? So I disagree with the premises, as before.
Am I correct to take that paragraph as a rebuttal of premise 2? Taking it as such, I think you are right that I cannot say premise 2 is true as surely as I can say that I ate pancakes for breakfast this morning. However, I personally am confident that premise 2 is probably true. If I could show that premise 1 and 2 were both each definitely true, then I would have thereby
proven god (as defined for sake of argument) does not exist. I admit I have not proven this but merely provided evidence for it based on the probability of the truth of premise 2. So when you ask how do I "decide what standard of success god must use" your implication is right that I cannot decide what he absolutely
must do. Consider the great chef analogy: If I take you to a restaurant and you know nothing of the restaurant or the cook of the food except by tasting the dish brought in front of you. Assuming the first premise (If a great chef cooked this food, it will be great food.) is true, then you can judge the presence of a great chef cooking the food by the taste of the food. You taste the food and it is bad, like it had been microwaved. Perhaps it has been
proven to you that there is no great chef cooking the food to the degree that you could be wrong that the food was bad. Only if you were omniscient could you say 100% that premise 2 (the food was poorly prepared by the chef) is false. But there's a huge range between complete ignorance and omniscience wherein is all human knowledge. This non-omniscience but not complete ignorance is what gives us probabilities. If you have some evidence that the food is bad, then you can say it is from that state of evidence probably true that the food is bad, which is evidence (but being a probability still not proof) that there no great chef cooked that food.
Scott wrote:scientific studies of the effectiveness of prayer can help us figure out whether or not a god exists (premise 1).
Alun wrote:There is really no way to know whether god cares to answer prayers.
You are right. Let me rephrase. If I could know 100% that a god would answer prayers if he existed (in addition to 100% knowing premise 2), then god's nonexistence would be proven to me. However, I think I have provided
evidence not proof that god does not exist by severely limiting the type of god that could exist.
In analogy, if a detective finds out a potential suspect's alibi is a lie it does not prove the suspect is guilty, since there still are some reasonable possible scenarios that explain the lie, the lack of alibi but it is evidence since it narrows eliminates some of the possible scenarios in which he is innocent thereby making it more probable that one of the scenarios in which he is guilty is true.
Scott wrote:Scientific studies have repeatedly found that prayer is utterly ineffective regardless of who prays, of which god they pray to and of what they pray about (premise 2).
Alun wrote:[There is really no way to know whether god], e.g., rewards for them in an afterlife.
Fair enough. But don't people usually pray specifically for something to happen before they die? Surely many people prayed that the incarcerated Jews wouldn't be murdered by the Nazis by the millions, for example. In another example, consider a a woman was about to be attacked and raped by a gang of hoodlums, and she quickly got on her knees and prayed to god to prevent her from being raped but her prayer has no effect (in this life); even if after she physically dies 60 years later--perhaps after having suffered from unrelated personality-altering brain injuries and complete memory loss decades after the rape (
more examples like this)--say she was kept alive in some afterlife, I'm not sure how that prayer could be answered since the time has passed.
Scott wrote:Premise 1: If there was an omnipotent or otherwise supernaturally powerful god, he would not cause or let utterly, unproductively awful things such as the holocaust which entailed the mass-murder of children to occur.
Premise 2: Utterly, unproductively awful things like the holocaust have happened.
Conclusion: Neither an omnipotent nor otherwise supernaturally powerful god exists.
Alun wrote:Again, we don't know what god considers evil, or if evil now ends up having better or compensatory effects in some other way.
Though I did quote a similar argument by Epicurus in which the word evil is used, I did not use the word evil in my argument. (As you know, I am an amoralist.)
Alun wrote:Again, neither premise is guaranteed.
They both can not be guaranteed true. If they could, then I would have proven god does not exist. But I will debate that they are each at least probably true which gives us
evidence not proof.
Alun wrote:The same can be said for the last two arguments: We do not know if 'bad' things really are unproductive, purposeless, etc., and we do not know if god cares if they are bad, unproductive, purposeless, etc.
As contextualists, we both realize that in a certain sense of the words, we can't know anything for certain. But using there normal definitions, we can know things; I know the sky is blue; I know I ate pancakes for breakfast; I know the pancakes tasted good to me. Like with the pancakes, I think I can know or at least have evidence to show probable truth of the statement,
The mass-murder of millions of Jews including children is an unproductively, utterly terrible or in other words destructively awful. For example, don't you agree that it is at least probably true that
the mass-murder of millions of Jews including children is an unproductively, utterly terrible or in other words destructively awful? You may say that talking about god changes that context so that we behave like nihilists who can't know anything, but I'm not asking you about god or hypothetical gods here. I'm asking you a question that could equally be asked by one atheist to another in a discussion not at all about god. I'm asking you,
don't you agree that it is at least probably true that the mass-murder of millions of Jews including children is an unproductively, utterly terrible or in other words destructively awful?
Alun wrote:Without the possibility that god is illogical, there are only so many possible gods who could be posited, and who could then theoretically be ruled out. The problem remains, however, that nearly comprehensive knowledge of existence is needed to rule out the popular ones.
Incidentally, the posters in the thread
Which gods don't you believe in, and why don't you? have each been asked to give their reasons for not believing in 8 of at least nine sets of specific popular gods.
Alun wrote:As it stands, you can only rule out gods who have very specific purposes--e.g., a logical god who does not want any human being to ever have an appendix does not exist.
I think we've pretty much ruled out any god but a sadistic god who is a poor designer and behaves without purpose and who wants us to not believe in him.
Alun wrote:Any general purposes may yet be explained by what we don't know of the universe;
We may find evidence that proves O.J. Simpson's innocence and explains away the evidence that he is guilty. We may find evidence that we live in The Matrix. We may find evidence that there is intelligent life on Mars far more advanced than us and explains away the current alleged evidence that there isn't life on Mars. We may find... because, I agree, these things have not been proven (at least in some context for each). But 'we may find' is not a refutation of current evidence except to demonstrate that the evidence is not proof. It's not the same to refute evidence by pointing out actual extenuating circumstances that negate the evidence as to say
we may find extenuating circumstances that negate the evidence.
***
NoPityNoRemorse, I enjoyed reading your post. What most stuck out to me was your point about god hiding himself from us. I like the way Schellenberg formalized the argument of reasonable non-belief which I posted in
post #17.
***
Marabod wrote:Before trying to[...] disprove God, we at least need to settle which exactly God we are talking about!
There is a definition of the word 'god' as it is to be used in this thread provided in the OP.
Marabod, I appreciate all of your input, but your repeated claims that there is no evidence that a god exists are off-topic.
Also, considering your talk about objective and subjective reality, I would appreciate it if you could post your response to Stenger's scientific argument about
god's nonexistence which I posted in post #17. I think that one will be most useful to you.
***
Whynot, thank you for playing devil's advocate and giving me some food for thought.
Whynot wrote:If God used evolution to arrive at mankind as we now exist, then what proof have you that this evolutionary process is complete and man is now a finished product?
Wouldn't everything an omnipotent being does be a finished product?
Whynot wrote:Physiology demonstrates that both male and female nipples are loaded with sensitive nerves that accentuate the sexual experience.
Do you have a source for this claim, namely one that talks not only of humans but of all or at least most creatures that have two genders and male nipples?
During the very early stages of fetal life, before the sex hormones have had a chance to do their stuff, all humans are basically bisexual. This is why we males have nipples, which in addition to nerves include equipment for the function of milk-feeding that do not provide sexual excitement but are developed before the hormones that determine sex are developed in the fetus (
source). This--like the other examples of unintelligent design--make sense if humans evolved by evolution via natural selection but not if we were built intelligently from scratch.
Whynot wrote:Again your premises make narrow assumptions about the role of a God vs. the role of man in these issues. There's sufficient logical recourse to assert that God is not obligated to resolve every human illness. Just think of all the unemployed healthcare professionals and the service industries that revolve around medicine...the science and economic positioning that would be disrupted were God to intervene at the bequest of every petitioner. God is not obligated to do for man what man can do for himself.
It isn't that he didn't intervene in each and
every case; it's that he didn't intervene in
any. The prayer did nothing in any case.
I think it's a stretch to say god makes people sick and lets them suffer and die as a handout to the medical industry. Besides he could just snap his fingers and put money in their pockets or at least cause a problem that is a boon to industry and employment without making people terribly ill or dead.
Whynot wrote:Epicurus and the PoS are both fair targets of the "Ought from an Is" criticism. God is not morally obligated to do for man what man can do for himself. Is that why we walk by beggars and drunks without getting personally involved in their lives to resolve their percieved problems? Does that make us immoral?
I didn't say god is immoral. I said the only god that could exist would have to be a sadist, so assuming god is not a sadist, then no god exists.
Whynot wrote:This is what I call the argument from arrogance. Assuming a God who uses evolution as his creationary toolkit, which of the above stated events could you confidently remove from the evolutionary chain and still arrive at your own existence at this time? Likely, none of them. I'd hate to have to choose which universe shaping events to eliminate. I wouldn't dare to assume I have enough knowledge and understanding of the intricate relationships between all these events to begin reducing things at whim, just because I assume its a waste of time or energy.
I appreciate your understanding of
the butterfly effect. However, an omnipotent being could just snap his fingers and make the universe as it is now, or as it was 1 million years ago, or as it was 5 billion years ago which was even before Earth existed. You say "assuming god uses evolution as his creationary toolkit," but I make no such assumption.
Consider the great chef analogy: I take you to a small restaurant, the only evidence you have about whether or not the greatest chef in the world is in the kitchen cooking all the food that comes out or not is the food you eat. The food comes out, you eat it, it tastes poorly made and microwaved. You say, "this is evidence that the greatest chef in the world is not cooking the food here." I say, "Assuming he is using a microwave as his cooking mechanism, we would expect the food to be not that great because microwaves don't cook great food." My statement might be true, but it hardly rebuts your evidence because the truth of the assumption itself is unjustified and is evidence of the contrary. A great chef wouldn't use a microwave; and I don't think god would use billions of years of natural selection and evolution to do what he could do better just as easily. That a microwave was used is itself evidence that the food was not made by a great chef.
Thanks again everyone!