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Saying there is no god implies that you have the FAITH to believe you have enough information, of all the information available in the universe let alone all that is had by mankind at the moment, to claim with CERTAINTY that there is no god. You are better off declaring yourself a non-believer as DC does.
(p.s. gonna catch your latest post in a bit)
No way! You totally and utterly missed the point of what I said, which is why I underlined, italicised and boldened the word "think".
Thinking is nothing to do with faith:
Faith is about ignoreing the evidence, sticking your hands over your ears and saying "I BELIEVE ANYWAY AND YOU CAN'T CHANGE THAT!"
Thinking on the other hand is about asking "what is the evidence? What do we/don't we know? What conculsions can we draw?"
What we do know in this matter is that there is an awfull lot of evidence for us just happening to be here as a product of Evolution and enormous luck of being on one of the perhaps 1 in 1,000,000,000 planets which can sustain life.
But thats what it is - luck. Even if the odds are 1 in 1,000,000,000 conservative efforts put the number of planets in the universe as 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 which still leaves us with a billion life supporting planets out there of which ours is simply one.
Now theres some perfectly good reasoning to believe that we just appeared here. Now, lets think about God:
If we say that the "first cause" is God (and Thomas Aquainus' 'proofs' are really pants by the way), then we immediatly have to ask, what made God? A being which is powerfull enouigh to create the universe and to read the thoughts of everyone is incredibly complicated in himself, certainly more complicated than the atoms of Hydrogen that science theorieses were the first "complex" things bumping around in the Universe. So, what designed the designer?
If you say "nothing" then you contradict yourself, because it seems to me that the entire point of proposing a designer is to explain how everything became so fascinatingly complicated, but the designer is evidently even more complicated than everything that is, and in itself even more implausable than the proposal that everything has come into existence through chance nd then Biological evolution.
Infact, hes so much more implausable that I can't subscribe to him.
Someguy clearly said that he believes science can eventually find answers, but doesn't even assert that as fact- that it the only rationally sane conclusion one can draw! The only thing we can say with certainty at this time is "I don't know". The other thing that I believe is "You don't either".
I don't believe in the Christian god, as described in the Bible, other than as a model. I don't believe in a personified god at all, just forces we don't as yet understand. I have to say, I echo the sentiment of SomeGuy that if faith is just the opiate of the masses, then I just can't subscribe. I don't want to be happy, if that happiness is based on half-truths, and outright falsehoods.
I couldn't agree with you more - paraphrasing Marx here: 'Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, the hope of a hopeless place; it is the opiate of the masses'
Personally, I'd prefer to stare life in the eyes, to stand my ground and say "I am not afraid of the truth". I'd prefer to live knowing an unhappy truth than to wallow in happy ignorance.
This is a true statement, but it does not prove that empiricism is sufficient for getting at all universal truth. Dawkins is a logical positivist, which ultimately can only be defended as an article of faith.
I don't fully follow Dawkins, I don't however think that you get "universal truths" outside science. As I said - it's politics and weather. Policitcs is opinion and there are no universal truths in that, weather is science, and seeking the truth is the name of the game.
Why do you say that I say that God in fact exists at this point? When what I say is that the possibility of a [g]odexists. SomeGuyOverThere asserts that there is NO possible way that he/she/it exists. He is in fact making a leap of faith that he has enough empirical information on hand to make that assertion. I at this point am merely taking the agnostic position in a gendaken (thought) experiment, where I'm starting with the idea that 'creation' might require a 'creator'.
He has jumped directly to the end of the experiment and says that God is DEAD.
Please remove your hand from my ass - I am not a hand puppet and you do not have permission to speak for me.
I never ever asserted that God "Does not exist" (except in short hand), God is a matter of possibility, and I think that he is very very unlikely indeed; unlikely enough for me to think that he does not exist.
Unfortunatly you seem to fail to understand the concept of the burden of proof.
The burden of proof does NOT lay with the person who denies an assertion. If person 'a' asserts belief B, and person 'b' disagrees, it is up to person 'a' to prove B to 'b'. In other words, if I say that it is raining outside, and you say that it isn't, it is up to me to walk us both outside and asertain whether or not it is or is not raining.
Similarly, if you say "There is God" and I say "I don't think that is the case" the burden of proof is with you to say "Look, here is God", it is not wih me to disprove it.
Then if you (like many beleivers) say "I just know internally that there is a God" then, I'm sorry, but who gives a fuck? Thats like me saying "I just know that black is the best colour". Woopdy-fucking-doo.
Also, I'm never arguing that there is empirical evidence for God. These guys always bring me back to their empirical game and so I say hey maybe you don't have all the empirical information to out of hand dismiss the possibility of a creator and that if you think you do maybe thats an article of faith on your part.
I'm sorry, but the only things worth asserting the existence of are things which there is empirical evidence for. Empicism is not a "game" it is the best method we as a species have for ascertaining facts about the world. The existence of God is definatly within the empirical areana, it is not something that you can just say "I know it to be the case and I'm not playing your game", that isn't the way science works and if it was we'd still be in the bleeding dark ages.
If God shouldn't have empirical means applied to him, then he is obviously not an object which exists in reality, as only objects which can't be found, analysed and measured are excluded from such treatment; and if you'll admit that then we can stop argueing!
I've understood DC-Deep's position from before ever hitting LPSG. It's not a recent personal epiphany or learned nuanced. I just find non-believer = atheist is functionally the same, I used to humor that distintion but not so much anymore. At least atheist is more intellectually honest. Non-believer is an escapist formulation.
Funny enough I'm arguing about an incomplete experiment (which I really don't even care about). My thought experiment is that the Universe itself is the trail in the oil that indicates there is a God or sub atomic particle creating that trail in the oil for us to 'see' (we just also happen to be part of that oil trail). That's my thought experiment which is probably not much different than E's riding on a beam of light (until experimentalist caught up to the theoretician). You can call him Thor, Aphrodite, FSM, Yaweh, I don't care. You want to call him Thor? Okay, I'm arguing for Thor.
You are more of a believer than I. Isn't Jesus a physical, empirical representation of God? If not, why not? (Be careful Peter).
My faith as I've gotten to defining it does not really care if God will ever present himself in a empirical fashion. I seems irrelevant to me, but very relevant to you and to Dawkins.
Non-believer cannot be said to be the same as Atheist. VBeing a non-believer is a necissary condition for being Atheist, but not all non-beleivers are Atheists. A non believer may simply fail to think that any Gods we have are worth beleiveing in and be reserveing judgement on whether or not there is any form of divine creator. An Atheist is an -theist, the opposite of somebody who subscribes to thoughts of divine creatures, the Atheist thinks that there are no forms of divine beings.
Now you claim to not hold any real position on this arguement? Well why are you still posting then?
I think that God is evident, our existance proves he exists, to me at least if no one else.
It's the details that have to be worked out and that will never happen empirically.
I find Dawkins and company to be people who could empirically rationalize any morality that is convenient at the moment. They have no ability to assert "inalienable rights" because they don't want to. They are above such constraints.
But our existence doesn't prove in any way that he exists, there are far more plausable scientific arguements for us being the product of good luck and evolution than there are for a designer, who immediatly requires a designer, and sparks off an infinite regress of divine beings which create the lesser being.
You sound like you are just enguageing in "wishfull thinking" to me.
--This post is apparently too long, so more to follow --