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BatmanWithBunnyEars — Problem Solved
Published: 2012-06-09 13:20:15 +0000 UTC; Views: 10479; Favourites: 359; Downloads: 92
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Problem Solved
It sounds funny because the God debate is often portrayed as such a profound and insoluble riddle. But if you actually do Google it, you’ll find plenty of articles about untestable hypotheses, anecdotal evidence, Ockham’s Razor, and other useful info about how to evaluate claims, as well as info about evolution, cosmology, particle physics, and other relevant subjects. (I’ve even written a few myself.) Sure, you’ll also find websites like Answers in Genesis, but if you read everything that’s available, you’ll understand why it’s not called Correct Answers in Genesis.
So if anybody asks you why it’s irrational to believe in God, you can just tell them to Google it. And if they accuse you of naively oversimplifying a complex issue, just direct them here.
Examples of useful info that can be found by anyone who is genuinely inquisitive:
Why do people laugh at creationists? (part 1)
God is Imaginary
Why Won’t God Heal Amputees
Skyhooks and Cranes
Unfalsifiable claims
Ockham’s Razor
The Best Case For God: Refuted
The Euthyphro Dilemma
Abiogenesis
An article about how to look for intelligent design, with links to lists of embarrassing counterexamples to intelligent design.
A Universe from Nothing
For more religious humor, check out
My Religion
The Bible Says God Doesn’t Exist.
And…
is religiously metaphorical by ~BlueMeadow193 .
Related content
Comments: 1044
I bet you can't tell who he is. . u .
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By the Nine Divines, There's a psychopath on the loose!!!
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Wow, butthurts as far as the eye can see.
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I love that there are comments on this that are like "I believe in god and don't believe in shoving my belief down others throats... but THIS IS NOT ART AND YOU'RE WRONG".
Really? You just said you don't believe in shoving your opinions down people's throats. It's not your decision whether or not it's art, because not everyone agrees on what art is. Same falls for belief in god.
Tl;dr - I support you and find some of the people taking offense to this hysterically illogical.
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My thoughts exactly! Thanks for the great comment.
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Exist physically or Spiritually? You have to believe in Jesus for the "physical" existence.
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Okay, this is just ridiculous. You can PROVE God by Googling it too, if you want to get really simple.
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"Sure, you’ll also find websites like Answers in Genesis, but if you read everything that’s available, you’ll understand why it’s not called Correct Answers in Genesis."
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Didn't need Google to figure that out.
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Google to see is satan is real. My world will be different.
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Quick question, did you go over the links you provided? because the link to Ockham's razor is a far cry from supporting your atheist position. It actually explains in great detail how Ockham's razor is frequently misused.
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Sure it does. It isn't about proving that there isn't a God, though; it's about not adding anything to the picture (such as a deity) that doesn't need to be there to account for observations. A lot of people don't understand the difference.
And don't be distracted by William of Ockham being a friar. The theory of expanding universe and the big bang theory were first proposed by Catholic priest Georges Lemaître, but that doesn't mean an atheist can't believe in those ideas and refer to it when debating religious people who reject big bang cosmology. Focus on what was said, not on who said it.
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The article itself explains rather well why Ockham's razor is not applicable to questions pertaining to god's existence.
If you wish to apply the "principle of parsimony" (not the same thing) to metaphysics, some quick thought experiment will demonstrate that it is a dubious principle at best, and that it was a hindrance to science in some cases (again as well-documented and explained in the link you provided).
I'm an atheist myself, but I must admit that I never understood the "deep meaning" behind accepting an irrefutable assumption as opposed to accepting its equally irrefutable negation.
Do you truly believe that when you reject an axiom you do not accept its negation as true?
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I'm not sure which Ockham's razor article you're reading, but the one I linked doesn't say much about how Ockham's razor relates to religious questions. And what it does say echoes what I've been saying, in particular the quote by Stephen Hawking, and the quote that, "In physics we use the razor to cut away metaphysical concepts." (Religious ideas are metaphysical concepts.)
Do you truly believe that when you reject an axiom you do not accept its negation as true?
Not if you simply don't know one way or the other. More importantly, there's the issue of burden of proof that you're ignoring altogether.
It all comes down to believing something without reason. I could claim to be immune to matter-antimatter annihilation, or that I have superhuman strength but only under a red sun, but it would be silly take those claims seriously just because you can't disprove them. It's really no different from the way religious people have rendered God completely untestable by adding timelessness, spacelessness, and other arbitrary loopholes.
Think about it: If the subject matter were my alleged superpowers rather than religion, would you be making all the same counterarguments? Before you answer, go back and re-read your responses, replacing "God" with "my superpowers." Now the claim that I have superpowers is an irrefutable assumption just as the claim that I don't have superpowers is an irrefutable assumption. When you look at it that way, your responses seem rather erroneous, don't they?
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I was reading this part:
'Occam's razor is often cited in stronger forms than Occam intended, as in the following statements...
"If you have two theories which both explain the observed facts then you should use the simplest until more evidence comes along"
"The simplest explanation for some phenomenon is more likely to be accurate than more complicated explanations."
"If you have two equally likely solutions to a problem, pick the simplest."
"The explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is most likely to be correct."
... or in the only form which takes its own advice...
"Keep things simple!"
Notice how the principle has strengthened in these forms which should be more correctly called the law of parsimony, or the rule of simplicity. To begin with we used Occam's razor to separate theories which would predict the same result for all experiments. Now we are trying to choose between theories which make different predictions. This is not what Occam intended. Should we not test those predictions instead? Obviously we should eventually, but suppose we are at an early stage and are not yet ready to do the experiments. We are just looking for guidance in developing a theory."'
Here you also need to define what 'simple' actually means, which is not a very simple task.
There was also this part:
'In fact, only the first two of these forms appear in his surviving works and the third was written by a later scholar. William used the principle to justify many conclusions including the statement that "God's existence can not be deduced by reason alone."'
That alone should be enough to explicitly state that Ockham's razor is not applicable to god, unless you wish to modify its original definition.
moving forward...
Not if you simply don't know one way or the other. More importantly, there's the issue of burden of proof that you're ignoring altogether.
So are you an agnostic or an atheist
As for burden proof, I'll begin by stating that I have yet to see a single valid proof in my life of anything without postulating axioms before deducing the desired conclusion, and axioms by definition are irrefutable assumptions.
I wholeheartedly reject the concept of proof you refer to as fallacious.
Given a set of axioms one can deduce many things, but without axioms accepted by both sides proofs do not exist.
Furthermore, given an axiom which is independent from the set of axioms you're working with (God's existence in this case), there exists no such burden of proof. You can either accept the axiom or reject it. It is independent from the set of theorems you can derive, and therefore the concept of burden of proof cannot apply here, even if one axiom uses existential quantifiers.
"It all comes down to believing something without reason."
First of all, I take personal offense to this statement as an atheist. I deny god's existence without reason and I do not feel any need to justify my personal beliefs to anyone. Moreover, the statement is not constructed correctly. I fail to understand what it means to believe in something without "reason". What I think you meant is more like:
It all comes down to believing something without a reason that I find satisfactory.
I do not believe that theists believe in god for no reason, you simply don't find the reasons compelling: some do it due to their upbringing, some due to values, some due to personal revelation and some just think it's more probable than the alternative.
We assume lots of things without "reason". Dark energy for example, it cannot be directly measured. Its existence has only been postulated from inferred data. It's basically nothing more than a number in an equation that gives a more approximate solution, from a scientific point of view it carries close to no explanatory power. It is not a descriptive entity as it cannot be measured in any way, it is only explanatory in the sense that it yields better predictions. I find this an unsatisfactory "reason" to believe in the existence of something that by definition cannot be proven to exist, yet many scientists disagree with me.
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I would say that adding a being whose properties defy much of what we know about the universe is "multiplying entities" quite a bit. But here's the part to which I really object:
We assume lots of things without "reason". Dark energy for example, it cannot be directly measured. Its existence has only been postulated from inferred data.
So...inferring from the data doesn't count as having a reason? Look, scientists don't just look up and say, "Well, I don't know what's going on up there, so there must be dark matter or something." They noticed that celestial objects didn't move according to what contemporary physics would predict, but they found that if they plug in a specific mass in a specific location, everything works out perfectly. So, they reason that there is likely something there which they simply can't see directly. If you think this sort of careful investigation is on the same level as accepting an absurd idea for the arbitrary reason of one's upbringing, it's a great insult to those who are putting forth the effort to piece together the workings of the universe, and it shows that you have a lot to learn about evaluating claims.
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Ockham explicitly stated that "God's existence cannot be deduced from reason alone" yet you still insist on applying reason to answer the question of God. If that is not taking a principle out of its original context and applying it where it does not belong, I don't know what is.
Please answer the following questions:
1) Is dark energy a postulation that has never been directly measured?
2) Were dark matter and dark energy inserted post-hoc as a constant into a mathematical equation in order to better fit Einstein's field equations to observed data.
3) What does it explain exactly? that the gap in amount of mass/energy is explained by "special" mass/energy that cannot be observed or measured, much like its friend the 'invisible pink unicorn'?!
4) Are there real physicists who dispute the existence of dark energy?
[link] (unfortunately professor Sachs passed away last month)
Example 2: String theory
1) Has string theory provided a single empirical prediction since it was created?
2) Does string theory postulate more dimensions than we currently assume?
3) Would you say that this counts as "Multiplying entities unnecessarily"?
4) Should it be a fair conclusion to say that in accordance with Ockham's razor as you described it, String theory should be discarded?
Now back to religion...
Please define this mysterious property you refer to as "reason"? Would it be fair to say the set of all "reasons" is subjectively defined? Therefore, would it be fair to say that you use biased reasoning when deciding what can be said to have a "reason"?
Is inferring from data a reason? sure, but is it a sufficient reason?
Inference is a needed tool in all scientific endeavors. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It is up to your subjective judgement to decide if the reason behind the inference is sufficient to justify belief in it. I do not find most theistic reasons sufficient to change my mind about god's existence, but at least I'm honest enough not to discard them as believing without reason. Reasonable people do not believe things without reason. You may choose to disagree with the reason. Still, it does not grant you the right to dim it as having no reason at all.
By the way, I do believe that dark energy is an erroneous conclusion because I believe that Einstein's deductions and intuition are sounder when compared to modern positivistic inferences made from data.
Adding tautologies to a theory (saying that what explains the gap in measured energy is "dark" energy) is exactly "multiplying entities unnecessarily". It would have been better to say "we don't know" than to invent a mystical, immeasurable, irrefutable entity that explains nothing.
If you think that shoving a constant anywhere that there's a problem with the data is good science. I'd say that we disagree on what is a "reason".
Sounds a bit like the atheists' god.
In what sense do the two differ?
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There's more than one way to take the quote "God's existence cannot be deduced from reason alone." If it's the case that "God's existence cannot be deduced from reason alone," and we obviously haven't observed God empirically, then that sounds like quite a blow to religion. Apparently the Pope took it the same way I did, since the very next sentence in the article is, "That one didn't make him very popular with the Pope."
The biggest difference between modern science and religion is that scientists are investigating, and trying to set up empirically testable predictions to confirm or refute their hypotheses and theories. For example, the purpose of the LHC is to look for evidence of extra spatial dimensions that, if found, would help corroborate string theory. Perhaps most importantly, scientists are always looking for alternative explanations, and are more than willing to scrap an idea if new evidence refutes it.
By contrast, religious people run from testability. For example, when prayer studies show (big surprise) no divine intervention, they have plenty of unverifiable ad hoc excuses at the ready. They used to firmly hold that God made the universe in six days as described by the bible, but when evidence for evolution became overwhelming and widespread, they had to change their story so that God guided the process of evolution. When flaws in God's "perfect" design are pointed out, they're full of bullshit excuses.
BTW, dark matter and dark energy are a lot more complicated than my one sentence explanation. Don't you think it's a bit presumptuous for you to use what little you know about the matter to accuse teams of scientists with graduate degrees of poor science? Did the thought ever occur to you that if you understood the intricacies and nuances of the matter on the graduate level, their experiments, calculations, and tentative conclusions might make more sense to you? That's where you and I differ the most; you hear a sound bite from Michio Kaku and talk like you know more than the brilliant people who've studied this stuff for decades. I'm at least aware that there's a lot I don't know.
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Other than the fact that you did not answer a single question I have raised, we are mostly in agreement here.
I am not religious for a reason. I support science and scientific research for a reason. So do many theists, for their own reasons.
I am not a physicist, but I was paraphrasing one in regards to dark energy [link] [link] One who devoted his life solely to the study of relativity theory. Furthermore, bad methodology can and should be criticized regardless of one's level of knowledge in physics.I may not understand the physics involved, but it is legitimate to beg the question about a "scientific" theory that produces no new predictions (as of this point in time, and the foreseeable future), and has no consistent mathematical axiomatization (as far as I'm aware). On this point as well, I'm mainly echoing the sentiments of physicists I read, such as Sheldon Glashow who went as far as saying "...you may call it tumor, if you will..." ([link] ).
You win, I'm too sick to continue this pointless argument.
No hard feelings I hope.
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I actually did address the point about making testable claims, since they're trying to test the prediction of extra dimensions. To answer another one of your questions, string does predict extra dimensions; it's a result of the mat which I, and I suspect you as well, don't understand completely. Dark matter is hypothesized to be matter that is transposed in one of these dimensions, perhaps in an alternate universe (as in multiverse theory) such that the gravity can leak through and affect our visible universe without the dark matter itself being visible.
These aren't all disconnected ideas thrown in to sound good. They form a coherent picture of reality that may or may not be correct, as further testing will hopefully tell.
Indeed, methodology should always be up for critique. But if it were as simple and obvious as you describe it to be, you have to figure the scientists would have figured it out by now. Listening to the one naysayer could yield useful information, and he could be right, but you have to be careful. The criticisms of a creation "scientist" about evolution can seem plausible too if you only partially understand the material.
Sheldon Glashow's credentials bode well for him, but he could still be a crank. Frank Tipler accomplished great things before he lost it and published his laughable "Physics of Christianity" book. I was hoping I could find someone's responses to Sheldon so I could at least hear both sides, but unfortunately, I couldn't find anything.
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Strange enough, my sig answers this for me
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I guess if you're happy with an obvious strawman fallacy. In case you don't see the problem, there's a big difference between being able to visually see something and being able to find evidence for something. It's easy to find evidence that all humans have brains, but it's not so easy to find evidence for an infinitely powerful genie in the sky who loves us, but only acts when we're not looking and allows grotesque tragedies and injustices to befall us.
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Well that's sad. You seem to look at only the bad side of things. By the way most of the tragedies that befall us are mostly caused by man. He cannot control a man's actions. Do you think that He'd just fall out of the sky to help us? He did that once, and what have we given to him in return for His undying love for us? Nothing. We keep on doing things that are against Him and only remember Him in our times of need. Nobody can deny this. Everyone does it. I admit I did too.
If we, only mere humans, get hurt if our friends only remember us when they need something from us, then don't you think God has every reason to hate us since He created us in the first place? But He doesn't. Otherwise the Earth wouldn't even exist anymore.
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Lol, keep that to yourself until you prove that god exists.
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I don't need to prove it to those who don't want to believe. There's no point. It's like asking for snow in mid summer. I believe in what I know is true and I don't let my horrible experiences cloud my judgement.
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"I don't need to prove it to those who don't want to believe."
-But this deviation talks about the existance of god, so try and keep the comments in relation to it.
"I believe in what I know is true"
-That makes no sense.
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1. I don't want to force my beliefs on people, after all, we are who we choose to be ^^
2. I believe what I feel is true. Call it instinct or something, I jest feel it. Everyone has the right to choose what they want to believe so I won't make you believe if you don't want to ^^
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1. Then don't comment on this.
2. Yes. Still:
"I believe in what I know is true"
Lol.
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Sorry, I should have checked it first before sent it ^^" My bad
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