3 ms·

> I've spent many, many hours on this God thing, and at > the end of the day you can't prove nor disprove there > is a God. Just a slight detail : you can

by wazoox 16y ago

> I've spent many, many hours on this God thing, and at > the end of the day you can't prove nor disprove there > is a God. Just a slight detail : you can't prove or disprove there aren't unicorns, or an invisible dragon in my garage, or a teapot in orbit between the Earth and Mars (just to take well-known overused examples). Non-existence is the default state of anything you can think about. You need to prove that things do exist, not the other way around. Therefore unless you proved something exists, it doesn't exist. Nobody would ever seriously discuss that conclusion on any other subject than God, that's getting tiring, admit it.

DanielBMarkham 16y ago
Going to reply (against my preferences) here because I'm seeing this repeated. Looks like you are making the mistake several other commenters are: you are ascribing some specific attribute to the word "God" and then throwing rocks at it. Are you asking me if a giant squid exists somewhere? Probably not. Unicorns that can sing and dance? Highly unlikely. FSG? I kinda don't think so. But you're the person making up the details. Yes, any detailed explanation of anything that is unknown is more likely false than true. But to say "therefore unless you proved something exists, it doesn't exist" is the height of fallacy. Lots of things exist that I (or nobody else) can prove. That's my point: in your eagerness for some kind of "answer" you jump too far the other way -- nothing exists unless I can prove it. This is as bad, really, as those who have some large detailed story of a Flying Spaghetti monster that they "know" to be true. If you don't know, you don't know. That's it. End of story. Looking back through history, I can say with some degree of confidence that whatever our world-of-knowledge was at any one time, there has always been a bigger world that we were unaware of. Many times a world for which we have no language to describe. Hard to talk about Quantum Dynamics with Francis Bacon. For every pond we swim around in, there is always a bigger pond. This leads me to believe that the unknown is a huge part of our experience. A Great Unknown exists with things in it that will highly interest us and affect our lives. This is just from induction. Not a particular myth that you might find fault with -- the unknown itself. The idea that nothing exists effectively unless we can prove it is a horrible idea. It's really, well, fundamentalism, when you get right down to it. So you can go on arguing octopuses, pink elephants, Thor, whatever. It really has no relevance on what I'm talking about. If you'd like to call the unknown Thor, have at it. Works for me. I like Thor better than "Bob". But let's not fight over particulars, because that misses the point entirely. As Hawking put it in another article, there might be a philosopher's God, but he's not somebody that could come down and talk to you. Hawking here still goes off the deep end -- I have no idea if something unknown to me could communicate to me or not. Or -- to put my response to Hawking differently -- can the laws of physics still be valid and things happen for which I have no explanation? Why of course they can. That's just common sense. The opposite belief -- that somehow mankind has a model of reality such that nothing unusual can happen? That's as bad as other folks who think their holy book is a science book. Both groups of people are assuming a certainty that just isn't there.
- jeromec 16y ago
  Just like with your earlier post, I agree with almost everything you say. My one sticking point here is this: A Great Unknown exists with things in it that will highly interest us and affect our lives. "Things" in it? Hard to say. Depends on the definition of "things". Although I do agree that whatever the case we would likely have great interest in it. "and affect our lives" Not necessarily. And here, again, is a reason I'm led to believe you're theist. If you believe the height of conventional scientific wisdom then the universe will expand indefinitely, and we will simply be left more alone. To suggest that we are to be affected by something unknown is to take a position to the affirmative, as a theist would.
  - DanielBMarkham 16y ago
    I'm just continuing the inductive series, beginning with pre-fire hominids and ending up with modern man. At each stage we were basically blind to the next stage, and once the unknown was revealed it highly interested us and affected our lives. I see nothing unique about our present state of knowledge to feel like the series will change significantly. No unwarranted optimism was intended. In fact, future stages may be terrible, but we will be highly interested in them and they will deeply affect our lives.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
- jamesbritt 16y ago
  "Lots of things exist that I (or nobody else) can prove." Can you gave some examples, and also tell how you know these things exist?
  - jeromec 16y ago
    There are most certainly many, many extrasolar planets that we cannot presently observe, or otherwise prove to be there directly. However, we know that statistically they are certain to exist. Below is a link to the best methods we currently have to detect them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methods_of_detecting_extrasolar_planets http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methods_of_detecting_extrasolar...

by wazoox 16y ago

DanielBMarkham 16y ago

Going to reply (against my preferences) here because I'm seeing this repeated. Looks like you are making the mistake several other commenters are: you are ascribing some specific attribute to the word "God" and then throwing rocks at it. Are you asking me if a giant squid exists somewhere? Probably not. Unicorns that can sing and dance? Highly unlikely. FSG? I kinda don't think so. But you're the person making up the details. Yes, any detailed explanation of anything that is unknown is more likely false than true. But to say "therefore unless you proved something exists, it doesn't exist" is the height of fallacy. Lots of things exist that I (or nobody else) can prove. That's my point: in your eagerness for some kind of "answer" you jump too far the other way -- nothing exists unless I can prove it. This is as bad, really, as those who have some large detailed story of a Flying Spaghetti monster that they "know" to be true. If you don't know, you don't know. That's it. End of story. Looking back through history, I can say with some degree of confidence that whatever our world-of-knowledge was at any one time, there has always been a bigger world that we were unaware of. Many times a world for which we have no language to describe. Hard to talk about Quantum Dynamics with Francis Bacon. For every pond we swim around in, there is always a bigger pond. This leads me to believe that the unknown is a huge part of our experience. A Great Unknown exists with things in it that will highly interest us and affect our lives. This is just from induction. Not a particular myth that you might find fault with -- the unknown itself. The idea that nothing exists effectively unless we can prove it is a horrible idea. It's really, well, fundamentalism, when you get right down to it. So you can go on arguing octopuses, pink elephants, Thor, whatever. It really has no relevance on what I'm talking about. If you'd like to call the unknown Thor, have at it. Works for me. I like Thor better than "Bob". But let's not fight over particulars, because that misses the point entirely. As Hawking put it in another article, there might be a philosopher's God, but he's not somebody that could come down and talk to you. Hawking here still goes off the deep end -- I have no idea if something unknown to me could communicate to me or not. Or -- to put my response to Hawking differently -- can the laws of physics still be valid and things happen for which I have no explanation? Why of course they can. That's just common sense. The opposite belief -- that somehow mankind has a model of reality such that nothing unusual can happen? That's as bad as other folks who think their holy book is a science book. Both groups of people are assuming a certainty that just isn't there.

jeromec 16y ago
Just like with your earlier post, I agree with almost everything you say. My one sticking point here is this: A Great Unknown exists with things in it that will highly interest us and affect our lives. "Things" in it? Hard to say. Depends on the definition of "things". Although I do agree that whatever the case we would likely have great interest in it. "and affect our lives" Not necessarily. And here, again, is a reason I'm led to believe you're theist. If you believe the height of conventional scientific wisdom then the universe will expand indefinitely, and we will simply be left more alone. To suggest that we are to be affected by something unknown is to take a position to the affirmative, as a theist would.
- DanielBMarkham 16y ago
  I'm just continuing the inductive series, beginning with pre-fire hominids and ending up with modern man. At each stage we were basically blind to the next stage, and once the unknown was revealed it highly interested us and affected our lives. I see nothing unique about our present state of knowledge to feel like the series will change significantly. No unwarranted optimism was intended. In fact, future stages may be terrible, but we will be highly interested in them and they will deeply affect our lives.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
jamesbritt 16y ago
"Lots of things exist that I (or nobody else) can prove." Can you gave some examples, and also tell how you know these things exist?
- jeromec 16y ago
  There are most certainly many, many extrasolar planets that we cannot presently observe, or otherwise prove to be there directly. However, we know that statistically they are certain to exist. Below is a link to the best methods we currently have to detect them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methods_of_detecting_extrasolar_planets http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methods_of_detecting_extrasolar...