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Good points here, although i must note that your appeal to authority ("many intelligent people") does not lend credence to any of these arguments. For many peop

Good points here, although i must note that your appeal to authority ("many intelligent people") does not lend credence to any of these arguments. For many people, they are no more true than any random syntactically correct sentence. And in any case, i feel this thread is diverting to a ... religious argument. p.s. "...but it's impossible to prove that no form of deity is possible" - could you point to a proof of that?

klipt 15y ago
Well, if you accept that it's impossible to prove that we aren't in a simulation - then it's possible we are in a simulation, and that would make the being responsible for simulating us a deity of sorts.
lucasjung 15y ago
It was not an appeal to authority, nor was it intended to support any of those arguments. It was intended to underscore the point that a particular philosophical argument is not automatically invalid simply because some people, no matter how intelligent and rational, do not find it convincing. In effect, it was a rejection of gp's appeal to his own authority as a student of philosophy. As for your latter point: if you disprove the possibility of deities with a particular quality or set of qualities, I can then describe a deity which lacks those qualities and is therefore outside the set of deities you have proven impossible. For example, if you can somehow prove that there has never been divine intervention of any form (which I highly doubt is possible to prove), then I could respond by positing a deity that does not intervene in the temporal universe at all, but instead rules only in the afterlife. Since the afterlife is beyond temporal measurement, it is by definition beyond empirical observation, and there is therefore no way you can disprove the existence of an afterlife. By extension, there is no way you can disprove the existence of a deity which rules the afterlife.
- ignifero 15y ago
  Thanks for your time. See, i am an eliminativist myself, so i would doubt things like afterlife and spirit are accessible to us humans. I might accept forms of non-intervening deities if it were confined to setting the initial conditions of the big bang. Point is, arguing against it or for it is like arguing the weather.

klipt 15y ago

Well, if you accept that it's impossible to prove that we aren't in a simulation - then it's possible we are in a simulation, and that would make the being responsible for simulating us a deity of sorts.

lucasjung 15y ago

It was not an appeal to authority, nor was it intended to support any of those arguments. It was intended to underscore the point that a particular philosophical argument is not automatically invalid simply because some people, no matter how intelligent and rational, do not find it convincing. In effect, it was a rejection of gp's appeal to his own authority as a student of philosophy. As for your latter point: if you disprove the possibility of deities with a particular quality or set of qualities, I can then describe a deity which lacks those qualities and is therefore outside the set of deities you have proven impossible. For example, if you can somehow prove that there has never been divine intervention of any form (which I highly doubt is possible to prove), then I could respond by positing a deity that does not intervene in the temporal universe at all, but instead rules only in the afterlife. Since the afterlife is beyond temporal measurement, it is by definition beyond empirical observation, and there is therefore no way you can disprove the existence of an afterlife. By extension, there is no way you can disprove the existence of a deity which rules the afterlife.

ignifero 15y ago
Thanks for your time. See, i am an eliminativist myself, so i would doubt things like afterlife and spirit are accessible to us humans. I might accept forms of non-intervening deities if it were confined to setting the initial conditions of the big bang. Point is, arguing against it or for it is like arguing the weather.