Can science disprove the existence of God?

[LegionOnomaMoi]

"God answers prayers" completely unfalsifiable.
"God caused a global flood" this is falsifiable but there is no reason to take the whole of the Bible 100% literally, as all atheists do. The "earth" mentioned in Genesis may have referred to the territories that were known to the people of Noah's tribe.
"God cures cancer sometimes" completely unfalsifiable.

Conclusion, the existence of God is unfalsifiable.

On falsifiability:

"Unfortunately for Popper's original idea, most scientific hypotheses are not really refutable with certainty either. Notoriously, a hypothesis can be saved from refutation by tinkering with the rest of the theory. And even in an idealized, empirical setting in which experimental outcomes are unproblematically theory-independent, probability estimates are logically consistent with any data in the short run, even if such an estimate is understood to imply a limiting relative frequency of outcomes in the future data. The same is true of the hypothesis that there are only finitely many types of elementary particles to be discovered, the hypothesis that a system is chaotic as opposed to orderly, and the hypothesis that a given sequence is produced by a Turing machine rather than by some uncomputable process.
Popper's response (1968) was to reconceive falsificationism as an injunction against coddling pet views rather than as a criterion of success."
Kelly, K. T. (2000). Naturalism Logicized. In R. Nola & H Sankey (Eds.) After Popper, Kuhn and Feyerabend: Recent Issues in Theories of Scientific Method (pp. 177-210). Kluwer Academic Publishers.

"contrary to naive falsificationism, no experiment, experimental report, observation statement or well-corroborated low-level falsifying hypothesis alone can lead to falsification. There is no falsification before the emergence of a better theory"
Lakatos, I. (1970) “Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes” in I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave (Eds.) Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (pp. 91-195). Cambridge University Press.

On scientific methods more generally:

"Ask a scientist what he concevies the scientific method to be, and he will adopt an expression that is at once solemn and shifty-eyed: solemn, because he feels he ought to declare an opinion; shifty-eyed, because he is wondering how to conceal the fact that he has no opinion to declare"
Medawar, P. B. (1969). Induction and intuition in Scientific Thought. American Philosophical Society.

“One of the most widely held misconceptions about science is the existence of the scientific method. The modern origins of this misconception may be traced to Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum (1620/1996), in which the inductive method was propounded to guarantee ‘‘certain’’ knowledge. Since the 17th century, inductivism and several other epistemological stances that aimed to achieve the same end (although in those latter stances the criterion of certainty was either replaced with notions of high probability or abandoned altogether) have been debunked, such as Bayesianism, falsificationism, and hypothetico-deductivism (Gillies, 1993). Nonetheless, some of those stances, especially inductivism and falsificationism, are still widely popularized in science textbooks and even explicitly taught in classrooms. The myth of the scientific method is regularly manifested in the belief that there is a recipelike stepwise procedure that all scientists follow when they do science. This notion was explicitly debunked: There is no single scientific method that would guarantee the development of infallible knowledge (AAAS, 1993; Bauer, 1994; Feyerabend, 1993; NRC, 1996; Shapin, 1996).” (emphases added)
Lederman, N. G., Abd-El-Khalick, F., Bell, R. L., & Schwartz, R. (2002). Views of nature of science questionnaire: Toward valid and meaningful assessment of learners’ conceptions of nature of science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 39, 497–521.

"The model of ‘scientific method’ that probably reflects many people’s understanding is one of scientific knowledge being ‘proved’ through experiments...That is, the ‘experimental method’ offers a way of uncovering true knowledge of the world, providing that we plan our experiments logically, and carefully collect sufficient data. In this way, our rational faculty is applied to empirical evidence to prove (or otherwise) scientific hypotheses. This is a gross simplification, and misrepresentation, of how science actually occurs, but unfortunately it has probably been encouraged by the impoverished image of the nature of science commonly reflected in school science." (emphasis added)
Taber, K. S. (2009). Progressing Science Education: Constructing the Scientific Research Programme into the Contingent Nature of Learning Science (Science & Technology Education Library Vol. 37). Springer.

"there is no one way to ‘do’ science. Methods and practices vary widely across fields, institutions, and individuals. Even the U.S. National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) asserts, contrary to decades-old school lore, that 'no single universal step-by-step scientific method captures the complexity of doing science' (National Science Teachers Association, 2000). Amidst this array of approaches to doing science, there exists considerable debate amongst the general public and academics from a range of disciplines about how to characterize scientific inquiry."
Grotzer, T. A., Miller, R. B., & Lincoln, R. A. (2012). Perceptual, Attentional, and Cognitive Heuristics That Interact with the Nature of Science to Complicate Public Understanding of Science. In M. S. Khine (Ed.). Advances in Nature of Science Research: Concepts and Methodologies (pp. 27-49). Springer.

“Pre-college students, and the general public for that matter, believe in a distorted view of scientific inquiry that has resulted from schooling, the media, and the format of most scientific reports. This distorted view is called THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD.” (emphasis added)
Lederman, N. G. (1999). EJSE Editorial: The State of Science Education: Subject Matter Without Context. Electronic Journal of Science Education, 3(2).


"This myth [of the scientific method] is often manifested in the belief that there is a recipe-like stepwise procedure that typifies all scientific practice. This notion is erroneous: there is no single 'Scientific Method'... Scientists do observe, compare, measure, test, speculate, hypothesize, debate, create ideas and conceptual tools, and construct theories and explanations. However, there is no single sequence of (practical, conceptual, or logical) activities that will unerringly lead them to valid claims, let alone ‘certain’ knowledge." (emphasis added)
Abd‐El‐Khalick, F., Waters, M., & Le, A. P. (2008). Representations of nature of science in high school chemistry textbooks over the past four decades. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 45(7), 835-855.

"Activity without understanding seems to be a regular feature of classroom life for science students in American schools...Any plans for testing new frameworks for school science investigations would be poorly conceived, however, without taking into account the influence of the current paradigm of preference for educators—the scientific method (TSM)—and its role in allowing distorted images of science to be passed down through schooling practices."
Windschitl, M., Thompson, J., & Braaten, M. (2008). Beyond the scientific method: Model‐based inquiry as a new paradigm of preference for school science investigations. Science education, 92(5), 941-967.

"a focus on practices (in the plural) avoids the mistaken impression that there is one distinctive approach common to all science—a single “scientific method”—or that uncertainty is a universal attribute of science. In reality, practicing scientists employ a broad spectrum of methods" (emphasis added)
Schweingruber, H., Keller, T., & Quinn, H. (Eds.). (2012). A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas. Committee on a Conceptual Framework for New K-12 Science Education Standards. National Research Council’s Board on Science Education, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education.

“In Science for All Americans, the AAAS advocated the achievement of scientific literacy by all U.S. high school students...(American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1989). This seminal report described science as tentative (striving toward objectivity within the constraints of human fallibility) and as a social enterprise, while also discussing the durability of scientific theories, the importance of logical reasoning, and the lack of a single scientific method.” (emphasis added)
Schweingruber, H. A., Hilton, M. L., & Singer, S. R. (Eds.). (2005). America's Lab Report::Investigations in High School Science. Committee on High School Laboratoriers: Role and Vision. Board on Science Education, Center for Education, National Research Council.

 

[Crypto2015]

On falsifiability:

"Unfortunately for Popper's original idea, most scientific hypotheses are not really refutable with certainty either. Notoriously, a hypothesis can be saved from refutation by tinkering with the rest of the theory. And even in an idealized, empirical setting in which experimental outcomes are unproblematically theory-independent, probability estimates are logically consistent with any data in the short run, even if such an estimate is understood to imply a limiting relative frequency of outcomes in the future data. The same is true of the hypothesis that there are only finitely many types of elementary particles to be discovered, the hypothesis that a system is chaotic as opposed to orderly, and the hypothesis that a given sequence is produced by a Turing machine rather than by some uncomputable process.
Popper's response (1968) was to reconceive falsificationism as an injunction against coddling pet views rather than as a criterion of success."
Kelly, K. T. (2000). Naturalism Logicized. In R. Nola & H Sankey (Eds.) After Popper, Kuhn and Feyerabend: Recent Issues in Theories of Scientific Method (pp. 177-210). Kluwer Academic Publishers.

"contrary to naive falsificationism, no experiment, experimental report, observation statement or well-corroborated low-level falsifying hypothesis alone can lead to falsification. There is no falsification before the emergence of a better theory"
Lakatos, I. (1970) “Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes” in I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave (Eds.) Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (pp. 91-195). Cambridge University Press.

On scientific methods more generally:

"Ask a scientist what he concevies the scientific method to be, and he will adopt an expression that is at once solemn and shifty-eyed: solemn, because he feels he ought to declare an opinion; shifty-eyed, because he is wondering how to conceal the fact that he has no opinion to declare"
Medawar, P. B. (1969). Induction and intuition in Scientific Thought. American Philosophical Society.

“One of the most widely held misconceptions about science is the existence of the scientific method. The modern origins of this misconception may be traced to Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum (1620/1996), in which the inductive method was propounded to guarantee ‘‘certain’’ knowledge. Since the 17th century, inductivism and several other epistemological stances that aimed to achieve the same end (although in those latter stances the criterion of certainty was either replaced with notions of high probability or abandoned altogether) have been debunked, such as Bayesianism, falsificationism, and hypothetico-deductivism (Gillies, 1993). Nonetheless, some of those stances, especially inductivism and falsificationism, are still widely popularized in science textbooks and even explicitly taught in classrooms. The myth of the scientific method is regularly manifested in the belief that there is a recipelike stepwise procedure that all scientists follow when they do science. This notion was explicitly debunked: There is no single scientific method that would guarantee the development of infallible knowledge (AAAS, 1993; Bauer, 1994; Feyerabend, 1993; NRC, 1996; Shapin, 1996).” (emphases added)
Lederman, N. G., Abd-El-Khalick, F., Bell, R. L., & Schwartz, R. (2002). Views of nature of science questionnaire: Toward valid and meaningful assessment of learners’ conceptions of nature of science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 39, 497–521.

"The model of ‘scientific method’ that probably reflects many people’s understanding is one of scientific knowledge being ‘proved’ through experiments...That is, the ‘experimental method’ offers a way of uncovering true knowledge of the world, providing that we plan our experiments logically, and carefully collect sufficient data. In this way, our rational faculty is applied to empirical evidence to prove (or otherwise) scientific hypotheses. This is a gross simplification, and misrepresentation, of how science actually occurs, but unfortunately it has probably been encouraged by the impoverished image of the nature of science commonly reflected in school science." (emphasis added)
Taber, K. S. (2009). Progressing Science Education: Constructing the Scientific Research Programme into the Contingent Nature of Learning Science (Science & Technology Education Library Vol. 37). Springer.

"there is no one way to ‘do’ science. Methods and practices vary widely across fields, institutions, and individuals. Even the U.S. National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) asserts, contrary to decades-old school lore, that 'no single universal step-by-step scientific method captures the complexity of doing science' (National Science Teachers Association, 2000). Amidst this array of approaches to doing science, there exists considerable debate amongst the general public and academics from a range of disciplines about how to characterize scientific inquiry."
Grotzer, T. A., Miller, R. B., & Lincoln, R. A. (2012). Perceptual, Attentional, and Cognitive Heuristics That Interact with the Nature of Science to Complicate Public Understanding of Science. In M. S. Khine (Ed.). Advances in Nature of Science Research: Concepts and Methodologies (pp. 27-49). Springer.

“Pre-college students, and the general public for that matter, believe in a distorted view of scientific inquiry that has resulted from schooling, the media, and the format of most scientific reports. This distorted view is called THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD.” (emphasis added)
Lederman, N. G. (1999). EJSE Editorial: The State of Science Education: Subject Matter Without Context. Electronic Journal of Science Education, 3(2).


"This myth [of the scientific method] is often manifested in the belief that there is a recipe-like stepwise procedure that typifies all scientific practice. This notion is erroneous: there is no single 'Scientific Method'... Scientists do observe, compare, measure, test, speculate, hypothesize, debate, create ideas and conceptual tools, and construct theories and explanations. However, there is no single sequence of (practical, conceptual, or logical) activities that will unerringly lead them to valid claims, let alone ‘certain’ knowledge." (emphasis added)
Abd‐El‐Khalick, F., Waters, M., & Le, A. P. (2008). Representations of nature of science in high school chemistry textbooks over the past four decades. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 45(7), 835-855.

"Activity without understanding seems to be a regular feature of classroom life for science students in American schools...Any plans for testing new frameworks for school science investigations would be poorly conceived, however, without taking into account the influence of the current paradigm of preference for educators—the scientific method (TSM)—and its role in allowing distorted images of science to be passed down through schooling practices."
Windschitl, M., Thompson, J., & Braaten, M. (2008). Beyond the scientific method: Model‐based inquiry as a new paradigm of preference for school science investigations. Science education, 92(5), 941-967.

"a focus on practices (in the plural) avoids the mistaken impression that there is one distinctive approach common to all science—a single “scientific method”—or that uncertainty is a universal attribute of science. In reality, practicing scientists employ a broad spectrum of methods" (emphasis added)
Schweingruber, H., Keller, T., & Quinn, H. (Eds.). (2012). A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas. Committee on a Conceptual Framework for New K-12 Science Education Standards. National Research Council’s Board on Science Education, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education.

“In Science for All Americans, the AAAS advocated the achievement of scientific literacy by all U.S. high school students...(American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1989). This seminal report described science as tentative (striving toward objectivity within the constraints of human fallibility) and as a social enterprise, while also discussing the durability of scientific theories, the importance of logical reasoning, and the lack of a single scientific method.” (emphasis added)
Schweingruber, H. A., Hilton, M. L., & Singer, S. R. (Eds.). (2005). America's Lab Report::Investigations in High School Science. Committee on High School Laboratoriers: Role and Vision. Board on Science Education, Center for Education, National Research Council.

I agree on the fact that the scientific method doesn't exist. I also agree on the fact that the concept of theory falsification (not to be confused with the concept of falsifiability) is too simplistic to explain how science progresses. On the other hand, the concept of falsifiability (i.e., if a statement can be demonstrated to be false either by experimentation or logic) is the only way to determine if an enunciation is within the province of science. Popper's demarcation of what constitutes science and what constitutes pseudo-science is the best demarcation that has ever been enunciated and it continues to be upheld by nearly everyone that has a proper knowledge of what science is. Popper's demarcation is based on the concept of falsifiability. According to this concept, God is OUTSIDE the province of science. This is not just my opinion. For example, see this

"In its basic form, falsifiability is the belief that for any hypothesis to have credence, it must be inherently disprovable before it can become accepted as a scientific hypothesis or theory.

For example, if a scientist asks, "Does God exist?" then this can never be science because it is a theory that cannot be disproved."

Taken from https://explorable.com/falsifiability

Therefore, it is an incontestable truth that science has nothing to say about the existence of God. This is a very basic truth that all scientists ought to know. It is founded on the thoughts of some of the most brilliant philosophers in the history of mankind. Moreover, any honest scientist is able to attest that science cannot provide answers to metaphysical or moral questions. Science has simply nothing to do with morality, metaphysics, or even with ethics. That's why people like Richard Dawkins, Laurence Krauss, Sam Harris, Massimo Pigliucci and others are either profoundly ignorant or profoundly dishonest.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

What I said is not circular. This is circular: "No absolute true can be known". If no absolute true can be known, we already know one absolute true.

Heh... that's not actually circular.

A circular argument relies on its conclusions as premises. What you have there is an argument that *refutes* its own premises.

Regarding why the existence of God is rationally acceptable, there are several reasons for it. For example, the universe cannot be infinite because infinity is just a concept and doesn't exist in the real world.

Unsupported nonsense.

... and an argument from ignorance: you can't understand how a true infinity exists, therefore it doesn't?

Hence, the universe must have had a beginning. If the universe had a beginning, it must have been created from nothing.

More nonsense. You need to demonstrate that words like "created" even have meaning outside our universe before statements like that can be reasonably made.

BTW: why "created" (which implies intent) and not just "caused"?

However, we know that nothing comes from nothing. Hence, the universe must have had a cause that exists outside of the universe (i.e., that can exist outside of time and space).

Hang on: you just said that the universe came from nothing. Which is it?

For this eternal cause to have originated a temporal phenomenon, the cause must be personal and have a will. In other words, impersonal eternal causes can only originate eternal consequences. Since this consequence, the universe, is not eternal, the cause must be personal and able to act at its own will.

Come again? Now you're REALLY just making crap up.

Hence, the cause is a personal being who is eternal and powerful enough to create the universe from nothing. That sounds a lot like the Biblical God.

The God you've suggested is a contradictory mess supported by hand-waving instead of evidence. Yes, that sounds a lot like the Biblical God.

... and you never even answered my question.

I asked you for something that can be rationally accepted despite being unfalsifiable. The nonsense you gave certainly can't be rationally accepted, and it was peppered with falsifiable claims anyhow. Care to try again? Can you give a single unfalsifiable claim that's objectively true (i.e. not just "true for you" and "false for me" like an aesthetic preference)?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

The difference between God and the Rhinoceros men is that the latter's existence:

(1) have not been seriously believed in by some of the brightest minds in the history of mankind.

Appeal to authority.

http://www.fallacyfiles.org/authorit.html

(2) do not change our notions of morality, ethics, and the afterlife.

Appeal to the consequences of a belief.

http://www.fallacyfiles.org/adconseq.html

(3) is not supported by historical facts such as the resurrection of Christ (if this sounds doubtful, we can open a thread about it later).

You can bet your butt it sounds doubtful.

(4) is not supported by logical arguments such as the ones proposed by Saint Thomas Aquinas.

In general, Aquinas' arguments are neither logical nor support God.

 

[Rick O'Shez]

I have faith that science will eventually prove the existence of God. I will say a prayer to Saint Dawkins. Praise the absence of Lord!

 

[Crypto2015]

Appeal to authority.

http://www.fallacyfiles.org/authorit.html


Appeal to the consequences of a belief.

http://www.fallacyfiles.org/adconseq.html


You can bet your butt it sounds doubtful.


In general, Aquinas' arguments are neither logical nor support God.

Maybe I confused circular reasoning with self-refutation. However, the argument that I put forth for the existence of God is reasonable. Does infinite exists in the real world? No. Then the universe cannot be infinite: the universe must have had a beginning. Come something come from nothing? No. Then the universe cannot have come from nothing. What was the cause that originated the universe? We know that it must be a cause that is independent from the universe and therefore independent from time and space. Moreover, causes that are eternal and impersonal can only have eternal consequences. Since the universe is not an eternal consequence, its eternal cause cannot be impersonal. It follows that the cause for the existence of the universe is personal, eternal, and extremely powerful.

 

[Crypto2015]

Appeal to authority.

http://www.fallacyfiles.org/authorit.html


Appeal to the consequences of a belief.

http://www.fallacyfiles.org/adconseq.html


You can bet your butt it sounds doubtful.


In general, Aquinas' arguments are neither logical nor support God.

It is strange because Aquinas' arguments have been regarded as extremely valuable by virtually every philosopher that has ever read them. It seems that you can prove that Aquinas was wrong simply by stating that he was wrong. You must be amazing.

 

[Mohammad Nur Syamsu]

I am amazed at how many high-calibre scientists are out to demonstrate that science disproves the existence of God. This amazes me because in general all science students learn at least a little bit of philosophy of science. One of the most basic principles in philosophy of science is that of falsifiability. A statement is falsifiable if there is an observation (either experimental or logical) that can demonstrate that the statement is false. For example, the statement “all cats are black” can easily be disproven by finding a cat that is not black. Similarly, the statement “parallel straight lines meet at some point” is false by definition. However, statements such as “this cat ought to be black” are unfalsifiable because it is impossible to demonstrate what something ought to be. Another example of an unfalsifiable statement is “if I had been born in Nigeria, I would be two meters tall”. These statements are unscientific because they are unfalsifiable. Science cannot tell us anything about them. It can neither prove them nor disprove them. However, an unfalsifiable statement may be true. For example, “mothers ought to love their children” is unfalsifiable and unscientific, but may be true nonetheless. The existence of God is unfalsifiable. Therefore, science cannot tell us anything about it. Claiming that this is not so is demonstrating a profound ignorance of what science is and is not. Please share your thoughts on the matter.

It's close but it doesn't get down to the fundamental logic of the matter. Facts are in essence copies, models. A book about the moon containing the facts about it, is in essence a model of it in the form of words, pictures and mathematics. Facts are in essence forced. The moon is the cause, the book about the moon the effect. The moon forces what ends up in the book containing the facts about the moon.

The reason statements about what ought are not facts, is because they apply to agency of decisions. What ought and ought not only applies for issus that can turn out several different ways.

Where facts have the logic of being forced, opinions have the logic of freedom. Which means that both the conclusion it ought, and the conclusion it ought not, are logically valid. The logical validity just depends on that it is chosen.

In the same way to say something is beautiful, is equally valid as to say it is ugly. Beauty also applies to agency of a decision. Beauty is a love for the way something looks. Love is agency of a decision, meaning that love is what makes a decision turn out A in stead of B. What that means is that it is equally logically valid to say the love is real, as it is to say the love is not real. However, it can still be regarded as immoral to say the love is real, or immoral to say it is not real.

The terms God and the soul, are also defined in terms of agency, and therefore they are proper subjective terms. Which means the rules of subjectivity apply, that it is equally logically valid to say God is real, as to say God is not real.

What that means practically is that one can express a feeling of emptiness, (remebering that expression of emotion works by free will, thus choosing) for one's own agency, the agency in society, the agency in the universe, and for the spiritual domain entirely. Such would be highly immoral, in my opinion, but it would be logically valid, and probably fairly common humanity of expression of emotions.

 

[Rick O'Shez]

Then the universe cannot be infinite: the universe must have had a beginning. Come something come from nothing? No. Then the universe cannot have come from nothing. What was the cause that originated the universe? We know that it must be a cause that is independent from the universe and therefore independent from time and space.

Not really. There is increasing support for the idea that the universe is infinite, or that our universe is just one of many. Remember that cause and effect is a property of space-time, so talking about cause and effect prior to space-time is pretty meaningless.

There is still much which is unknown. We can either accept the uncertainty or prematurely fill it with a religious belief, the choice is yours.

 

[Crypto2015]

Not really. There is increasing support for the idea that the universe is infinite, or that our universe is just one of many. Remember that cause and effect is a property of space-time, so talking about cause and effect prior to space-time is pretty meaningless.

There is still much which is unknown. We can either accept the uncertainty or prematurely fill it with a religious belief, the choice is yours.

There is no increasing support for an infinite universe. The opposite is true. The fact that cause and effect is a property of space-time actually supports my statement. That's what the statement is all about. So, virtually, you are saying that we must not believe in God because we don't know enough about the universe? I thought you, atheists, accused us of believing in God because we didn't know enough about the universe. It seems that you are the ones who appeal to mankind's ignorance in order to support beliefs for which you have no evidence.

 

[Rick O'Shez]

So, virtually, you are saying that we must not believe in God because we don't know enough about the universe?.

No, I'm saying that your arguments for God are pseudo-science.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Maybe I confused circular reasoning with self-refutation. However, the argument that I put forth for the existence of God is reasonable. Does infinite exists in the real world? No. Then the universe cannot be infinite: the universe must have had a beginning. Come something come from nothing? No. Then the universe cannot have come from nothing. What was the cause that originated the universe? We know that it must be a cause that is independent from the universe and therefore independent from time and space. Moreover, causes that are eternal and impersonal can only have eternal consequences. Since the universe is not an eternal consequence, its eternal cause cannot be impersonal. It follows that the cause for the existence of the universe is personal, eternal, and extremely powerful.

A crappy argument - and calling that string of baseless assumptions an "argument" is more charitable than it deserves - doesn't get any better by repeating it.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

It is strange because Aquinas' arguments have been regarded as extremely valuable by virtually every philosopher that has ever read them.

If you aren't familiar with any of the deconstructions of Aquinas' arguments that go through his mistakes of logic, I can give you some links.

It seems that you can prove that Aquinas was wrong simply by stating that he was wrong. You must be amazing.

It seems you can't tell the difference between stating a conclusion and giving a proof.

 

[jonathan180iq]

However, the fact remains that the Iliad contains historical events.

And, admittedly, the Bible does in fact reference a few historical events.

So we've established that the Bible and the Iliad are "on the same page" in regards to their loose connection to factual History.

Now what?

I think the next logical step is to classify the Bible as a mish-mash collection of Mythological literature, similar to the Iliad. Do you disagree?

 

[jonathan180iq]

The difference between God and the Rhinoceros men is that the latter's existence:

(1) have not been seriously believed in by some of the brightest minds in the history of mankind.
(2) do not change our notions of morality, ethics, and the afterlife.
(3) is not supported by historical facts such as the resurrection of Christ (if this sounds doubtful, we can open a thread about it later).
(4) is not supported by logical arguments such as the ones proposed by Saint Thomas Aquinas.

1) An argument from popularity doesn't hold any weight. Millions upon millions of people have also believed in Witchcraft and smoke cleansing... Is it suddenly a legitimate thing?
2) How can you make that claim if you've never spent time studying the ethical lives of the Rhinoceros Men from Atlantis?
3) Yes, please start a thread about the factual, Historical resurrection of Jesus...
4) Logical arguments can be made for almost any ridiculous thing - logical arguments do not make something factually true.

 

[Mohammad Nur Syamsu]

There is no increasing support for an infinite universe. The opposite is true. The fact that cause and effect is a property of space-time actually supports my statement. That's what the statement is all about. So, virtually, you are saying that we must not believe in God because we don't know enough about the universe? I thought you, atheists, accused us of believing in God because we didn't know enough about the universe. It seems that you are the ones who appeal to mankind's ignorance in order to support beliefs for which you have no evidence.

There are lots of infinities in the universe. The space between object is continuous, meaning there is no smallest small space. The number pi is also infinite, and integral to the working of the universe. An infinity is simply a mathematical term, it's got nothing to do with God.

 

[Crypto2015]

No, I'm saying that your arguments for God are pseudo-science.

Strange, because what's actually pseudo-science is what atheists like you, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris do when they foist-off their unsupported views about the universe under the guise of being scientific.

 

[Crypto2015]

A crappy argument - and calling that string of baseless assumptions an "argument" is more charitable than it deserves - doesn't get any better by repeating it.

Insulting an argument does nothing to disprove said argument. You haven't even attempted to disprove it. So, I must conclude that you are unable to do so.

 

[Crypto2015]

If you aren't familiar with any of the deconstructions of Aquinas' arguments that go through his mistakes of logic, I can give you some links.


It seems you can't tell the difference between stating a conclusion and giving a proof.

Where do you get your "deconstructions of Aquinas' arguments? From Dawkins? If so, spare the need to read such infantile rubbish.

 

[Crypto2015]

It's close but it doesn't get down to the fundamental logic of the matter. Facts are in essence copies, models. A book about the moon containing the facts about it, is in essence a model of it in the form of words, pictures and mathematics. Facts are in essence forced. The moon is the cause, the book about the moon the effect. The moon forces what ends up in the book containing the facts about the moon.

The reason statements about what ought are not facts, is because they apply to agency of decisions. What ought and ought not only applies for issus that can turn out several different ways.

Where facts have the logic of being forced, opinions have the logic of freedom. Which means that both the conclusion it ought, and the conclusion it ought not, are logically valid. The logical validity just depends on that it is chosen.

In the same way to say something is beautiful, is equally valid as to say it is ugly. Beauty also applies to agency of a decision. Beauty is a love for the way something looks. Love is agency of a decision, meaning that love is what makes a decision turn out A in stead of B. What that means is that it is equally logically valid to say the love is real, as it is to say the love is not real. However, it can still be regarded as immoral to say the love is real, or immoral to say it is not real.

The terms God and the soul, are also defined in terms of agency, and therefore they are proper subjective terms. Which means the rules of subjectivity apply, that it is equally logically valid to say God is real, as to say God is not real.

What that means practically is that one can express a feeling of emptiness, (remebering that expression of emotion works by free will, thus choosing) for one's own agency, the agency in society, the agency in the universe, and for the spiritual domain entirely. Such would be highly immoral, in my opinion, but it would be logically valid, and probably fairly common humanity of expression of emotions.

It is not equally logic to say that God exists and that God doesn't exist. If you believe in what you are saying, why are you a Muslim instead of an agnostic?