Theism vs. Atheism ... will it ever be settled?

or not. Man's ability to transcribe thoughts and ideas into language has been around for a few 100s of thousand of years; the ability to depict imaginary concepts in pigment and paint  has been around for a few 10s of thousands of years; and the ability to put down concepts into a written form that can be communicated across the span of time has been around for about a few thousand years. Through-out (and after) all this time the one constant, unchanging, well defined concept that mankind should be able to answer without hesitation, deviation or repetition, without blinking, stuttering or umming and without thinking, pondering or giving a second thought should be 'what do you mean by "god".' Yet no one can and those that think they can do not have the confidence of the rest of humanity to support their definition to such an extent that there are 19 major world religions subdivided into 270 major groups and 34,000 seperate denominations/church groups and over 4,000 minor religions. With something like 84% of the world's population believing in some form of god since the "dawn of man" there really ought to be better cohesion and correlation as to what it is they believe in. Apparently this is indicative of the scope of god, that god is unknowable because god is ineffability and transcendance and not for the logical and obvious reason, which is what is unknowable is unknowable because there is notihing to know. 

rpe9p wrote: Mr ProgFreak wrote: If you insist that we cannot disprove the existence of the supernatural - fine, but until you can explain to me how these supernatural phenomena are different from "nothing", I'd say that it's pretty irrelevant whether they exist or not. It is quite possible that "supernatural" phenomena exist that we are not capable of observing, but that does not mean they are "nothing."  My beliefs may be irrelevant to 99% of my daily life, but that does not mean they are not important to me.

If we cannot observe it that means it does not matter whether it exist or not. And by "observation" I do not limit that to direct observation of the phenomena, but incudes indirect observation of the effects of that phenomena. If it does not matter whether they exist or not and we cannot observe them or their effects means that they are not different from "nothing".

rpe9p wrote: Mr ProgFreak wrote: The point is that the typical religious person has some concrete ideas about their deity, and many of them represent an interaction with the real world which can actually be tested and shown to not exist - to a high degree if certainty. For example, many Christians believe that God listens to prayers and actually answers some of them, but many studies (even those funded by religious organizations) have shown that prayer has no measurable effect. Ok, well I dont.  You keep grilling me about my personal beliefs which really isnt what I came to this thread to discuss.  My original point was not that I have all (or any) of the answers and neither do you so you can stop acting as though your beliefs have been logically proven correct and any sane, logical person should agree with you.  You beliefs require leaps of faith just like everyone else's.

1. "I believe the car keys are in the dishwasher" is a statement based upon some unproven guess.
2. "I believe the car keys are not in the dishwasher" is a statement based upon some unproven guess.
3. "I do not believe the car keys are in the dishwasher" is the same as "I do not believe option (1)"

Edited by Dean - September 17 2010 at 21:05

I'll take a wild stab at this - how about 250,000 years ago? what about 6,000 years ago? how about 2,010 years ago? why not 1,440 years ago? what was wrong with last wednesday?

 

I know, let's pencil-in next thursday around mid-day (GMT).

Ivan_Melgar_M wrote:   Couldn't it be possible that God has revealed to different men  in different ways? Or even better, that different cultures had a different perception of God?   At least for the most of the main religions, the full concept and complete  definition of God, exceeds human capacity, maybe God has decided that this is not the moment to make a full revelation because mankind needs to be in a different evolutionary stage. .

That's not what I said.

 

Theists say god is unknowable to explain why they don't know - I simply gave an perfectly logical and reasonable explanation of why the unknowable is unknowable - not why they don't know the unknowable.

 

Moreover the theists further claim that the gods do not want us to know and that man does not have the capacity to know so they can keep moving the goal posts to justify their lack of knowing.

rpe9p wrote: I fail to see your point, are you saying that if we believe god exists, even if god never interacts with us in any observable manner, we still ought to know exactly what god is and agree upon a definition?

Yes, that is exactly what I am saying.

rpe9p wrote: Suppose not to long ago someone believed there was something beyond classical physics, but didnt know what (ideas like quantum theory and string theory had not be thought of yet).  How does your argument apply to religious people but not that person? (this is not a rhetorical question, I'm trying to understand what you are saying, not to argue against it)

Because that's not how the scientific method works.

So your free-thinker with a hypothesis of something beyond classical physics has a strict set of logical processes to follow to assess the validity of that hypothesis so that it can be accepted as a workable theory that explains all known data and can make predictions on future data. If at anytime those predictions fail or they fail to explain the data then the hypothesis and/or later theory fails.

 

So my argument does not apply to the free-thinking scientist because he is subject to even tougher and more rigorous checks and restrictions that do not and cannot apply to any religious person, because the religious thinker can invent a fanciful notion and call it divine inspiration without justification, explanation or empirical data to support it and everybody (including non-believers) are expected to accept it without question.

rpe9p wrote:    Dean wrote: If we cannot observe it that means it does not matter whether it exist or not. And by "observation" I do not limit that to direct observation of the phenomena, but incudes indirect observation of the effects of that phenomena. If it does not matter whether they exist or not and we cannot observe them or their effects means that they are not different from "nothing". I disagree, as just one example we have the Christian idea that god watches you throughout your life and you will be with god when you die.

The mischeivous side of me want to blurt out "prove it!", but I shall refrain  

 

Omnipresence is completely unobservable directly or indirectly and thus has no direct or indirect consequence beyond using it to justify how you live your life. If you only do good things because the gods are watching you every minute of the day then that is a dishonesty - I endevour to do good things because I want to, not because someone is looking over my shoulder.

rpe9p wrote:   Dean wrote: If it takes faith to believe in something then not believing in the same something is a lack of faith (or a failure to leap). The opposite of "believing that gods exist" is "not believing that gods exist" - whereas "believing that gods do not exist" is not the same thing and is not the opposite - one requires belief and one does not.   suppose: "I believe the car keys are in the dishwasher" is a statement based upon some unproven guess. "I believe the car keys are not in the dishwasher" is a statement based upon some unproven guess. "I do not believe the car keys are in the dishwasher" is the same as "I do not believe option (1)"     Really it just seems like we are both trying to draw circles that include the middle ground of open-ended uncertainty and pin each other on the outside, which is kind of a silly argument.

Calling a lack of faith a faith is a silly statement, calling a lack of belief a belief is a silly statement - any counter argument to either statement tends towards the absurd.

rpe9p wrote:   Ivan_Melgar_M wrote:   Not believing in God doesn't require faith, I agree with that, but claiming "God doesn't exist, as a statement beyond any doubt" requires as much faith as saying God exists because you are making a claim that can't be proved, and you will agree that  a good number of atheists that cross this line.   Iván Ivan kind of read my mind and explained the kind of atheists I was referring to with the "faith" comment.  However, when I see people arguing that atheism is completely logical and anyone who disagrees is stupid, I usually dont assume that by atheism they mean the belief that "god probably doesnt exist but we cant really be sure" so I feel it is fair to lump them into the category of "god doesnt exist beyond any doubt"

Edited by Dean - September 18 2010 at 04:35