Your generic God debate containing Aliens and lots of excitement!
 

So is there any proof god exists yet?



Mod Edit: I chose to split this debate from the wikileaks thread once and for all. So please, if you need to further debate God and such things, keep it to this thread. The Atmosphere in the debate is already pretty loose, so don't be afraid to keep things that are only loosely based on this discussion here. Just keep the other threads clean!

Have fun :)

Well you see my gut instinct

His gut instinct! Says way to much chili last night. http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_5Z8-8LVkqO...0/smiley01.png

Is there any proof he doesn't?

Inflammatory little hobgoblin.

It doesn't work that way. Show it exists first.

God is outside proof, this discussion is broken at stage one.

Any attempt to reason God exists through proof can be shot down, any attempt to conceptually deny God can be shot down.

And people wonder why I'm agnostic.

But since we're talking philosophomistorfony, you can just say that, then I can say that everything needs proof, and it's back to being inside that sphere again.

You cannot prove that everything needs proof.

The sphere breaks itself. Evidentialism cannot answer its own challenge.

why not?

Because you cannot prove you need proof? It's self justifiable.

Like, you cannot say why we should be nice people. If you're outside the sphere of morality then there's nothing to say you should be nice or even recognize the concept of niceness. You need to be inside a sphere to discuss things related to that sphere.

Empiricism and evidentialism and all the scientific method attached to it work well enough for our lives and for advancement and health and wealth and the future, but you certainly can't claim that it's all there is. It's just good enough, and that's all that counts.

Why?

That a concept has been developed that is beyond the reaches of evidence is sufficient enough to dismiss it out of hand. And they thought they were so clever with that one.

I don't think either of you understand the nature of the objection.

Explain it then.

I don't quite know how, I just don't understand how your counter-objection works against mine. If anything, it's a bigger pile of rhetoric.

The statement people want to say is 'Any statement that isn't a priori significant or backed up by evidence is meaningless' right? That statement is neither significant or backed up by evidence. It's impossible for a need for evidence to justify itself.

Yes, the 'outside' of the empirical world is utterly meaningless to us in the end, as it stands, but that's not the point. The point is there's no good reason to suggest why it couldn't exist without going back inside the sphere.

It's outside the sphere of evidence and thus scientifically meaningless, but it's not outside the sphere of thought and you can't deny the claim that God or other metaphysics could exist without fighting them on their own terms. 'You can't prove God exists' is like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.

Ultimately, like I said, God's existence does not impact our everyday lives, and given the sheer number of religions in the world and the nature of faith to begin with, there may not be good enough reason to conceptually deny God, but there is certainly enough reason to not all convert on the off-chance he exists (Fuck you Pascal) and to just get on with things inside our sphere of logic.

But what would God need with a starship?

Yes, there is. Religion is disgusting, hateful, and a source of great pain all throughout human history.

Good thing that faith and religion are two different things eh?

Faith in religion, or religious figures is also disgusting, hateful, and a great source of pain all throughout human history.

OANST and Faith in religion, or religious figures is also disgusting, hateful, and a great source of pain all throughout human history.

She's got the idea.

Anime, OANST and Faith in religion, or religious figures is also disgusting, hateful, and a great source of pain all throughout human history.

Holy shit. Never has she gotten the idea more!

Even God needs to pick up space chicks sometimes.

EDIT: I are good at recognising the last page of a thread.

Doublefine, Anime, OANST and Faith in religion, or religious figures is also disgusting, hateful, and a great source of pain all throughout human history.

What's this now? Now, you've just lost your fucking mind.

Running a joke into the ground is also disgusting, hateful, and a great source of pain all throughout human history.

Alcar's penis, OddHunter, Doublefine, Anime, OANST and Faith in religion, or religious figures is also disgusting, hateful, and a great source of pain all throughout human history.

Modest Mouse, Turtles, Braid, Team Meat, Strike Witch, Memes, Alcar's penis, OddHunter, Doublefine, Anime, OANST and Faith in religion, or religious figures is also disgusting, hateful, and a great source of pain all throughout human history.

Marine Biology, Braid, Team Meat, Memes, Alcar's penis, OddHunter, Doublefine, Anime, OANST and Faith in religion, or religious figures is also disgusting, hateful, and a great source of pain all throughout human history.

I've created a monster.

Keep going.

Monsters, Trolling, Rape, The woods, Inane pseudocomments, Slender Man, Dr. Karl Barishnikov, Meme acceleration, Roofing, Modest Mouse, Turtles, Marine Biology, Braid, Team Meat, Memes, Alcar's penis, OddHunter, Doublefine, Anime, OANST, OANST's family, Everything else OANST likes and Faith in religion, or religious figures is also disgusting, hateful, and a great source of pain all throughout human history.

It's a practical and methodological concern. Ideas and concepts for which there is evidence and ideas and concepts that have emerged from observation have produced real-world outcomes and products the likes of which philosophy can only discuss, and religion can only resist. And here's the awesome part: those discoveries and evidence-based ideas lead on to even more ideas and discoveries. I don't need to tell you how thought and evidence is a positive feedback loop that accelerates science beyond anything philosophy is capable of, being based on just thought. It can't be ignored, the values of evidentialism are its own unmatched accomplishments, and as far as I'm concerned science doesn't need to justify itself to the rest of philosophy at all.

But ideas about the nature of the universe, and lets not kid ourselves, a god's existence, have a very major effect on the nature of the universe, and those are scientific. Not necessarily in origin, but they stumble deep into science's territory and thus can be examined critically and scientifically. And gods fall at every hurdle. It's true that there is no evidence for them, and in a broader sense that is important (and a very good thing too) but that is quite trivial compared with the problems of the idea itself. The term would be "not even wrong". The response would be "go home and do it again". It is beyond the reach of science to deal with as we would anything real because the idea is so useless and poorly constructed. I've always said, if there are any gods at all then it is science that will discover them, and any resemblance to those of our myriad human religions will be purely coincidental.

On top of that, all the gods we've heard of bear all the gruesome hallmarks of having been invented by a creature half a chromosome away from a chimpanzee. There is really no good reason to take any of them seriously at all.

One's the root of the other. I think both are poisonous. In before "you have faith in science" and similar nonsense.

LIKE A PUFFER FISH?

Not like the big bang at all really.

That does not even warrant a measured response. I am extremely tired of having to substitute grade-school education for debate.

Let me put it to you like this, ignoring red shift and such "proof" because there are similar possibilities for the creation and not just Christian and Jewish creation:

In the beginning there was a particle,
No one knew why the thing existed nor why it contained such enormous power but it did,
And the particle exploded and creation began and all that it did was good.

On the first day, it created more particles than grains of sand on a beach, it created light from darkness and interstellar clouds formed...need I go on?

Please do. This is fascinating.

Nobody needs a lecture on the Higgs Boson Scrabtrap.

Ok...

In the second age the particle decided it needed to separate the gas cloud into smaller gas clouds so it created space and separated the light and the dark with a vacuum.

The third age saw the creation of the planets, the particle was proud of all that it had done and but saw that the universe could not be filled with rocks and empty spaces, there had to be someone to enjoy it...

In the fourth age, the particle prepared the planets with oxygen and nitrogen and hydrogen from the nothingness of space, he created new elements because his power was infinite but the universe was still not complete.

In the fifth age the particle realised that his job was nearly done, he had prepared spheres for life and now he must add life. He created DNA from water and acid and merged it by a miracle, some say this is impossible but those are the non-believers and they have the devil (need and alternative...aliens?) in them. He looked on what he had done and lo, it was good!

On the last day the particle created complex lifeforms, most amazing of all, man, a species of clumsy and backward apes that miraculously survived for four million years to become what we are today.

I could go on right to Revelation and start the Qu'ran but cba. Hope you liked OANST, now I'll go get you some milk and you can tuck yourself in.

EDIT: Don't you like my stories Oddhunter?