₦airaland Forum

hopefulLandlord:
What does "proof of no god" even mean?

That is a very good question.

I could ask what the concept of "atheism" even means.

It seems to assert the "non-existence of god". Is this assertion with, or without proof?

If it is "with proof" then the atheist would have to explain what "proof of no god" means.

If it is "without proof", I ask why the atheist thinks the deist needs to prove his belief.

sinequanon:
That is a very good question.

I could ask what the concept of "atheism" even means.

It seems to assert that "non-existence of god". Is this assertion with, or without proof?

If it is "with proof" then the atheist would have to explain what "proof of no god" means.

If it is "without proof", I ask why the atheist thinks the deist needs to prove his belief.

Proof is always positive so "proof of no god" makes no sense

hopefulLandlord:
Proof is always positive so "proof of no god" makes no sense

Define positive.

Also, does it "make no sense" to prove that there are NO (non-trivial integer) SOLUTIONS to x^3 + y^3 = z^3 (or more generally, Fermat's Last Theorem).

Does it make sense to "prove" that there were NO MACROSCOPIC LEAPS in evolution of species?

Does it make sense to "prove" that NO ISOLATED SYSTEM decreases in entropy?

Does it make sense to "prove" that IDENTICAL FERMIONS CANNOT SIMULTANEOUS OCCUPY THE SAME QUANTUM STATE (Pauli Exclusion Principle)?

Explain what you mean by "positive". There is even an argument that says that you can rephrase any statement that looks "positive" to be "negative", and vice versa.

sinequanon:
Define positive.

Also, does it "make no sense" to prove that there are NO (non-trivial integer) SOLUTIONS to x^3 + y^3 = z^3 (or more generally, Fermat's Last Theorem).

Does it make sense to "prove" that there were NO MACROSCOPIC LEAPS in evolution of species?

Does it make sense to "prove" that NO ISOLATED SYSTEM decreases in entropy?

Does it make sense to "prove" that IDENTICAL FERMIONS CANNOT SIMULTANEOUS OCCUPY THE SAME QUANTUM STATE (Pauli Exclusion Principle)?

Explain what you mean by "positive". There is even an argument that says that you can rephrase any statement that looks "positive" to be "negative", and vice versa.

Proof is always used for positive assertions. The person who asserts something exists provides the proof not the other way around

hopefulLandlord:
Proof is always used for positive assertions. The person who asserts something exists provides the proof not the other way around

That is not a description of your use of "positive".

Also, we are talking about asserting that something DOESN'T exist. I gave several examples in my last post.

You still seem to be confusing

NO PROOF SUPPLIED THAT GOD EXISTS

with PROOF THAT GOD DOES NOT EXIST.

sinequanon:
That is not a description of your use of "positive".

Also, we are talking about asserting that something DOESN'T exist. I gave several examples in my last post.

You still seem to be confusing

NO PROOF SUPPLIED THAT GOD EXISTS

with PROOF THAT GOD DOES NOT EXIST.

It seems you're just running around in circles and trying to split hairs. Proof in the context of existence would be positive so "proof of no god" makes no sense.

hopefulLandlord:
It seems you're just running around in circles and trying to split hairs. Proof in the context of existence would be positive so "proof of no god" makes no sense.

I think you are stuck, because I have asked you a difficult question.

Scientists assert the non-existence of many things as part of proven theory. I have already given you a number of examples. Suddenly claiming that this is "not positive" for your current debate is scientifically inconsistent.

However, even though your position is exposed in the wider context, it is not an escape route. I can just as well rephrase the question:

HOW DO YOU PROVE THAT EVERYTHING OBEYS NATURAL LAWS OF SCIENCE?

(You are running out of excuses, like "irrelevant", "running round in circles", "not positive"....)

sinequanon:
I think you are stuck, because I have asked you a difficult question.

Scientists assert the non-existence of many things as part of proven theory. I have already given you a number of examples. Suddenly claiming that this is "not positive" for your current debate is scientifically inconsistent.

However, even though your position is exposed in the wider context, it is not an escape route. I can just as well rephrase the question:

HOW DO YOU PROVE THAT EVERYTHING OBEYS NATURAL LAWS OF SCIENCE?

(You are running out of excuses, like "irrelevant", "not positive"....)

No I'm not stuck you are simply wishing I am, proof of existence is ALWAYS positive!. You're free to run around and gather irrelevant and incoherent things in an attempt to invalidate that but it stays true. evidence of existence remains positive not negative.

What are natural laws of science? tell me about them

Then if you guys says there exist no God,how then did the world come into be,and also other planets
We have in our solar system,and other galaxies that are light ways away from us ?

hopefulLandlord:
No I'm not stuck you are simply wishing I am, proof of existence is ALWAYS positive!. You're free to run around and gather irrelevant and incoherent things in an attempt to invalidate that but it stays true. evidence of existence remains positive not negative.

So, you can't explain yourself.

Philosophy, which is what this discussion amounts to, is a very difficult and challenging field. It's OK, you have lasted much longer than evo (whatever his name was).

You have got to a point where you are repeating the word, "positive" in dogmatic assertions, unable to explain what you mean by it.

I have challenged the word "positive" in clear-cut examples, which you now evade. I can only conclude that you are stuck at this point.

hopefulLandlord:
What are natural laws of science? tell me about them

Laws of thermodynamics, entropy.

Law of conservation of momentum, energy, non-destruction of matter.

etc.

Why am an atheist


*There is not one iota of unequivocal evidence that any God exists. . . .God remains just an idea, a conception, a perception and a claim that requires belief to sustain it.

*God cannot explain all that exists because God itself cannot be explained. This claim just gratuitously swaps one mystery for another.

*Religions do not fully explain any mechanism or process whereby God created anything. It is effectively an appeal to magic they tell you to just believe. For example how exactly did God create the planet, all you get are just wishy washy appeal to magic.

*Religious faith is generally indistinguishable from gullibility. Trust and faith as human concepts, are normally based on experience and reason. Religious faith is necessarily based on belief in unproved and unknowable things.

* Religious faith has never been tested objectively and shown to work.

*A God or anything that exists outside the realm of natural reality is necessarily unknowable, unintelligible and incoherent. It is therefore irrational to believe in something that is said to be supernatural and beyond the ability to be tested and be objectively shown to be real.

*Religious scripture:
* is completely man-made
*contains many translation, historical and scientific and interpretation errors
* is often self-contradictory
* often contradicts known facts
*promotes conversion by violence
*contains many narratives that are purely mythical
* calls for punishment and death to unbelievers, why should people be punished for unbelief in stories that lack evidence?
*contains virtually no specific and unequivocal predictions
* is always subject to personal interpretation and opinion
* Was written by ancient men that didn't know much about the world and the universe in general
*contains only vague predictions beyond its own time
*contains many failed prophecies, predictions and unfulfilled promises of God
*Isn't universally objective as should be assuming it is from a divine source that wants to pass a message to humans.
*Scripture contains too much that is vague, metaphorical and symbolic to be instructions from a divine being to humans. A perfect being would be expected to be able to communicate much better than that.

*In order to render most of scripture useful, it must necessarily be interpreted. This makes it easily twisted to support nefarious purposes.

*The problems with scriptures outweigh any good messages they may contain. If read at all, they should be considered opinion and philosophy and that's all that there is to it.

*Morals are based on human sympathy, empathy, what will lead to a stable and less chaotic society and not on divine guidance. it varies from culture to culture, period in history and is always evolving. Establishing moral codes based on theism is unnecessary, riddled with contradictions, and fraught with danger. Reason is what humans are supposed to use to guide them when making moral choices and decisions not ancient rules written by people whose civilization and way of life is outdated.

*Religion is divisive in that it pits groups of otherwise indistinguishable people against one another. There are already more than enough differences for humans to fight over. And religion is the most intransigent of such divisions because many people feel it is a divine duty to revile those who believe differently than they do even if they don't see the reason in it. God hates the disbelievers or the disbeliever are condemned is what is written in most scriptures.

*Religions are generally intractable when it comes to substantive compromise with other religions or belief systems.

*All suggested ways to perceive God rely on internal mechanisms that are subject to personal desires, suggestion, and mistakes. On the question of communicating with God, religion insidiously asks us all to deceive ourselves. If God or Gods communicates to people as they claim then why are they always receiving and sending different messages that are mostly contradictory even within the same religious group?


*Every culture that has existed has had God myths and other superstitions. This is often used as an argument for the existence of God. Rather than indicating that there is a true God, this indicates that people are simply attracted to the idea and people easily form the idea.


*Goodness, truth, wisdom and all other purported attributes of God are human concepts. When applied to a presumed entity so completely different in kind as to be supernatural, they are meaningless. The idea of God is thus incoherent.

*Infinity is a concept humans cannot comprehend except in a limited mathematical sense. If God is infinite, this also renders him unintelligible.

*Belief in an afterlife is insidious, besides there is no evidence to show the human consciousness survives bodily death.

*Organized religion wastes untold amounts of money and resources that could be used to care for people, promote real knowledge, and advance the human race.

*Theism puts God above people thereby making people subservient, unimportant and expendable.

*Religion relies on guilt, fear, uses threat and outlandish promises to gain obedience.

*Religion is like racism because it segregates people.

*Theism generally precludes any possibility of testing God or questioning his existence substantively and objectively. It is something like the wizard of Oz saying, "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."

*The methods used in proselytizing for religion bear an unmistakable resemblance to the methods of confidence men. But the scriptures consider this the great commission of mankind.

*There are many good rational and logical arguments against theism but not one argument in favor of it that doesn't rely on a fallacy, assumption or special pleading.

*There are so many Gods put forth by thousands of religions that no one could ever be certain of picking the correct one, assuming that one exists.

*Prayer is totally subjective and cannot be shown to have any more efficacy than pure chance.

*There is no discernible difference between believing in God and having an imaginary friend.

*People generally rely on facts and evidence in every human endeavor except religion.

*Unequivocal miracles do not occur. example Gods do not heal amputees and restore their amputated limbs or babies born with down syndrome.

*God supposedly speaks directly to the human spirit. This must be, at least partly, the same concept as mind. People who receive messages in their minds are invariably delusional.

*There is no positive correlation between belief in God and being a moral person.


*Religions have a long history of misogyny.

*Religious dogma is practically immune to the incorporation of new facts. The best it can do is strained reinterpretation.

* Children have to be indoctrinated with religion at a very early age.

*The argument that God cannot be proven not to exist is irrelevant when one considers that to do so requires that the concept of a supernatural God be intelligible and coherent, which it is not.

*There is a well known argument commonly called "The Problem of Evil". It basically says that if an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God exists, unnecessary or gratuitous evil would not exist in the world. Thus if God sees this type of evil and does nothing he is either not omnibenevolent because he doesn't care or not omnipotent because he is unable to stop it. There are many counter-arguments that have been used. However the only one that really could defeat the Problem of Evil is if one says that we cannot apply human standards to decide what is or is not gratuitous evil. This may well be true, but that argument renders God unintelligible and meaningless to humans. Either way, the concept of God seems to be highly doubtful.

*Theists claim that God has given humans free will. However, this free will is anything but free. The choices are forced on pain of death and eternal suffering. It is equivalent to having a slave and saying something like: "I grant you your freedom to leave at any time. But if you do, I will torture you mercilessly and kill you as slowly as possible."

Dboy55:
Then if you guys says there exist no God,how then did the world come into be,and also other planets
We have in our solar system,and other galaxies that are light ways away from us ?

In philosophy, this comes under ontology.

In our human experience, and according to our human experience of time, things have a "beginning and an end", a "birth and a death". Even stars and galaxies are "UNDERSTOOD" to follow this pattern.

So, it is natural to ask the question, where did everything "COME" from. But the question need not be a valid one, as it is only an extrapolation of our human experience.

Of course, a trite answer to your question would be another question, "where did god come from?"

Above all I am an atheist because I came to realize that Gods are human ideas, conceptions, imaginations and ignorance. All Gods ate a human creation that is why there are many different Gods and many different religions created after the various Gods.

Dalamama:
Why am an atheist


*There is not one iota of unequivocal evidence that any God exists. . .

I stopped right there. The notion of "unequivocal evidence" is not recognized even by scientists. Scientific evidence comes with a "confidence level", never 100%.

sinequanon:
I stopped right there. The notion of "unequivocal evidence" is not recognized even by scientists. Scientific evidence comes with a "confidence level", never 100%.

So what if it is not recognized by scientist? There is no unequivocal evidence that any God exist. That is one of my reasons for not believing in any God.

Dalamama:
So what if it is not recognized by scientist? There is no unequivocal evidence that any God exist. That is one of my reasons for not believing in any God.

Your use of the term "unequivocal evidence" seems to be an appeal to science. How do you measure the "unequivocal" nature of "evidence", otherwise? It is then odd that you would dismiss scientific recognition of anything.

hopefulLandlord:
No I'm not stuck you are simply wishing I am, proof of existence is ALWAYS positive!. You're free to run around and gather irrelevant and incoherent things in an attempt to invalidate that but it stays true. evidence of existence remains positive not negative.

What are natural laws of science? tell me about them

sinequanon is right actually.

you assert that there is no god, you should be able to prove your assertion.

if your position simply rests on the fact that theists have not been able to prove god exists, you can at most be agnostic.

absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. that theists have not been able to prove god does not mean he doesn't exist.

there was a time when evidence of gravitational wave was absent, scientist would have concluded that there is nothing like gravitational wave if they took absence of evidence to mean evidence of absence.
that they did not find evidence at first did not mean there was no evidence, it meant they couldn't find it at first. same thing applies here.

for you to say god does not exist, you have to provide evidence that shows he doesn't exist. you can't just rely on the lack of evidence of his existence. that evidence is lacking could possibly mean we don't have capability to find evidence yet.


saying you can't prove a negative is false. once you make an assertion, burden of proof lies on you.

you can prove god doesn't not exist the same way you can prove that:

-there is no monster under your bed by looking under your bed and seeing no monster.
-your brother is not in the kitchen by going into the kitchen and not seeing him.
-you have no million dollar in your account by checking your account balance.
-you have no spanking new Ferrari in your garage by checking your garage and seeing nothing there.
-humans cannot breathe in water by examining human anatomy...

Dalamama:
Why am an atheist


*There is not one iota of unequivocal evidence that any God exists. . . .God remains just an idea, a conception, a perception and a claim that requires belief to sustain it.

*God cannot explain all that exists because God itself cannot be explained. This claim just gratuitously swaps one mystery for another.

*Religions do not fully explain any mechanism or process whereby God created anything. It is effectively an appeal to magic they tell you to just believe. For example how exactly did God create the planet, all you get are just wishy washy appeal to magic.

*Religious faith is generally indistinguishable from gullibility. Trust and faith as human concepts, are normally based on experience and reason. Religious faith is necessarily based on belief in unproved and unknowable things.

* Religious faith has never been tested objectively and shown to work.

*A God or anything that exists outside the realm of natural reality is necessarily unknowable, unintelligible and incoherent. It is therefore irrational to believe in something that is said to be supernatural and beyond the ability to be tested and be objectively shown to be real.

*Religious scripture:
* is completely man-made
*contains many translation, historical and scientific and interpretation errors
* is often self-contradictory
* often contradicts known facts
*promotes conversion by violence
*contains many narratives that are purely mythical
* calls for punishment and death to unbelievers, why should people be punished for unbelief in stories that lack evidence?
*contains virtually no specific and unequivocal predictions
* is always subject to personal interpretation and opinion
* Was written by ancient men that didn't know much about the world and the universe in general
*contains only vague predictions beyond its own time
*contains many failed prophecies, predictions and unfulfilled promises of God
*Isn't universally objective as should be assuming it is from a divine source that wants to pass a message to humans.
*Scripture contains too much that is vague, metaphorical and symbolic to be instructions from a divine being to humans. A perfect being would be expected to be able to communicate much better than that.

*In order to render most of scripture useful, it must necessarily be interpreted. This makes it easily twisted to support nefarious purposes.

*The problems with scriptures outweigh any good messages they may contain. If read at all, they should be considered opinion and philosophy and that's all that there is to it.

*Morals are based on human sympathy, empathy, what will lead to a stable and less chaotic society and not on divine guidance. it varies from culture to culture, period in history and is always evolving. Establishing moral codes based on theism is unnecessary, riddled with contradictions, and fraught with danger. Reason is what humans are supposed to use to guide them when making moral choices and decisions not ancient rules written by people whose civilization and way of life is outdated.

*Religion is divisive in that it pits groups of otherwise indistinguishable people against one another. There are already more than enough differences for humans to fight over. And religion is the most intransigent of such divisions because many people feel it is a divine duty to revile those who believe differently than they do even if they don't see the reason in it. God hates the disbelievers or the disbeliever are condemned is what is written in most scriptures.

*Religions are generally intractable when it comes to substantive compromise with other religions or belief systems.

*All suggested ways to perceive God rely on internal mechanisms that are subject to personal desires, suggestion, and mistakes. On the question of communicating with God, religion insidiously asks us all to deceive ourselves. If God or Gods communicates to people as they claim then why are they always receiving and sending different messages that are mostly contradictory even within the same religious group?


*Every culture that has existed has had God myths and other superstitions. This is often used as an argument for the existence of God. Rather than indicating that there is a true God, this indicates that people are simply attracted to the idea and people easily form the idea.


*Goodness, truth, wisdom and all other purported attributes of God are human concepts. When applied to a presumed entity so completely different in kind as to be supernatural, they are meaningless. The idea of God is thus incoherent.

*Infinity is a concept humans cannot comprehend except in a limited mathematical sense. If God is infinite, this also renders him unintelligible.

*Belief in an afterlife is insidious, besides there is no evidence to show the human consciousness survives bodily death.

*Organized religion wastes untold amounts of money and resources that could be used to care for people, promote real knowledge, and advance the human race.

*Theism puts God above people thereby making people subservient, unimportant and expendable.

*Religion relies on guilt, fear, uses threat and outlandish promises to gain obedience.

*Religion is like racism because it segregates people.

*Theism generally precludes any possibility of testing God or questioning his existence substantively and objectively. It is something like the wizard of Oz saying, "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."

*The methods used in proselytizing for religion bear an unmistakable resemblance to the methods of confidence men. But the scriptures consider this the great commission of mankind.

*There are many good rational and logical arguments against theism but not one argument in favor of it that doesn't rely on a fallacy, assumption or special pleading.

*There are so many Gods put forth by thousands of religions that no one could ever be certain of picking the correct one, assuming that one exists.

*Prayer is totally subjective and cannot be shown to have any more efficacy than pure chance.

*There is no discernible difference between believing in God and having an imaginary friend.

*People generally rely on facts and evidence in every human endeavor except religion.

*Unequivocal miracles do not occur. example Gods do not heal amputees and restore their amputated limbs or babies born with down syndrome.

*God supposedly speaks directly to the human spirit. This must be, at least partly, the same concept as mind. People who receive messages in their minds are invariably delusional.

*There is no positive correlation between belief in God and being a moral person.


*Religions have a long history of misogyny.

*Religious dogma is practically immune to the incorporation of new facts. The best it can do is strained reinterpretation.

* Children have to be indoctrinated with religion at a very early age.

*The argument that God cannot be proven not to exist is irrelevant when one considers that to do so requires that the concept of a supernatural God be intelligible and coherent, which it is not.

*There is a well known argument commonly called "The Problem of Evil". It basically says that if an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God exists, unnecessary or gratuitous evil would not exist in the world. Thus if God sees this type of evil and does nothing he is either not omnibenevolent because he doesn't care or not omnipotent because he is unable to stop it. There are many counter-arguments that have been used. However the only one that really could defeat the Problem of Evil is if one says that we cannot apply human standards to decide what is or is not gratuitous evil. This may well be true, but that argument renders God unintelligible and meaningless to humans. Either way, the concept of God seems to be highly doubtful.

*Theists claim that God has given humans free will. However, this free will is anything but free. The choices are forced on pain of death and eternal suffering. It is equivalent to having a slave and saying something like: "I grant you your freedom to leave at any time. But if you do, I will torture you mercilessly and kill you as slowly as possible."

this can only make you agnostic at most.

for you to assert as fact that god does not exist, you should be able to prove that god does not exist.

sinequanon:
Your use of the term "unequivocal evidence" seems to be an appeal to science. How do you measure the "unequivocal" nature of "evidence", otherwise? It is then odd that you would dismiss scientific recognition of anything.

Appeal to which science? You said science doesn't recognize it in one sentence and in another you say it's an appeal to science? Are you making things up or what?

Where is the scientific declaration that says unequivocal evidence isn't scientific? Show me it to me pls.

Gggg102:
this can only make you agnostic at most.

for you to assert as fact that god does not exist, you should be able to prove that god does not exist.

What is the evidence that there is no adult male elephant hiding inside my closet at the moment ? Lack of evidence that there is one.

Gods are man made ideas, conception, ignorance and imaginations.

[quote author=hopefulLandlord post=70475256][/quote]you were ready to prove Yahweh doesn't exist here.

Dalamama:
Appeal to which science? You said science doesn't recognize it in one sentence and in another you say it's an appeal to science? Are you making things up or what?

It is an appeal to what is known as "Western science".

Your appeal is flawed, hence the discrepancy.

Dalamama:
Where is the scientific declaration that says unequivocal evidence isn't scientific? Show me it to me pls.

Let us first be clear, before I show you. You are using the term "unequivocal evidence" to mean valid evidence that can be interpreted in only one way, i.e 100% proof, right?

Dalamama:
What is the evidence that there is no adult male elephant hiding inside my closet at the moment ? Lack of evidence that there is one.

Gods are man made ideas, conception, ignorance and imaginations.

I could go into your room, open your closet and have a look inside. and the evidence is that I would not see an adult male elephant inside.

what is your proof that there is no god?

sinequanon:
It is an appeal to what is known as "Western science".

Your appeal is flawed, hence the discrepancy.

Unequivocal evidence has nothing to do with with western science.

Let us first be clear, before I show you. You are using the term "unequivocal evidence" to mean valid evidence that can be interpreted in only one way, i.e 100% proof, right?

Yes, leaving no doubt. Show me the scientific declaration that says full proof that leaves no doubt isn't scientific.

Gggg102:
you were ready to prove Yahweh doesn't exist here.

So you ard an agnostic,you are not sure whether he exists or not right ?

Dalamama:
Above all I am an atheist because I came to realize that Gods are human ideas, conceptions, imaginations and ignorance. All Gods ate a human creation that is why there are many different Gods and many different religions created after the various Gods.

what's the proof of your realization.

wouldn't you ask for proof of I said: above all I am a theist because I came to realize god is real and we have a little bit of his consciousness in our mind, idea, conception, imagination. god created human and different religions created different gods because they know subconsciously that god exists are trying to find god so they express their subconscious knowledge albeit inaccurately.

Dboy55:
So you ard an agnostic,you are not sure whether he exists or not right ?

IDK... I don't really bother myself with existence of god that much.

Gggg102:
IDK... I don't really bother myself with existence of god that much.

So what do you know believe in ?

Gggg102:
I could go into your room, open your closet and have a look inside. and the evidence is that I would not see an adult male elephant inside.

what is your proof that there is no god?

God is a human idea and conception as such there is NO one God. There are different ideas and versions of God based on this human ideas. Some believe in polytheism (many Gods) others believe in monotheism (Single God).

So which version of God should I disprove when there are many different versions?

So which of the God or Gods

Dalamama:
God is a human idea and conception as such there is NO one God. There are different ideas and versions of God based on this human ideas. Some believe in polytheism (many Gods) others believe in monotheism (Single God).

So which version of God should I disprove when there are many different versions?

So which of the God or Gods

is anything that is an idea non existent?

does this sound right?:
big bang is a human idea and conception so it did not happen, there are different theories about big bang created by man.

the being that caused the universe to exist.

Dalamama:
Unequivocal evidence has nothing to do with with western science.

I am glad that you agree.

Dalamama:
Yes, leaving no doubt. Show me the scientific declaration that says full proof that leaves no doubt isn't scientific.

We can simply wiki it...

Scientific proof
It is often said that proof is for alcohol and mathematics, as these are really the only areas where proof has any real meaning. "Proof" is something that the opponents of science are always clamouring for, yet is NOT ACTUALLY SOMETHING SCIENCE SUGGESTS it will give — specifically in the common sense definition of "proof" that suggests that a claim has been proven 100%.

Surprisingly to some, SCIENCE DOES NOT DEAL IN PROOF, in spite of the word being associated with science...