Why don't you believe in God?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So then you are not an atheist?

I think the distinction between agnosticism and atheism is irrelevant, at least for anyone interested in getting on with the business of living one's life. Let's just say that on the spectrum of atheism/agnosticism/belief, unicorns are slightly more to the "agnostic" side than gods, which are slightly more to the "atheist" side.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Occam's razor has been brought up by several nonbelievers as if it is definitive proof that God does not exist. As Inigo Montoya says in The Princess Bride, "You keep on saying that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

OR is itself a theory about shifting the burden of proof between hypotheses. It is not an incontrovertible law of physical science. It is itself a hypothesis, and an often misunderstood one at that.

The author of this hypothesis was a Catholic priest and logician who believed in God.

This is just tap-dancing. The funny thing is, you're correct in your characterization of OR, but you don't seem to understand the implication of what those words mean. Bertrand Russell offered what he called "a form of Occam's Razor" which was "Whenever possible, substitute constructions out of known entities for inferences to unknown entities."

Your "god hypothesis" has the greater burden of proof, because 1) it is more complex, and 2) it has *less* explanatory power than the infinite succession of universes hypothesis. The only reason theists don't think so is because they fallaciously start with the assumption that an infinitely complex god exists, and work their way backwards.

From wikipedia:

William of Ockham himself was a theist. He believed in God, and thus in some validity of scripture; he writes that “nothing ought to be posited without a reason given, unless it is self-evident (literally, known through itself) or known by experience or proved by the authority of Sacred Scripture.”[38] In Ockham's view, an explanation which does not harmonize with reason, experience or the aforementioned sources cannot be considered valid. However, unlike many theologians of his time, Ockham did not believe God could be logically proven with arguments. In fact, he thought that science actually seemed to eliminate God according to the Razor's criteria

Since we're talking about amusing things, what's really amusing is the argument offered up by an adult, that OR supports the god hypothesis because Occam himself was a believer. It's like arguing that electric light bulbs cannot illuminate blue rooms because Edison hated that color. Simply comical.

It gets amusing to watch nonbelievers state that ANY alternative hypothesis of creation MUST be more plausible than God, because God is impossible. So an infinity of successive universes, a "spontaneous creation" of everything from nothing for no reason, a black hole...all of these things are more plausible than an Uncaused Cause.

Wrong, you're apparently still not paying attention. The God hypothesis isn't "impossible", but God doesn't get special privileged status on your say so. If rationalists have to deliver a valid story for the origin of the singularity, believers need to do so for "God". Just saying "he's an uncaused cause" is casuistry--in the perjorative sense. Our story is that there's this fairly well-understood phenomenon, but we don't know how it came to be yet. Yours is that there's this mystical force for which there's no concrete evidence whatsoever. But how did it come to be? Ah! See, it didn't! It's always been there.

Puh-leeze.

OK, if that is your faith, I can respect your free will to believe as you will. I just hope you don't decide to form a society based on that premise. Those societies have not worked out so well for the people living in them.

More silliness. As though the long succession of holocausts wrought by irrational societies founded on organized religion is somehow preferable to the handful wrought irrational societies founded on personality cults.

So then you are not an atheist?

Oops...hit "submit" instead of "preview."

So you are not an atheist?

But you do believe Wikipedia is infallible?

This could be the oldest dodge in the book, and practically stinks of desperation. If you take issue with any of the points I quoted, you're free to make them. I'm guessing you're the one who was claiming that Occam's Razor can't possibly be used to question the god hypothesis because, gasp, William of Occam believed in God.

[Anonymous]

? You think unicorns are less likely than God?

[Anonymous]

There are biochemical markers of the feelings we call "love". There is also bonding, which is common among mammals.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:? You think unicorns are less likely than God?

No sorry, clunky phrasing: unicorns are more likely than God.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:? You think unicorns are less likely than God?

No sorry, clunky phrasing: unicorns are more likely than God.

Now here's a debate I can get into. Unicorns are less likely than God to exist in that unicorns are big animals and somebody would have noticed them if they exist. God, on the other hand, is presumed not to be physically present in the world, so he has an excuse why he can't be found that unicorns don't have. Plus, a bunch of people at least claim to have felt the presence of God. I've never heard of anything similar for unicorns.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Now now, no need to get all snippy! Evidence in scientific language usually means something you can measure or prove. You can't measure love or prove it exists. We just know it because it is an "evidentiary experience" - something we know exists because we experience it. I would argue souls are similar. People that believe in souls know they exist because they can feel them the same way you feel love.

Hmm. I don't think I've ever heard anyone say they feel their soul the same way that they feel love. Can you give some examples of people feeling their souls?

As for evidence of love, you can observe that in people's actions, not just because they say so. And you could prove love exists if you had to. Off the top of my head, I can imagine an experiement where one group consists pairs of fathers and daughters (presumed to love one another) and the other consists of pairs of random people who don't know each other. You tell each pair that one of them will be shot. Then you tell one of the people he/she can choose whether s/he is shot or the other person. I'm betting that more of the people in the father daughter pairs choose to have themself shot versus the control group, proving love exists.

Good try, but imagine in that same study, one of the fathers was terminally ill. The daughter knows this. So she chooses to have her father shot instead of herself. Does this mean there is no love between them (it does not exist there)?

I think a lot of people equate their souls with their consciences. Martin Luther used to ask members of his congregation "How is it with your soul?" instead of "How are you?". So if you feel guilt, anger, happiness, obligations, whatever - it is your soul. People who believe in souls would argue that they feel their souls the same way you feel love.

A better example would be how many Catholics feel more guilt than others, and go to confession to "rid themselves" of that guilt. If you did a survey of catholics and non Catholics, I'm sure Catholics would rate higher on feelings of guilt. By your scientific view, does this mean they have souls, but non-catholics don't have souls, thus proving that souls exist?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Occam's razor has been brought up by several nonbelievers as if it is definitive proof that God does not exist. As Inigo Montoya says in The Princess Bride, "You keep on saying that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

This could be the oldest dodge in the book, and practically stinks of desperation. If you take issue with any of the points I quoted, you're free to make them. I'm guessing you're the one who was claiming that Occam's Razor can't possibly be used to question the god hypothesis because, gasp, William of Occam believed in God.

Your argumentation relies heavily on the use of straw men.

[Anonymous]

Of course there will be individual variations. One daughter may have been abused by the father, for instance. That's why you'd have to have enough participants to get a statistically relevant sample. I'm saying more people will sacrifice themselves over their loved one, not that all of them will.

On souls, I'm sorry, but you can't get the existence of the soul because Martin Luthor had a funny way of saying "How's it going?". If the soul just means feelings, then sure, everyone has a soul. But I understand what is meant by the soul is some essence of yourself that is separate from your physical body. There's no evidence that such a thing exists. We've never found one in a dissection, for example.

There's no way to test whether living people have souls, since if they exist we all have them and they are all inside of us somewhere. You'd have to design an experiment where you could sense the essence of a person apart from their body. I don't have a good experiment to test that, at least not one that's likely to show there is a soul. Plenty of tests would turn up a negative, I expect.

[Anonymous]

What is a soul? I can think of one because the brain determines our personality and holds our experiences and feelings.

[Anonymous]

Of course there will be individual variations. One daughter may have been abused by the father, for instance. That's why you'd have to have enough participants to get a statistically relevant sample. I'm saying more people will sacrifice themselves over their loved one, not that all of them will.

On souls, I'm sorry, but you can't get the existence of the soul because Martin Luthor had a funny way of saying "How's it going?". If the soul just means feelings, then sure, everyone has a soul. But I understand what is meant by the soul is some essence of yourself that is separate from your physical body. There's no evidence that such a thing exists. We've never found one in a dissection, for example.

There's no way to test whether living people have souls, since if they exist we all have them and they are all inside of us somewhere. You'd have to design an experiment where you could sense the essence of a person apart from their body. I don't have a good experiment to test that, at least not one that's likely to show there is a soul. Plenty of tests would turn up a negative, I expect.

But you can't prove something doesn't exist by failing to prove that it does exist. You just can't. It is like our court system. You can fail to prove someone guilty, but that doesn't mean they are innocent. Or guilty. Just means you haven't proven it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is a soul? I can think of one because the brain determines our personality and holds our experiences and feelings.

Oops. ...think of one example...

[Anonymous]

I think Out of Body Experiences would be evidence of a soul.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

But you can't prove something doesn't exist by failing to prove that it does exist. You just can't. It is like our court system. You can fail to prove someone guilty, but that doesn't mean they are innocent. Or guilty. Just means you haven't proven it.

I'm not saying there's proof the soul doesn't exist. I'm saying you can't prove it exists in the way you can prove love exists. Nor is there evidence that the soul exists the way there's evidence that love exists.

[Anonymous]

There have been many cases of documented out of body experiences that can not be explaned through normal scientific means. If a body and a person's mind can exist in two different physical places, that means they must be connected through a "supernatural" means, ie a soul.