Any other atheists here? Some frustration

[SadisticNature]

How do you know that Water isn't supposed to boil at 90 degrees and every time god stops it from boiling till it gets to 100. This seems pretty unreasonable but its not provably false, and its certainly not experimentally verifiable. So here is an example of something that could be true if a divine being were to exist that could not be shown by science. This also covers the non-interference problem, as if some divine being interferes in 100% of the experiments scientific truth could be entirely wrong.

As for truth, type matters. If you go with a radical doubt approach, its difficult to know much more than your own existence, because you can't prove that you aren't being deceived about the world. You can't even prove that people other than you exist. This is covered extensively in Philosophy, largely coming from the work of Descartes, but revisited by others. Other, more rational approaches start from different axioms and derive different results. In particular, the scientific method itself requires certain axioms.

Furthermore, no one has proven anything beyond a reasonable doubt in science, new experiments change and expand on previous laws. Even something as basic as gravity could behave radically differently from what was previously thought for something as yet untested. For instance, the gravity between two objects whose relative velocity is greater than the speed of light. For all we know the theory of gravity might be a tiny special case of the general picture. No experiment has proven it to be the be all and end all, just like no "god measuring" experiment would have a final word.

As for the 7 step argument Thorne postulates, step 4/5/6/7 is invalid as you have already assumed no gods, and consistency of one assumption does not imply the inconsistency of another.

1. Assume there are gods.
2. Do our models and theories of the universe still apply?
3. Yes, they do.
4. Then there probably are gods.
5. Is there evidence for gods?
6. Gods exist by assumption 1 so in this theory absolutely.
7. Then to the best of our knowledge there are gods.

If one of these theories was inconsistent or created problems it would be easy to reject it, but both are valid so someone needs to devise an experiment to show one or the other to be incorrect before outright rejecting either. In other words, neither "God exists." nor "God does not exist." is a statement of science, much like neither "The flying spaghetti monster exists." not "The flying spaghetti monster does not exist." is a statement of science. When we reject these things as implausible we aren't using scientific evidence we are making hypotheses from the entirety of our entire life experience about the plausibility of something we can't verify.

If I believe P is not equal to NP, I'm not asserting that computer science shows P is not equal to NP, I'm expressing a belief about an unproven conjecture. The fact that no one has demonstrated an algorithm for an NP-hard problem in polynomial time, is not enough to reject P = NP, even if an arbitrary large time window is used, a proof is still required.

[Thorne]

How do you know that Water isn't supposed to boil at 90 degrees and every time god stops it from boiling till it gets to 100.

Because we (mankind) have developed the Celsius scale of temperature using the boiling and freezing points of water under standardized conditions. So any god who wishes to fuck with us can simply cause the water to boil at any random temperature while maintaining those standard conditions, thereby negating our own science. Simple enough, isn't it?

As for truth, type matters. If you go with a radical doubt approach, its difficult to know much more than your own existence, because you can't prove that you aren't being deceived about the world. You can't even prove that people other than you exist. This is covered extensively in Philosophy, largely coming from the work of Descartes, but revisited by others. Other, more rational approaches start from different axioms and derive different results. In particular, the scientific method itself requires certain axioms.

I'm not going to debate philosophy. I have no understanding of it, and no taste for it. To me, it's a jumble of nonsensical excuses for believing whatever one wishes to believe.

Furthermore, no one has proven anything beyond a reasonable doubt in science, new experiments change and expand on previous laws. Even something as basic as gravity could behave radically differently from what was previously thought for something as yet untested.

I have never denied this. Science develops theories, which are basically models of the universe as we know it! If the model fails, the theory is wrong and must be either corrected or discarded. New devices, new technologies, new information, all help to improve the focus, to sharpen the spear point of science, to more accurately explain the real world around us. No reputable scientist would claim that he knows everything, or that we've explained anything absolutely. All we can say is that our models are as accurate as we can make them at this time.

As for the 7 step argument Thorne postulates, step 4/5/6/7 is invalid as you have already assumed no gods, and consistency of one assumption does not imply the inconsistency of another.

1. Assume there are gods.
2. Do our models and theories of the universe still apply?
3. Yes, they do.
4. Then there probably are gods.
5. Is there evidence for gods?
6. Gods exist by assumption 1 so in this theory absolutely.
7. Then to the best of our knowledge there are gods.

I disagree absolutely! Statement 6, above, is just plain wrong. The assumption of gods does not constitute evidence of gods. It's about as silly as claiming that we know the Bible is the "True Word of God" because the Bible tells us it's the "True Word of God!"

I would reword statement 6 to say, "No, there is no such evidence." Then statement 7 must become, "Then there may not be any gods. Our assumption at #1 may be wrong. Let's assume there are no gods and see where that takes us."

In short, if there is no evidence that gods exist, and no difference between a universe with gods and a universe without them, then why bother with them? They are, if they exist at all, irrelevant! They make no difference at all.

[FirstBorn]

1. Assume there are gods.
2. Do our models and theories of the universe still apply?
3. Yes, they do, in absolute indifference to our assumption 1.
4. Then we cant tell if there are gods or not.
5. No evidence supports the existence of gods.
6. We belived in god back at 1 but nothing supports that assumption.
7. There is no devine influence, possibly because theres no god.

[SadisticNature]

Up to 4 your argument makes sense. However once you have asserted by assumption an axiom is true, you can either show it false by contradiction, or you have a model of the universe in which its true, so within that model 5 is certainly wrong. 6 is true, however the same argument can be made about assuming gods don't exist.

7. is a reach that doesn't follow from 1 to 6 at all. It isn't even provably true, as how would you identify divine influence if it were happening in 100% of experiments.

As for the temperature scale:

My point is the actual temperature we identify as 100 celcius may in fact be different from the true temperature at which water boils if some divine entity were causing the true laws of nature to be violated in all instances. In this case we would discover false laws based on the violations.


As for philosophy if you choose not to debate it that's fine, but truth has long been consider in the realm of philosophy by both mathematicians and scientists. Scientists discover truth about the physical world, these aren't the only types of truth.

You continue to misunderstand point 6.

My point is consider two models of the universe.

Model A is the model you gave before where the assumption is that no gods exists.

Model B is the model where god exists by assumption.

Neither model is inconsistent, so you cannot rule out either model as a state of the universe. The only way in which an assumption can prove anything about itself is a proof of falsity by contradiction.

In Model A god does not exist is a true statement by assumption, this isn't evidence however because in Model B god exists is a true statement also by assumption. If you wanted to show god does not exist, you'd have to show that model A is consistent, while model B is not.

Model A provides evidence for god not existing as within Model A the statement god does not exist is true. Model B provides evidence for god existing as within Model B the statement god exists is true. None of this evidence is useful however as it is all circular reasoning and as neither of these models is consistent assuming a statement doesn't result in its proof.

Con (AoS) -> Con (AoS + 'God does not exist')
Con (AoS) -> not Con (AoS + 'God does exist')

would say that if one assumes the axioms of science are correct then one is forced to conclude god does not exist. This means any argument for the existence of god would have to argue the scientific method was wrong. However these statements have not been shown and from a logical standpoint are not derivable unless there are axioms of science that imply statements about god.

If you propose to advance a rigorous argument I suggest you use Models properly. If you'd like I could suggest a formal logic text or a model theory book, I've studied both.

[SadisticNature]

The Ancient Greeks have no verifiable evidence of gravity, and thus should conclude gravity does not exist. Of course this is a false conclusion.

Absence of verifiable evidence is insufficient to conclude something is false. You'd need to be able to show its negation is verifiable to show anything about the truth of the existence of God.

It is perfectly fine to assume God does not exist for the purpose of doing science, and that's a perfectly rational position to take. However, it is not a proof, so you have not done enough to show the public that god does not exist.

[Wiscoman]

It is perfectly fine to assume God does not exist for the purpose of doing science, and that's a perfectly rational position to take. However, it is not a proof, so you have not done enough to show the public that god does not exist.

The burden of proof is with the claimant. If it were the other way around, we'd be disproving every crazy-assed thing someone came up with. Was John Wilkes Booth possessed by demons? Up to you to prove he wasn't. Was the Hindenburg brought down by a UFO? I don't know, prove it wasn't.

It's not up to skeptics to prove a god doesn't exist, it's up to believers to prove it does.

[Thorne]

The Ancient Greeks have no verifiable evidence of gravity, and thus should conclude gravity does not exist. Of course this is a false conclusion.

You're saying they didn't know that if you dropped something it would fall? That's a silly notion. Of course the Greeks knew about gravity. They didn't know what it was, and they certainly weren't able to quantify it, but that doesn't mean it did not exist.

Absence of verifiable evidence is insufficient to conclude something is false. You'd need to be able to show its negation is verifiable to show anything about the truth of the existence of God.

No argument from me here. I've said all along that you cannot prove a negative. I've never said that gods cannot exist. I've only said there is no evidence that they do and therefor no reason to believe that they do. There's no evidence that Neverland doesn't exist either. That doesn't mean Peter Pan will be dropping by tomorrow.

It is perfectly fine to assume God does not exist for the purpose of doing science, and that's a perfectly rational position to take. However, it is not a proof, so you have not done enough to show the public that god does not exist.

You misunderstand! I don't have to prove that he doesn't exist! Again, such a proof is impossible. If you want people to believe he does exist, then it's up to you to provide proofs of that existence.

[Thorne]

As for the temperature scale:
My point is the actual temperature we identify as 100 celcius may in fact be different from the true temperature at which water boils if some divine entity were causing the true laws of nature to be violated in all instances. In this case we would discover false laws based on the violations.

It doesn't matter what the so called actual temperature should be. A being violating the laws of nature in all instances is identical in results to no being violating said laws. It's not a proof of divine intervention, though an assumption of divine intervention can be made if you wish. But why would you?

Model A provides evidence for god not existing as within Model A the statement god does not exist is true.

No, it does not provide such evidence. Assumptions are not evidence. If any evidence for the existence of gods were to be found it would falsify our assumption, thereby making our hypothesis false.

Model B provides evidence for god existing as within Model B the statement god exists is true. None of this evidence is useful however as it is all circular reasoning and as neither of these models is consistent assuming a statement doesn't result in its proof.

Again, the assumption of the existence of gods' does not constitute evidence of their existence.
In these two instances either hypothesis works. You can assume gods exist or not and the results are identical. However, there is no evidence of such existence, so the only reason for hypothesizing them is to make yourself feel better. Their existence, if it is true, has no bearing on the running of the universe.

the axioms of science are correct then one is forced to conclude god does not exist.

I'm not sure which axioms you are referring to here, but the only reason to conclude that gods do not exist is because there is no evidence of them. For the same reason we can reasonably conclude that unicorns do not exist, that there is no green cheese on the Moon, and no ancient civilizations on Mars.

This means any argument for the existence of god would have to argue the scientific method was wrong.

The scientific method is simply a tool used to verify the work of fallible human beings. Repeated experiments and observations, duplication by independent sources and peer review of data and conclusions. There's nothing to say that you cannot prove anything, just that you have to have the evidence and the data to verify it.

However these statements have not been shown and from a logical standpoint are not derivable unless there are axioms of science that imply statements about god.

I don't understand this at all. Are you saying that we cannot prove God exists unless we make God's existance an axiom? "God exists, therefore we have proven that God exists"? Which god? Your god, or Caesar's god, or Muhammed's god? All of them? None of them?