Christains quoting Christian, you don't see that everyday.

(May 5, 2016 at 2:26 am)robvalue Wrote: I thought that "X is physical" and "X (literally) exists" mean exactly the same thing.

If something is non-physical, then it can only exist abstractly at best (a concept).

What exactly does it mean for something to exist but not be physical? Unless I'm getting the definition wrong, it seems to be a contradiction in terms.

If people want to put supernatural stuff alongside abstract concepts, then I have no argument with that. But a concept has no power to do anything in of itself.

You are talking about natural vs supernatural. In discussion on the scientific method and its effectiveness, it cannot comment on the existence or the nonexistence of the supernatural. To make a statement like "only natural things exist" would be a metaphysical statement/discussion.

Science deals with the world which is natural, the fact science can't comment on the supernatural demonstrates that the supernatural isn't part of the world, and hence reality.

(May 5, 2016 at 7:24 am)Jörmungandr Wrote:

(May 5, 2016 at 6:56 am)SteveII Wrote: If nothing exists necessarily, everything exists contingently. Contingent things have an explanation for their existence. Why is there something rather than nothing? To say "I don't know" to that question and then tell a theist that the idea of God is ridiculous is, at best, inconsistent.

Exactly what do you mean when you say it's inconsistent here?  The idea of God is ridiculous whether or not there is an alternative or not.  To reject a ludicrous hypothesis even if you lack an alternative is not inconsistent, it's just common sense.  What do you mean here?

If you make the statement that nothing necessarily exists, you are also saying that everything is contingent (having an explanation for its existence). If everything is contingent, the universe has an explanation for its existence. 

So the argument seems to be 

1) the universe must have an explanation for existence
2) God cannot be that explanation
Therefore: We don't know, just anything other than God. 

I have yet to hear why the concept of God is logically impossible (and therefore ridiculous).

(May 5, 2016 at 8:26 am)Alasdair Ham Wrote: Science deals with the world which is natural, the fact science can't comment on the supernatural demonstrates that the supernatural isn't part of the world, and hence reality.

Again, what is the basis that all of reality is natural? That is a metaphysical statement so you can't use science to support that assertion.

I don't know what the fuck "supernatural" is meant to be either.

We arbitrarily label certain things "natural". Scientifically, we label everything we observe that way. Informally we may distinguish between natural and "man made". Either way, it's just labels.

I know, I know... supernatural breaks "the laws of nature". I've been through all this before. It's an equivocation fallacy between our scientific models and any actual laws that exist.

Doesn't anyone ever get tired of being dishonest...

http://youtu.be/J5u5-Bg2ENQ

(May 4, 2016 at 6:21 pm)SteveII Wrote:

(May 4, 2016 at 3:57 pm)Crossless1 Wrote: The Abrahamic religions all claim to worship a god who is non-physical but who (once upon a time) interacted directly and often with the physical world. Hell, he ate lunch with fucking Abraham!

Such a being, if it existed and affected the world through its interaction with it, would presumably leave effects that could be studied.

And he has. what do you think the Bible is?

A collection of ancient writings by a particular group of superstitious people in a narrowly circumscribed area of the world.

(May 5, 2016 at 8:49 am)SteveII Wrote:

(May 5, 2016 at 8:26 am)Alasdair Ham Wrote: Science deals with the world which is natural, the fact science can't comment on the supernatural demonstrates that the supernatural isn't part of the world, and hence reality.

Again, what is the basis that all of reality is natural? That is a metaphysical statement so you can't use science to support that assertion.

The basis is that reality is about real life. Life is about phenomena, not noumena which is unprovable. Anything outside of the reaches of phenomenology is effectively nonexistent because it's irrelevant to our lives.

Yeah but you can't prove there isn't magic!

Adults. Adults saying this. Fucking hell.

No, I can't prove it. Why would I want to? You can only define these stupid things (magic, supernatural, non-physical) in terms of things we have never experienced and so by definition they can't have any evidence for them. It makes me shake my head in wonder.

All we have is arguments from ignorance.

(May 5, 2016 at 8:45 am)SteveII Wrote:

(May 5, 2016 at 7:24 am)Jörmungandr Wrote: Exactly what do you mean when you say it's inconsistent here?  The idea of God is ridiculous whether or not there is an alternative or not.  To reject a ludicrous hypothesis even if you lack an alternative is not inconsistent, it's just common sense.  What do you mean here?

If you make the statement that nothing necessarily exists, you are also saying that everything is contingent (having an explanation for its existence). If everything is contingent, the universe has an explanation for its existence. 

So the argument seems to be 

1) the universe must have an explanation for existence
2) God cannot be that explanation
Therefore: We don't know, just anything other than God. 

I have yet to hear why the concept of God is logically impossible (and therefore ridiculous).

It isn't that God is an impossible explanation, just that it is a very poor one. Discounting the evidence from miracles, we have no direct effects attributable to this hypothetical being, only the writings and words of men. Explanations are judged on a number of different criteria to determine their merit. One of these is scope, or how many phenomena are covered by the explanation. God gets high marks in this area. Another aspect is parsimony, or how simple the explanation is. Arguably, God fares okay on this metric, though it's hard to compare. On other measures, the God explanation fails miserably. Relevance, or how related the cause is to the effect is poor. Explanatory power, or how well we understand the phenomenon after the explanation as opposed to before is another abysmal failure. Predictiveness, or what predictions you can make based on the explanation and how do those pan out is another big zero for God.

In short, in most of the things we expect a good explanation to provide, God comes up short. God is little more than a Hail Mary hypothesis. It explains everything without explaining anything. The only real advantages it has are scope and familiarity, and familiarity is a lousy reason to support a hypothesis.