The great philosopher Socrates, they say, said before his death "I know that I do know nothing"
We can't say that in our days. In fact we know an awful lot of things about Nature and every day enhances our knowledge of the Universe in general and of the Earth in particular.

If we imagine a theoretical absolute limit of our knowledge of Nature and try to draw a curve within two coordinates, one being the amount of knowledge and the other the axis of time we would get an ascending nonlinear curve showing a lot of humps.
Each hump would mean that almost every discovery of a law of nature is not necessarily a leap forward to the absolute goal but that some discoveries are creating new problems which are awaiting for answers, and so it continues it's humping road upwards.
The continuous line of the ascending curve is paved by science, representing a way of thinking accessible to reason of man, where it is no place for any supra natural phenomena.

Now, if we draw a doted line on this curve stretching from the point which represents our actual knowledge of Nature, upwards to the absolute goal of knowledge , that's just the area where believers in supra natural forces are trying to place themselves in.

In a more concrete way ,we know a lot about the micro cosmos ,down to the elementary bricks of matter ,we know a lot about the macro cosmos with it's galaxies and black holes and the recently issue of the black matter, we know a lot about evolution of life and so on.

But there are a lot of things we don't know as for instance the origin of life on Earth ,how come that our globe is placed in the so called Goldilocks zone, why is the strong force 0.007,why is time oriented only in one direction, and an awful lot of similar still unanswered questions.

Trying to disprove the existence of God, atheism puts forward the conquests of science. But science still fails to answer to a lot of issues and is giving by that the opportunity to theists, creationists, ID-ists and alike, to sustain their case, Moreover atheism even retreats before them saying that it is only "almost " certain that God does not exist.

From the above mentioned considerations one can draw following conclusions:
-theoretically, there is not possible at all for men, the Homo Sapiens
who came out of Africa only a few tens of thousands years ago (a little fraction of
time related to the appearance of humans on Earth),who are a link in the evolution
of life to come forward with scientific answers to all problems of Nature.
-if science has not the possibility of totally disproving the existence of God through
explanation of Nature than atheism should try to find another convincing
arguments to it.
-the anthropic principle used as an explanation of the above unanswered
problems is unconvincing, unnecessary, not baring the intrude of God, and even
exhales a faint smell of faith.
-accepting only a partially disproval of God is weakening atheism to the point of
trading percents of how much it is right against how much it is wrong.


There exists a particular way of disproving God, which I would call the major disprove of God, as follows.
The very notion about an entity called God sprung up from dawn of history from the beliefs of people in supra natural forces which are governing the world.

The notion of God used by theists and creationists where does it come from?
Did a supra God send this notion about himself into their brains?
It's absurd.
In reality their God is only another face of the same old God religious people do believe in him.

I consider that we can refer to God, as being similar to the Roman God Janus, a two faced entity:
- one face is the "creator" of the Universe. He who knows how the world ticks and
also why it ticks as it does. I call him the universal God or in short UG and he is
the master of the theists, creationists ,ID-ists and alike.
-the other face is what I call the Humanly God or in short HG. He is in "charge" of
the destiny of humans, of their souls, of their life after death .He demands to be
glorified and worshipped, he loves and punishes men as he pleases He is the
master of religions.

Now, whereas UG is only partially disprovable by science, HG is without any doubt a creation of man which is motivated by needs of human society, which can be analyzed by historical archeological, psychological ,socio-economical and other scientifically means, enabling by that atheism to disprove totally his existence.
Both, UG and HG are in fact the same entity called God .
In my opinion you can not treat UG as a separate entity, as scientific atheism do because it’s very notion derives from the same God as HG.

I am not saying that the above disproval is the ultimate one, I am calling it the major one because it is undeniable and therefore no atheist should by-pass it.

Finally here is a slogan which I propose:
"There are no Gods other than God created by man and he dwells in no place of the Universe but in the minds of people who believe in him."

Is there going to be a test? Should I be taking Notes?
:p

Er....two points...

(November 7, 2008 at 1:50 pm)josef rosenkranz Wrote: The great philosopher Socrates, they say, said before his death "I know that I do know nothing"

Whether socrates means knowledge as in absolute knowlege or in merely understanding., I do not know. But I think it is correct that we can't (at least for now, as far as we understand) 100% know anything. I mean we "know gravity" and its so close to certain that its 100% right we might as well say it is. But we don't really 100% know. We think we 100% know and we understand it as such. Just as God could suddenly strike me with lightning and cause earthquakes and have Satan rise from hell...just as that. Gravity could suddenly stop. Its scientifically impossible, which means scientifically as close to impossible as you can get. Its as close to certain as almost certain can be scientifically. Basically since the beginning of the existence of gravity this has been the case. For billions and billions of years. But its possible (just almost certainly as minutely possible as possible, totally smallest possibility ever, almost certainly), for gravity to stop. because we don't know the future! So as far as we know we can't 100% absolutely know anything, for ourselves. We can just be almost entirely certain, that we have God the absolute truth correct.

Quote:Moreover atheism even retreats before them saying that it is only "almost " certain that God does not exist.

Because, for as I have explained above, atm as far as we know, thats the way it is, scientifically. How could we 100% disprove God? We can't (atm at least, and I'm not sure if we ever will be able to, who knows?). Its Russell's Teapot! It would actually be unscientific to claim that we can or have 100% absolutely disproved God when as far as we know so far, according to evidence and probability, we can't and haven't. So its not a retreat if its the scientific truth!

(November 12, 2008 at 7:51 pm)Jason Jarred Wrote: Is there going to be a test? Should I be taking Notes?
:p

Suit your self, it's a free country.
Is that all to it? No comments ? No f-words ? The "Big brother" did not permit to discuss the issue ? what ?

---

quote
[
Because, for as I have explained above, atm as far as we know, thats the way it is, scientifically. How could we 100% disprove God? We can't (atm at least, and I'm not sure if we ever will be able to, who knows?). Its Russell's Teapot! It would actually be unscientific to claim that we can or have 100% absolutely disproved God when as far as we know so far, according to evidence and probability, we can't and haven't. So its not a retreat if its the scientific truth!
[/quote]

OK. So we agree that science don't have the possibility to totally disprove God.
You are proving this in your way ,I in my way ,but in essence we both agree about the same impotence.
The problem is that you stop here , I would say in a fatalistic resignation ,in alignment with RD and his "almost certainty thar God does not exist",whereas I suggest another way ,you are free to consider it right or wrong , but it is at least worth to discuss that way .

Quote:Trying to disprove the existence of God, atheism puts forward the conquests of science.

Atheism does no such thing. We attempt to find good answers to difficult questions through science and so far gods have not been a sufficient answer for any of them. Chances are we never will either. But we are not trying to disprove god.

(November 13, 2008 at 3:53 pm)josef rosenkranz Wrote: The problem is that you stop here , I would say in a fatalistic resignation ,in alignment with RD and his "almost certainty thar God does not exist",whereas I suggest another way ,you are free to consider it right or wrong , but it is at least worth to discuss that way .

There is no evidence that completely 100% absolutely disproves God though is there? Or gravity?! Or anything for that matter?! Because we can't see into the future and there's always a possibility that we are wrong. Give me an example of how God is 100% completely and absolutely disproved. Rather than just scientifically disproved ( in that there is almost certainly no God in a de facto scientific sense).

(November 13, 2008 at 3:53 pm)josef rosenkranz Wrote: Suit your self, it's a free country.
Is that all to it? No comments ? No f-words ? The "Big brother" did not permit to discuss the issue ? what ?

F-words??? You're an odd man Josef, but that's ok
You're right, my big brother told me not take onboard somebody else's burden of proof, so I rarely bother to attempt to prove the nonexistence of anything, including God, teapots or Flying Spaghetti Monsters!

(November 12, 2008 at 8:22 pm)EvidenceVsFaith Wrote: Er....two points...

(November 7, 2008 at 1:50 pm)josef rosenkranz Wrote: The great philosopher Socrates, they say, said before his death "I know that I do know nothing"

Whether socrates means knowledge as in absolute knowlege or in merely understanding., I do not know. But I think it is correct that we can't (at least for now, as far as we understand) 100% know anything. I mean we "know gravity" and its so close to certain that its 100% right we might as well say it is. But we don't really 100% know. We think we 100% know and we understand it as such. Just as God could suddenly strike me with lightning and cause earthquakes and have Satan rise from hell...just as that. Gravity could suddenly stop. Its scientifically impossible, which means scientifically as close to impossible as you can get. Its as close to certain as almost certain can be scientifically. Basically since the beginning of the existence of gravity this has been the case. For billions and billions of years. But its possible (just almost certainly as minutely possible as possible, totally smallest possibility ever, almost certainly), for gravity to stop. because we don't know the future! So as far as we know we can't 100% absolutely know anything, for ourselves. We can just be almost entirely certain, that we have God the absolute truth correct.

Quote:Moreover atheism even retreats before them saying that it is only "almost " certain that God does not exist.

Because, for as I have explained above, atm as far as we know, thats the way it is, scientifically. How could we 100% disprove God? We can't (atm at least, and I'm not sure if we ever will be able to, who knows?). Its Russell's Teapot! It would actually be unscientific to claim that we can or have 100% absolutely disproved God when as far as we know so far, according to evidence and probability, we can't and haven't. So its not a retreat if its the scientific truth!

I have repeated many times my point of view but only a few have bothered themselves to try to understand what I'm saying.

I agreed with you that science is not able to totally disprove God .
So far so good.

Now another way is to put the question of who the hell created the very notion of God ?.
The aswer is clear : God is a creation of man for provable purposes
which I am not going to detail because the kind of them are so many as historical ,political, spiritual ,psychological economical,etc,,
treated by experts in a lot of books.
Moreover my opinion is that God is not only a historical creation but he is recreated momentarily in the mind of everyone who believes in him the very moment he thinks about him.
I came to this last conclusion by making a little research discussing it with religious people.
It's a simple research everyone of us I believe has aquintances who see themselves as believers (even more or less) and you can easily repeat that experience.
The concliusion I draw from what I said above is tht God does not exist anywhere in space but in the minds of people who believe in him.
Another opinion of mine is that even after disproving of God in the way I exposed above there remains the problem of the belief in Destiny which even secular people stick to it.
For how to tackle that problem let's leave for another post.

(November 14, 2008 at 2:21 pm)josef rosenkranz Wrote:

(November 12, 2008 at 8:22 pm)EvidenceVsFaith Wrote: Er....two points...

(November 7, 2008 at 1:50 pm)josef rosenkranz Wrote: The great philosopher Socrates, they say, said before his death "I know that I do know nothing"

Whether socrates means knowledge as in absolute knowlege or in merely understanding., I do not know. But I think it is correct that we can't (at least for now, as far as we understand) 100% know anything. I mean we "know gravity" and its so close to certain that its 100% right we might as well say it is. But we don't really 100% know. We think we 100% know and we understand it as such. Just as God could suddenly strike me with lightning and cause earthquakes and have Satan rise from hell...just as that. Gravity could suddenly stop. Its scientifically impossible, which means scientifically as close to impossible as you can get. Its as close to certain as almost certain can be scientifically. Basically since the beginning of the existence of gravity this has been the case. For billions and billions of years. But its possible (just almost certainly as minutely possible as possible, totally smallest possibility ever, almost certainly), for gravity to stop. because we don't know the future! So as far as we know we can't 100% absolutely know anything, for ourselves. We can just be almost entirely certain, that we have God the absolute truth correct.

Quote:Moreover atheism even retreats before them saying that it is only "almost " certain that God does not exist.

Because, for as I have explained above, atm as far as we know, thats the way it is, scientifically. How could we 100% disprove God? We can't (atm at least, and I'm not sure if we ever will be able to, who knows?). Its Russell's Teapot! It would actually be unscientific to claim that we can or have 100% absolutely disproved God when as far as we know so far, according to evidence and probability, we can't and haven't. So its not a retreat if its the scientific truth!

I have repeated many times my point of view but only a few have bothered themselves to try to understand what I'm saying.

I agreed with you that science is not able to totally disprove God .
So far so good.

Now another way is to put the question of who the hell created the very notion of God ?.
The aswer is clear : God is a creation of man for provable purposes
which I am not going to detail because the kind of them are so many as historical ,political, spiritual ,psychological economical,etc,,
treated by experts in a lot of books.
Moreover my opinion is that God is not only a historical creation but he is recreated momentarily in the mind of everyone who believes in him the very moment he thinks about him.
I came to this last conclusion by making a little research discussing it with religious people.
It's a simple research everyone of us I believe has aquintances who see themselves as believers (even more or less) and you can easily repeat that experience.
The concliusion I draw from what I said above is tht God does not exist anywhere in space but in the minds of people who believe in him.
Another opinion of mine is that even after disproving of God in the way I exposed above there remains the problem of the belief in Destiny which even secular people stick to it.
For how to tackle that problem let's leave for another post.

The scientific probability and lack of evidence of is what matters. It doesn't matter if the idea was created by man, because if you think about it the best discoveries were first created in the mind until they were shown to actually be scientifically true.
Whether God was created in the mind or not doesn't matter, all human ideas are created in the mind. What matters is that the "God" idea whether its the original supernatural one or any "new" supernatural one, its still extremely scientifically improbable.

[


[/quote]
The scientific probability and lack of evidence of is what matters. It doesn't matter if the idea was created by man, because if you think about it the best discoveries were first created in the mind until they were shown to actually be scientifically true.
Whether God was created in the mind or not doesn't matter, all human ideas are created in the mind. What matters is that the "God" idea whether its the original supernatural one or any "new" supernatural one, its still extremely scientifically improbable.
[/quote]

Sorry,but between the creation of God and the creation of discoveries
there is a world of difference.
The question of who made a discovery has no relevance to it's truth
as long as we are sure that it was made by a human and not by a monkey.
You ask a believer in God who created Him and he will consider the question itself as a blasphemy.
This is just the Achilles' heel of any monotheistic religion.
God in the view of a believer existed before the beginning of time so that the creation of him by man,if prooved convincingly by atheism,
is a deadly blow to his belief.
I don't deny the importance of the scientific disprove but it has at least two weak points:
1) it does not totally disprove the existence of God,it recognizes it's limits and therefore has to recure to pathetic examples as the chamber pot of Bertrand Russell spinning (and dripping)in space
2)it has little influence on the common believer for whom science is an area far away from his understanding.
Does atheism intend to remain a philosophic discussion between academics or does atheism see itself as an ideology meant to be spred between large communities?
The promoters of religion adopt willingly the position of theists and creationists who evolve almost unharmed from the fight with atheism
for their brainwashing activities.
Do you think that atheism should not use the arm of "God created by man" only because it it is not in line with the scientifical disprove?
I have not still mentioned the aspect of irrational thinking related to the belief in God which I leave for a next thread.
You have not taken any position to the problem of Destiny.