(November 3, 2014 at 10:20 pm)IDScience Wrote: I am a theist, and I don't believe God does not exist. Your problem is you don't understand basic semantics. And you don't recognize and establish the framework of logical absolutes before you developed a hypothesis.

Either God exists or does not exist, there is no possible third alternative. Just as either the Giants or the Royals could win the world series (Law of excluded middle). If you don't believe the Royals will win, you must believe the Giants will win, you have no choice in this dichotomy. Even if you never say "I believe the Giants will win", you inadvertently positively assert that position my claiming you don't believe the Royals will win.

You refuse to acknowledge the ultimate outcome of your hypothesis if your position is correct (i.e. God does not exist). However if God can exist, then atheism can be wrong, and this renders your position of atheism to a unscientific subjective philosophy and not a logical one.

You continually miss the point. There is no possibility other than a god exists or no god exists. But there are three states of knowledge. Existence, Non-Existence, Lack of Knowledge. If you can't see that, you just failed basic logic.

(November 3, 2014 at 10:17 pm)Jenny A Wrote: I didn't actually intend to go quite that far, but I will now. Anyone who cannot demonstrate god or that he is much more probably than not, and yet believes in him is acting irrationally.

Why do you have to demonstrate it?

Quote:Absent proof that god is at a minimum more probable than not, yes no one can rationally claim to know god exists.

What do you mean by proof? Is there a rational argument or scientific evidence free-will exists? Is it irrational to believe in free-will as a result as well?

Quote:If "spiritual knowledge" had any validity, the sensors would sense the same god, yet they don't.

The same can be said about morality. If there was a such thing as morality, we would all sense the same thing, yet we don't.

Quote:Tiberius if more tolerant of fools, than I am. But I do believe theists at least think they have knowledge.

No Tiberius is not an ego quest of belittling all Theists, that's why he can rationally see he is in no rational position to be anything but agnostic to whether people have knowledge of God or don't.

(November 1, 2014 at 12:01 am)TRJF Wrote: ID, your main problem (among many, but most have been elucidated by other posters already, so I'm only addressing this one) is that you get to "God-like intelligence" and then jump to "God." Sure, at least one hopefully rational atheist (the only one I can speak for) believes that there is a (small) non-zero possibility that there is an entity somewhere in this universe that has intelligence that far surpasses any human's.

Sure, you can incrementally argue intelligence up from a human standard. But you can't do the same with, say, the ability to create matter or to read minds or the like.

God-like is God as far as the argument is concerned. If something can be God-like (i.e. virtually identical) then for all intense and purposes, it is God.

Tell me why its a "(small) non-zero possibility". Tell me why intelligence and complexity can't continually increase as it has (so you believe) from 5 billion years ago until today?. Is it because if you follow the logical progression of your own evolutionary theory, a being capable of creating a universe and all life in it, becomes an inevitable outcome of the theory?

Quote:But I do not believe that this hypothetical god-like intelligence 1) has existed forever, 2) can alter the physical universe through non-physical means, or has any of the other powers that any definition if "god" will possess if that god is sufficiently distinct from, well, a "not-god."

I don't either, I believe God evolved before the BB and became all knowing thus all powerful as a direct result of never being able to die because entropy did not exist

(November 3, 2014 at 10:20 pm)IDScience Wrote: Either God exists or does not exist, there is no possible third alternative.

There is, however, a third possible statement, to wit, "I don't know whether or not god exists."

Your cherished "Law of Excluded Middle" is also a fallacy, when inaptly applied.

Please, think more and post less, there's a good lad.

(November 1, 2014 at 2:03 am)Alex K Wrote: Is there going to be any maths beyond counting psalms?

Anyway, you can evolve a brain the size of a planet, (or Brain 100000^100000 as sophisticated ID scientimathicians like to call it), you'll still be limited by physics, still know nothing about stuff outside the light cone, still not be the creator. Of course, within our universe counting from 13.x bi. Years ago, there wasn't enough time anyways for that.

The only math needed is for the chances of abiogenesis. Once intelligent life exists, evolution and selection will ensure the most adaptable and intelligent will reproduce and survive. So natural selection guarantees intelligence has a greater chance of increasing over time rather than decreasing over time.

Read my previous posts about God evolving his attributes before the universe existed

(November 3, 2014 at 10:27 pm)IDScience Wrote: Tell me why intelligence and complexity can't continually increase as it has (so you believe) from 5 billion years ago until today?. Is it because if you follow the logical progression of your own evolutionary theory, a being capable of creating a universe and all life in it, becomes an inevitable outcome of the theory?

Because there are physical limitations on everything. Elephants' feet suffer from being at the extreme end of mammalian size. Giraffes have similar problems with high blood pressure due to stretching the limits of neck height. Any evolutionary trait levels off as it becomes biologically expensive.

But if that's too hard to think about, consider skyscrapers. The limit on how high we build them is lower than how high we do build them. Why? Because eventually the lower floors are rendered useless by all the space taken up by elevators to the upper floors. All things have limits.

(November 1, 2014 at 4:10 am)Fidel_Castronaut Wrote: You know what would really systematically dismantle atheism (???)?

Evidence of your god(s).

You seem pretty fucked on that level, though.

By your logic, you can only prove God did not create the universe, if you can prove the universe did not have an intelligent cause.

I can prove the philosophy of atheism is an invalid proposition, because nothing prohibits a life form with the attributes of a God from existing, other than the atheists inability to comprehend the concept of BIG LIFE. Therefore my argument does not make theism true, but make atheism irrational. Just as its irrational to reject any other life in the universe. But this also does not mean there is other life in the universe, but only proves rational and irrational propositions about what life forms can and can not exist

(November 3, 2014 at 10:36 pm)IDScience Wrote: God is proven true.

A baseless assertion with no evidence to back it up.

(side note: he posted that before he edited the post and deleted it)

(November 3, 2014 at 10:26 pm)MysticKnight Wrote:

(November 3, 2014 at 10:17 pm)Jenny A Wrote: I didn't actually intend to go quite that far, but I will now. Anyone who cannot demonstrate god or that he is much more probably than not, and yet believes in him is acting irrationally.

Why do you have to demonstrate it?

Because unless it's demonstrable, it's not rational.

(November 3, 2014 at 10:26 pm)MysticKnight Wrote:

Quote:Absent proof that god is at a minimum more probable than not, yes no one can rationally claim to know god exists.

What do you mean by proof? Is there a rational argument or scientific evidence free-will exists? Is it irrational to believe in free-will as a result as well?

Non sequitur. I can't prove free will exists either. I like to pretend it does, but it's just my robotic self programmed to pretend.

(November 3, 2014 at 10:26 pm)MysticKnight Wrote:

Quote:If "spiritual knowledge" had any validity, the sensors would sense the same god, yet they don't.

The same can be said about morality. If there was a such thing as morality, we would all sense the same thing, yet we don't.

Exactly. There aren't any universal moral truths.

(November 3, 2014 at 10:26 pm)MysticKnight Wrote:

Quote:Tiberius is more tolerant of fools, than I am. But I do believe theists at least think they have knowledge.

No Tiberius is not an ego quest of belittling all Theists, that's why he can rationally see he is in no rational position to be anything but agnostic to whether people have knowledge of God or don't.

Sorry if you feel belittled, but you have no evidence of god.

(November 3, 2014 at 10:16 pm)IDScience Wrote:

'Exian Wrote:Lets just use the increments we see on earth and let our intelligence play the role of the highest possible achievement in that arena. We start with the emergence of life, which we then build on to create ever increasing intelligence until we arrive at us. It's at this point that you would then state humans have created everything. Do you see the giant hole in your argument?"

Why would I state that at that point?. I would state, I observe an ever increasing intellectual capacity/ varying degrees of intelligence here on earth, then extend that to its logical conclusion. And to me that logical conclusion stops only at the point in which everything that can be known is known -if knowledge is limited-. Or intelligence levels continue to grow/evolve for all of eternity. When I extend the theory of "evolution of intelligence" as far as critical thought will take it, God then becomes a logical possibility.

Quote:"The reason we can agree on a 1% higher intelligence is that we can look at the current gradient existing today, as well as our own evolutionary journey. But even if we use this reasoning to arrive at the maximal level of intelligence, how does this intelligence then go back and create everything that it built itself on for its own existence?"

This brings up another topic. I believe God "evolved" (via self direction) before the singularity and before the 2nd law of thermodynamics existed. The first law is never violated, therefore we must believe energy in some form existed for all of eternity in the past. And because entropy can not be eternal, usable energy must have existed forever in the past. Therefore this eternal usable energy had literally forever to become aware of its self, i.e. “I think therefore I am” (abiogenesis of God).

And any life form that exists in a place in which entropy does not exist, can never die, and any life form that can never die must eventually become/evolve into an all knowing all powerful being, no matter how painstakingly long it may take.

Therefore if the eternal "something" exists, the chances of it becoming a sentient all knowing being is 1/1 (100%) because it has literally all of eternity for it to happen. Thus if the eternal something exists, God must also exist. And atheistic science knows this very well, this is why they need an illogical "something from nothing" hypothesis to reject God from existing.

Your idea of a lifeform independent of entropy which becomes aware and persists, tied to energy only, as a self-aware structure of some sort no matter what happens to entropy, does seem very problematic to me. First of all, entropy basically is what gives us our arrow of time, where more likely macroscopic states are later than less likely ones (to criminally simplify a bit). Without it, there is no real notion of cause and effect. The idea that an intelligence persists and evolves throughout time independently of entropy requires some serious theoretical effort to bridge this gap, by default it just looks wrong.

If we assume, for the sake of argument, that you manage to construct such a thing and show that it is in the least bit plauaible, you still are stuck with the problems that there is no evidence for a plane of reality (in the form of physical degrees if freedom) in which such a being would be realized *and* has some form of administrator rights for access to our reality, such that the name "God" would at all be justified. This is not something you can just claim to be obvious. What's more, for your argument to hold, you need to show that this unusual physical proposal is not just a vague possibility, but rather a necessity. Until then, you simply have no case.