Even if theism is a failure, it's still superior to atheism

[Ahriman]

Nah dude, atheism rocks. I'm loving our atheistic American society.

You really need to pick a lane.

One day you are all about god the next you are atheist.

Every day you are annoying.

I believe in God, but I still know it's better to live in an atheistic society as opposed to a theocracy.

[polymath257]

Goody for you. I got a PhD in mathematics 36 years ago and have been a research mathematician since.

But you are right, we cannot say the q is false simply because p is false and p-->q. But we can say that the argument attempting to prove q is invalid.

Now, are you suggesting the the existence of a deity is independent of other axioms? That it can neither be proved nor disproved?

And if that is the case, how do we choose whether to assume q or not(q) as an axiom?

36 years as a research mathematician, that's really impressive, doc. Mad respect for you and your profession. Mathematics is the only discipline that I used to be good at, it helped me build the confidence that I can actually do something significant in this life.

It seems we agree now that starting with false assumptions doesn't always lead you to false conclusions. So even if one grants you that theism fails, it doesn't follow that everything else that the theist argues for is necessarily false. As for the existence of a deity, my central argument has always been and remains the teleological argument. "Look around" is the reason why people believed in God for millenia, it doesn't require any advanced training in logic or modern physics to understand it, which is what an actual argument for God should look like.

My position is that this argument should continue to enjoy the same stature it once had. The sudden shift that happened after Darwin's ideas is simply unwarranted, and I might say motivated by a strong bias against the church at the time -which is understandable-. How can an argument for a designer become invalid or fall out of favor just because we understood some of the designer's work, or just because we know more about the history of His design?

Well, the argument is that the complexity is such that no natural system could produce what we observe. What Darwin did is give a mechanism for which a natural process *could* give rise to what we see. That shows that the argument isn't enough to get to the conclusion. And that is why it fell out of favor.

In general, giving evidence of design isn't as easy as many seem to think. Among other things, it requires knowing enough of what can happen *without* intelligent interference to justify the necessity of such interference. On the other hand, it is often found that things that initially *look* designed can actually be the result of natural processes.

So the upshot is that the 'look around' argument simply doesn't get to the conclusion.

Perhaps it's better to use an analogy here : let's say you have a dozen of highly intelligent AI robots. These robots started investigating their own origins and eventually ended up tracing the entire history of technological progress made by mankind. One day, one robot suggested that : we have a lot of evidence of less intelligent machines, we found ((fossils)) of analog computers, calculators, floppy disks with laughably limited storage, and countless other machines in nature. It seems we can explain our origin or genesis without appeal to some intelligence called "human". Now, it's not hard to see that something is wrong here.

Yes, and what is wrong is that AI robots do not reproduce with mutations and are not subject to natural selection.

One often finds the following criticism : A deity is purportedly omniscient and omnipotent, and so doesn't need any evolutionary mechanism to bring about human beings. The answer is that : yes, ofc the deity doesn't need any of that, it doesn't need to bring about any universe at all, but the fact that it doesn't need x doesn't imply that x's existence invalidates the deity's existence. People didn't really need to create AI robots to survive, but now that they did, AI robots can't plausibly argue that they didn't need a designer.

Agreed. That's a bad argument. A better one would be to ask why even make the hypothesis of a deity? What does it actually serve to explain (i.e, make more probable because of the assumption)? Doe sit help at all to figure out the line spectrum of any element? How about the processes of galaxy formation? or the nature of the asymmetry between matter and anti-matter?

From the point of view of trying to explain what we can, how does the assumption of a deity help at all?

I would submit that the simple assumption of a deity does not help at all. Many further assumptions are required that have no evidentiary support before anything close to any explanation is possible. And even then, nothing testable is ever proposed.

That is a fine accomplishment.  I hope you continue your education.  I also hope you share your thoughts on Bayesian Analysis and the probability of the failure of theism.

Thank you. I hope I can do that one day.

The bayesian approach is a fascinating topic in statistics, it introduces the ideas of priors, likelihoods, among other things. But the underlying logic is pretty simple : the probability that some assertion A, in and of itself, is true, may be difficult to determine. Instead of directly trying to determine this probability, we can take an additonal assertion B that we're familiar with, and which is linked to A, and then assess the probabilities of A given B (called conditional probabiltiy), or of B given A. Bayes' theorem tells us that P(A) is directly linked to P(A|B) and P(B|A).

This approach is extensively used today in philosophy of religion journals, many theist (and atheist) philosophers rely on its formalism in their arguments. But like any argument, they rely on controversial assumptions. if you reject the assumptions, all the subsequent calculations are false, and using heavy machinery like bayesian analysis doesn't help in this case. 

Swinburne used bayesian probabilities to prove that probability that Jesus ressurected from the dead is pretty high (more than 0.8, if I recall that correctly). I didn't read his argument in its entirety, which he developed in a well-known paper, but I can't really take any argument for Jesus's ressurection seriously, the initial plausibility of such an event is close to 0 for me. Given that the initial sayings of Jesus are lost, and that the Bible doesn't inherently warrant a supernatural explanation -unlike the Qur'an, I would argue- I don't see how any argument in favor of christianity is even possible.

And I would say that the Qu'ran requires no more supernatural explanation that the Bible or Bagavad-gits.

OK, that is a good start. Empirical investigation. How, precisely, do you define that?

As for obeying physical laws, I very much doubt that we know what the ultimate physical laws are, so we cannot tell what obeys them. I assume you would agree.

But perhaps you can clarify what is meant by the term 'physical laws'. In the process, you might want to define what it means to be 'physical'.

Something being reachable by empirical investigation means that we have some means to detect its existence, even if undirectly. This is what we do routinely in science, we collect evidence and clues about various objects or particles and come up with models that fit the evidence. As for the definition of physical, I would say an object is physical if its essential constituents are elementary particles.

OK, I would not make that assumption since, for example, energy is not made of elementary particles but is still physical (it is a property of such particles). I also would not make the assumption that there are elementary particles until observation and testing make that plausible. At this point it seems plausible, but I won't commit to saying that it is forced by the nature of physical things.

My personal definition of physical is that it can be empirically detected (through the senses, possible indirectly) and explained via the scientific method.

And we all know what physical laws are, our knowledge is probably not final or ultimate, but we can't really do better anyways.

Well. physical laws are the description of how physical things act. Nothing more and nothing less. The truth or falsity of a proposed physical law is entirely determined by whether it matches how actual physical things act.

But the objects of human ingenuity are not, right?

Now, would a human born from in vitro fertilization be 'natural' or not? They would be the product of human intelligence, no?

In vitro fertilization is simply assisted reproduction by artificially combining male gametes or sperm with a female egg, it doesn't really replace the reproduction process which occurs naturally. So this type of feritlization doesn't really amount to  human intelligence. I might as well argue that the very act of a male penetrating a female to introduce sperm is somehow human intelligence, and that, therefore, all humans are a product of human intelligence.

But an internal combustion engine merely takes the combustion that would happen naturally and directs it to human ends. The point is that technology can *only* do what the natural world allows.

I would also like to know what it means for something to 'exist'. How would this be determined/ How could it be tested? For example, does the number 2 exist/

Now that's an interesting question. It's probably the most important issue hanging between theism and atheism. Probably a good start is to think about things that all people agree that they exist, regardless of their beliefs. The next thing would be to ask yourself why you believe in their existence so strongly. 

Perception is a basic source of forming beliefs for all human beings. Now, lo and behold, the most curious thing about beliefs from perception is that they are inherently fallacious : you know that the wall in front of you exists because you trust your perception, and you trust your perception because, well, everybody else says that the wall really exists! 

Or maybe you believe walls exist because the pain you feel once you hit a wall makes it more probably than not that walls exist, but pain is just another category of perception. Surely an unpleasant sensory experience can't be a serious proof that walls exist ! 

I can go on and on to show how difficult it is to prove that walls exist. I would argue that it's impossible to do so, unless you make some epistemic concessions, the same epistemic concessions that led people to believe that the appearance of design implies a designer...

Actually, I would say that the existence of something is ultimately determined by whether it can be detected in principle. So, yes, the detection of the wall through the senses is *precisely* why I believe they exist. It is part of the definition I use for 'existence'.

And I disagree that this is the same sort of epistemic concession that leads to the belief in a designer. A designer requires MANY more assumptions and ones that are much less based on observation.

In fact, there are basically two options as I see it. Either a deity can be detected and tested (so the scientific method works for investigating deities) or deities simply do not exist at all in the real world. But then, I would not say that the number 2 exists in the real world (except as a concept in some brain). It 'exists' in an abstract axiomatic system, but whether that system applies to the real world is a matter of observation and testing.

[polymath257]

I could also discuss probability measures and whether they serve as good models of probability in quantum mechanics (they do not).

Bell's Inequality?

Precisely. Probability measures produce the inequalities that Bell discovered. Those inequalities are violated in quantum mechanics (because they are violated by operators on a Hilbert space). In a sense, quantum mechanics is a non-commutative version of probability while measure theory is the commutative version. The uncertainty principle does not happen in the commutative case.

[Jehanne]

Bell's Inequality?

Precisely. Probability measures produce the inequalities that Bell discovered. Those inequalities are violated in quantum mechanics (because they are violated by operators on a Hilbert space). In a sense, quantum mechanics is a non-commutative version of probability while measure theory is the commutative version. The uncertainty principle does not happen in the commutative case.

Why Probability in Quantum Mechanics is Given by the Wave Function Squared

[The Grand Nudger]

Tons of testable things are proposed...but we're told, by the faithful...not to judge their gods for their failures.

[LinuxGal]

God : a personal creator of the universe, -and hence outside of the universe, that is omnipotent and omniscient.

Prove it's impossible for this creator to exist. Good luck.

If omniscient, then God has perfect foreknowledge of his own actions. 
Perfect foreknowledge precludes the ability to choose something different than what he knows he will choose.
This cancels out his omnipotence.
If God is strictly outside of the universe, then he cannot act on the universe, since any action that occurs to the universe is automatically part of the universe.

[Jehanne]

No introduction, LinuxGal? I just read that the main Linux kernel is dropping support for 486 computers.

[LinuxGal]

No introduction, LinuxGal?  I just read that the main Linux kernel is dropping support for 486 computers.

Thanks for the head's up!

[rlp21858]

i'm not sure where to start with so many pages, but i'll try to start here. i get the feeling there's an argument that God is located/operates in/from one place, but the Bible says that God is in all things, and in us as well.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

i'm not sure where to start with so many pages, but i'll try to start here.  i get the feeling there's an argument that God is located/operates in/from one place, but the Bible says that God is in all things, and in us as well.

(Bold mine)

You can have It removed, though. It’s a fairly simple procedure.

Boru