RE: Four proofs of the nonexistence of God
July 20, 2017 at 12:43 pm
(This post was last modified: July 20, 2017 at 12:49 pm by Lek.)
(July 20, 2017 at 7:08 am)mordant Wrote: I, an otherwise normal respected person, hereby report seeing a pink elephant following me all day as I go about my business. Can science prove whether or not I am truly accompanied by a pink elephant? If not, are we to assume totally that pink elephants that are visible only to me don't exist? What if a dozen other people report seeing them? What if thousands of otherwise regular people make this claim?
Well the issue isn't whether I'm "mostly" sane or credible yet see pink elephants. The issue is whether I can present any evidence to substantiate it. If I can't, then sorry, it's not substantiated. If thousands of people can't, then sorry, it's not substantiated. It doesn't mean I'm crazy or "not regular", it means I am making an unsubstantiated claim. If the elephant is invisible and not detectable in any way, then it's not even substantiatable.
Finally if I claim the elephant isn't part of the natural world then I have two problems. Now it's REALLY unsubstantiatable, inherently. And if I'm claiming as a matter of knowledge that my pink elephant exists, then I'm making an inherently illogical claim. I'm saying the elephant doesn't exist in the only universe I have access to examine, yet, I can't make that claim since I have no access to that imagined realm where I claim the elephant is.
Science would regard thousands of people claiming to be followed by pink elephants that only they can see, as an interesting case of mass hysteria or delusion, and would examine it as such. It would not consider it an interesting case of invisible pink elephants. Simplest explanation, Occam's Razor, etc.
I'm astounded that here in the 21st century I have to explain this to you, frankly.
Although I'll agree that there probably people who say they have seen pink elephants I never ran into any. But there are trillions of people since early mankind who believed or believe in the supernatural to this day. These people were or are not mentally ill and consisted of scientists, doctors, teachers, farmers, laborers and so on. One might determine that because science cannot verify these beliefs that they are not real. Or we can say that there are things that exist that are beyond the realm of science and cannot be verified by scientific methods. If we choose to go with the former, then we are placing ourselves in a little universe with arbitrary boundaries and closing our minds to the existence of anything beyond it, which is what you're doing when you state "there is no supernatural existence".
(July 20, 2017 at 8:24 am)Jehanne Wrote: Many thousands of people have reported that they were abducted by aliens, taken to their spaceships and subjugated to anal probes; do you accept those accounts?
I don't know if there are thousands. Again, I haven't run into anybody who claims that, but I definitely believe in the possibility that an event like that could happen. I definitely wouldn't say that there is no other intelligent life in the universe.
