Four proofs of the nonexistence of God

[Jehanne]

#1:  The virtual particle-antiparticle pairs are not caused by anything; they are uncaused.  If so, what do you think it is that causes them, and what causes that to cause them, and so forth.  Again, I am not talking about some quantum event that created our Universe.  What causes these particles to appear?  Please be specific.

What I am wondering, is how do you determine that something is not caused by anything?  I may have suspicions about the cause of these particles, but I do not know what causes them.  And yet I do believe that nothing provides neither a necessary nor sufficient reason for the effect.  "I do not know" does not lead me to the conclusion that their is no cause.    The principle of causality is foundational to science and really a basic principle to living in general.   I'm not willing to abandon it, and science so easily. Does nothing have limits to what it can cause (how is this determined)?

This question is the domain of particle physics.  Virtual particles exist; the Casmir effect was a prediction of them:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect

My point to Steve is that one gets into an infinite regress if one says that something causes the existence of virtual particles.  Rather, virtual particles simply happen because they can happen as described by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.  They are not caused by anything.

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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".

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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.

There are at least thousands:

The Roper Poll[edit]

In 1991, Hopkins, Jacobs and sociologist Dr. Ron Westrum commissioned a Roper Poll in order to determine how many Americans might have experienced the abduction phenomenon. Of nearly 6,000 Americans, 119 answered in a way that Hopkins et al. interpreted as supporting their ET interpretation of the abduction phenomenon. Based on this figure, Hopkins estimated that nearly four million Americans might have been abducted by extraterrestrials. The poll results are available at this external link: Abduction by Aliens or Sleep Paralysis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_abduction_claimants