Proof and evidence will always equal Science

[polymath257]

You seem to be talking about design in this case.
A design (blueprint) is not a physical thing. It is not made of atoms.
But the actual chair is made of atoms. The collection of atoms is a representation of a chair.

The reason philosophers choose ordinary objects to talk about the issue is because it simplifies things. Philosophers posit that the chair is "made of simples"... some constituent parts: atoms... or quarks or whatever particle, quantum field, or what have you, that is most fundamental.

But "atom" is a conceived of object just like the chair. All you are doing by saying that "atoms are real" is shifting the metaphysical burden to a different ordinary object. "Are atoms real?" is just as a metaphysically salient question as "Are chairs real?"

Instead of calling it design, you can call it information as well.

Words are pieces of information as well. They aren’t made of atoms.
However, you can take some ink and put it on paper and you have a representation of the word. The ink and paper is made of atoms.

Is design real? Is information real? (Again) are atoms real? All these are concepts. Just like chair. We're focusing on chairs because it's a simple thing.

Music is also information. It is non-physical.

Music is a physical phenomenon. A disturbance. A wave traveling through air molecules. Music is sound. Sound is a physical phenomenon.

Stories in books, musics, the blueprint for an airplane, a circle, letters and languages and basically anything has a design component and a physical component.

Do stories exist? I would say yes and no. It depends on how you look at it.
Maybe it doesn’t exist as long as it isn’t written on paper or in the mind of a person.
Normally I say no to make it clear to people I make a distinction between information and reality (atoms).

Does a god exist? Yes, in the minds of people. Smurfs exist in the minds of people as well.

If you want to argue that songs, chairs, stars, black holes, atoms and other ordinary objects exist, I pretty much agree with you. Gods are a different story. I'm highly suspicious of the category error claims being advanced by Bel and Neo. I did want to step in and defend the assertion that metaphysical assumptions (such as "chairs exist", "chairs don't exist", "atoms exist", "atoms don't exist") don't depend on empirical findings to be proven true or false. I agree with them on that, but little else.

I think the comparison of God to a tooth fairy is apt. If someone thinks God hears their prayers like a person does, and answers (or doesn't answer) those prayers like a person would, then I think the best conclusion is that they are talking about an imaginary being.

For a social convention to exist, you need a population of humans and humans are made of atoms.

Is a social convention real? Are atoms real? Shifting the metaphysical burden doesn't resolve the issue. That's why we keep it to something simple like chairs. Philosophers understand that things are composed of atoms and atoms are composed of subatomic particles. We aren't idiots. If atoms solved the problem, we could figure that out. And there are several good solutions to the problem. You should watch the vsauce video. One of the proposed solutions will appeal to you. I can almost guarantee.

i think the thing that bothers me most about this is the implication that the term 'real' has a single meaning before we begin discussion. This happens with a number of other words, like 'physical' and 'exists', often without comment.

Instead, I think we should take the approach of trying to *define* what it means to be 'real' , what it means to be 'physical' and what it means to 'exist', potentially allowing for several different definitions to be active, even if clearly distinguished.

So, however we define the term 'physical', we want to be sure that chairs, and by implication, atoms, are 'physical' and are also 'real' and 'exist'.

But we can then expand to things like light. is light 'physical'? It certainly 'exists' and is 'real'. I tend to say that it is 'physical' as well because a large part of physics is devoted to studying its properties.

Information is a trickier thing. First, it isn't always clear that the word 'information' is always being used in the same sense. Is Shannon's definition of information the same as the one we use for mental events? That isn't clear to me. In any case, it is pretty clear that information supervenes on the 'physical' even if it isn't physical itself: if we knew the entire physical situation, we would also know the information content of the situation.

In any case, it is clear that information is a different type of 'thing' than atoms and chairs. It may well be 'real' in some uses and not 'real' in others.

Then we get to some more interesting cases. Does language 'exist'? Is it 'real'? I would certainly NOT say it is 'physical', although it can be encoded into physical phenomena. Culture is in the same category, as I see it. Again, both supervene on the physical and so 'exists', but I don't think of them as being 'real' objects. In what sense do words exist? are they 'real'?

Next, we get to mathematical objects. Does the number 2 'exist'? is it 'real'? I would certainly say it is not 'physical'. Here we also get into a terminological confusion: in math, 2 is a 'real number', but that is a very different use of the word that 'real' as we have been discussing. My personal take is that 2 'exists' in a formal system, but does NOT exist outside of it. I would NOT say that 2 is a 'real thing'. It is an abstract concept, and probably best thought of as an adjective in language.

But then we get to things like Sherlock Holmes. Does Sherlock Holmes 'exist'? Well, certainly he doesn't exist in the same way that atoms and chairs exist. But he is definitely an iconic figure in our literature and we can say many things about him without fear of contradiction. But I would certainly say that he doesn't 'exist' (outside of that literature) and isn't 'real' (again, outside of that literature).

So, when talking about God(s), we have to ask where in this hierarchy such things appear. Are God(s) closer to 'existing' like chairs? Or closer to 'existing' like words in language? or like the number 2? or closer to being like Sherlock Holmes?

From my perspective, God(s) are closer to being like Sherlock Holmes than anything else on this list: they are cultural inventions that carry certain iconic ideas, but have no existence outside of our cultural constructs.