RE: Debunking the claim that Ramanujan received insights from a god
July 12, 2023 at 2:10 pm
(This post was last modified: July 12, 2023 at 2:20 pm by Simon Moon.)
There is nothing that needs to be debunked.
The people that claim that this brilliant mathematician, Ramanujan, received his insights from a god, have all the heavy lifting to do. There is no work that you have to do.
Just for a start, they have to demonstrate that a god exists, that said god has the ability to communicate with us (and we can communicate with the god), that Ramanujan was actually in communication with said god, and that his mathematical insights were in fact communicated by a god.
It is not up to the skeptic to disprove unevidenced claims. All you need to say is, I do not find any evidence or reasoned argument to demonstrate your claim about Ramanujan.
The most parsimonious explanation, is that Ramanujan was a brilliant person, who came up with his ideas from his own mind, but attributed them to a god.
As Christopher Hitchens said, "that which can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence".
Stephen Hawking came up with scientific insights just as brilliant as Ramanujan's, but since he was an atheist, he never attributed them to a god.
The people that claim that this brilliant mathematician, Ramanujan, received his insights from a god, have all the heavy lifting to do. There is no work that you have to do.
Just for a start, they have to demonstrate that a god exists, that said god has the ability to communicate with us (and we can communicate with the god), that Ramanujan was actually in communication with said god, and that his mathematical insights were in fact communicated by a god.
It is not up to the skeptic to disprove unevidenced claims. All you need to say is, I do not find any evidence or reasoned argument to demonstrate your claim about Ramanujan.
The most parsimonious explanation, is that Ramanujan was a brilliant person, who came up with his ideas from his own mind, but attributed them to a god.
As Christopher Hitchens said, "that which can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence".
Stephen Hawking came up with scientific insights just as brilliant as Ramanujan's, but since he was an atheist, he never attributed them to a god.
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
