Deism for non-believers

[FallentoReason]

How would you determine this, if it were immaterial?

I am going by the assumption that the material and immaterial don't interact.

Yet the concept could exist even if it were completely in error, could it not? Apply the same to your "plausible god" proposal.

Agreed, it could exist. I don't get the next part though.. apply it to the 'plausible god'.. so, it could exist even if it's completely in error? Maybe you meant to say something else?

Nope, it isn;t divine, its completely natural, and birds do exist, biologically and aerodynamically speaking there is no reason that such a bird could not exist..so, on your scale of plausibility, wouldn't my 80 foot bird be even more plausible than you plausible god? Do you see any 80 foot birds laying about?

I see what you're saying, but the bird can't be inserted into my scale because my scale's requirement is that the 'being' has to at least posses the attribute of being a 'universe creator'. You need a new scale altogether that deals with hypothetical physical creatures or species, but would fail entirely because all the entries on the scale are making physical claims like an 80 foot bird that don't exist.

p.s. on a side note, aerodynamically it would not fly I'm sure. It would be way too heavy! There's a reason why the birds that do exist are the size that they are i.e. relatively small!

You'd have to actually provide an arbitrary event for us to explain it scientifically, what you have provided is your concept of something arbitrary, which is not scientific, and therefore not something that we would even ask science to explain for us. In the event that you did, and we could not explain it, as per your musing about truth earlier, that doesn't mean that there is no scientific explanation, simply that it is unavailable to us (for whatever reason).

True. I guess the explanation for my arbitrary motion can be given eventually.

That you remain alive isn't exactly solid proof of your possessing any reason, now is it? Unless by "possessing reason" you mean "hasn't "swallowed a large crayon and remembers to breath".

I take it you're pointing out that non-rational beings (animals) are also alive but posses no 'reason'?

So you need reason to kick a ball in this statement here, just a few breaths after proposing the existence of an arbitrary act? Which one is it going to be? If you can sit down and stand up arbitrarily then a person can kick a ball arbitrarily.

You're right, I've contradicted myself.

Let me clarify what I meant when I brought up the example, because I'm rather confused where we're going with this 'reason' talk. Basically, science can tell us how exactly my leg moved and how much energy I transferred to the ball, but it can't tell us why I decided to kick a ball in the first place. Although, I guess we have already covered this when you said that one day we might be able to explain my reason for kicking it scientifically...

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Unlike the Most Tangible God, it is plausible because it doesn't contradict anything in the physical world.

Just because something doesn't contradict something else in the physical world doesn't make it any more valid than it would be otherwise.

Your biggest mistake lies in the fact that you are presenting a subjective God whose only duty in his existence is to fulfill a role on someone's mind as a being who, depending on the person, could do anything from creating the universe and everthing in it 6,000 years ago to acting as a simple unfalsifiable overseer of the universe.

No, wrong. That's the whole point of the scale. You just asserted that a god could do anything like creating the world in 6 000 years. Well that's a physical claim that can be tested and as far as I know, that god in particular is an impossibility. Therefore you have to move further down the scale.

Without evidence, you cannot very well say that something exists simply because it doesn't contradict the universe in any way.

See Russell's teapot.

Through discussion, I think we have fleshed out the idea more and we're not exactly talking existence but rather plausibility. I don't know what it would take to make a definite jump from plausibility to existence though.