(November 22, 2009 at 9:55 am)downbeatplumb Wrote: Whose side are you on?The side of which constitutes the most rational and reasonable proposition. It just so happens that this time around, it isn't the side you are on. I'll ask a question to you that fr0d0 asked to Kyu oh so many months ago:
"What test could you possibly perform, or what piece of evidence could you possibly obtain that would prove God existed?"
Arthur C Clarke (famous atheist and agnostic) put it this way: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Even if the stars themselves started to dance, an angelic chorus cried out through the night, and a man resembling Jesus descended from the clouds, you might be convinced of God, but you are also unable to say for absolute certainty that such a being, and such events, aren't just advanced alien technology.
Truthfully, there is no such thing as "proof" in the natural world. The only things we can prove are through systems we have invented ourselves, since we invented them to have proof built in (mathematics for example). There is no method that can prove anything about reality, since there is no way of knowing that reality won't do something different one day. We aren't infallible, so we just cannot know. Science, empiricism, spiritualism, whatever you want to use, is all a bunch of probabilities. I'm not saying that some probabilities aren't more accurate than others, but they are all less than 100% certainty nevertheless.
