RE: Stephen Hawking has died at the age of 76.
April 24, 2018 at 5:58 pm
(This post was last modified: April 24, 2018 at 8:36 pm by Edwardo Piet.)
(April 24, 2018 at 7:49 am)Hammy Wrote: outside of nature and there can be no evidence of him, you have to take him on faith... and on the other hand you say that nature is evidence of God, and you don't have to take him on faith. Total contradiction. Either there's evidence for God or not.
(April 24, 2018 at 11:46 am)alpha male Wrote: False dichotomy. That there is some amount of evidence for a proposition does not necessarily indicate that there is conclusive evidence for that proposition. In such cases belief in the proposition requires some amount of faith.
Note the bold... notice that I didn't mention conclusive evidence. So that's a strawman. I said "either there is evidence for God or not". I didn't say "either there's conclusive evidence for God or no evidence of any kind for God at all."
(April 24, 2018 at 7:49 am)Hammy Wrote: ... the fact that he would be completely indistinguishable from a supremely powerful alien pretending to be God....
(April 24, 2018 at 11:46 am)alpha male Wrote: Assuming you mean by "alien" a product of this universe, then the alien wouldn't be supremely powerful.
Irrelevant. The point is we wouldn't be able to tell the difference. From our perspective an alien could be powerful enough that we couldn't tell the difference from it and a truly supremely powerful being. That's why, as you can see in the quote above, I mentioned the word "indistinguishably".
Furthermore, we could be living in a simulated universe... a simulated God is more probable than an actual God that lives outside the universe.
(April 24, 2018 at 7:49 am)Hammy Wrote: Either he's unfalsifable or he isn't, either you have to take him on faith or you don't, either there can't be evidence of him or there can, make your mind up.
(April 24, 2018 at 11:46 am)alpha male Wrote: I've made my mind up - there can be evidence of God, but the evidence isn't necessarily conclusive. Are you having difficulty with this concept?
Nope. As I showed above, you strawmanned me. I never mentioned conclusive evidence, I mentioned evidence. Do you believe God is outside the realm of science or not? If he isn't wouldn't that make him natural rather than supernatural? Isn't being supernatural about being beyond the natural world? And doesn't science test the natural world?
(April 24, 2018 at 7:49 am)Hammy Wrote: You're defining God as something unfalfifable that you have to take on faith and then claiming he's not unfalsifiable and not only can you have evidence of him but nature already is evidence of him.
(April 24, 2018 at 11:46 am)alpha male Wrote: You don't seem to understand falsifiability.
Actually I do understand it... but you don't seem to understand it as you're the one saying God is unfalsifable but then saying there can be evidence of him. Science requires falsfifiability and science tests the world... so you can't use the world as evidence unless God becomes falsifiable. You can't have evidence of an unfalsfiable entity, and you already admitted God is unfalsfiable, and yet you say there is also evidence of him. That makes no sense.
(April 24, 2018 at 7:49 am)Hammy Wrote: You're a confused mess, I'm just pointing it out. If God is outside the reach of science, he's outside the reach of science. If you have to take him on faith, you have to take him on faith. You are trying to have your cake and eat it too.
(April 24, 2018 at 11:46 am)alpha male Wrote: I'm noting the simple fact that evidence in support of something isn't necessarily conclusive.
Note that you've only started noting that trivial truth after strawmanning me as I noted above. I never said anything else. That's just a trival truth. I never spoke of conclusive evidence, I spoke of evidence.
(April 24, 2018 at 7:49 am)Hammy Wrote: There's nothing arrogant or irrational about claiming that a being that is described in such a way that he is outside of the scope of empirical evidence is outside the scope of empirical evidence.
(April 24, 2018 at 11:46 am)alpha male Wrote: Here you're not actually reading what I said.
Rather hypocritical considering your strawman of me above. You didn't actually read what I said.
(April 24, 2018 at 11:46 am)alpha male Wrote: To say that God is not confined to the earth doesn't imply that it's impossible for God to appear on the earth or otherwise affect the earth. P then Q doesn't imply Q then P.
How ironic. It turns out that it isn't even an example of me not reading what you said. It's an example of you not reading what I said. Because I never said anything about it being impossible for God to appear on the earth or otherwise affect the earth, I said it was impossible for there to be evidence of it because God is unfalsifable. You're just strawmanning me again.
Well. That was underwhelming.