RE: Benevolent Creator God?
August 20, 2021 at 3:36 pm
(This post was last modified: August 20, 2021 at 3:39 pm by R00tKiT.)
(August 20, 2021 at 2:19 pm)Spongebob Wrote: OK, so I'm open to other "types" of evidence. What you got? Describe your "evidence". Explain to me how you came to possess it. Or at least explain your theory.
My favorite argument in favor of God's existence was and always will be the teleological argument, it simply spells out our natural tendency to interpret things teleologically. If by design we mean adaptation of means to end, we can argue that the entire universe is designed and is adapted to life -when I say the entire universe, I really mean it, everything is designed, even things like snowflakes, that opponents of the teleological argument generally present as a counter-example-.
(August 20, 2021 at 2:19 pm)Spongebob Wrote: Ah, you agree there is no empirical evidence for supernatural beings. Great, we've established some common ground; that's huge! But wait, the distinction between natural and supernatural is not meaningless, as you say. It is quite meaningful. Natural refers to something that we can, by definition, observe or measure in some way. The term "supernatural" is a bit elusive but it certainly means something that is beyond that which is natural, right? So that implies that humans would likely not have the ability to observe or measure something supernatural.
Well, if it's elusive, then it's meaningless. If we can't correctly assess that some process X is supernatural, then the label supernatural is empty of meaning. A deity may as well intervene through natural processes like evolution and selection, or, to put it differently, only sets out the stage early in the beginning of the universe, and leaves laws of physics take care of it, then interevenes rarely by revealed messages.
(August 20, 2021 at 2:19 pm)Spongebob Wrote: No one here is allergic to posteriori arguments. Science depends on it. Empirical data is not always a premise for such an argument, it is the grounds on which such an argument is judged. Einstein used no empirical data to develop his theory of special relativity. But once technology was developed to test his theory, it was done. So, to your point, any sort of idea can be imagined and considered whether you have data or not. But it cannot be evaluated as truthful without some kind of measurement or observation.
Well, Einstein, in order to formulate SR, still relied on big chunks of classical mechanics, electromagnetism, etc. all of which are based on empirical data. But it doesn't matter, the requirement of empirical observation is only valid inside the observable world. If the entity under investigation is not observable or detectable by definition, it's meaningless to require empirical evidence.