Neil DeGrasse Tyson on Disproving God

[Jesster]

...Most commonly in a court case, a defendant is "innocent until proven guilty". While we aren't entirely sure they are innocent, they are treated as such until there is enough evidence to show that they are actually guilty....This is the default position on any claim.

As SteveII pointed out there are different standards for acceptance - "preponderance of the evidence", "reasonable doubt", and "absolute certainty." And as I have said, different criteria of acceptance are used claims in different domains such as history, mathematics, text interpretation, archaeology, philosophy and physics. The default position for a properly basic belief is acceptance.

Oh, the "properly basic" bullshit again? Sorry, but no. A god claim is a big claim. There's nothing "basic" about it. I'm gonna need this one to go to "court" just like everything else.

It's funny how easily you accepted the court example before. Your claim is special somehow, though, so for some reason you can use your own special reasoning on it.

[Nonpareil]

Your problem is with word definitions.

It's really not.

Evidence refers to pieces of information or facts that help us establish the truth or existence of something.

Yes. Evidence is that which logically supports a given conclusion.

And you don't have any.

So, to say that my list is not evidence is simply wrong. What you mean is that in your opinion, it is not proof.

No. I mean that it is objectively not evidence, because it fails to support your conclusion.

At all.

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I follow this up by questioning whether or not atheism should be the default position, as many atheists assume. My position is that people are justified in believing that things are as they appear to be until shown otherwise

Yes.

There appears to be no god. That is why atheism is the null hypothesis.

one of those ideas is that some divine agency is operative in the world. Nature appears teleological. People instinctively sense a transcendent moral order.  Synchronicities abound. Uncanny personal experiences are ubiquitous. The list goes on and on.

Yes. It does.

Unfortunately, it at no point becomes any less incoherent and poorly defined, and never actually presents any evidence to support its claims.

But if someone is going to go around saying that theism is irrational and that theists are deluded because they accept a properly basic belief then THOSE accusations are positive claims that needs to be justified.

There is no such thing as a "properly basic belief". There are only beliefs that are rational and beliefs that are not rational.

Theism is not rational. This is justified by the fact that there is no evidence for the existence of a god.

If there were, you could present it.

The real question is whether people are using appropriate criteria for evaluating the veracity of any given proposition.

They are.

You just have no evidence.

For example, the way you wrote it makes it seem like the NT would not qualify as “intense scrutiny of multiple examinations being performed by different teams of qualified individuals”.

Because it wouldn't.

The qualification of the individuals is exactly what is in question. In order to establish their qualifications, you must present evidence.

But there isn't any.

[masterofpuppets]

So if the 27 documents of the Bible are all evidence as SteveII says, then why are there so many contradictions in the Bible? Christians will deny these contradictions yet they are conspicuous in their abundance.

This is one of the reasons the Bible cannot be evidence and is much more akin to mythology. Scientifically and historically inaccurate, and ridden with contradictions.

https://infidels.org/library/modern/dona...tions.html

After reading the above, please explain to me how the Bible is still evidence.

[Neo-Scholastic]

So if the 27 documents of the Bible are all evidence as SteveII says, then why are there so many contradictions in the Bible? Christians will deny these contradictions yet they are conspicuous in their abundance.

This is one of the reasons the Bible cannot be evidence and is much more akin to mythology. Scientifically and historically inaccurate, and ridden with contradictions.

https://infidels.org/library/modern/dona...tions.html

After reading the above, please explain to me how the Bible is still evidence.

Most of the apparent contradictions are the result of:

1) Applying a only a literalist heurmenutic. In other words, they are reading it the same way religious fundamentalists would.
2) Failure to distinguish between historical information, allegories, allusions, metaphors, and figurative language.
3) Divorcing the text from authorial intent. In other words, ignoring what the text would have meant to readers during the time it was written.
4) Giving inordinate significance to trivial differences.

In other word, the writer at infidels had no interest in understanding the text. He was only interested in promoting his agenda and in so doing made an ass of himself. If you take him seriously you are a fool.

[masterofpuppets]

So if the 27 documents of the Bible are all evidence as SteveII says, then why are there so many contradictions in the Bible? Christians will deny these contradictions yet they are conspicuous in their abundance.

This is one of the reasons the Bible cannot be evidence and is much more akin to mythology. Scientifically and historically inaccurate, and ridden with contradictions.

https://infidels.org/library/modern/dona...tions.html

After reading the above, please explain to me how the Bible is still evidence.

Most of the apparent contradictions are the result of:

1) Applying a only a literalist heurmenutic. In other words, they are reading it the same way religious fundamentalists would.
2) Failure to distinguish between historical information, allegories, allusions, metaphors, and figurative language.
3) Divorcing the text from authorial intent. In other words, ignoring what the text would have meant to readers during the time it was written.
4) Giving inordinate significance to trivial differences.

In other word, the writer at infidels had no interest in understanding the text. He was only interested in promoting his agenda and in so doing made an ass of himself. If you take him seriously you are a fool.

You seem to be making an awful lot of assumptions. Even if what you claim is true, the Bible would still not be good evidence because it seems impossible to distinguish between what should and should not be interpreted as true in the Bible. Without being able to make this distinction, the Bible is useless in terms of evidence.

[Kernel Sohcahtoa]

For example, the way you wrote it makes it seem like the NT would not qualify as “intense scrutiny of multiple examinations being performed by different teams of qualified individuals”. As SteveII has abundantly demonstrated to willfully ignorant ears, nothing could be further from the truth. The NT is not a single source; the bible is a summary collection of accounts and letters by various authors from disparate populations. Asking for sources outside the NT is like saying various reference materials don’t count if they come from the same library! Even then there actually are extra-biblical written records, even if like everything from the ancient world, there are only a handful. These illuminate cultural practices of the NT era, like customs for criminal burials, that support the biblical narrative. Archaeology has located everything from inscriptions mentioning Pilate to the pool of Bethesda, these too support the biblical narratives. [1] It is one thing to say that none of that evidence supports (proves) the Resurrection, [2] it is a completely different thing to say there is no evidence at all.

From my observations, regarding the NT, the posters here are saying that it does not provide any evidence for [1] along with claims for the existence of a god; thus, [2] is the conclusion in regards to [1]. Do you see thing differently?

My position is that people are justified in believing that things are as they appear to be until shown otherwise, i.e. that some ideas are properly basic and one of those ideas is that some divine agency is operative in the world. Nature appears teleological. People instinctively sense a transcendent moral order.  Synchronicities abound. Uncanny personal experiences are ubiquitous. The list goes on and on. To all appearances the world does seem saturated with the divine. Now, maybe it isn’t. Maybe that is only how things appear but not how they actually are. Of course that is possible, but one needs sound reasons for denying what seems to be the case.

Out of curiosity, is "the idea that some divine agency is operative in the world" actually properly basic to humanity, or is it a particular way of thinking that certain groups of people have cultivated over the years, which has resulted in it being labeled as properly basic (especially by people who think that way)?  Does this properly basic idea of divine agency only apply to those individuals who choose to think in a theistic way? Can't secular approaches to interpreting reality also be seen as properly basic, especially to those individuals who do not think in a theistic manner?

[Neo-Scholastic]

Most of the apparent contradictions are the result of:

1) Applying a only a literalist heurmenutic. In other words, they are reading it the same way religious fundamentalists would.
2) Failure to distinguish between historical information, allegories, allusions, metaphors, and figurative language.
3) Divorcing the text from authorial intent. In other words, ignoring what the text would have meant to readers during the time it was written.
4) Giving inordinate significance to trivial differences.

In other word, the writer at infidels had no interest in understanding the text. He was only interested in promoting his agenda and in so doing made an ass of himself. If you take him seriously you are a fool.

You seem to be making an awful lot of assumptions. Even if what you claim is true, the Bible would still not be good evidence because it seems impossible to distinguish between what should and should not be interpreted as true in the Bible. Without being able to make this distinction, the Bible is useless in terms of evidence.

What you claim to be impossible can be done with education and discernment. For example, a proper reading of Swift's "A Modest Proposal" requires some background knowledge to know it is satire. A naive reader might mistake it for a genuine plan to eat the babies of the poor. Such a reader's notions about the character of the author would be completely wrong. In the bible Jesus is described as both "the Lamb of God" and "the Lion of Judah", anyone reasonable person can see that both are instances of figurative language. The prophets spoke in allusions. Jesus spoke in parables. Revelation is so deeply symbolic that it is opaque even to most biblically literal people. And really, what difference does it make if pi got rounded to 3 or the man-count of armies are given in round numbers? Judas killed himself, does it really matter how?

I would add that apparent contradictions in the Resurrection account contributed to me becoming an atheist. But that was based on a very superficial reading on my part. Today, I can say with confidence that the 4 accounts of the Resurrection are complimentary and all the apparent contradictions disappear by making a careful reconstruction from comparing the texts side-by-side. I did that personally and without difficulty.

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[1] It is one thing to say that none of that evidence supports (proves) the Resurrection, [2] it is a completely different thing to say there is no evidence at all.

From my observations, regarding the NT, the [atheist] posters here are saying that it does not provide any evidence for [1] along with claims for the existence of a god; thus, [2] is the conclusion.  Do you see thing differently?

My position is that people are justified in believing that things are as they appear to be until shown otherwise, i.e. that some ideas are properly basic and one of those ideas is that some divine agency is operative in the world.

[b]

Out of curiosity, is "the idea that some divine agency is operative in the world" actually properly basic to humanity, or is it a particular way of thinking that certain groups of people have cultivated over the years,...

The science on this one is pretty clear. (I made three citations on another thread) such as this one: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20...103828.htm

[Kernel Sohcahtoa]

The science on this one is pretty clear. (I made three citations on another thread) such as this one: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20...103828.htm

Thank you for your response , Neo-Scholastic. In particular, I found the following passage from the link posted in the quote above to be interesting:

Experiments involving adults, conducted by Jing Zhu from Tsinghua University (China), and Natalie Emmons and Jesse Bering from The Queen's University, Belfast, suggest that people across many different cultures instinctively believe that some part of their mind, soul or spirit lives on after-death. The studies demonstrate that people are natural 'dualists' finding it easy to conceive of the separation of the mind and the body.

Now, when reading this, it reminded of a passage from J. Anderson Thomson's Why we believe in gods: A concise guide to the science of faith, which discusses the concept of mind-body dualism:

Because we need to work with other people to survive, our brains evolved the ability to make assumptions about others, to create conjecture to help us coexist in social settings.  We are born accepting that others are like us, intentional agents with minds like ours, even though we are unable to literally see their minds.

One aspect of this is called mind-body dualism split or dualism, the view that the mind and body function separately, without interchange.  We cannot conceive of souls unless we see mind as separate from body.  And we do, because our brains are wired that way.

The medial frontal area of our brains, just behind the space between the eyes, contains the circuits for introspection, awareness of our own nonphysical attributes, our emotional states and traits, and our own wishes and desires.  It is also the part of our brain with which we reflect on the abstract: other people's minds, their intentions, beliefs, desires, and feelings--their non physical attributes. 

This ability is not learned; it is innate, hard-wired.  The brain represents mind and body in separate neural circuits . This allows us to separate minds from bodies, to experience and believe that they are entirely different categories (Thomson, 50-51).

Now, along with the human tendency for dualism, Thomson also observes that the human mind is also prone to attributing causal, human-like agency to nearly everything that it encounters.  In addition, he observes that the human mind also has a tendency to fill in the blanks (inferential reasoning and minimally counterintuitive worlds) (Thomson,  64-66).  Furthermore, decoupled cognition, an aspect of the human mind that  allows people to conduct complex social interactions with unseen others, aids people in their need to co-exist in social settings and to have successful relationships with others.  Hence, these aspects of the human mind complement humanity's need for attachment, especially to something that cannot be observed. (Thomson, 54)

Now, from the article that was linked in your post:

'This project suggests that religion is not just something for a peculiar few to do on Sundays instead of playing golf. We have gathered a body of evidence that suggests that religion is a common fact of human nature across different societies. This suggests that attempts to suppress religion are likely to be short-lived as human thought seems to be rooted to religious concepts, such as the existence of supernatural agents or gods, and the possibility of an afterlife or pre-life.'

Is human thought rooted to religious concepts, or do religious concepts provide an effective means for people to stimulate those areas of their brains that are hard-wired or rooted to attachment, dualism, inferential reasoning, decoupled cognition, and etc.?

References

Thomson, J.A. (2011). Why we believe in gods: A concise guide to the science of faith.  United States of America: Pitchstone Publishing

[arewethereyet]

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