Stephen Hawking has died at the age of 76.

[The Valkyrie]

God: not confined to earth. Cannot reasonably conclude from lack of observation that God's existence is therefore improbable.

What?! So god is not everywhere after all.

Fire-breathing dragons: large animals confined to earth. Would eventually be discovered as man explores the earth. Since man has explored most of the earth, reasonable to conclude that their existence is improbable.

Except there are people that believe they saw dragons and that some of the pictures of dragons are real. Like there are people who think this video (among others) is genuine





Just like some people believe other people witnessed Virgin Mary or angels or Xenu etc.

And of course there are other ways around it: some people believe dragons can be invisible or simply mimic their surroundings perfectly to hide, idea that was exploited in movies and cartoons.

Well, that's pretty conclusive.

All hail our reptilian overlords.

[Edwardo Piet]

Are you sure it's not an aligator?

[John V]

So they're at least falsifiable.

Yep.

Not even falsifiable.

Nope. Christianity is called a faith you know.

It's a postulation of a complex entity that not only is there no evidence of

Sure there is. Read the Bible. Consider existence, and life.

but there CAN'T be any evidence of...

Er, why not? What would stop such a god from appearing right now?

You're literally believing in something that there can't possibly be any evidence of. You can't get more irrational than that.

You're literally proclaiming what can and cannot be considered evidence, and what can and cannot happen in the future. That's both arrogant and irrational.

[Edwardo Piet]

Yep.

Indeed.

Nope. Christianity is called a faith you know.

And faith is irrational by definition as it means belief without evidence. Exactly my point.

Sure there is. Read the Bible. Consider existence, and life.

See how confused you are? On the one hand you say God's unfalsifable, 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.

Er, why not? What would stop such a god from appearing right now?

... the fact that he would be completely indistinguishable from a supremely powerful alien pretending to be God.... have you not heard of NOMA?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-overla...magisteria

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.

You're literally proclaiming what can and cannot be considered evidence, and what can and cannot happen in the future. That's both arrogant and irrational.

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.

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.

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. You're irrational for on the one hand saying you need faith and God is unfalsifiable, and on the other hand saying nature is evidence of him, and he can show himself any time. Make your mind up, either God is a being that cannot be detected or he is. Either you need faith or you can have evidence. Faith is not needed if there's actually evidence of him.

It's extremely irrational to think that evidence of nature is evidence of some imaginary being that is completely undetectable and unknowable and theists just made up. You literally have an imaginary conception of a superperson in your head, and you think that the natural world is evidence of that silly conception of that superperson being outside nature and making it all, despite the fact that that 1) That all has natural explanations 2) Even if it didn't, the non-arrogant thing you do when you don't have the answer is to say that you don't know, not to make up some imaginary superperson that made it all.

[GrandizerII]

How hard is it to just say "I don't know if God exists or not, but I believe he/she/it does"? That would be a breath of fresh air to hear this from a theist. Instead, we get theists who know all about what is going on behind the cosmic scenes, while contradicting one another here and there, and all nevertheless claiming authority on the matter.

[Edwardo Piet]

What's the point in saying something like "You need faith because God is unfalsifiable" and at the same time saying something like "Life and existence is evidence of God"? You don't need faith if you have evidence, and obviously life cannot be evidence of God, that's what it means for something to be unfalsfiable: Outside the realm of science. If life was evidence of God, science would be capable at least in principle of showing it. Science is all about our best understanding of the natural world. So if science can't show nature as evidence of God, then nothing can show nature as evidence of God. The whole point about God being outside of the natural world and science is that it's literally impossible to have evidence of him. Evidence is empirical, and literally anything that God could do to show that he exists can have a natural explanation. Hence my example of a superpowerful alien pretending to be God. The whole problem with belief in God is that it's literally believing in something that by definition there can be no empirical evidence of. As soon as a supernatural entity outside of nature shows up in nature... it shows itself naturally in a way that has natural explanations. As soon as something supernatural shows itself in nature, there's no way we can tell it's still supernatural.

[Jehanne]

How hard is it to just say "I don't know if God exists or not, but I believe he/she/it does"? That would be a breath of fresh air to hear this from a theist. Instead, we get theists who know all about what is going on behind the cosmic scenes, while contradicting one another here and there, and all nevertheless claiming authority on the matter.

Such individuals (who exist) are known as agnostic theists.  But, "theism" is not well-defined.  After all, which god or gods to believe in?  Agnostic atheism is, at least, well defined (i.e., "none of the above").

[GrandizerII]

How hard is it to just say "I don't know if God exists or not, but I believe he/she/it does"? That would be a breath of fresh air to hear this from a theist. Instead, we get theists who know all about what is going on behind the cosmic scenes, while contradicting one another here and there, and all nevertheless claiming authority on the matter.

Such individuals (who exist) are known as agnostic theists.

Now that's a phrase you don't hear quite often. I wonder if they are a myth.

[SaStrike]

You get agnostic theists only in theory

[Edwardo Piet]

Well agnostic theists are agnostic about all gods, apart from the ones they think are impossible, I reckon.

It's simply that the god they believe in... they are leaning towards existing rather than away from existing.

This is what I mean when I say it's disingenuous to pretend that you don't think such-and-such entity is improbable or probable. Fair enough if you think it's a 50% or unknown probability. But to try and avoid that as well... to pretend to have absolutely no opinion on things like unicorns, dragons, other gods, etc... it's just disingenuous.

Roadrunner was trying to have his cake and eat it too, and he's so unwilling to even define his own God, repeatedly, while repeatedly reacting to my statements about God as if I'm talking about his... that he had to go on block. He's not here for a proper discussion. There's nothing problematic about me saying "God is highly improbable" if I'm talking about a God that really is highly improbable. I could be talking about a God that can make square circles: A logically impossible God. You can't get more improbable than that!

But still, RR disingenuously continued over and over to react as if I'm talking about his God, all whilst refusing to define his God, and completely ignoring my statements about how I wasn't talking about his God, and how could I, because he refuses to describe his God to me.

I also said repeatedly that I don't consider all Gods equally improbable and it depends on the God. I need to know which God we're talking about. I was merely making a blanket statement about all Gods that I do have valid reasons to consider improbable.

It's almost as if he was pretending like it's impossible to do that about any god, all while he does exactly the same about other gods besides the one he believes in, and about dragons, and unicorns and other improbable entities.

His objection was to say that "improbable" was the wrong word, and he didn't like the word. Tough shit that he doesn't like the word, it is the right word. Probable/improbable is a true dichotomy. The only misleading aspect is the fact that it's not clear whether 50% is probable or improbable, because it's exactly half probable... and it's also possible to put an unknown probability on things. But I already addressed that. And I asked him if he honestly thinks the probability of fire breathing dragons is unknown or 50%

He won't answer direct questions directly, because that would make him have to face the fact that my analogy succeeds, and I have a point, and that I'm right when he's trying to have his cake and eat it too.

This all started from his claim that me saying "God is highly improbable" is the argument from ignorance, as lack of evidence of God isn't positive evidence that God definitely doesn't exist. But I wasn't saying it was.

The whole point of a null hypothesis is down to a matter of parsimony, it's not to say "The null hypothesis is definitely correct until you can prove otherwise" that WOULD be the argument from ignorance. But that's not at all how the null hypothesis works! The point of the null hypothesis is that it's the more parsimonious one that is more likely to be correct... and that's how it is with atheism. You don't need positive evidence of God's non-existence to conclude that God is highly improbable because atheism is more parsimonious and the God hypothesis lacks evidence. Theism postulates an unnecessary entity without evidence... it's improbable for the exact same reason that Russell's Teapot or an invisible intangible unicorn is. It's an entity, with no evidence that is postulated.