Proof and evidence will always equal Science

[Ferrocyanide]

[Angrboda]

I get the sense that some athiests think that all thiests believe that God is just another thing in a universe of things. I remember writing about this pernicious category error in a thread called " tooth fairy bullshit".

So you're arguing that God is not a thing? I haven't looked at your commentary in the thread you cite (link please), but I would be very interested in a fuller explication.

[vulcanlogician]

[Ranjr]

We have chairs.  We use different things as chairs.  Regardless of what a chair is as a concept in our minds, they exist as objects around us, and I can count them, weigh them, and take various measurements.  We don't have god.  So regardless of what god is as a concept, it's not measurable.  In that regard, there's no room for a metaphysical dodge.

[zwanzig]

We have chairs.  We use different things as chairs.  Regardless of what a chair is as a concept in our minds, they exist as objects around us, and I can count them, weigh them, and take various measurements.  We don't have god.  So regardless of what god is as a concept, it's not measurable.  In that regard, there's no room for a metaphysical dodge.

This ^^^ is where I'm at on it.

Metaphysics feels like a different conversation, a distraction, and jerking off when we're talking about things that are physical and observably real. My point is, that defining god and religious concepts like souls and spirits in only metaphysical terms makes it incapable for them to fit a physical definition. So why ask for evidence?

I know, likely obvious, yeah. But it finally connected for me when I made this thread. But on top of that, I doubt science will ever discover something that can be pointed to by a theist/spiritual person as an admission of "yes. This physical thing you have found and measured is god/soul/magic." We won't get that. And it feels unlikely that science would ever discover something and call it the soul or a god. They'd call it something else, likely name it after the person who discovered it. So it's "that's not god. That's just lightning/weather" over and over again. The gaps are always going to be there.

[Ranjr]

I like your thread, especially with theists adding to the discussion.

Should science build a god detector only to find nothing, theists can make a Tower of Babel appeal.  God is thwarting your efforts to teach you a lesson.  The very existence of that tale from Genesis tells us people have long asked, if god is up there, surely we can find him.

[polymath257]

[Jehanne]

Zeno claimed that motion was an illusion. Dionysius, his pupil, supposedly disproved this by getting up out of his chair and walking across the room.

[polymath257]

Zeno claimed that motion was an illusion.  Dionysius, his pupil, supposedly disproved this by getting up out of his chair and walking across the room.

Thereby showing that philosophy alone cannot reach truth. At best, it shows our biases and assumptions.

There are many other examples. Kant, for example, regarded Euclidean geometry as synthetic a priori knowledge. The existence of non-Euclidean geometries rather destroyed that idea.

[Ahriman]

I get the sense that some athiests think that all thiests believe that God is just another thing in a universe of things. I remember writing about this pernicious category error in a thread called " tooth fairy bullshit".

So you're arguing that God is not a thing?  I haven't looked at your commentary in the thread you cite (link please), but I would be very interested in a fuller explication.

God isn't really a thing, more like a force, a conscious force. You wouldn't call gravity a thing, would you?