Disproving the Existence of God

[Grahame]

Sorry, but you are totally and utterly wrong in every possible respect here. You're clearly seeing everything in terms of black and white, when the world is anything but!

 

Life is a journey, we're not born one way and we don't always remain the same. A good person can turn bad and a bad person can turn good and do good acts for the rest of his life. A corrupt soul can find redemption just as the pure can be tainted.

 

The vast majority of people hover somewhere in between light and dark, just as that is a fundamental part of their / our natures.

 

The part I have highlighted is true for everyone Karis. You also say a corupt soul can find redemption, and yes that is true, and yes the pure in heart can become tainted. You also speak of life being like a journey which again is true and on a journey we can fall into difficulties like those on the Titanic and some were rescued while others were not. While that was probably down to good luck as much as anything we unlike those on the Titanic can be assured of our salvation.

 

 

 

[Karis]

You really need to spend more time accepting and acknowledging the various parts of human nature rather than denying the parts you consider to be unwholesome.

 

Through denial comes disaster, which is the cause of so many problems...

 

An act is just an act and no more defines a person than the colour of their hair.

[six45ive]

Firstly your making rather huge assumptions about what I believe and secondly unless you can backup you claims of evidence then it has no more validity than "believe this cos I say so".

 

So maybe you'd like to explain what it is you do believe. I'm all for gaining extra knowledge.

As for me educating you on the evidence against god, there is so much out there that it would probably take you years to take it all in and understand how it all links together like a jigsaw but as a start here's a piece (of the jigsaw) that basically sums up what I've been saying.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2010-10-11-column11_ST_N.htm

 

I get my morals from lots of places thankyou and though I've read the bible and was raised a Roman Catholic I'm in no way a practicing - or even believing - Christian. However even believing that the bible is alagorical doesn't prevent someone from taking moral themes from it or from believing in god.

 

Yes.....that's stating the obvious so as I said above, what do you believe?

 

The god of the bible/tora/koran may be interventionist but that is by no means the only god that is worshiped out there many of them non interventionist in nature.

 

As I said before, please explain the point of worshipping a god that doesn't do anything that affects anybody's lives.

[redwhine]

Can anyone actually disprove the existence of God? Or can we merely disprove or counter creationism with scientific theory?

No.

 

Because...

 

http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/Dragon.htm

 

[milquetoast1]

As for me educating you on the evidence against god, there is so much out there that it would probably take you years to take it all in and understand how it all links together like a jigsaw but as a start here's a piece (of the jigsaw) that basically sums up what I've been saying.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2010-10-11-column11_ST_N.htm

 

I read that article yesterday, and I was actually reminded of evildrneil's comments as I read it.

[onewheeldave]

I read that article yesterday, and I was actually reminded of evildrneil's comments as I read it.

 

the article doesn't actually give any evidence showing the non-existence of God: asredwhine points out, science can never disprove God.

 

(Except for those believers whose claims about/definition of God includes actual manifestations of his/her powers that are scientifically testable)

 

And this leads to the biggest problem with religious "truth": There's no way of knowing whether it's true. I've never met a Christian, for instance, who has been able to tell me what observations about the universe would make him abandon his beliefs in God and Jesus. (I would have thought that the Holocaust could do it, but apparently not.) There is no horror, no amount of evil in the world, that a true believer can't rationalize as consistent with a loving God. It's the ultimate way of fooling yourself. But how can you be sure you're right if you can't tell whether you're wrong?

Again, the big problem with scientists attacking religion is that they generally have no idea about what is meant by 'God' when the term is used by a rational believer.

 

They tend to take Dawkins approach of setting up a strawman version of God as the being believed in by fundamentalist ranters and then knock down that strawman.

 

It's easy to make videos where you interview an irrational ranting fundamentalist and show him up as a fool.

 

But- it is a strawman- when such scientists enter a debate with a rational believer (yes, they do exist) who can aviod getting sucked into their strawman defintion of God, they tend to not do so well.

 

(Saw a TV debate between Dawkins and the archbishop of canterbury recently- it was noticable that Dawkins did considerably less well against someone who refused to go along with Dawkins presupposittions about what religion is about).

[onewheeldave]

 

"But surely," you might argue, "science and religion must be compatible. After all, some scientists are religious." One is Francis Collins, head of the National Institutes of Health and an evangelical Christian. But the existence of religious scientists, or religious people who accept science, doesn't prove that the two areas are compatible. It shows only that people can hold two conflicting notions in their heads at the same time. If that meant compatibility, we could make a good case, based on the commonness of marital infidelity, that monogamy and adultery are perfectly compatible. No, the incompatibility between science and faith is more fundamental: Their ways of understanding the universe are irreconcilable.

 

Again- the dogmatic statement that science and religious belief are irreconcilable- that is a matter of debate, not an established fact.

 

(the point made that just because a person holds 2 views, does not mean those 2 views are compatible, is a good one- it's unfortunate that the scientist then tags on a piece of unsubstatiated dogma on the end)

 

Many scientists are believers, and find it irksome when Dawkins and other fundamentalist atheists insist that the two are not compatible and, by implication, that scientist believers are irrational.

 

But don't just take my word for the incompatibility of science and faith — it's amply demonstrated by the high rate of atheism among scientists. While only 6% of Americans are atheists or agnostics, the figure for American scientists is 64%, according to Rice professor Elaine Howard Ecklund's book, Science vs. Religion.

Which, of course, means that 44% of American scientists are not atheists.

 

And so we see that, just because an article is written by a scientist, does not mean it does not contain dubious arguments, irrationality and strawmen.

[milquetoast1]

While only 6% of Americans are atheists or agnostics, the figure for American scientists is 64%, according to Rice professor Elaine Howard Ecklund's book, Science vs. Religion.

 

Which, of course, means that 44% of American scientists are not atheists.

 

Really?

 

[six45ive]

the article doesn't actually give any evidence showing the non-existence of God: as redwhine points out, science can never disprove God.

 

(Except for those believers whose claims about/definition of God includes actual manifestations of his/her powers that are scientifically testable)

 

Exactly, which is what we're talking about. As I pointed out to evildrneil, if he/she/it doesn't manifest itself in the here and now in some way then what's the point in believing in it and if it/he/she does then those claims can be tested and disproved.

 

Again, the big problem with scientists attacking religion is that they generally have no idea about what is meant by 'God' when the term is used by a rational believer.

 

That's why I always ask the person I'm debating to give me their definition of what they mean by god.

 

They tend to take Dawkins approach of setting up a strawman version of God as the being believed in by fundamentalist ranters and then knock down that strawman. It's easy to make videos where you interview an irrational ranting fundamentalist and show him up as a fool.

 

The point you seemed to have missed is that the article is from the USA where most xtians are this so called strawman that you accuse Dawkins of inventing. They believe the bible to be the unerring word of god, that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old, that Adam and Eve were the first humans created by god and that evolution is a total myth. These are people who practice real xtianity, not the watered down version that you find in an angican church every Sunday and they hold an immense amount of power over there that needs to be substantially reduced if the US is to flourish as a truly secular nation.

 

But- it is a strawman- when such scientists enter a debate with a rational believer (yes, they do exist) who can aviod getting sucked into their strawman defintion of God, they tend to not do so well.

(Saw a TV debate between Dawkins and the archbishop of canterbury recently- it was noticable that Dawkins did considerably less well against someone who refused to go along with Dawkins presupposittions about what religion is about).

 

Really? All I saw was the archbishop squirming uncomfortably knowing that his meaningless rhetoric (poetic language) was being sussed for what it was by his intellectual superior.

Let's watch and see.

[evildrneil]

So maybe you'd like to explain what it is you do believe. I'm all for gaining extra knowledge.

As for me educating you on the evidence against god, there is so much out there that it would probably take you years to take it all in and understand how it all links together like a jigsaw but as a start here's a piece (of the jigsaw) that basically sums up what I've been saying.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2010-10-11-column11_ST_N.htm

 

I'm agnostic - I have no idea whether there is a god or not and have seen no convincing evidence to move me one way or the other. If I do have anyleanings it's probably towards deism.

 

As to your link - well that really is what I was saying about building a philisophical argument for the non existance of god. Basically for the argument to work you have to accept a number of the authors premises - i.e. share the same belief structure.

 

A few of them I would disagree with:

 

1. "Science nibbles away at religion" - this is the "god of the gaps" approach - i.e. god can only exist in the gaps between scientific theory. Personally I don't accept this - it assumes that if god is not the single and only architect of somthing then he/she/it can't be involved. Lets take evolution as an example - just because the world didn't spring forth fully formed it doesn't mean that evolution isn't a result of laws and processes laid down by a creator.

 

2. Science and religion are incompatable - science and religion have very different remits - one is involved with the physical corporeal world the other with the spiritual world - why should they be incompatable? Where you get incompatabilities is when religion becomes a temporal entity rather than a spiritual one. Many of the great advances in science have been aty the hands of deeply religious men - Newton thought of himself as primarily a theologist; Mendalian inheritence was discoverfed by a monk and the big bang was proposed Monsignor Georges Lemaître. Their religious beliefs drove their scientific investigations rather than hindering them.

 

3. Evil in the world as evidence against god - this is simply ascribing human ideals to god. Perhaps in a universal timescale what we see as evils will have positive benefits driving humanity to avoid it's destructive side and become better as a species? If there is such a thing as a creator I don't believe we can ever hope to understand it's motivations.

 

4. "Among countries of the world, there is a strong negative relationship between their religiosity and their acceptance of evolution. Countries like Denmark and Sweden, with low belief in God, have high acceptance of evolution, while religious countries are evolution-intolerant." - 80% of Danes are members of the Danish National Church and 71% of Swedes are members of the Church of Sweden - how is that a low belief in god!?

 

As I said before, please explain the point of worshipping a god that doesn't do anything that affects anybody's lives.

 

Well I can hardly explain it as I don't do it. I was merely pointing out that people do worship and pray to non interventionist gods - find yourself a Jain and ask them...