Understood and I agree. I know what you said, which is why I put in the differentiation. I do my best to take a more neutral track.
He’s leading himself into a trap.
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Thank you, at last an atheist who isn’t afraid to be honest. Therefore we can look at some cases that are not currently scientifically explained and we can classify these as:
- Things not yet scientifically explained but potentially can be in the future.
- Things not yet scientifically explained and are not capable of being scientifically explained.
Point 1 Is the remit of science that well know and love, all of the ongoing science we see today. But 2. is where sone atheists get uncomfortable, some even saying that this class of questions is empty.
But is it empty? I put it to you that it is not, there are questions which are unanswerable purely by a reliance of science, primarily questions about science itself, questions about the things that science must presume (like the existence of laws or symmetries and the existence of determinism and so on).
If we confine ourselves to science and only science, as our means of answering questions about reality we will have questions about reality that are unanswerable, the question then naturally arises - might they have another kind of explanation, one that is not scientific, naturalistic.
The descriptive laws of physics that humans have created are demonstrably derived from that scientific discipline, and I don’t think someone claiming the bits that we don’t yet understand need acts of inexplicable magic from unevidenced deities, derived from archaic superstition, should be calling factual statements silly.
I’ve asked you before, try to be more concise, I have no intention of responding to your pseudo lectures, clearly state your disagreement with something I said and we can discuss otherwise save yourself the trouble of making such lengthy posts.
How did you reach that conclusion?
This is the realm of metaphysics not science and is a well known topic in metaphysics and philosophy. Whether material “obeys” or “follows” laws or whether material behaves as if it obeys laws is a question of how we choose to interpret nature. Insofar as my argument goes it doesn’t matter, these laws do exist we can discern their presence.
Indeed and that begs the question to what do we attribute the presence of the “relationships”?
Oh look, our specimen has resurrected the “assumptions” creationist bullshit:
I dealt with this canard specifically in my major exposition on creationist canards, the first version of which I presented on another forum way back in 2010.
Specifically, this is Canard #4 in my extensive list, viz:
As for the peddling of the idea that the age of the Earth cannot be subject to test, this is another piece of bullshit on your part, which I deal with in extensive detail in this exposition on the rigorous nature of radionuclide dating, and its application to the question of the age of the Earth. Read that document in full, slowly if need be, and learn why your assertion is yet another bare faced lie.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I was invited to replicate the experiments conducted by Becquerel and Curie, validating the radionuclide decay law, in my physics classes at the age of 15, and my physics teacher handed me a sample of real plutonium for the purpose.. As a corollary, I’m eminently well positioned to destroy this latest lie of yours.
So now you’re resorting to the apologetic assertion that your cartoon magic man is deceptive? That isn’t the flex you think it is.
Meanwhile …
Instead of whingeing when I exercise due dilligence in dealing with your canards, try exercising some diligence yourself in response. Or is this too much like hard work for you?
As for “pseudo lectures”, I leave those to you.
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If you knew, why didn’t you go straight to symmetries? Now you’re just moving the goalposts.
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And all you end up with as we continue to explain more and more of the universe we observe around us is god of the gaps i.e. that your god exists somewhere in the gaps in our knowledge.
Guess we’d all better be careful not to tread on him by accident then.
Also, how do you get to decide what we will be able to explain or won’t?
UK Atheist
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Because it’s not important, it has no effect on the argument nor do I assume everybody is as familiar with symmetries as they are with the more familiar “law”.
If the gap cannot possibly be bridged by naturalistic explanations then yes, of course we need to look for something else or we can just say “so what” or “it is what it is” take your pick.
Bullshit.
Scientists don’t pretend to dictate how reality behaves, unlike mythology fanboys. They let the DATA inform them of this.
Stop lying.
Oh look, the appeal to “metaphysics”. Which in the hands of mythology fanboys, usually means “here’s some made up shit I pulled out of my arse, which I treat as fact”.
Complete and utter bullshit.
I’ll provide an apposite example of why this is bullshit, derived from a textbook from my mathematics classes, namely Theoretical Mechanics by Murray R. Spiegel, Schaum’s Outline Series, published by McGraw-Hill, ISBN 07 084357 0, which presents an explicit example of this on page 127, problem 5.15.
In that problem, the student is required to determine mathematically the nature of a central force, given a specific orbital path taken by the particle. That orbut takes the particle through the origin of the central force, a point which is important to remember for what is to come.
The requisite derivation results in the central force taking the form of F = k/r5, where r is the distance from the origin of the central force.
Now we know that, for example, gravity does not obey such a central force law, because, wait for it, such a central force law would result in planets crashing into their parent stars before a single orbit is completed. Since this clearly does NOT happen, we know that a different central force law is applicable.
On the other hand, it has been determined that a k/r2 law for gravity is not only an excellent match to the actual observed behaviour of bodies moving under the influence of gravity, but one that allows scientists to plan long distance spacecraft trajectories with excellent precision.
This isn’t a matter of “interpretation” (once again, you resurrect Canard #4 from my list), but of paying attention to what the DATA is telling us.
And none of this supports “Magic Man did it”.
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Please define your god, including all its attributes. Without such, I, for one, am unable to even begin to determine what I think might evidence it.
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He’ll make excuses to avoid answering you as he does with me …
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What you are saying here doesn’t make any sense. I understand at a philosophical level, for instance, you can’t use evidence to prove the concept of evidence is true. But you can take evidence along with things like logic, decision making, etc, to have a tool that is useful and works, like the scientific method.
Let’s define naturalism: a philosophy that states that all beings and events in the universe are natural. Nobody in this thread has advocated for this, let alone tried to prove it with itself.
I think you are missing the point. Let’s say for argument sake that there is something outside the universe that doesn’t try to communicate with us. The only way we could know is if we could measure that it broke some previously known law or theory. However, we wouldn’t know if this was just some yet unexplainable force, or something externally. We wouldn’t know. We’re not saying something doesn’t exist externally, there is just no way of knowing at this point.
I am not using science to prove itself; show us how I am doing that? I am using the scientific method and logic to say there hasn’t been any evidence for god that I’ve seen. Once again, the scientific method is not science.
Epistemology is just the method of knowing truth. You are claiming there are other ways to know truth. What are they?
False. The definition of proof is: “evidence or argument establishing or helping to establish a fact or the truth of a statement.” I have proof gravity exists. I have proof the scientific method gives us reliable models. How many laws can we describe mathematically now? We’ve used the scientific method to get to the moon. What other epistemology has even come close? Certainly not faith.
Will the scientific method be updated or replaced in the future? I don’t know.
Major Premise, Some Christians: The earth is 6000 years old.
Minor Premise, @Sherlock-Holmes : You can’t prove it’s not true
Conclusion, @Sherlock-Holmes: So it could be true.
How is this not an appeal to ignorance fallacy? Go ahead, I’m listening…
@Sherlock-Holmes, this is getting tiresome. You claim our methods are bad and we should be using another method, but you won’t / can’t tell us what that is. Over the course of this many posts it just starts to become little more than trolling. How can we possibly go from ignorance to knowledge if you don’t know yourself? This looks like faith to me, you want to believe. You haven’t given us any evidence or methodologies. At this stage, this is nothing more than a special case fallacy. This is where the person making the claim says a special case is needed, but never specifies why the case is needed.
Major Premise: god could exist
Minor Premise: the scientific method cannot be used currently to show that any god exists
Conclusion: you need a special epistemology to know god exists.
Building a custom epistemology to fit one’s needs is only self-serving in the interest of that person’s ideas and is an affront to truth. There are two huge holes here. Why can’t the scientific method be used, and what do we use in it’s place?
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He would have to also have evidence for each attribute too, it gets messy fast.
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Me? you claim you don’t hold a belief in X yet cannot define X?
Why does this response not surprise me?
You say your god exists and then ask me to define it? Hahahahahaha. That’s funny!
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I ignore posts that rely on terms like “bullshit” and other expletives, if you believe I’m so beneath you to not warrant basic civility then why should I even attempt to regard you as an adult.
Oh look, tone policing time as a substitute for substance, along with the usual thinly veiled ad hominem.
Try behaving like an adult yourself sometime.
I’m not here to argue for God or convince you God exists, I am here to reveal the inherent vacuity that is atheism. I’m attacking atheism plain and simple, you cannot defend yourself, You and several others here are all over the metaphorical ropes.
“I don’t hold a belief in X and I cannot define what X means” and “I see absolutely no evidence for X because I have no idea what characterizes evidence for X”.
You call that an intellectual position? now that’s funny.