First of all, I am not attempting to affect your argument with insults. I am simply insulting you because you have the intelligence of a small child.
Note, I said "anyone with half a brain", a figure of speech, and you turned that into "I have more wisdom than everyone else". It's obvious that you're too fucked up in the head to see how very different those statements are.
Magic is not thrown out by the laws of thermodynamics...! Magic, by it's very definition is supernatural and thus beyond the scope of the laws of nature and the universe.
Apparenly, you believe it is equally likely that a dragon may or may not be in your garage, since there is "the same amount of evidence" either way. I don't know about you, but I'm not going to look over my shoulder next time I'm in my garage...
You haven't presented a dime of evidence for any definition of god. In fact, you haven't even touched that subject-- you are indeed delusional.
I have never spoke with absolute certainity. I ridicule others for their ability (or lack thereof) to think rationally, something you are not very well acquainted with yourself.
You've already forgotton and sidestepped Occam's razor and parsimony. Why not, I mean, believing in just any made-up claim is all find and dandy, because any made-up claim, if untrue, will never have evidence against it unless something logically contradicts it.
Again, why is proof necessary when facing the non-existence of something? What would indicate that this thing does not exist? When something exists, it effects the world, and obviously there will be indications as to whether it exists, whether it be indirecly (say, a footprint) or directly (directly experienced by our senses). If something does not exist, obviously no such indication (evidence) is possible.
You say that magic is "thrown out" because of the laws of thermodynamics, when earlier you were talking about "disproof". Being "thrown out" is not the same as "disproof" which you so crave...
Magic is "thrown out" because of parsimony and Occam's razor, the same principles as to why people don't believe in little green men and, of course, deities.
I am not "resorting" to name calling, I am calling this idiot for what he is: an idiot. He is an idiot for how he thinks.
I never said people who believe in God are too stupid to understand the scientific process-- although they ignore it when they believe in a god.
There is no intellectually sound reason to believe in god. "Because it makes sense" is a reason based on emotional appeal and lacks any intellectual value.
I don't care if you believe what you do because you thought it'd be cool to speculate, or because someone fed it to you. It's idiocy all the same.
And that parallel universe comment? That was just plain stupid-- an unfalsifiable technicality that is irrelevent to the point being made.
Ad hominem? I'm insulting you, not brushing your arguments away because of who you are. There is a difference, although you are probably too stupid to figure that out.
Your straw man about me "having so much more wisdom on anyone else on the matter" is utterly pathetic and amusing. I never made that claim, you made it for me.
Oh, it's hilarious that you evoke Pascal's Wager. Great. You discredit yourself...
Oh, and proof "one way or the other"? Are you asking for evidence of no evidence? Are you out of your mind?
You say I must wait for proof one way or another before I make up my mind? Why, then, do you blow off the "dragon in the garage" hypothesis when there's no evidence against it?
If something does not exist, there can't be evidence that it does not exist. That doesn't make sense. There can be better explanations, sure, which is exactly why I don't think there is a god. I'm not saying with absolute certainity that there isn't a god, I never have, and I never would.
Again, now YOU are the one distinguishing between "negatives and positives". When it comes to truth, it is irrelevent. If something exists, then to justify belief in it you must have an indication (evidence) that it exists. If something does not exist, then no indication (evidence) CAN exist. Natural processes as an explanation work better than a deity explanation, so that is used as well. Can you get that through your thick skull?
You have two slices of bread. One appears to be buttered, the other doesn't.
But we don't experience god, we cannot test it, we cannot sense it. That qualifies as supernatural.
Philosophy is not necessarily concerned with "why", either, as science itself is based on philosophy.
Also, what's with your inane ranting about "disproving" god? I'm not trying to disprove a claim that was made unfalsifiable, here. I want to see evidence for its existence. There is no reason to think their is a god, little boy.
And people spend hours debating the usefulness of science on the internet, both of which are direct spawns of science.
Guess who automatically has the upperhand?
Ha, just because people have a fascination with fiction doesn't mean they need to believe it. How many people like Star Wars (Ep. 4-6, mind you) and know it's SCIENCE fiction?
Occam's razor isn't necessarily about simplicity, it's about unneeded entities. You are pretty ignorant...
Which is a better explanation, a magical, supernatural deity that we have no evidence of its existence, or a universe being part of and formed by natural means that are clearly possible?
How about this..? You make a sandwich, leave the room, come back, and discover a bite in your sandwich. Do you assume aliens who take bites out of sandwiches came down and did it, fulfilling their live's mission, or that perhaps a brother or friend snuck a bite...?
First of all, you are giving me the INTENT of why they were built, not HOW they were built. Do you honestly believe that engineering is based on faith?
And the reasons people studied the stars is irrelevent as well. We now study for knowledge, not for fantastical reasons. You are deluded.
First of all, although it might be hard like an imbecile like you to understand, my position rests on the lack of proof of something.
In this case, we are discussing an falsifiable construct.
Why, again, do the "aliens-live-on-Mars" folk need evidence to back up their claim? After all, there's no disproof that they could be underground, or hiding from us...
I'll tell you why. Because they are assuming, based on apparently no evidence, that there IS an additional something, and can justify their position with "you can't disprove it!".
With a deity, it's about the same. Sure, a god COULD exists, just as aliens COULD live on Mars. But there is no reason to postulate any of their existences until evidence springs up, thus atheism is the default position.
Oh, and I noted your straw man-- I never said you can't disprove a negative... you can't prove a negative or a "positive". Absolute proof is bullshit, which you probably didn't know based on the fact that you appear to be a very ignorant fellow....
Occam's razor and parsimony is the exact point I'm bringing up when I discussed Sagan's dragon scenario. Of course, you said "Occam's razor" disproves it, but that's not true... it simply shows why it's not a good idea to assume the dragon is there in the first place.
I'm not saying a god can't exist, he certainly could outside my knowledge. But there is no intellectually justifiable reason, no evidence to indicate the existence of one.
Santa Claus, the tooh fairy, and God each have the exact same evidence and validity for believing in them.
Beside the fact that beautiful is itself subjective, you have not demonstrated any material gains besides the feeling of "wonder" caused in our brains. Does "faith" prolong life? Does it increase our awareness of what the world is? Hell no.
Besides, artwork, song, and prose stem from creativity, not a belief in fantasy, regardless what the subject of the artwork is of.
Me? End it? Stupid troll, anyone skeptic with half a brain has already figured it out. Just because people believed in fantasy for a good portion of human history doesn't mean they were ever justified in believing said fantasy.
I could use your reasoning to justify believing in the greek gods of old. I could use your reasoning to suggest an ethereal invisible dragon lives in my garage....
Oh, and the "basic reasoning skills" involve parsimony and Occam's razor... basically, theists assume a god exists without any evidence in face of better explanations for, say, how the world came about.
Your way of thinking is what is called "IGNORANCE".
Complete and utter fantasy. You are redefining faith to try to justify your irrational beliefs.
Since god is unfalsifiable, there cannot be evidence against its existence. It doesn't take faith to say that there's probably no god-- it takes common sense and basic reasoning skills to figure that out.
Sorry chump, but you are irrational. It doesn't mean a damn thing that your little beliefs can't be disproven. YOU need evidence.
You think that you get a free pass because the irrational things you believe in can't be tested. Sorry again, but if they can't be tested and verified there's no reason to believe in them in the first place. There's a reason I don't believe in invisible ethereal dragons living in my garage...
That's because a consistent person cannot be faithful in some things and scientific in others. Either you're rational (choose science) or not (faith).
Science cannot have faith in it; otherwise it isn't science. Faith cannot have science it in; then it isn't faith. So yes, they are mutually exclusive if we follow the definition of faith and science.
Science, by the way, is what causes humanity to progress intellectually. What has faith given us...? Computers...? No, that was science. Rockets? Science as well.
What has faith (belief absent of or lacking of evidence) given us? NOTHING. BLIND SPECULATION DOESN'T GIVE US ANYTHING BESIDES PEOPLE WITH A FANTASTICAL WORLDVIEW.
There is evidence for evolution and the big bang. There is no evidence for god's existence. So why believe in god? Oh, that's right, everyone else does...:/
What's with this "disproof" garbage again? Things need to be demonstrated to be true or likely to be true, NOT demonstrated to be not true.
Quite simply, if there is no evidence of X, there is no reason to believe in X. You cannot falsify God, therefore it is UNSCIENTIFIC, and useless as an explanation to anything.
But I've never met a scientist who would tell you that the lack of such proof constitutes a disproof.
Completely irrelevent. We do not need "disproof" to demonstrate a claim has no basis. After all, why don't (good) scientists accept claims that are unfalsifiable?
Faith is the antithesis of science. Faith is pure irrationality. Just because faith is a nice buzzword society throws doesn't mean it's antithetical to reason.
Faith and science are as compatible as matter and antimatter. If you wish to be a rational person, you cannot pick and choose your basis for believing in things.
That's not true. I found some spelling mistakes in my A7N8X-Deluxe manual, ones that were rather obvious-- "teh" instead of "the", for example.
Perhaps they simply spend more time on the product than the manual? After all, most people buying a motherboard, for example, know what they are doing.
Hell, I have seen programmers write English rather poorly (hell, you occasionally find typos in the program's comments, or even the program itself) but the code otherwise is sound and clean. Haven't you? After all, just one typo in a program's code and bug up the whole program... yet they misspell words...
It just seems to me tech companies don't care about the manual's grammar very much. I see typos all the time in tech stuff that otherwise works fairly well.
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First of all, I am not attempting to affect your argument with insults. I am simply insulting you because you have the intelligence of a small child.
Note, I said "anyone with half a brain", a figure of speech, and you turned that into "I have more wisdom than everyone else". It's obvious that you're too fucked up in the head to see how very different those statements are.
Magic is not thrown out by the laws of thermodynamics...! Magic, by it's very definition is supernatural and thus beyond the scope of the laws of nature and the universe.
Apparenly, you believe it is equally likely that a dragon may or may not be in your garage, since there is "the same amount of evidence" either way. I don't know about you, but I'm not going to look over my shoulder next time I'm in my garage...
You haven't presented a dime of evidence for any definition of god. In fact, you haven't even touched that subject-- you are indeed delusional.
I have never spoke with absolute certainity. I ridicule others for their ability (or lack thereof) to think rationally, something you are not very well acquainted with yourself.
You've already forgotton and sidestepped Occam's razor and parsimony. Why not, I mean, believing in just any made-up claim is all find and dandy, because any made-up claim, if untrue, will never have evidence against it unless something logically contradicts it.
Again, why is proof necessary when facing the non-existence of something? What would indicate that this thing does not exist? When something exists, it effects the world, and obviously there will be indications as to whether it exists, whether it be indirecly (say, a footprint) or directly (directly experienced by our senses). If something does not exist, obviously no such indication (evidence) is possible.
You say that magic is "thrown out" because of the laws of thermodynamics, when earlier you were talking about "disproof". Being "thrown out" is not the same as "disproof" which you so crave...
Magic is "thrown out" because of parsimony and Occam's razor, the same principles as to why people don't believe in little green men and, of course, deities.
You're just trying to justify your conclusions.
Yes, it does, are you stupid or something?
Reeealllly, now? An organized system of data collection, experimentation, and observation is not based on knowledge, but on emotionality? Bull shit.
I am not "resorting" to name calling, I am calling this idiot for what he is: an idiot. He is an idiot for how he thinks.
I never said people who believe in God are too stupid to understand the scientific process-- although they ignore it when they believe in a god.
There is no intellectually sound reason to believe in god. "Because it makes sense" is a reason based on emotional appeal and lacks any intellectual value.
I don't care if you believe what you do because you thought it'd be cool to speculate, or because someone fed it to you. It's idiocy all the same.
And that parallel universe comment? That was just plain stupid-- an unfalsifiable technicality that is irrelevent to the point being made.
Ad hominem? I'm insulting you, not brushing your arguments away because of who you are. There is a difference, although you are probably too stupid to figure that out.
Your straw man about me "having so much more wisdom on anyone else on the matter" is utterly pathetic and amusing. I never made that claim, you made it for me.
Oh, it's hilarious that you evoke Pascal's Wager. Great. You discredit yourself...
Oh, and proof "one way or the other"? Are you asking for evidence of no evidence? Are you out of your mind?
You say I must wait for proof one way or another before I make up my mind? Why, then, do you blow off the "dragon in the garage" hypothesis when there's no evidence against it?
If something does not exist, there can't be evidence that it does not exist. That doesn't make sense. There can be better explanations, sure, which is exactly why I don't think there is a god. I'm not saying with absolute certainity that there isn't a god, I never have, and I never would.
Again, now YOU are the one distinguishing between "negatives and positives". When it comes to truth, it is irrelevent. If something exists, then to justify belief in it you must have an indication (evidence) that it exists. If something does not exist, then no indication (evidence) CAN exist. Natural processes as an explanation work better than a deity explanation, so that is used as well. Can you get that through your thick skull?
You have two slices of bread. One appears to be buttered, the other doesn't.
Talk about a red herring! You completely ignored my point.
You don't have to believe in fantasy to be curious about it, which is essentially what you're justifying-- believing in fantasy because it feels nice.
But we don't experience god, we cannot test it, we cannot sense it. That qualifies as supernatural.
Philosophy is not necessarily concerned with "why", either, as science itself is based on philosophy.
Also, what's with your inane ranting about "disproving" god? I'm not trying to disprove a claim that was made unfalsifiable, here. I want to see evidence for its existence. There is no reason to think their is a god, little boy.
Quit side-stepping my question. It doesn't matter if someone erects a temple in dedication to their god, the engineering used is science, not faith.
What has faith *directly* given us that isn't simply a product of people's creativity?
And people spend hours debating the usefulness of science on the internet, both of which are direct spawns of science.
Guess who automatically has the upperhand?
Ha, just because people have a fascination with fiction doesn't mean they need to believe it. How many people like Star Wars (Ep. 4-6, mind you) and know it's SCIENCE fiction?
I rest my case.
Occam's razor isn't necessarily about simplicity, it's about unneeded entities. You are pretty ignorant...
Which is a better explanation, a magical, supernatural deity that we have no evidence of its existence, or a universe being part of and formed by natural means that are clearly possible?
How about this..? You make a sandwich, leave the room, come back, and discover a bite in your sandwich. Do you assume aliens who take bites out of sandwiches came down and did it, fulfilling their live's mission, or that perhaps a brother or friend snuck a bite...?
First of all, you are giving me the INTENT of why they were built, not HOW they were built. Do you honestly believe that engineering is based on faith?
And the reasons people studied the stars is irrelevent as well. We now study for knowledge, not for fantastical reasons. You are deluded.
It's also foolish to ascribe artwork to, essentially, irrationality.
First of all, although it might be hard like an imbecile like you to understand, my position rests on the lack of proof of something.
In this case, we are discussing an falsifiable construct.
Why, again, do the "aliens-live-on-Mars" folk need evidence to back up their claim? After all, there's no disproof that they could be underground, or hiding from us...
I'll tell you why. Because they are assuming, based on apparently no evidence, that there IS an additional something, and can justify their position with "you can't disprove it!".
With a deity, it's about the same. Sure, a god COULD exists, just as aliens COULD live on Mars. But there is no reason to postulate any of their existences until evidence springs up, thus atheism is the default position.
Oh, and I noted your straw man-- I never said you can't disprove a negative... you can't prove a negative or a "positive". Absolute proof is bullshit, which you probably didn't know based on the fact that you appear to be a very ignorant fellow....
Occam's razor and parsimony is the exact point I'm bringing up when I discussed Sagan's dragon scenario. Of course, you said "Occam's razor" disproves it, but that's not true... it simply shows why it's not a good idea to assume the dragon is there in the first place.
I'm not saying a god can't exist, he certainly could outside my knowledge. But there is no intellectually justifiable reason, no evidence to indicate the existence of one.
Santa Claus, the tooh fairy, and God each have the exact same evidence and validity for believing in them.
Oh where, oh where, has my little dog gone... oh where, oh where can he be...?
Beside the fact that beautiful is itself subjective, you have not demonstrated any material gains besides the feeling of "wonder" caused in our brains. Does "faith" prolong life? Does it increase our awareness of what the world is? Hell no.
Besides, artwork, song, and prose stem from creativity, not a belief in fantasy, regardless what the subject of the artwork is of.
Me? End it? Stupid troll, anyone skeptic with half a brain has already figured it out. Just because people believed in fantasy for a good portion of human history doesn't mean they were ever justified in believing said fantasy.
I could use your reasoning to justify believing in the greek gods of old. I could use your reasoning to suggest an ethereal invisible dragon lives in my garage....
Oh, and the "basic reasoning skills" involve parsimony and Occam's razor... basically, theists assume a god exists without any evidence in face of better explanations for, say, how the world came about.
Your way of thinking is what is called "IGNORANCE".
Complete and utter fantasy. You are redefining faith to try to justify your irrational beliefs.
Since god is unfalsifiable, there cannot be evidence against its existence. It doesn't take faith to say that there's probably no god-- it takes common sense and basic reasoning skills to figure that out.
Sorry chump, but you are irrational. It doesn't mean a damn thing that your little beliefs can't be disproven. YOU need evidence.
You think that you get a free pass because the irrational things you believe in can't be tested. Sorry again, but if they can't be tested and verified there's no reason to believe in them in the first place. There's a reason I don't believe in invisible ethereal dragons living in my garage...
Sitting by my fireplace, shotgun in hand... I'm ready for the fat bastard this year, I tell ya...
This tool is great. Once Santa's near my region I'll be ready... I won't miss this year (damn reindeer startled me..!)
That's because a consistent person cannot be faithful in some things and scientific in others. Either you're rational (choose science) or not (faith).
Science cannot have faith in it; otherwise it isn't science. Faith cannot have science it in; then it isn't faith. So yes, they are mutually exclusive if we follow the definition of faith and science.
Science, by the way, is what causes humanity to progress intellectually. What has faith given us...? Computers...? No, that was science. Rockets? Science as well.
What has faith (belief absent of or lacking of evidence) given us? NOTHING. BLIND SPECULATION DOESN'T GIVE US ANYTHING BESIDES PEOPLE WITH A FANTASTICAL WORLDVIEW.
There is evidence for evolution and the big bang. There is no evidence for god's existence. So why believe in god? Oh, that's right, everyone else does... :/
What's with this "disproof" garbage again? Things need to be demonstrated to be true or likely to be true, NOT demonstrated to be not true.
Quite simply, if there is no evidence of X, there is no reason to believe in X. You cannot falsify God, therefore it is UNSCIENTIFIC, and useless as an explanation to anything.
But I've never met a scientist who would tell you that the lack of such proof constitutes a disproof.
Completely irrelevent. We do not need "disproof" to demonstrate a claim has no basis. After all, why don't (good) scientists accept claims that are unfalsifiable?
Faith is the antithesis of science. Faith is pure irrationality. Just because faith is a nice buzzword society throws doesn't mean it's antithetical to reason.
Faith and science are as compatible as matter and antimatter. If you wish to be a rational person, you cannot pick and choose your basis for believing in things.
That's not true. I found some spelling mistakes in my A7N8X-Deluxe manual, ones that were rather obvious-- "teh" instead of "the", for example.
Perhaps they simply spend more time on the product than the manual? After all, most people buying a motherboard, for example, know what they are doing.
Hell, I have seen programmers write English rather poorly (hell, you occasionally find typos in the program's comments, or even the program itself) but the code otherwise is sound and clean. Haven't you? After all, just one typo in a program's code and bug up the whole program... yet they misspell words...
It just seems to me tech companies don't care about the manual's grammar very much. I see typos all the time in tech stuff that otherwise works fairly well.
Chicken Soup for the Hacker's Soul.