h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>So, just because you can't 'see' something, doesn't mean that it's not there!!

And, of course, this argument also applies to fairies at the bottom of the garden. It's one thing to say "this might be the case but we just can't see it", it's quite another to say "I *believe* this to be the case despite never having seen it".

Incidentally, we *can* see the rings of Saturn, they're not unknowable to us and the discovery of the new Saturn ring was hardly revelatory. So not the best example.

Well warner claims to be a Jew, Christian and a Muslim.

He believes the Messiah has come 2000 years ago to save us; the Messiah is still to come; and the Messiah wasn't the Messiah, but just a jobbing prophet.

Having read a fair amount of warner's caka, as Taff has pointed out, arguing with him is like planting a fog...

so zagreb what you are saying is god is like shrodingers cat

as long as we think god is in the box, god exists, as soon as we open the box and start looking....poof! god dissapears in a puff of logic

see DNA and the babel were right all along

Zagreb:

'If asked "do you believe there is an apple in this box?" the only completely rational answer is "I don't know because I've not opened the box" which is clearly not "absurd".'


I don't quite agree with your formulation. If asked 'do you believe there is an apple in this box?', the reply, 'I don't know' is not an answer to the question asked. While you don't 'know' whether the apple is in the box, you most certainly do 'know' whether you 'believe' there is an apple or not, which is what was actually asked.

this reminds me of Sagan's comments on the question he constantly faced concerning flying saucers: 'Do you believe in UFOs' his fans would ask and he would have to go into a long explanation about the fact that he neither believed nor disbelieved -- belief had nothing to do with it, and, in fact, he made a great effort to not let belief be a part of his thinking: he knew things, didn't know things, made working assumptions about things, etc., but made a point of not getting into the belief thing.

So, for your apple in the box:

I don't know if there's an apple there, I may make the working assumption it is there depending on the degree of trustworthiness I've ascribed to you based on passed encounters, I may conduct experiments with my pocket MRI device to test my working assumption, but if asked if I 'believe' there's an apple in the box, I would have to reply 'what's belief got to do with it?' and I certainly wouldn't say 'I don't know whether I believe there's an apple in your box.'

Taff.



Rene Descartes is in a bar at closing time. The barman comes over and says:

'M. Descartes, we're about to close, would you like one more round.'

Descartes looks carefully at his nearly empty brandy for a moment, says 'I think not', and puffs out of existence.

"I don't quite agree with your formulation. If asked 'do you believe there is an apple in this box?', the reply, 'I don't know' is not an answer to the question asked. While you don't 'know' whether the apple is in the box, you most certainly do 'know' whether you 'believe' there is an apple or not, which is what was actually asked."

That's my point - for a rationalist, to believe something they have to have the evidence to hand and that evidence has to be conclusive. People can decide most points one way or the other if the evidence isn't complete (jurys do this all the time) but that's not the same as belief. Belief is a certainty.

"this reminds me of Sagan's comments on the question he constantly faced concerning flying saucers: 'Do you believe in UFOs' his fans would ask and he would have to go into a long explanation about the fact that he neither believed nor disbelieved -- belief had nothing to do with it, and, in fact, he made a great effort to not let belief be a part of his thinking: he knew things, didn't know things, made working assumptions about things, etc., but made a point of not getting into the belief thing."

That's exactly how I see it - agnostics don't "do" belief one way or the other, really.

'for a rationalist, to believe something they have to have the evidence to hand'

No. My point was that 'belief' doesn't come into it. Belief is not rational. The rationalist stance doesn't do belief. If the evidence leads to 100% certainty (never a real world situation, of course) then the rationalist doesn't *believe*, she *knows*. If the certainty is less, then there is less complete knowledge, working assumptions, etc., but not belief.

'agnostics don't "do" belief one way or the other, really.'

well, of course not: agnosticism is about knowledge, not about belief.

>>He believes the Messiah has come 2000 years ago to save us; the Messiah is still to come; and the Messiah wasn't the Messiah, but just a jobbing prophet.<<
Do I? I thought that we'd 'put that one to bed', or perhaps you missed it ...

I believe that the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary came 2000 years ago, and that He will return to complete his life as a 'global king'.
[ As many Christians do ]
I believe that the Messiah WAS the prophecised Messiah.
[ As a small proportion of Jews do ]
I believe that Jesus son of Mary was/is a Prophet of God Almighty
[ As most of the Muslims do ]

Most importantly, I believe:

There is no god but "The One God", and Muhammad is a Messenger of that God.
Peace

warner:

if I told you about a particle which had no mass and no volume, a particle with did not interact with any other particles, a particle which was, in fact, absolutely undetectable by any means whatsoever, would you accept my word that the particle actually exists and then adjust your life in whatever way I suggested your life needed to be adjusted because of the existence of that particle? Or would you say the particle doesn't exist?

"All those statements imply is that anything immaterial doesn't exist, which as toybox pointed out (didn't you?), is only true 'by definition'.
ie. If immaterial is defined as 'not existing'"

Exactly what I was going to say. If the definition of immaterial is "does not exist" than sure. I don't understand why people try to argue against logical reasoning by saying "its just obvious" type things.

I took "material universe" to mean all that is material, and in that case IF god created the "material universe", THEN god is immaterial. Since there is NO reason to think anything "immaterial" does not exist (exist is another word we might have a lot of trouble with on definitions), there is no reason to think god does not exist.

okay, for you too, Iluvatar:

if I told you about a particle which had no mass and no volume, a particle with did not interact with any other particles, a particle which was, in fact, absolutely undetectable by any means whatsoever, would you accept my word that the particle actually exists and then adjust your life in whatever way I suggested your life needed to be adjusted because of the existence of that particle? Or would you say the particle doesn't exist?

anhaga
This hypothetical particle ... why do you belive it exists?
What proof do you have?

If you tell me, none whatsoever, I wouldn't be impressed, obviously!
But if you gave me millions of words that were coherent about why it existed, although I can't see it, I could well believe you.

After all, the 'layman' believes in most scientific advice being correct ...
( I don't necessarily, but then I don't consider myself a layman. Yes, I know, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. It can be, but I'd rather use my God-given intelligence, and take that chance, thankyou! )
Peace

I don't 'believe' this hypothetical particle exists, warner. Why do you believe in yours? What proof do you have? Millions of words? Coherent? Hardly. Where are the words which explain how your immaterial particle is 'known' to those who *believe* in it? It strikes me that the millions of words you are describing constitute a multiparty conversation in which all that is said is 'I believe because you do' multiplied by a million or so.

Gotta go now. I'm due to donate blood in a bit. I don't know why I bother since atheists have no morals and only care about themselves. Funny how dropping a pint to save the life of some stranger appeals to me more than raping and murdering, isn't it?

Now now, you have the whole "Jesus is coming back" thread for Warner and his delusions.

"if I told you about a particle which had no mass and no volume, a particle with did not interact with any other particles, a particle which was, in fact, absolutely undetectable by any means whatsoever, would you accept my word that the particle actually exists and then adjust your life in whatever way I suggested your life needed to be adjusted because of the existence of that particle? Or would you say the particle doesn't exist?"

I get you. No, I wouldn't. But I wouldn't adjust my life to how some self proclaimed "religious leader" says to live my life either. Personally I can't stand religion much at all. They are all sheeple. For the longest time, I heard the arguement, "look at creation. See, god exists!" and looked at creation and saw a predictable thing, and no god. But if there were always a huge flashing sign in the sky reading, "there is a god", I would have thought it normal and said of course there is no god. Same thing with the universe. Of course we human beings, made of matter and energy and living out our lives according to the laws of the universe look upon these laws and find them reasonable. These laws are what dictates our very logic. Not the other way around. Are these laws all magic? What is it that "holds" the rulebook by which we all play? We keep discovering rules we find logical. Who holds the rulebook of this logic? What programmed nothing to transform into space and time? Even if it never transformed, how do all these rules work? What tells them to keep working? Is it just in their nature, like the "argument" I have heard before? This isn't any kind of argument. It is circular reasoning.

Granted, God does not explain how things work, but it is a very useful word for the all encompassing laws of physics, logic, and anything else. If there is something that has such a vast amount of information as the universe and all it's laws, that governs our very existance, why then would this all knowing all controlling thing not have specific "desires" the way we "do". After all, aren't we just physical matter? I would thing a huge, all encompassing everything thingamagig could just possibly have more to it than any human.

I call this "god". I believe any religion also calls this "god", but don't think of it in the terms I do. Who cares though, God encompasses everything. It is a very hard line to attempt to determine where the line is cut between us and god. Is god really into all of creation like he is into us, but the religious folk don't realize it? Do us humans just need a very humanlike vision of God, to understand him?

I think this is the crux (if you'll pardon the term) of your argument, Iluvatar:

'Granted, God does not explain how things work, but it is a very useful word for the all encompassing laws of physics, logic, and anything else.'


Yes, it is useful to have a term for all that. But then you continue:

'. . . this all knowing all controlling thing . . .'

There is nothing in 'the all encompassing laws of physics, logic, and anything else' which implies 'knowing' or even 'controlling'. I would suggest you've derived the 'knowing' and 'controlling' from the pre-existing (if you'll pardon the term) connotations of the term you've chosen to describe 'the all encompassing laws of physics, logic, and anything else'. If you had chosen 'the dingly bits' or 'all that stuff' or 'nature' or 'wyrd' (I hesitate with the last one because New Age idiots with less than no understanding of Old English have co-opted the term for their own Rune-reading-crystal-refreshing-pyramid-power purposes, but . . .) I would suggest that you might not have ended up even considering the idea of 'this all knowing all controlling thing'.

As for your flashing sign in the sky saying 'there is a god', I've not seen it nor even ignored it (I know it's a metaphor). Some time ago I was driving and listening to an afternoon phone-in radio show () on some sort of prayer/religious subject and I just wanted to dial in and say:

When I consider the beautiful world around me, the infinite depths of the starry night sky, the wondrous intricacy of the web of living things, the tender loveliness of a wild sunflower blooming beside a country road, a rainbow, a sunset, a waterfall, a cottonwood tree standing alone in a field of wheat -- When I consider all this subtlety and magnificence I can't imagine how anyone could possibly accept the simplistic, insipid, small-minded and absolutely inadequate explanations offered for it all by the creation stories and cosmologies of the religions people have made.

I can't help but feel sadness and sympathy for such people: what horrible, tragic hurts must have been done to them earlier in life to make them turn away from reality with such hatred? How terrible that these people have suffered such injury that they must blind themselves to so much of the unfathomable beauty of the world in order to embrace the hopeless protection of the tremulous fog that religion offers.


Maybe there's a flashing sign in the sky somewhere, but I've never had even a glimpse of it. And no one hereabouts has in anyway pointed the thing out to me, so, I'm afraid, it's seems to be sitting right there beside that mass-less, volume-less, invisible particle I mentioned.

>that mass-less, volume-less, invisible particle <

That´s a reality. It´s called gobmint grants for those who need them.

ah, but, those gobmint grants interact with the material world in a detectable way.

Then I am immaterial - none of the $$$ (€€€ in my case) ever materialized in my cotinuum (spell that "bank account")