Hypothetical: God is disproved
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Alcon
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« Reply #25 on: May 22, 2016, 04:04:22 PM »


You're arguing that it's impossible to engage a theoretical that requires you to accept a shoddy premise.  That was the argument I was rebutting in the remainder of the paragraph whose first two sentences you quoted.  It's the one that starts with "That's not obvious to me."  Also, see my response to bore, where I pointed out that it seems logically consistent to vest a concrete reality with metaphysical properties if it's reasonable to have "faith" in a metaphysical reality.  It's not logically impossible, and even if it were, there's nothing that stops you exploring a premise based on a logical impossibility.


You think that most intelligent people would know what "particularly boring and pedantic Deistic conception" you're referring to, or why you "would not recognize [it] as 'God'"?

Let's not shift things too much. It was the question I labeled as stupid. I'd argue that any philosophical question that can't be addressed honestly is kind of stupid. I suppose I'm using 'stupid' to mean 'pointless and unproductive' rather than 'lacking in intelligence', but that's not unusual in this context. No one else has to agree, but that's my settled view.

You and bore have basically labeled it "pointless and unproductive" because it's based on an untenable metaphysical premise.  The thing is, as I have pointed out, the premise isn't untenable; it's potentially compatible with the logic of certitude-through-faith.  Even if it weren't, you seem to be arguing that

Quite possibly. You can't know how you'd react to most hypotheticals which does make them problematic from the honesty perspective (which is important).

You are on a political forum where you routinely express opinions about incredibly complicated social, economic and political constructs, all the time, and yet you're unwilling to consider your own behavior and thoughts in a hypothetical situation because those are so uncertain it would be "dishonest" to even speculate?

The idea that we have control over our feelings is risible.

When did I say you have control over your feelings?  I only said that you can "allow" thoughts to be difficult by rewarding yourself from avoiding them -- and that is exactly how our brain works.  If we train ourselves to avoid cognitive dissonance or difficult thoughts, it gets harder to engage them when we really should, and more satisfying/comforting to dismiss them.  It's absolutely a learned skill.
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Alcon
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« Reply #26 on: May 22, 2016, 04:04:48 PM »
« Edited: May 22, 2016, 04:38:08 PM by Alcon »


You're arguing that it's impossible to engage a theoretical that requires you to accept a shoddy premise.  That was the argument I was rebutting in the remainder of the paragraph whose first two sentences you quoted.  It's the one that starts with "That's not obvious to me."  Also, see my response to bore, where I pointed out that it seems logically consistent to vest a concrete reality with metaphysical properties if it's reasonable to have "faith" in a metaphysical reality.  Why can you have faith in one, but not the other?  It's not logically impossible, and even if it were, there's nothing that stops you exploring a premise based on a logical impossibility.


You think that most intelligent people would know what "particularly boring and pedantic Deistic conception" you're referring to, or why you "would not recognize [it] as 'God'"?

Let's not shift things too much. It was the question I labeled as stupid. I'd argue that any philosophical question that can't be addressed honestly is kind of stupid. I suppose I'm using 'stupid' to mean 'pointless and unproductive' rather than 'lacking in intelligence', but that's not unusual in this context. No one else has to agree, but that's my settled view.

You and bore have basically labeled it "pointless and unproductive" because it's based on an untenable metaphysical premise.  The thing is, as I have pointed out, the premise isn't untenable; it's potentially compatible with the logic of certitude-through-faith.  Even if it weren't, you seem to be arguing that

Quite possibly. You can't know how you'd react to most hypotheticals which does make them problematic from the honesty perspective (which is important).

You are on a political forum where you routinely express opinions about incredibly complicated social, economic and political constructs, all the time, and yet you're unwilling to consider your own behavior and thoughts in a hypothetical situation because those are so uncertain it would be "dishonest" to even speculate?

The idea that we have control over our feelings is risible.

When did I say you have control over your feelings?  I only said that you can "allow" thoughts to be difficult by rewarding yourself from avoiding them -- and that is exactly how our brain works.  If we train ourselves to avoid cognitive dissonance or difficult thoughts, it gets harder to engage them when we really should, and more satisfying/comforting to dismiss them.  It's absolutely a learned skill.
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bore
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« Reply #27 on: May 22, 2016, 05:37:08 PM »
« Edited: May 22, 2016, 07:17:38 PM by bore »

Nah, there's no doubt that this is a stupid question (which doesn't mean it's not fun to debate and think about but it does mean we won't get anything serious out of it), and to try and pretend that it's actually got us religious people quaking in out boots is silly.

The reason that it doesn't make sense is that the conventional, orthodox belief right across (most) different faiths is that God is Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing, Why Anything At All Exists, He's not some person who is basically like us but also has some pretty neat superpowers. What this means for proof and disproof is that you can't just find him by looking throughout the universe and taking some readings, He isn't holed up in a flat in Croydon. He is not simply one more thing in the universe, if you had a list of all the things that are, you wouldn't add God to that list as a separate entity. This means that you can only prove God doesn't or does exist by a logical argument, and in a logical argument  you make some assumptions, then you show what these logically imply and you keep on doing this until you reach a conclusion. But of course those assumptions are just that, assumptions. They might be right and they might be wrong, but we can never, fully, know which one they are.

Your main argument, which is reasonable, is that God is not knowable based on empirical observation.  I'm not sure if you're arguing for certitude-via-faith or belief-in-absence-of-certitude, but it doesn't really matter.  The thing is, though, that the majority of Christians (at least in the polling I've seen) do, in fact, express certitude.  You might (rightly) argue that these Christians may believe in certitude-via-faith.  But if you believe in certitude-of-faith, and believe that's reasonable (I don't), how is any leap to attribute (via certitude-of-faith) metaphysical meaning to something concrete?  It's not really that hard to imagine a religion that has faith in the metaphysical significance of a concrete thing or observation.  That's why I reject calling this question "stupid," even if adding the "concrete" part was an unnecessary distraction; it's not inherently inconsistent with the thinking/belief system of most theists.

I'm not sure I get your point. Of course many people are convinced that God exists, and many other people are convinced that He doesn't. It's worth noting that convinced does not mean mathematical proof though, it basically just means 99.9999999%. You might argue that the distinction is meaningless, and in all practical circumstances it is, but I don't care about practicalities, I'm a mathematician. I'm making a narrow point that the question of God's existence is not something that can be established as an unambiguous 100% proof, even in principle. The actual experience of believing is neither here nor there.
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See, that's the weird thing: why are you so confident you're right and that your beliefs won't change?  Have you not been presented with reasonable counterarguments by reasonable people with different, reasonable intuitions?  If people's disagreement is not a function of unreasonableness, or stupidity, how can you not have a degree of uncertainty about whether your beliefs are wrong?  How is it so hard to imagine a world in which your intuitions change enough to agree with other reasonable people with different intuitions?

I have had people present arguments that challenged my fundamental beliefs.  A few of those arguments have been more consistent and reasonable than those I had -- so I changed my beliefs.  I don't know how this hasn't happened to anyone who has ever been a dumb teenager.  There are some fundamental value propositions I have (that, all else being equal, suffering should be avoided; that, all else being equal, autonomy is good).  Those would be hard to change, mostly because they're based on assumptions so loose I wouldn't even call them "assumptions" (why not let people live the life they prefer?  It's what I would want.)  But those aren't really good analogues to religious belief, which actually asserts a truth about reality, which is presumably based in more contestable logic and is believed "true."

tl;dr: I don't see the idea of changing your mind on a fundamental belief fantastical, and I don't see how it's so hard to think through, conceptually or emotionally.  If you allow it to be that difficult, doesn't that risk making it incredibly difficult to change your mind about fundamental beliefs even when doing so is reasonable?
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You misunderstand me. Of course my mind has been changed and of course I'm probably mistaken about many things I believe now. My argument is emphatically not (because, let's be honest, it's such a ludicrous argument that no one serious can believe it) that people's views don't change, nor that it happens rarely, nor that it shouldn't happen.

My argument is that we can't know how they will change until they do change, so talking about how they might change if thing X happens is about as likely to be accurate as astrology.
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RightBehind
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« Reply #28 on: May 22, 2016, 07:18:10 PM »

People say this is a stupid question, but how is this different from other unlikely hypotheticals? I want to know what people would do with themselves and how it might change them as a person.
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Intell
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« Reply #29 on: May 22, 2016, 10:37:13 PM »

There is no way to do disprove 'God', a physical or a spiritual being.
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RightBehind
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« Reply #30 on: May 22, 2016, 11:11:18 PM »

There is no way to do disprove 'God', a physical or a spiritual being.

This is a mere hypothetical, not saying it'll ever be possible.
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Alcon
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« Reply #31 on: May 22, 2016, 11:41:57 PM »
« Edited: May 22, 2016, 11:50:24 PM by Alcon »

There is no way to do disprove 'God', a physical or a spiritual being.

I get the distinct impression you reply to a lot of topics you don't read.

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Your main argument, which is reasonable, is that God is not knowable based on empirical observation.  I'm not sure if you're arguing for certitude-via-faith or belief-in-absence-of-certitude, but it doesn't really matter.  The thing is, though, that the majority of Christians (at least in the polling I've seen) do, in fact, express certitude.  You might (rightly) argue that these Christians may believe in certitude-via-faith.  But if you believe in certitude-of-faith, and believe that's reasonable (I don't), how is any leap to attribute (via certitude-of-faith) metaphysical meaning to something concrete?  It's not really that hard to imagine a religion that has faith in the metaphysical significance of a concrete thing or observation.  That's why I reject calling this question "stupid," even if adding the "concrete" part was an unnecessary distraction; it's not inherently inconsistent with the thinking/belief system of most theists.

I'm not sure I get your point. Of course many people are convinced that God exists, and many other people are convinced that He doesn't. It's worth noting that convinced does not mean mathematical proof though, it basically just means 99.9999999%. You might argue that the distinction is meaningless, and in all practical circumstances it is, but I don't care about practicalities, I'm a mathematician. I'm making a narrow point that the question of God's existence is not something that can be established as an unambiguous 100% proof, even in principle. The actual experience of believing is neither here nor there.

Let me distill the arguments as clearly as I can, since I went a bit overboard on making them precise:

1. Most practicing Christians in the United States do identify as "certain."  I do not think many of these people are rounding 100.00% up to certitude; many of them belief that faith is genuinely sufficient for certitude.  If they can have certitude based on faith in that metaphysical question, I do not see why they can't have similar faith-based certitude that a concrete, observable reality could also justify metaphysical certainty.

2. Even if that's not the case, and you think the premise (certainty about metaphysical truth) is dumb, this still seems interesting as a pure thought experiment.  I doubt it's functionally different from asking people what would happen if they were convinced God doesn't exist; I expect most people would react similarly (if not identically) to a 99.9% certainty their beliefs were wrong vs. a 100.0% certainty.

You misunderstand me. Of course my mind has been changed and of course I'm probably mistaken about many things I believe now. My argument is emphatically not (because, let's be honest, it's such a ludicrous argument that no one serious can believe it) that people's views don't change, nor that it happens rarely, nor that it shouldn't happen.

My argument is that we can't know how they will change until they do change, so talking about how they might change if thing X happens is about as likely to be accurate as astrology.

...Really?  You don't have strong enough theory of mind that you can think through your likely reaction to theoretical situations?  You can't think about the implications a change in belief would have on your philosophy and emotional investments?  I just read your (very nice) post on why you're a Christian, and you came to a strong conclusion through various intuitions, including the sense that Jesus "must be" Lord and Savior...and yet you're unwilling to speculate on a non-metaphysical question involving your theoretical emotional, behavioral, or intellectual reaction to a change in beliefs?  Your post also indicated that you "came to" a belief in God and Christianity, which makes them even more puzzling to me.

I'm not trying to be presumptive, but I've never seen so many people on this forum dodge a hard-to-answer or hypothetical question.  Normally, people here love this sort of thing.  It makes me wonder if it's a counterfactual people dislike considering for some reason.
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True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)
Ernest
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« Reply #32 on: May 23, 2016, 02:16:00 AM »

Now that's a specific question. Still an absurd hypothetical in my opinion since it requires looking for a change in non-theological topics that no one feels the need to look for at present.

what?  What topics, and why is it "absurd" to engage a hypothetical that requires looking for a change in those topics because no one "feels the need" to look for such a change at present?

As previously stated, the topics of cosmology and physics. I feel those are the only fields of inquiry that conceivably could produce a proof that the Divine does not exist as they touch upon the subject of existence. But at present those fields of study don't require grand leaps forward that involve discarding large chunks of the current scientific framework in them. It would take such a grand leap to potentially have a disproof of God be developed. So even if there be a potential disproof, it won't be found. Hence the question is absurd as "What would your reaction be if it was shown that the moon actually was made of cheese?" as it deals with a hypothetical with zero chance of happening.
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afleitch
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« Reply #33 on: May 23, 2016, 06:36:59 AM »

I think Alcon is doing a tremendous job here and I agree completely that there has been a very uncharacteristically terse response to a very simple counterfactual. The question was asking you to assume that this had been over ridden. It is an experiment in understanding the cognitive science of religion. These things are worth talking about.

The answer to the premise (which at this stage doesn’t really matter now) is broadly simple. It is overridden, to each individuals satisfaction as one moves out of a system of belief. I offered myself as an example. The end result of that, is not measurable; i.e there is nothing in the wide spectrum of human experience that belief or non-belief mitigates. Or in layman’s terms. There are as many Christian assholes as non-Christian assholes. Being Christian doesn’t stop you being an asshole and not being one doesn’t make you more or less of one.

All this feeds into, the cognitive science of religion (which is not a strictly secular pursuit). Justin Barrett (who is actually a Christian) is fairly accessible on this. He talks about ‘counter intuitives’, which Alcon has described in part without using the term. For example, the gods that are currently popular (i.e; they have survived) are significantly more complex than some earlier, more base gods (gods relating to farming, the sun, water etc). These base gods, or rather their base actions is what is called ‘minimal counter intuitives’ i.e taking a simple concept like a bush, which we all know of, then making it talk. You would be hard pressed to believe that happens now, though some do and indeed these things still appear in core texts. I’ll come back to this later.

Teleology is essentially the basis for all attempts at human understanding. Theology is a subset of this and through this, certain successful religions have become theologically complex but still accessible. So the Christian god for example is made omniscient, omnipresent and essentially all powerful existing outside of all applications of human understanding (which people have argued up thread in their opposition to this counterfactual) yet believers tend to revert to more intuitive, more anthropomorphic understandings of god when faced with making rapid inferences. So gods are ‘highly counterintuitive’ yet believers rely on ‘minimal counterintuitive’ notions of god (he was there for me, he answered my prayer, I need him, he helps me) in part because they are easier to process than highly counterintuitive notions of god that may be theologically more correct.

 It’s also worth noting that it helps them square not only belief in god but ‘respect’ for god as a tenet, with core theological texts that in many ways are theologically correct, but fantastical or indeed disturbing. Their application either on contemporary Judea or applied to modernity can be considered inhuman. (eg bears mauling children for making fun of a bald prophet)

There is another angle to this and in fact Ernest, you just did it so it makes my job on explaining this easier Smiley! You demonstrated a ‘highly counterintuitive’ notion of god, when defending the concept. There is no physical, philosophical or scientific sword by which you can puncture god. There he has been moulded. There has been made untouchable.

But the untouchable doesn’t really provide succour does it? If you describe to someone the omniscient, omnipresent concept of god, you might impress them, but you will struggle to get the investment to sustain belief. So personal concepts of god have to be precisely that. You need the ‘minimal counterintuitive’ notion of god to make it tangible. To make the connection between the believer and the belief.

So Christian apologists have constructed a god that is not allowed to be ‘disproved’ using basically any arsenal against it. But yet ‘proof’ is sustained based on the very same concepts that you’re not apparently allowed to use to scrutinise or disprove god. In other words, the exit out is a 6 foot steel door, but the entrance in is a screen door.

Christianity being true is partly based on physical, observable and measurable claims; claims to do with time, with history, with geography, biology, celestial events, physics and with god made man and so on. Indeed the proof of Jesus being a real person is one that has always had one foot based on the physical. On history. On the plausibility of the setting. That’s the minimal counter intuitive; a Jewish carpenter, in a named place at a named time being the son of god. Very few successful religions don’t have that ‘way in’.

The standards of proof (excluding faith, which is a separate issue) are designed to be far more physical, far more tangible and far less theological than the desired standard of proof against.
Which leads those who are standing outside of this to demand ’why?’ Now if you’re a deist, then it’s perfectly acceptable to place unbeatable standards by which to disprove a deity. It’s therefore equally acceptable to place unbeatable standards by which to prove a deity and it’s intent or goal(if any). If that was the case no one would perhaps have even thought of the concept in the first instance or if they did, they wouldn’t lose much sleep over it. But with theism, it’s a different matter.

Cognitive science is, as I said a fascinating subject and all this obfuscation is a pretty poor attempt to not want to stretch your legs a little.
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bore
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« Reply #34 on: May 23, 2016, 07:32:44 AM »


Your main argument, which is reasonable, is that God is not knowable based on empirical observation.  I'm not sure if you're arguing for certitude-via-faith or belief-in-absence-of-certitude, but it doesn't really matter.  The thing is, though, that the majority of Christians (at least in the polling I've seen) do, in fact, express certitude.  You might (rightly) argue that these Christians may believe in certitude-via-faith.  But if you believe in certitude-of-faith, and believe that's reasonable (I don't), how is any leap to attribute (via certitude-of-faith) metaphysical meaning to something concrete?  It's not really that hard to imagine a religion that has faith in the metaphysical significance of a concrete thing or observation.  That's why I reject calling this question "stupid," even if adding the "concrete" part was an unnecessary distraction; it's not inherently inconsistent with the thinking/belief system of most theists.

I'm not sure I get your point. Of course many people are convinced that God exists, and many other people are convinced that He doesn't. It's worth noting that convinced does not mean mathematical proof though, it basically just means 99.9999999%. You might argue that the distinction is meaningless, and in all practical circumstances it is, but I don't care about practicalities, I'm a mathematician. I'm making a narrow point that the question of God's existence is not something that can be established as an unambiguous 100% proof, even in principle. The actual experience of believing is neither here nor there.

Let me distill the arguments as clearly as I can, since I went a bit overboard on making them precise:

1. Most practicing Christians in the United States do identify as "certain."  I do not think many of these people are rounding 100.00% up to certitude; many of them belief that faith is genuinely sufficient for certitude.  If they can have certitude based on faith in that metaphysical question, I do not see why they can't have similar faith-based certitude that a concrete, observable reality could also justify metaphysical certainty.

2. Even if that's not the case, and you think the premise (certainty about metaphysical truth) is dumb, this still seems interesting as a pure thought experiment.  I doubt it's functionally different from asking people what would happen if they were convinced God doesn't exist; I expect most people would react similarly (if not identically) to a 99.9% certainty their beliefs were wrong vs. a 100.0% certainty. [/quote]
Here's where I see the difficulty. I'm talking about a proof independent of experience and you're not. What I mean by that is something like the proof that there are infinitely many prime numbers. It is undeniably true for all people. A person can not deny the premise by saying "Well actually I don't believe that prime numbers exist" .I'm saying that a proof like that about God can not exist, for the simple reason that the premises are about the world and they do not have to be accepted. I don't doubt that many people wholeheartedly accept or wholeheartedly reject the premises, but my point is that if you want you can deny them without contradiction. Therefore no such proof or disproof of God is possible. At most you could get a sort of Goldbach's Conjecture situation, where every indication we have is in favour of God not existing, but it can still be rejected without doing damage to logic.

As you note in your second point though and as I noted before, this is something of a tangent. For the practical purposes of this question it doesn't really matter if it's 99.99........9% or 100%.  And while maybe these sorts of arguments can't be given direct percentage scores, I don't doubt that there could emerge very suggestive evidence that God doesn't exist.
You misunderstand me. Of course my mind has been changed and of course I'm probably mistaken about many things I believe now. My argument is emphatically not (because, let's be honest, it's such a ludicrous argument that no one serious can believe it) that people's views don't change, nor that it happens rarely, nor that it shouldn't happen.

My argument is that we can't know how they will change until they do change, so talking about how they might change if thing X happens is about as likely to be accurate as astrology.

...Really?  You don't have strong enough theory of mind that you can think through your likely reaction to theoretical situations?  You can't think about the implications a change in belief would have on your philosophy and emotional investments?  I just read your (very nice) post on why you're a Christian, and you came to a strong conclusion through various intuitions, including the sense that Jesus "must be" Lord and Savior...and yet you're unwilling to speculate on a non-metaphysical question involving your theoretical emotional, behavioral, or intellectual reaction to a change in beliefs?  Your post also indicated that you "came to" a belief in God and Christianity, which makes them even more puzzling to me.

I'm not trying to be presumptive, but I've never seen so many people on this forum dodge a hard-to-answer or hypothetical question.  Normally, people here love this sort of thing.  It makes me wonder if it's a counterfactual people dislike considering for some reason.
[/quote]

Yes, really Tongue 

I'm perfectly happy to give things that would make me at the very least doubt christianity, and maybe turn theism more generally. Things like the laws of the universe breaking down, Jesus's body being found, other gospels being discovered, the discovery of a babelfish and so on. But I'm not able to say how I would react to becoming an atheist until it happens.

Perhaps able isn't the right word though. I suppose I could speculate (which I think is an appropriate word) about it, but I just don't think it's helpful. For one thing there would be a very loose connection between what we think would happen and what actually does, otherwise bookies wouldn't exist. We are all pretty terrible at prognosticating, and when it comes to something as personal as our most important convictions we're even worse at it. The other problem is that when it comes to hypotheticals we invariably lie and give as the answer what we feel we ought to do, rather than what we actually would. There is a reason everyone in this forum claims they would have voted for the SPD in 1932. 

My take on this is that the question in the OP is the philosophical equivalent of "What if the Nazis won?" or "What if Stalin died in 1960 instead?" It can be fun to wile away a few hours discussing it but you won't learn much because you'll never know if you're right. In other words, it's not serious history. And this question isn't serious philosophy.
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« Reply #35 on: May 23, 2016, 08:20:39 AM »

The difference is that it's proven history the Nazis lost and that Stalin died in 1953. I'm an atheist. I truly don't think there is a God or a higher power and it's a serious debate. Knowing that there's no higher power might change people's line of thinking.
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bore
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« Reply #36 on: May 23, 2016, 09:14:01 AM »

The difference is that it's proven history the Nazis lost and that Stalin died in 1953. I'm an atheist. I truly don't think there is a God or a higher power and it's a serious debate. Knowing that there's no higher power might change people's line of thinking.

That's a distinction without a difference. They are all questions about what would happen if some event X occurred. But of course event X (be that Stalin living longer, the battle of hastings being won by Harold, God being disproved or whatever) has not happened, so we simply can't say with any degree of accuracy what it's effects would be, for the simple reason that history and people are just too complex. They change rapidly and in unforeseen ways. We can of course speculate, but we'll never even come close to knowing. Any response is quite literally unfalsifiable, so it's not really serious.

As a side note someone will probably raise the fact that I seem to be saying the same thing about pretty much everything upthread, so this isn't a good objection. And there may be some truth to that. But I'd say that I'm arguing that pretty much everything is unfalsifiable in the most general sense (we can't prove that the earth was created a few moments ago with the appearance of age, for instance), but hypotheticals aren't even falsifiable in a more limited cases that we actaully use in our day to day lives. For instance if we accept a few basic axioms of science (that things are repeatable and so on) then an experiment  can be used to falsify something, if we accept that documents can tell us about the past in some sense then we can use them to falsify historical statements,  if we accept that the Bible is a revelation from God than we can use it to falsify theological statements. My point is that for all these things we accept a set of assumptions and then we use them to discuss and prove and disprove various statements. But for hypotheticals, how can we even attempt to do that?
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afleitch
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« Reply #37 on: May 23, 2016, 09:46:39 AM »

The difference is that it's proven history the Nazis lost and that Stalin died in 1953. I'm an atheist. I truly don't think there is a God or a higher power and it's a serious debate. Knowing that there's no higher power might change people's line of thinking.

That's a distinction without a difference. They are all questions about what would happen if some event X occurred. But of course event X (be that Stalin living longer, the battle of hastings being won by Harold, God being disproved or whatever) has not happened, so we simply can't say with any degree of accuracy what it's effects would be, for the simple reason that history and people are just too complex. They change rapidly and in unforeseen ways. We can of course speculate, but we'll never even come close to knowing. Any response is quite literally unfalsifiable, so it's not really serious.

As a side note someone will probably raise the fact that I seem to be saying the same thing about pretty much everything upthread, so this isn't a good objection. And there may be some truth to that. But I'd say that I'm arguing that pretty much everything is unfalsifiable in the most general sense (we can't prove that the earth was created a few moments ago with the appearance of age, for instance), but hypotheticals aren't even falsifiable in a more limited cases that we actaully use in our day to day lives. For instance if we accept a few basic axioms of science (that things are repeatable and so on) then an experiment  can be used to falsify something, if we accept that documents can tell us about the past in some sense then we can use them to falsify historical statements,  if we accept that the Bible is a revelation from God than we can use it to falsify theological statements. My point is that for all these things we accept a set of assumptions and then we use them to discuss and prove and disprove various statements. But for hypotheticals, how can we even attempt to do that?

The pre-assumption that god is omniscient and omnipresent is itself a hypothetical based on a particular theistic interpretation of the concept of god in a dichotomy where a god has to present itself as an option (despite different ontologies existing that don’t require the concept of god-v-no god) You can’t resort to your base hypothetical construct of the nature of god to then explain over a series of different posts, why you find engaging in hypotheticals meaningless. Because you clearly engage with hypothetical concepts already!
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bore
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« Reply #38 on: May 23, 2016, 10:45:41 AM »
« Edited: May 23, 2016, 10:53:36 AM by bore »

The difference is that it's proven history the Nazis lost and that Stalin died in 1953. I'm an atheist. I truly don't think there is a God or a higher power and it's a serious debate. Knowing that there's no higher power might change people's line of thinking.

That's a distinction without a difference. They are all questions about what would happen if some event X occurred. But of course event X (be that Stalin living longer, the battle of hastings being won by Harold, God being disproved or whatever) has not happened, so we simply can't say with any degree of accuracy what it's effects would be, for the simple reason that history and people are just too complex. They change rapidly and in unforeseen ways. We can of course speculate, but we'll never even come close to knowing. Any response is quite literally unfalsifiable, so it's not really serious.

As a side note someone will probably raise the fact that I seem to be saying the same thing about pretty much everything upthread, so this isn't a good objection. And there may be some truth to that. But I'd say that I'm arguing that pretty much everything is unfalsifiable in the most general sense (we can't prove that the earth was created a few moments ago with the appearance of age, for instance), but hypotheticals aren't even falsifiable in a more limited cases that we actaully use in our day to day lives. For instance if we accept a few basic axioms of science (that things are repeatable and so on) then an experiment  can be used to falsify something, if we accept that documents can tell us about the past in some sense then we can use them to falsify historical statements,  if we accept that the Bible is a revelation from God than we can use it to falsify theological statements. My point is that for all these things we accept a set of assumptions and then we use them to discuss and prove and disprove various statements. But for hypotheticals, how can we even attempt to do that?

The pre-assumption that god is omniscient and omnipresent is itself a hypothetical based on a particular theistic interpretation of the concept of god in a dichotomy where a god has to present itself as an option (despite different ontologies existing that don’t require the concept of god-v-no god) You can’t resort to your base hypothetical construct of the nature of god to then explain over a series of different posts, why you find engaging in hypotheticals meaningless. Because you clearly engage with hypothetical concepts already!

I'm sorry but I have no idea what this is supposed to mean.

I'm saying that questions of the format "If X happens, what happens next" where  X is some event in human history may be fun, but they're fundamentally unanswerable and aren't really a serious debate.

You're saying that because God might not exist or might not be how I think He is (so is hypothetical) this is a hypocritical suggestion?  (I might be wrong because as I said I am having difficulty parsing this) But that's a ridiculous argument. It's perfectly possible to argue, for example, about whether, say, Jesus was entirely fictitious or based on a real person and then turn around and say that discussing how the world would have turned out without him (or, if you like, the idea of him) is pointless. The two are entirely unconnected.
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afleitch
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« Reply #39 on: May 23, 2016, 11:28:23 AM »

The difference is that it's proven history the Nazis lost and that Stalin died in 1953. I'm an atheist. I truly don't think there is a God or a higher power and it's a serious debate. Knowing that there's no higher power might change people's line of thinking.

That's a distinction without a difference. They are all questions about what would happen if some event X occurred. But of course event X (be that Stalin living longer, the battle of hastings being won by Harold, God being disproved or whatever) has not happened, so we simply can't say with any degree of accuracy what it's effects would be, for the simple reason that history and people are just too complex. They change rapidly and in unforeseen ways. We can of course speculate, but we'll never even come close to knowing. Any response is quite literally unfalsifiable, so it's not really serious.

As a side note someone will probably raise the fact that I seem to be saying the same thing about pretty much everything upthread, so this isn't a good objection. And there may be some truth to that. But I'd say that I'm arguing that pretty much everything is unfalsifiable in the most general sense (we can't prove that the earth was created a few moments ago with the appearance of age, for instance), but hypotheticals aren't even falsifiable in a more limited cases that we actaully use in our day to day lives. For instance if we accept a few basic axioms of science (that things are repeatable and so on) then an experiment  can be used to falsify something, if we accept that documents can tell us about the past in some sense then we can use them to falsify historical statements,  if we accept that the Bible is a revelation from God than we can use it to falsify theological statements. My point is that for all these things we accept a set of assumptions and then we use them to discuss and prove and disprove various statements. But for hypotheticals, how can we even attempt to do that?

The pre-assumption that god is omniscient and omnipresent is itself a hypothetical based on a particular theistic interpretation of the concept of god in a dichotomy where a god has to present itself as an option (despite different ontologies existing that don’t require the concept of god-v-no god) You can’t resort to your base hypothetical construct of the nature of god to then explain over a series of different posts, why you find engaging in hypotheticals meaningless. Because you clearly engage with hypothetical concepts already!

I'm sorry but I have no idea what this is supposed to mean.

I'm saying that questions of the format "If X happens, what happens next" where  X is some event in human history may be fun, but they're fundamentally unanswerable and aren't really a serious debate.

You're saying that because God might not exist or might not be how I think He is (so is hypothetical) this is a hypocritical suggestion?  (I might be wrong because as I said I am having difficulty parsing this) But that's a ridiculous argument. It's perfectly possible to argue, for example, about whether, say, Jesus was entirely fictitious or based on a real person and then turn around and say that discussing how the world would have turned out without him (or, if you like, the idea of him) is pointless. The two are entirely unconnected.


So if god is not a hypothetical concept (as much as no god is), then what concept is it?
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bore
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« Reply #40 on: May 23, 2016, 11:46:24 AM »


The pre-assumption that god is omniscient and omnipresent is itself a hypothetical based on a particular theistic interpretation of the concept of god in a dichotomy where a god has to present itself as an option (despite different ontologies existing that don’t require the concept of god-v-no god) You can’t resort to your base hypothetical construct of the nature of god to then explain over a series of different posts, why you find engaging in hypotheticals meaningless. Because you clearly engage with hypothetical concepts already!

I'm sorry but I have no idea what this is supposed to mean.

I'm saying that questions of the format "If X happens, what happens next" where  X is some event in human history may be fun, but they're fundamentally unanswerable and aren't really a serious debate.

You're saying that because God might not exist or might not be how I think He is (so is hypothetical) this is a hypocritical suggestion?  (I might be wrong because as I said I am having difficulty parsing this) But that's a ridiculous argument. It's perfectly possible to argue, for example, about whether, say, Jesus was entirely fictitious or based on a real person and then turn around and say that discussing how the world would have turned out without him (or, if you like, the idea of him) is pointless. The two are entirely unconnected.


So if god is not a hypothetical concept (as much as no god is), then what concept is it?

Define hypothetical concept. If you mean that God may or may not exist than sure. I agree with that.
It's a hypothetical concept. But so what? What does that have to do with the matter at hand? Where is the hypocrisy?

Take the debate over whether there is life on Mars. There might or there might not be. It's a hypothetical concept. You can debate that for as long as you like. But surely it's obvious that the question "If life was discovered on Mars how would that change the course of the history?" and whether you think that's a meaningful debate is unrelated.
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afleitch
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« Reply #41 on: May 23, 2016, 12:23:38 PM »


The pre-assumption that god is omniscient and omnipresent is itself a hypothetical based on a particular theistic interpretation of the concept of god in a dichotomy where a god has to present itself as an option (despite different ontologies existing that don’t require the concept of god-v-no god) You can’t resort to your base hypothetical construct of the nature of god to then explain over a series of different posts, why you find engaging in hypotheticals meaningless. Because you clearly engage with hypothetical concepts already!

I'm sorry but I have no idea what this is supposed to mean.

I'm saying that questions of the format "If X happens, what happens next" where  X is some event in human history may be fun, but they're fundamentally unanswerable and aren't really a serious debate.

You're saying that because God might not exist or might not be how I think He is (so is hypothetical) this is a hypocritical suggestion?  (I might be wrong because as I said I am having difficulty parsing this) But that's a ridiculous argument. It's perfectly possible to argue, for example, about whether, say, Jesus was entirely fictitious or based on a real person and then turn around and say that discussing how the world would have turned out without him (or, if you like, the idea of him) is pointless. The two are entirely unconnected.


So if god is not a hypothetical concept (as much as no god is), then what concept is it?

Define hypothetical concept. If you mean that God may or may not exist than sure. I agree with that.
It's a hypothetical concept. But so what? What does that have to do with the matter at hand? Where is the hypocrisy?

Take the debate over whether there is life on Mars. There might or there might not be. It's a hypothetical concept. You can debate that for as long as you like. But surely it's obvious that the question "If life was discovered on Mars how would that change the course of the history?" and whether you think that's a meaningful debate is unrelated.


Because if the existence of god is hypothetical, where is the value, where is the 'meaningfulness' in arguing forit or a condition under which it might exist, whether because you believe it exists, or thinking it's worthwhile talking about even if you don't?

So for example in saying this;

The reason that it doesn't make sense is that the conventional, orthodox belief right across (most) different faiths is that God is Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing, Why Anything At All Exists, He's not some person who is basically like us but also has some pretty neat superpowers. What this means for proof and disproof is that you can't just find him by looking throughout the universe and taking some readings,

You're making a hypothetical assumption that the 'means for proof and disproof' is founded on broadly agreed theistic notions of an omnipotent omipresent god. 'You can't just find him by looking through the universe and taking some readings'. Why not? Who said you can't? That was what I was talking about in my earlier effort post.

What you end up with is, amongst most of those who have contributed so far, is believers arguing against the relevance of this particular hypothetical and those who don't believe arguing it has merit as an exercise in cognitive science. It has merit as an exercise for the same reason dealing with god (nominally a Christian god) as a hypothetical 'start point' and engaging with it (which is the basis of 90% of posts on this board)

What has piqued my interest, and I think Alcon's is exactly why 'what if god was disproved' has seemingly less merit among some as a hypothetical than the equally as hypothetically based assumption that 'god is proven (at least in my understanding as a believer)', which leads people to discuss whether pets go to heaven, whether the church should welcome female deacons or where did humans acquire original sin?
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« Reply #42 on: May 23, 2016, 12:52:11 PM »


The pre-assumption that god is omniscient and omnipresent is itself a hypothetical based on a particular theistic interpretation of the concept of god in a dichotomy where a god has to present itself as an option (despite different ontologies existing that don’t require the concept of god-v-no god) You can’t resort to your base hypothetical construct of the nature of god to then explain over a series of different posts, why you find engaging in hypotheticals meaningless. Because you clearly engage with hypothetical concepts already!

I'm sorry but I have no idea what this is supposed to mean.

I'm saying that questions of the format "If X happens, what happens next" where  X is some event in human history may be fun, but they're fundamentally unanswerable and aren't really a serious debate.

You're saying that because God might not exist or might not be how I think He is (so is hypothetical) this is a hypocritical suggestion?  (I might be wrong because as I said I am having difficulty parsing this) But that's a ridiculous argument. It's perfectly possible to argue, for example, about whether, say, Jesus was entirely fictitious or based on a real person and then turn around and say that discussing how the world would have turned out without him (or, if you like, the idea of him) is pointless. The two are entirely unconnected.


So if god is not a hypothetical concept (as much as no god is), then what concept is it?

Define hypothetical concept. If you mean that God may or may not exist than sure. I agree with that.
It's a hypothetical concept. But so what? What does that have to do with the matter at hand? Where is the hypocrisy?

Take the debate over whether there is life on Mars. There might or there might not be. It's a hypothetical concept. You can debate that for as long as you like. But surely it's obvious that the question "If life was discovered on Mars how would that change the course of the history?" and whether you think that's a meaningful debate is unrelated.


Because if the existence of god is hypothetical, where is the value, where is the 'meaningfulness' in arguing forit or a condition under which it might exist, whether because you believe it exists, or thinking it's worthwhile talking about even if you don't?

So for example in saying this;

The reason that it doesn't make sense is that the conventional, orthodox belief right across (most) different faiths is that God is Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing, Why Anything At All Exists, He's not some person who is basically like us but also has some pretty neat superpowers. What this means for proof and disproof is that you can't just find him by looking throughout the universe and taking some readings,

You're making a hypothetical assumption that the 'means for proof and disproof' is founded on broadly agreed theistic notions of an omnipotent omipresent god. 'You can't just find him by looking through the universe and taking some readings'. Why not? Who said you can't? That was what I was talking about in my earlier effort post.

What you end up with is, amongst most of those who have contributed so far, is believers arguing against the relevance of this particular hypothetical and those who don't believe arguing it has merit as an exercise in cognitive science. It has merit as an exercise for the same reason dealing with god (nominally a Christian god) as a hypothetical 'start point' and engaging with it (which is the basis of 90% of posts on this board)

What has piqued my interest, and I think Alcon's is exactly why 'what if god was disproved' has seemingly less merit among some as a hypothetical than the equally as hypothetically based assumption that 'god is proven (at least in my understanding as a believer)', which leads people to discuss whether pets go to heaven, whether the church should welcome female deacons or where did humans acquire original sin?

Two broad points:

1. I'd be happy to amend my earlier comments of the impossibility of such a disproof existing to "It is impossible for there to be a binding, incontestably proof that God, by which I mean the creator of the universe who is omniscient, omnipotent and incorporeal" I agree (along the lines of what Al was talking about earlier on) that there could concievably be a disproof of another type of deity, be it the divine watchmaker or Zeus or Odin or whatever. But as long as the God we are discussing is outside of time and space and the creator of time and space then such a 100% disproof (or proof) is impossible because our methods of knowing are limited by time and space.  I didn't see the need to use that qualifier in the rest of the thread because, frankly, very few people actually believe in God as a finite bounded creature.

2. I'm speaking for myself, but I would find a question along the lines of "For all you atheists, if God was conclusively proven how would you react?" similarly problematic. I think the same about the Who would you support in the American Civil War thread in FC at the moment.  I just don't think such questions have much merit, except as a fun exercise. It's not the fact we have to make assumptions to have a falsifiable debate on this question which troubles me, we have to make such assumptions for every debate. It's that for this debate, there are no assumptions you can make that make them falsifiable.
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #43 on: May 23, 2016, 05:47:09 PM »

...and importantly this silly question isn't being raised as a 'haha I has a question now lol' but as a barely concealed broadside. Inevitably the tone of responses is not going to be particularly friendly.
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« Reply #44 on: May 23, 2016, 07:15:56 PM »
« Edited: May 23, 2016, 07:26:12 PM by Alcon »

Here's where I see the difficulty. I'm talking about a proof independent of experience and you're not. What I mean by that is something like the proof that there are infinitely many prime numbers. It is undeniably true for all people. A person can not deny the premise by saying "Well actually I don't believe that prime numbers exist" .I'm saying that a proof like that about God can not exist, for the simple reason that the premises are about the world and they do not have to be accepted. I don't doubt that many people wholeheartedly accept or wholeheartedly reject the premises, but my point is that if you want you can deny them without contradiction. Therefore no such proof or disproof of God is possible. At most you could get a sort of Goldbach's Conjecture situation, where every indication we have is in favour of God not existing, but it can still be rejected without doing damage to logic.

As you note in your second point though and as I noted before, this is something of a tangent. For the practical purposes of this question it doesn't really matter if it's 99.99........9% or 100%.  And while maybe these sorts of arguments can't be given direct percentage scores, I don't doubt that there could emerge very suggestive evidence that God doesn't exist.

I'm not sure I'm talking about proof dependent on experience, since I think everything we're talking about is based on observation, which is derived from experience.  Beyond that, we're on the same page, but what I said still stands.  I do not think most people would deny that they're "certain"; they would say they're absolutely certain because of their faith, and claim it's not remotely equivocal.  I think this is illogical, and you probably agree.  But if you ask me to take "certain" to mean "less than certain," why are you not applying similar latitude to interpreting the "concrete proof" part of this question as the "very suggestive evidence" you mention?

At this point, I think that the interpretive difference here is kind of pedantic.  My point is that people are reacting with hostility to this question, interpreting it with very little flexibility, and yet you're being very deferential toward those who take "certain" to mean "very slightly uncertain."  That seems inconsistent.

Yes, really Tongue  

I'm perfectly happy to give things that would make me at the very least doubt christianity, and maybe turn theism more generally. Things like the laws of the universe breaking down, Jesus's body being found, other gospels being discovered, the discovery of a babelfish and so on. But I'm not able to say how I would react to becoming an atheist until it happens.

Perhaps able isn't the right word though. I suppose I could speculate (which I think is an appropriate word) about it, but I just don't think it's helpful. For one thing there would be a very loose connection between what we think would happen and what actually does, otherwise bookies wouldn't exist. We are all pretty terrible at prognosticating, and when it comes to something as personal as our most important convictions we're even worse at it. The other problem is that when it comes to hypotheticals we invariably lie and give as the answer what we feel we ought to do, rather than what we actually would. There is a reason everyone in this forum claims they would have voted for the SPD in 1932.  

My take on this is that the question in the OP is the philosophical equivalent of "What if the Nazis won?" or "What if Stalin died in 1960 instead?" It can be fun to wile away a few hours discussing it but you won't learn much because you'll never know if you're right. In other words, it's not serious history. And this question isn't serious philosophy.

...

2. I'm speaking for myself, but I would find a question along the lines of "For all you atheists, if God was conclusively proven how would you react?" similarly problematic. I think the same about the Who would you support in the American Civil War thread in FC at the moment.  I just don't think such questions have much merit, except as a fun exercise. It's not the fact we have to make assumptions to have a falsifiable debate on this question which troubles me, we have to make such assumptions for every debate. It's that for this debate, there are no assumptions you can make that make them falsifiable.

You have some fair points here, but I think your analogy to analyzing past events doesn't work at all.  That's because considering how you would have reacted to a past event introduces a much larger set of variables, and those variables play into cognitive bias much more effectively.   Those aren't issues with the question in this thread.  Let me explain.

Larger set of variables first: In this thought experiment, we hold everything else constant except the change in the input about God's existence.  When people are asked to consider how their 1940 analogue would have voted, they are forced to consider the million variables that would change, were they an analogous person in 1940 -- personal background, surroundings, knowledge, etc.  The reason people say they wouldn't have supported Nazi Germany is because they fail to consider the variables that would have changed.  Instead, they hold them constant, using information, background, and context they have now.  That's errant if you're trying to predict if your analogous past-self would have supported the Nazis.  It's perfectly fine if you're trying to present whether your current self would support the Nazis if transported into the past.  The question we're asking here asks people to hold all other variables constant, so the fact that people are bad at retrospective analysis is not a concern with the question in this thread.  In this case, failing to adjust for those variables is correctly answering the question.

Now for the cognitive bias issue.  You might protest that there's another factor with the Nazi analogy, in that people are biased toward giving desirable answers, so their answers on theoreticals can't be trusted.  That is, you could argue that even if the question where "with the background and context you have today, would you have supported the Nazis in 1940?", a lot of people would say no, wanting to think themselves less susceptible to being swayed by something bad.  However, again, that's not relevant here.   There is no desirability bias associated with predicting what would happen if you changed your mind to a belief you find unpleasant (that God doesn't exist).  If anything, the desirability bias is toward not engaging the premise, because it's accepting the premise that is undesirable, not considering the implications of doing so.  That would be consistent with people's total dodging in this thread -- it would not be consistent with this question being fatally flawed.

(There is also, in the retrospective analysis, a bias toward believing you'd be an accurate predictor/evaluator.  That's definitely a problem in the historical analysis analogies you give.  It's not a problem in this case, since you're asked to talk about how you process something you currently think is inaccurate anyway.)

In sum, I think your analogy fails to reject this as a reasonable and productive question, because the things that make the historical questions unreasonable/unproductive aren't a problem here...in some cases, they're actually good for this question.  A lot of my argument here is intuition-based, so let me know if you disagree with anything I'm saying.
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« Reply #45 on: May 23, 2016, 07:19:57 PM »

...and importantly this silly question isn't being raised as a 'haha I has a question now lol' but as a barely concealed broadside. Inevitably the tone of responses is not going to be particularly friendly.

isn't "barely concealed broadside" rather part of your personal brand?
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« Reply #46 on: May 23, 2016, 08:49:38 PM »

God is non-falsifiable. The hypothetical is as nonsensical as asking what you'd do if justice or freedom were disproven. Further, if such a proof did exist, it would be impossible to tell if it were just a test created by an omniscient being or not. But, ignoring all this, I'll play along.

If such a proof existed AND it could be undeniably demonstrated that the proof was 100% correct, then I suppose first I'd go through the stages of grief, which might take a very long time; it's fully possible I refuse to accept it anyway. Assuming I get to acceptance, how my life and views would change would be a function of how much of them are solely functions of my cosmological views. I guess I'd have an extra hour on Sundays to do whatever. Not much point in celebrating Christmas or Easter anymore. No reason to not use contraception. No need to ever fast. Probably wouldn't watch any Christian films anymore.

Politically, not sure how much would change. No need to protect religious liberty, but I'd still be pro-life and fairly conservative personally. Might move a bit on LGBT stuff, but not necessarily.

I don't know. It's a really intellectually difficult thing to imagine.
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« Reply #47 on: May 23, 2016, 10:30:46 PM »
« Edited: May 23, 2016, 10:35:32 PM by Alcon »

God is non-falsifiable. The hypothetical is as nonsensical as asking what you'd do if justice or freedom were disproven.

I agree with your point on falsifiability, but I don't think the analogies quite work logically.  "Freedom" and "justice" could be constructs, or abstractions of a (near-)universal set of preferences had by people; they don't necessarily need to be "true" in any sense to exist as concepts, or be useful.  Asserting the existence of God, by contrast, is generally a claim about the truth of the world.  "Disproving" 'freedom' and 'justice' doesn't make syntactical sense the way "disproving" God might (even if I agree that metaphysical claims -- all of them -- are unfalsifiable).

Further, if such a proof did exist, it would be impossible to tell if it were just a test created by an omniscient being or not. But, ignoring all this, I'll play along.

Those counterfactuals also exist for your current beliefs, no?  Why is this such a terminal issue for this hypothetical scenario but not a problem for your current beliefs?

There seems to be a lot of this in threads about religion here.  It doesn't make sense to arbitrarily apply much higher standards of scrutiny toward arguments against one's current belief system, than those in favor.
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afleitch
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« Reply #48 on: May 24, 2016, 06:33:02 AM »

There seems to be a lot of this in threads about religion here.  It doesn't make sense to arbitrarily apply much higher standards of scrutiny toward arguments against one's current belief system, than those in favor.

It’s what I’ve been discussing further up the thread. Standards of proof for god or more accurately a specific theistic interpretation of god are ‘lower’ (in part to get ‘buy in’ from a believer) and involve different assumptions than when god is defended.

The classic metaphysical defence of god (as unfalsifiable etc) is perfectly acceptable for a deist. But the bridge between that concept and being able to identify the intent, will and actions of a god leading to specific (physical) theistic claims is not one that relies purely on metaphysics.

(This is slightly off topic but explains this a little: The scientific method mayonly study that which is material, but it can also study anything that interacts with what is material and observable; That which has an effect on reality can be investigated in reality. Things that do not have an effect on reality, or things for which no sufficient investigative evidence has been provided to support having any effect on reality cannot be said to exist in any meaningful way.

If god is interacting with physical reality, then the effects would be observable even if the cause is not understood. Now clearly the effects had to observable in the Christian tradition because Jesus of Nazareth was a physical being (even if he was an avatar). Whether you’re a named person on the New Testament or some unnamed street sweeper that once saw him buy something from a market place, that’s an effect on physical reality.

There are specific claims made on the nature of Jesus and everything that flows from it that have an effect on physical reality. Inferring that ‘sometimes’ this interaction happens, leaves the interpretation of when the ‘sometimes’ is happening in the lap of those who inhabit material reality, making such experiences subjective. And Christianity is not much of a fan of metaphysical subjectivism, despite having to continually apply the damned thing...)
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« Reply #49 on: May 24, 2016, 07:30:50 AM »

There is another angle to this and in fact Ernest, you just did it so it makes my job on explaining this easier Smiley! You demonstrated a ‘highly counterintuitive’ notion of god, when defending the concept. There is no physical, philosophical or scientific sword by which you can puncture god. There he has been moulded. There has been made untouchable.

But the untouchable doesn’t really provide succour does it? If you describe to someone the omniscient, omnipresent concept of god, you might impress them, but you will struggle to get the investment to sustain belief. So personal concepts of god have to be precisely that. You need the ‘minimal counterintuitive’ notion of god to make it tangible. To make the connection between the believer and the belief.

I suppose it depends on what you look for in religion. I'm looking for a guide, not a master. I'm not looking for a helicopter God who steps in all the time. I've come to appreciate the order that can be found in chaos. I realize many need a firmer conception of the Divine to find em believable, but that doesn't describe me. Incidentally, that love of the beauty to be found in chaos is precisely why I'm a theist. A deterministic universe has zero appeal to me.
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