Hypothetical: God is disproved

[afleitch]

First off, define "God". What exactly is your absurd hypothetical disproving?

That's not what he asked. He asked if god was disproved what would your reaction be?

[afleitch]

God was disproved for me. And here I am. I think unless my income source depended on it most people would adjust.

[afleitch]

There's a serious amount of 'not wanting to answer' dressed up as wank in this thread.

[afleitch]

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 ! 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.

[afleitch]

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!

[afleitch]

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?

[afleitch]

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?

[afleitch]

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...)

[afleitch]

Suppose you were presented with a combination of evidence and experience that led you to abandon belief in God.

That's a very different thing than God being "disproven" in an objective sense. If that's what the OP actually wanted to ask, he should have phrased it better.

Anyway, this is actually a quite interesting question. I'm not sure I can answer it, even though that's exactly what happened to me, because it happened just at the time when I was moving from childhood to adolescence and as such there were a lot of changes in my life around the same time, so it's really hard to discern which caused what. What I can say is that at this point I really couldn't imagine being anything other than agnostic, and I'm (mostly) happy this way. I'm trying to build for myself a secular ethos (which obviously incorporates many Christian values) that I desperately hope will allow me to become a decent person. I think that's the most important.

I chose to read it as "definitive, concrete evidence" to each individual. Whatever that should mean. The important part isn't what that evidence constitutes. It's one of the things that, for purposes of the exercise, you take as given.

For me, I don't know that I ever truly believed in the first place, even though I attended church regularly for a long time (and, strangely, do again, with my wife and kids). My behavior didn't change once I realized I was an atheist because religion was never very deeply tied into my life/beliefs/morals.

These days I attend a progressive UCC with my wife and kids. My wife is Catholic, and this is our compromise. The church shares our values on a lot of issues about justice and compassion, and I don't have a problem seeing them as allies, since we align on those goals, rather than as opponents because they believe and I don't.

I've worked with LGBT youths and it's been important to work with progressive safe churches for those who have faith while identifying and mitigating against those who mean harm. I've visited synagogues and gurdwaras for the same reason and attended pagan rite and a satanic group. It helps you find common ground and basic humanity and you can say to faith inclined LGBT people 'if you're forced to fit in then it's not a good fit. It's not real for you, but try this church, try these people.'

If/when I have children my husband and I want them to have an open and analytic relationship with philosophy and belief. I doubt we would ever 'church' them but a day each week being exposed to and engaging with something different or what someone else experiences is the ideal.

[afleitch]

If/when I have children my husband and I want them to have an open and analytic relationship with philosophy and belief. I doubt we would ever 'church' them but a day each week being exposed to and engaging with something different or what someone else experiences is the ideal.

That actually sounds great. I don't get why you get so patronizing when discussing faith here if that's the outlook you want to have. No, I'm not trying to get into another fight, I'm genuinely surprised.

I don't think I'm patronising. I don't do anything other than question how people construct/deconstruct faith and belief. I'm fascinated by it. I write tomes about it. If anything I tend to get accused of being an 'edgy basement dwelling new Atheist' because that's the easy internet straw man. I don't slam people for having faith; I just ask them why they acquire it and why they follow x.

I've talked about my inter faith work for years but that get's ignored. That's what's patronising. It's also peculiarly American; it never happens here even when talking to people who are religious.

[afleitch]

I chose to read it as "definitive, concrete evidence" to each individual. Whatever that should mean. The important part isn't what that evidence constitutes. It's one of the things that, for purposes of the exercise, you take as given.

To me it's a bit silly that anyone would take any evidence as "definitive and concrete" in this realm, since nothing about metaphysics can ever be "definitive and concrete". Of course anyone's belief on these matters, one way or another, is legitimate and just as valid as my nonbelief, but to claim that it's rooted in "evidence" is frankly pretty arrogant.

That's not what he said. He specifically said 'Definitive and concrete to each individual'. That means 'definitive and concrete' to them, to their own standard of proof and personal truth. He even said 'the important part isn't what the evidence constitutes'. If there are standards to which people, internally and at ease with themselves, can accept belief in god (and they don't have to be evidential, or scientific or metaphysic), what standards (are they the same, are they different?) would cause them to abandon that belief. Would those standards be internal, or external or both.

I don't know how you can say he's being arrogant when you've basically agreed with him

[afleitch]

I chose to read it as "definitive, concrete evidence" to each individual. Whatever that should mean. The important part isn't what that evidence constitutes. It's one of the things that, for purposes of the exercise, you take as given.

To me it's a bit silly that anyone would take any evidence as "definitive and concrete" in this realm, since nothing about metaphysics can ever be "definitive and concrete". Of course anyone's belief on these matters, one way or another, is legitimate and just as valid as my nonbelief, but to claim that it's rooted in "evidence" is frankly pretty arrogant.

That's not what he said. He specifically said 'Definitive and concrete to each individual'. That means 'definitive and concrete' to them, to their own standard of proof and personal truth. He even said 'the important part isn't what the evidence constitutes'. If there are standards to which people, internally and at ease with themselves, can accept belief in god (and they don't have to be evidential, or scientific or metaphysic), what standards (are they the same, are they different?) would cause them to abandon that belief. Would those standards be internal, or external or both.

I don't know how you can say he's being arrogant when you've basically agreed with him

I already said in the previous post that I agreed with this definition. My point here is that, if that is your definition, then words like "concrete" and "evidence" are not well-chosen to express it. Those are two words that imply objectivity. Evidence can't be "subjectively concrete". Thus if what you mean is "arguments and experiences that lead you to espouse or reject a subjective belief", "concrete evidence" just isn't the right way to put it.

I'd like to take issue with your earlier point, especially to your accusation of strawmanning (which, if directed toward me, is frankly pretty damn rich), but we probably shouldn't derail this thread. Let me know if you want to pursue this elsewhere.

Antonio, it wasn't directed at you. And Fig wasn't being 'arrogant' in his discussion.

This is what I meant a few days ago. I think you needlessly accuse people of feeling certain ways and acting certain ways towards you, or towards others when really they aren't doing that at all.