- Read at my previous post.

http://www.staredit.net/196504/

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 16 2009, 3:44 am by CecilSunkure. Reason: Added link to post referred.

You can't. You can't disprove something that isn't observable. But that is still illogical proof that a god exists. Just because you can't prove that one doesn't exist doesn't mean that it does.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 16 2009, 3:43 am by CecilSunkure. Reason: Removed unsupported claim.

The previous few posts help to explain is why I believe that there is an extremely low chance of an omnipotent god existing. There's too much evidence against the all-powerful Christian God.

As I stated earlier, it is extremely to prove something which its existence lies in being not easily observable. Lack of hard evidence accompanied by twisted truths means false proof.

Now, can anyone can prove that a non-omnipotent god exists?

Haha very nice Raynimagi. I think a couple people have claimed it before.

I could make the argument that me myself am a non-omnipotent god.

As for evidence against the existence of the Christian god, I refrained myself from directly countering a bit of the claims made here, because I want to keep things on track. There have already been a couple topics about creationism, evolution, and gap theory, and we don't need this topic to become that. I would advise you to make your world view decisions or conclusions based on a properly debated argument, not one that is off-topic in the midst of a debate about an independent topic.

Well shouldn't the burden of proof be on you? You're making the positive claim. I'm simply saying it's not.

Heh, isn't that why about 99% of species that have ever existed on this Earth are gone? If there is a God, he doesn't seem like he's very good at doing what he does. You should tell them that it only gives the illusion of perfection, because the things that didn't meet the "standard of survival" simply died off. The things that helped an organism survive stayed with it. Show them that evolution can be related to a game where a person has to guess a word that another person is thinking of in a few tries. What they're thinking of is that you have to guess a word completely out of random, but what evolution describes is more like a game of hangman. If the "letter" is correct (beneficial to survival) then it remains (so it's easier to lead up to the final product, which would be the life forms of today).

You know what? We have based most of these arguments on the Christian definition of a god. But outside of that, what is a god? Who's to say that god is omnipotent? Who's to even say that god is not in our dimension? Who's to say god isn't evolution? We haven't really defined what a god is; we are going about trying to dis/prove something that we haven't defined.

No. If you make a claim, be it negative or positive, you are going to have to back your claim with something, that something can be analysis or a citation. I can make the claim that watermelons are not red on the inside until you cut into them, disprove me. Just because that claim is negative doesn't mean that the burden of proof doesn't fall onto me, even though I tried to shift the burden of proof onto someone else. You made the claim, you are responsible for backing it. The point of me asking was to show that your claim isn't provable, at least not in an online forum with the amount of time we are given. I should have just deleted your claim, as Vrael already warned against making claims like the one referred to above.

While it is true that the fittest organisms are the most likely to survive, the game of hangman implies that intelligence is directly intervening int he construction of the unknown word. Furthermore, the game of hangman requires intelligence to set the word to be guessed at. While the original argument posted by Stickynote is rather weak, yours is assuming that evolution is ruled by intelligence, when the theory of evolution is completely reliant on randomized probability to function, and is supposed to be a natural occurrence independent of an overseeing intelligence.

[Edit]
I tried to provide something like what you are referring to here: http://www.staredit.net/193633/

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 16 2009, 4:39 am by CecilSunkure.

The definition of a negative claim I'm using is not simply a sentence with a negative word in it, but rather a negative response to an already-existing claim. The theists would be the plaintiff and the atheists would be the defendant, in that they are responding to a claim made against them.
Hmm... a better analogy would be a lottery, in which a certain number corresponds with one of the right numbers in the right spot, then it remains there. It would take a lot less tries to win than if you were to have a random 10 digit number until it matched the winning number. This was the basic idea I was trying to portray, but if you insist on nitpicking the details, then I can always hand you a better analogy.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 16 2009, 4:43 am by CecilSunkure. Reason: Added names to quotes.

Claims without support that are merely asserted as true will not be tolerated within a topic of the SD. This is clearly stated in rules 2 and 3 of the pinned SD topic.

The chance of evolution being true or not isn't something that should be debated. What should be debated, is whether or not evolution being true would have an effect on the existence of god(s). My previous post was aimed at showing that your analogy was flawed in that it was claiming similarity in a game that required intelligence to random chance. The slot machine analogy is doing the same, in that it requires intelligence to program the workings of the slot machine (metaphor for the workings of the world), and intelligence to set the combos to be landed on (metaphor for highly evolved beings).

Well, if a religion depends on the spontaneous appearance of "sophisticated, carefully-designed organisms," then the very definition of evolution conflicts with this idea. So I'm pretty sure it does have an affect. Proving which side is right is another story.

Don't take this the wrong way, but if I had realized you were a moderator, I wouldn't have picked a verbal battle with you. By the way, I couldn't tell if you were playing devil's advocate, or you really disagree with most people on this topic.

Now you're just being silly.

It doesn't require intelligence for entropy to increase (say for things to die) which is all evolution really needs to work. Don't tell me you're trying to argue how in the very beginning there is no way for that first 'cell' to form because it would require an injection of intelligence, because evolution does not deal with how the first cell-type-thing was created, just from there-on.

Guys, I was just wandering around and stumbled across this topic. I quickly noticed things like this:
Which is quite terrible. Please triple-check your arguments before posting them. Evolution only disproves a God that created the Earth with people, animals and plants in 6 days. However, you did not specify that, hence anyone can just sweep your argument off the table without putting almost any effort into it. These kind of things make a difference between a good debate and a pile of useless posts.

God can not be proven scientifically, this includes logical arguments. Though some time ago, I posted an argument (in another thread) that goes like this: if god created the universe, he must've interacted with it in some way, hence our laws of logic and science must apply to him. This, however, is wrong, because:
1. our laws may be wrong/incomplete
2. if he has the prower to create universes, the assumption that he can exist outside of them is not a very far-fetched one, hence our laws, even if correct, still cannot explain him.

Still, I will post a philosophical argument. Though I haven't read all this thread, I'm pretty sure it hasn't been mentioned: If you are to argue for an existance of some sort of power/being/energy that is beyond our comprehension, you must go to the root of all things - the creation of the universe.

First attempt:
How come all the physical constants and laws are the way they are? With there being an infinite number of possible constant/law choices, we got the one that actually allows life. From a philosophical perspective, the multi-verse argument can be dismissed, as it creates more questions than it gives answers. Though I forgot how it's called, there is an argument of whether we make maths up or not, which, if proven to be true (that we do make it up), casts doubt on the well-chosen constants of the universe, hence this whole argument. Also, claiming that life would not exist had our constants/laws be different can never be verified - maybe it would sill be possible for other forms of life to exist, say, on the sub-atomic level. No, this argument is too unstabile; we need something simpler...

Second attempt:
How about the cause of the big bang. The 'scientific' point of view is that certain conditions were met that caused the infinitely small point expand, etc etc. If there were 'condtions', there must've been some rules (existence of conditions => existence of rules). Who created those rules? Don't hurry to say 'they just were there' - saying 'it just is/was' defeats the purpose of dispoving god, as you violate your own ideas of there being a scientifically-explainable cause to everything. Try to dodge the answer by saying 'there was another, higher, set of rules that created our universe', and in comes the rule/universe looping, which, as I stated before, only creates more questions. God also falls into this category - it creates lots of questions, many of which are similar to the ones we set out to answer: who created our rules, are they the only rules suitable for life, etc. So what now? I don't know. If God is a set of rules (even if we cannot comprehend them), it's all boring anyway.

I personally think one should not be worried about it. There is no conclusive proof, and probably never will be. Just assume nothing. Assuming that you do not know for sure is the safest and most truthful assumption in this case.

Not the best argument, but hey, I'm improving! I should educate myself a bit more about these issues.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 16 2009, 1:25 pm by JaFF.

Personally, I see life, on a fundamental, physical level, as small-scale, self-replicating patterns in the giant mess of interactions that is the universe, preferably with this "mind" thing which we love so much; things which I believe should be produced within any sufficiently chaotic, sufficiently large and sufficiently consistent, reliable system. As for the possession of a mind, I suggest that we know too little of whence, exactly, consciousness arises to be able to confidently say that it would be incapable of doing so within any such system, particularly when we know so little about the system itself (given how little we know of the fundamental laws of our own).
If you have any other definition, ...
My argument against God/gods is that it's a superfluous concept - theoretically, possibly existent, but a rather arbitrary and unnecessary explanation of the universe's current state.
If someone wants to define "God" as the set of fundamental physical laws governing our universe, without anthropomorphizing them any further, then I shall quietly accept that while muttering "Crazy person..." behind the one's back.

You were just comparing something designed with intelligence to something that is supposedly ruled by random chance independently from intelligence.

I don't want me being a moderator to deter anyone from arguing with me directly; I'm not going to punish anyone or anything, unless they are directly violating rules to where they are ruining the topic for others. So all in all, I encourage anyone to challenge anything I say. If someone shows a moderator they are wrong on a specific point, claps for you both of you. You just proved a moderator wrong, all the while helping to show that moderator a flaw in his thought. If anything, I would appreciate it if someone proves me wrong on specific points. Vrael has done it with me a few times now.

As for playing devil's advocate.. I usually am trying to just show flaws or weaknesses in arguments presented in the SD. I try not to let anyone know my actual stance (except for topics I start).

Well if there were an infinite number of parallel universes, it would make sense that we appeared on the one that just happened to have life, since we are that life

Most of the time I hear that the universe exploded from nothing because the universe can be defined as everything, or the universe exploding from a plane or reality unknown to ours since it lies outside of our universe. The point is, that nobody knows what is outside of our universe, if there is an outside, or if anything else independent of the universe exists. With this in mind, all philosophical approaches become metaphysics or simple conjectures and ideas. So you're right, there is no definitive answer to why the universe was caused into existence, yet. There are, however, some interesting perspectives on how the universe started after it was caused into existence until now (but those don't provide any answers of origin).


Are you just saying that the universe is a complex set of reactions, that to which are reliable and self perpetuating? I would agree with you, except the part about "self-replication". Are you trying to say the universe is never ending, or that self-replicating patterns are just another part of the giant mess of reactions we call the universe?

I think you read a few words in the wrong order.
I'm saying life is the self-replicating subsystems within the universe.

Oooh, ok. So basically, you just said that the universe is a complicated jumble of reactions, and that the life inside of it is self-replicating reactions which are just slightly more complicated than the rest. Is that what you were getting at? If so, I have a counter-riposte ready

Not necessarily "more complicated" - simply, as I self, self-replicating. They create more of themselves.
I am interested in seeing your "counter-riposte", and as much as I think it's a particular argument... I'm usually wrong when I try to predict people. So... ya.

Have you ever heard 'You may not believe in God, but God believes in you.'? Let's do another box analogy.

Jim is poor. He finds a gold nugget and puts it in a box.

DEAD walks in, and Jim says, 'I have gold nugget in here.'
DEAD says, 'I don't believe there's a nugget there.'

The nugget is still there, regardless of whether DEAD believes it is.

Yes, it does matter. I don't know about you, but I actually care whether or not what I believe is true or not. What you're basically trying to say is that there is only a subjective reality, and nothing beyond. I disagree with you on this, since there should be an objective realm, and the way we learn about this level of existence is through our senses (which can be distorted through hallucinations, but it works for the most part). Basically, our subjective experience is the medium in which our minds connect with the objective reality around us. Therefore, God may or may not exist in this objective realm, but you must be a fool if you think your electrical signals between neurons in your brain has any effect on the world of the objective.