Atheists Who Claim There is a God

[LEGERdeMAIN]

I think what Red was trying to get at was the distinction between positive and negative atheism.

Yes, of course. That's why this thread is such a mess. It's a difference that doesn't really have anything to do with the OP, since he was clearly not talking about agnostics and other lazy atheists. However, to avoid confusion, Reason could have been more specific about which category of atheists he was referring to which may have prevented several members from expressing outrage at his generalizations about atheists. Max Stirner is not Richard Dawkins, both are/were atheists.

 

[erm]

Yes, of course. That's why this thread is such a mess. It's a difference that doesn't really have anything to do with the OP, since he was clearly not talking about agnostics and other lazy atheists. However, to avoid confusion, Reason could have been more specific about which category of atheists he was referring to which may have prevented several members from expressing outrage at his generalizations about atheists. Max Stirner is not Richard Dawkins, both are/were atheists.

Before that he should have been specific about what god he was referring to, or placed anything specific about the object in the reasoning. The way his argument runs in the OP, replace god with any object and it all turns out the same. Objects yet to be observed work best though, given the context. That's a lot of objects! (Technically any object, if you vary the point of view from which the logic works)

The use of the "y" variable is incredibly faulty as well, but gotta get past the issues with the premises first.

 

[LEGERdeMAIN]

Before that he should have been specific about what god he was referring to. The way his argument runs in the OP, replace god with any object and it all turns out the same. Objects yet to be observed work best though, given the context.

I think he was being very general about god, more detailed info would help.

It would help to know mass/volume and density as well - Is god affected by gravitational fields and temperature?

 

[A window to the soul]

Before that he should have been specific about what god he was referring to, or placed anything specific about the object in the reasoning. The way his argument runs in the OP, replace god with any object and it all turns out the same. Objects yet to be observed work best though, given the context. That's a lot of objects! (Technically any object, if you vary the point of view from which the logic works)

That's just it, they don't know God.

BTW, I didn't see anything about an 'object' in the original post. I see where the OP refers to an element in the equation as a 'thing' and then for clarification says "that thing is God." Is that the part you're talking about? The overall post didn't flow quite right; maybe a language translation issue.

 

[LEGERdeMAIN]

That's just it, they don't know God .

BTW, I didn't see anything about an 'object' in the OP. I see where the OP refers to an element in the equation as a 'thing' and then for clarification says "that thing is God." Is that the part you're talking about? The overall post didn't flow quite right; maybe a translation issue.

an object is any thing that can be perceived, whether through the naked eye, instruments, senses, etc

 

[erm]

That's just it, they don't know God .

BTW, I didn't see anything about an 'object' in the original post. I see where the OP refers to an element in the equation as a 'thing' and then for clarification says "that thing is God." Is that the part you're talking about? The overall post didn't flow quite right; maybe a language translation issue.

The "G" at the start. Change it to any other object or thing you can think of, and follow the reasoning.

 

[A window to the soul]

an object is any thing that can be perceived, whether through the naked eye, instruments, senses, etc

I know that silly. I am trying to understand what erm is talking about. If it's an element in the equation and if so, which one.

 

[LEGERdeMAIN]

I know that silly. I am trying to understand what erm is talking about. If it's an element in the equation and if so, which one.

Atheists claim the existence of God is highly improbable, because we have searched and searched and yet no thing discovered so far has been God.

well...we have searched and searched and no thing is god...so far.

Let the domain of x be the set of all things. If God exists, then some x is God. If God does not exist, then no x is God. Simple:
Theism: ∃x[Gx]
In words: there exists a thing (∃x), and that thing is God (Gx).
Atheism: ∀x[~Gx]
In words: for all things (∀x), no thing is God (~Gx).

x is all things, god(if it exists) is some things(although I think it would be interesting if he made god all things), if god doesn't exist god then, omg, just read the parts I quoted and you can see how objects play a role given my previously stated definition of objects being things that can be percieved. The problem is that most theist religions have preemptively dick-swabbed this whole exercise by claiming that god is invisible and undetectable. how the fuck are we going to find god if we can never detect it???

 

[reason]

Okay, a quick summary of the argument (without special characters that evidently do not show up for everyone):

The degree to which a hypothesis is probabilistically supported by evidence is equal to the probability of the hypothesis given the evidence minus the probability of the hypothesis alone. Let "ps" be probabilistic support:

ps(h|e) = p(h|e) - p(h)​

The degree to which a hypothesis is inductively supported by the evidence is equal to the probability of the material conditional, where the evidence is the antecedent and the hypothesis is the consequent, minus the probability of the same material conditional given the evidence. Let "is" be inductive support:

is(h|e) = p(e -> h|e) - p(e -> h)​

Here's the deal: for any evidence which probabilistically supports some hypothesis, that same evidence will also inductively counter-support that same hypothesis. In other words, probabilistic and inductive support for the hypothesis move in opposite directions given the same evidence.

Another way to say this is that as the conclusion of an inductive argument becomes more probable given new evidence, the logical inference from the premises to the conclusion becomes weaker. That is, the evidence logically supports the conclusion less and less even while the probability of the conclusion keeps rising. Whatever is responsible for the increasing probabilistic support, it is not anything resembling an inductive or partially deductive inference.

This creates a dilemma for atheists (most seem to be empiricists/Bayesianists): every time they observe something that is not God, the (subjective) probabilistic support for God not existing increases, but, logically, the same evidence inductively supports (defined as partial deducibility) the conclusion that God does exist.

 

[A window to the soul]

The "G" at the start. Change it to any other object or thing you can think of, and follow the reasoning.

I think I follow you. I think we're both saying that the OP left out the important part about what qualifies as a "God thing" (aka, Gx - proof of God's existence), other than being represented by Ga, Gb, Gc, etc. As in, what qualifies as Gx? Splitting a molecule with water??

 

[LEGERdeMAIN]

Okay, a quick summary of the argument (without special characters that evidently do not show up for everyone):

The degree to which a hypothesis is probabilistically supported by evidence is equal to the probability of the hypothesis given the evidence minus the probability of the hypothesis alone. Let "ps" be probabilistic support:

ps(h|e) = p(h|e) - p(h)​

The degree to which a hypothesis is inductively supported by the evidence is equal to the probability of the material conditional, where the evidence is the antecedent and the hypothesis is the consequent, minus the probability of the same material conditional given the evidence. Let "is" be inductive support:

is(h|e) = p(e -> h|e) - p(e -> h)​

Here's the deal: for any evidence which probabilistically supports some hypothesis, that same evidence will also inductively counter-support that same hypothesis. In other words, probabilistic and inductive support for the hypothesis move in opposite directions given the same evidence.

Another way to say this is that as the conclusion of an inductive argument becomes more probable given new evidence, the logical inference from the premises to the conclusion becomes weaker. That is, the evidence actually supports the conclusion less and less even while its probability keeps rising. Whatever is responsible for the increasing probabilistic support, it is not anything resembling an inductive or partially deductive inference.

This creates a dilemma for atheists (most are empiricists/Bayesianists): every time they observe something that is not God, the (subjective) probabilistic support for God not existing increases, but, logically, the same evidence inductively supports the conclusion that God does exist.

I'm still not seeing why this is a new dilemma, just seems to be worded differently and maybe goes into more detail than the usual "can't prove god doesn't exists, induction, neener neener" arguments that most atheists encounter at some point.

 

[reason]

I guess scientologists shouldn't be playing with math.

I guess not.

There is no probability of god's existence in my mind.

A (subjective) Bayesianist would say the only place a probability could be is in your mind. Then it would only depend on whether we decide to include 0 and 1 as probabilities.

Anyway, it is customary among such philosophies to only assign the probability of 1 or 0 in the cases of, respectively, tautologies and contradictions. Anything else is something like (notwithstanding Quine) a synthetic proposition (i.e. a proposition that cannot be proved true or false by purely logical reasoning) and should only be assigned a probability between 0 and 1. Perhaps some theories of God are contradictory, but I don't think all have to be.

Of course, these kind of philosophies often have difficulties with synthetic propositions that do not predict anything in particular about what can be observed, i.e. metaphysics. Normally these philosophies just refuse to deal with such statements, branding them "meaningless" or "irrelevant." They normally get themselves into a host of logical quandaries for that reason.

 

[A window to the soul]

This creates a dilemma for atheists (most seem to be empiricists/Bayesianists): every time they observe something that is not God, the (subjective) probabilistic support for God not existing increases, but, logically, the same evidence inductively supports (defined as partial deducibility) the conclusion that God does exist.

I repeat: What qualifies as evidence? Without that, your equations are meaningless.

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

[YOUTUBE="_w5JqQLqqTc"]The Absence of Evidence is not the Evidence of Absence[/YOUTUBE]

 

[reason]

I'm still not seeing why this is a new dilemma, just seems to be worded differently and maybe goes into more detail than the usual "can't prove god doesn't exists, induction, neener neener" arguments that most atheists encounter at some point.

The problem is that, logically, the evidence does not support the most probable conclusion. This brings into question what it means for the evidence to support a hypothesis. It also challenges the use of probability to overcome the traditional problem of induction, i.e. how can evidence of past events imply anything about future events? If probabilistic support has nothing like the character of inductive (or partial deductive) support, then what does the probability of a hypothesis have to do with the probability of any of its future predictions?

More to the point, why do atheists, who normally purport to support only that which is supported by the evidence, not believe that God is more likely to exist every time they observe a chicken?

 

[erm]

I think I follow you. I think we're both saying that the OP left out the important part about what qualifies as a "God thing" (aka, Gx - proof of God's existence), other than being represented by Ga, Gb, Gc, etc. As in, what qualifies as Gx? Splitting a molecule with water??

Yes. Since not a single property of "G" is referenced throughout the argument, it could be anything you want and work the same. "e" becomes any evidence towards "h" which is any hypothesis. You don't even need the whole first section about god, only the second half has the actual reasoning in it. Follow the trick logic and empty premises, and you get "proof" that the more evidence you gather for something's lack of existence, the more likely it is to exist.

 

[A window to the soul]

This is lovely mutual exchange.

Yes. Since not a single property of "G" is referenced throughout the argument, it could be anything you want and work the same. "e" becomes any evidence towards "h" which is any hypothesis. You don't even need the whole first section about god, only the second half has the actual reasoning in it. Follow the trick logic and empty premises, and you get "proof" that the more evidence you gather for something's lack of existence, the more likely it is to exist.

Thanks for the reply. Makes sense.

 

[reason]

I repeat: What qualifies as evidence? Without that, your equations are meaningless.

Whatever you want: it hardly matters because the argument is mostly formal. That's why I used meaningless symbols to begin with. The argument can then have general application regardless of what "qualifies as evidence."

No need to be so concrete. What are you, an SJ?

 

[tinker683]

More to the point, why do atheists, who normally purport to support only that which is supported by the evidence, not believe that God is more likely to exist every time they observe a chicken?

Is this like some version of the clock argument, the one where we find a clock on the beach and wonder how it got there?

ETA: This is starting to sound like the ontological argument for god

 

[reason]

Is this like some version of the clock argument, the one where we find a clock on the beach and wonder how it got there?

ETA: This is starting to sound like the ontological argument for god

No, it's not like that. I am not really arguing that God exists. I am arguing that atheists should, by their own standards (normally those of empiricism/Bayesianism), consider the existence of God as more supported by the evidence every time they observe something new that is not God. It's really an argument about epistemology.