On why Atheism is a Shite BELIEF System

[JimC]

Seth wrote:

Still don't get the point do you? The question is not whether science is reliable, it's whether YOU can rationally state that some claim of science is true without actually doing the experiment yourself. You cannot. You have to rely on anecdotal evidence from others who have, according to them, done the experiment. As we know from some "cold fusion" claims, some people claim something about science without having done the work. They lie about it. Imagine that. But that's not even the point.

You reject theistic claims as being inconsistent, unreliable, not repeatable and rationally unconnected with observable reality. But you have exactly zero critically robust evidence that demonstrates this claim according to your own demands for scientific proof.

The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. But you are making claims about theistic claims that are not founded in either reason or science because you have absolutely no evidence that supports your claims. None. You are rejecting theistic claims based on your religious belief that the entire universe is and can only be described by your understanding of the scientific method. You label anything that looks to be outside of the realm of scientific knowledge and understanding to be "supernatural," but that's just a word that translates to "I don't understand what's happening and I don't believe it's true, therefore it must be supernatural."

The problem with your reasoning is that by your own arguments, conclusions must be drawn based on an examination of the evidence and subjecting that evidence to analysis to determine its probative value in supporting the claims made. And yet you are drawing all sorts of conclusions about theistic claims in the absence of any evidence whatsoever, by your own admission.

You violate your own ethical structure, to which you attempt to hold others, by concluding that theistic claims are false because there is no objective scientific evidence that meets your standards to support those claims. But you cannot rationally draw that conclusion in the absence of any evidence of the falsity of the theistic claims. Once again, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

This has nothing whatever to do with the truth or falsity of theistic claims, this is about your ability to reason and think logically within the parameters that you yourself set as the metric for proper scientific investigation.

If you have no objective scientific evidence that a theistic claim is not true, you cannot rationally conclude that the claim is not true. I'm just holding you to your own standards.

You clearly have no understanding whatsoever of the scientific method. It is an activity that depends on experiments being repeatable by any group. Most major areas of scientific theory have been assessed by experimental evidence from a wide range of people. The moment anomalous results appear, it is a spur to further experiments.

No one scientist could ever personally do every experiment - instead, there is a highly systematic procedure of peer review, which inevitably will detect fraud, even if there is some delay.

If there is no objective evidence for theistic claims, why should we give them any credence? (This, of course, is different to a bald statement that such claims are wrong, it simply says that the claims cannot be included in the body of objective evidence which has underpinned a consistent picture of the material universe). Remember, most theists go beyond talking about a personal, spiritual god - they claim their particular deity as both a creator and an active agent in the material universe, a claim without a shred of evidence. Claims by scientists that the sodium atom has 11 protons, and is commonly found in an ionised form have evidence upon evidence...

You are straying into very dangerous territory when you adopt a stance of neutral relativity for different positions about any given issue. Utterly crazy left wing liberals have adopted the whole shtick of cultural relativity, which says that a particular tribe's creation myths have exactly the same credence as the detailed astronomical picture spanning the big bang to solar system formation, or that genital mutilation practiced by nasty bronze age religious fuckwits cannot be criticised from the point of view of western ethics.

Strange bedfellows, Seth...

[Hermit]

Somewhere between 760 and 710 BC someone wrote one of the earliest surviving literary works of western literature. Thought to be written by Homer - though we are not sure that he was the author - it was titled Iliad and described a war between men, demigods and included the intervention of Gods. Until 1886 it was regarded by most people as pure invention - a legend. Then Heinrich Schliemann discovered the ruins of Troy.

History then? Yes and no.

Yes. It matched the time and place described in the Iliad. Troy was situated at a geographic bottleneck of an important trade route between Asia and Europe. As such, it was a wealthy town, so an attractive location for rulers to own, defend or attack, conquer. Not surprisingly, the city was built, conquered and razed several times. The Iliad turned out to coincide with the seventh time it was destroyed.

No. While we are pretty certain that there were Trojan wars - we have physical evidence after all - there are many aspects for which we have no evidence whatsoever. To begin with, we are told Homer's particular war was caused by Eris, the goddess of discord, who on grounds of a competition between her and three other goddesses regarding who is the most beautiful among them, engineered the judgement of Paris which in turn led to the elopement of Helen of Greece to his native Troy. Her husband, Menelaus, the king of Sparta, was not pleased with this. Along with his Greek allies he went after her with a 1000 ships and a ten year war ensued involving many heroes who were also demigods. Are we to believe in the existence of Eris, the panoply of Olympian gods, 12 major and dozens of minor ones, that are mentioned in the saga? Feel free, but though I think that there is sufficient evidence that Troy(s) and the Trojan war(s) were real, we have no evidence of the actual existence of gods and demigods. Maybe they did exist, but it seems pretty bloody unlikely, so I'll just do not believe until convincing evidence turns up. What that will turn out to be I don't of course know.

I think the Iliad is a pretty good analogy for the New and the Old Testament. At one stage the universe did not exist and there were thousands of prophets and gurus milling about. As for the existence of the Father and his godly Son described therein, I'll withhold belief for the same reason I don't believe in the supernatural aspects of the Iliad.

[surreptitious57]

But that does not mean that something that is not testable or falsifiable or repeatable under scientific protocols does not exist or did not occur

Of course not for the scientific method is indeed limited to what can actually be observed though no scientist would actually dispute that

For there are plenty of hypotheses which science could conceivably test but because of limitations in technology are not actually possible

This is not news to the scientific community as scientists more than anyone are aware of such limitations and so work within them instead

[Seth]

You clearly have no understanding whatsoever of the scientific method. It is an activity that depends on experiments being repeatable by any group. Most major areas of scientific theory have been assessed by experimental evidence from a wide range of people. The moment anomalous results appear, it is a spur to further experiments.

Yes, but entirely irrelevant.

No one scientist could ever personally do every experiment - instead, there is a highly systematic procedure of peer review, which inevitably will detect fraud, even if there is some delay.

Quite right, but again, irrelevant.

If there is no objective evidence for theistic claims, why should we give them any credence?

Why should you not? Why do you assume that there is no objective evidence for theistic claims merely because you have neither looked for such evidence nor given credence to that evidence that does exist?

The basic problem is that you are looking for objective evidence of a one-time event at which you were not present and at which no scientists or scientific apparatus was present to observe, record or analyze the event. Let's take my favorite example: the "miracle" of Fatima. I use this one because tens of thousands of people witnessed the event, including allegedly neutral non-theist observers.

There are plenty of people who say "well, this could be the cause, or that could explain it" but none of the contemporary commentators were able to do more than speculate, and neither is anyone else. What we have is the testimony of hundreds of eyewitnesses who tell largely the same story. That's it.

The existing objective evidence weighs in favor of an event occurring that is not explainable by contemporary or modern science. There is no objective evidence that it was a mass hallucination, or was an artifact of staring at the sun or anything else, there are only theories and speculation as to what might have caused such observations, but no objective evidence to support any of these speculations.

Skepticism is not objective evidence either, so merely scoffing at the idea that the event took place as described cannot be substituted for the very objective scientific evidence that you yourself require as support for a claim.

Were any traces of radiation, or unknown phenomena, or chemicals or anything else left behind that were collected and analyzed? Nope. Were there motion pictures of the event showing conflicting evidence? Nope. What about still photos? There were a few taken by journalists that are inconclusive.

The event is said to have occurred, and now it's over. It's not the sort of thing that is amenable to duplication or falsification in the lab. If I stop typing and wave my hands about, you have no objective scientific evidence that I did so, and you were not here to observe the event, but that does not mean the event did not occur as described. Can you demonstrate that it is possible for a human being to wave his hands about? Of course. But that provides nothing by way of evidence of whether the particular event reported occurred.

But, you say, nobody can cause the sun to stop or dance about, so we don't even have that much evidence.

True. But not particularly relevant. The fact that you, or some other scientists, or the entire human race was not capable of bashing particles together to break them down into more elemental particles in 1600 does not mean that bosons and quarks did not exist in 1600. It only means that the human mind was not able to conceive, perceive, quantify and analyze sub-atomic particles in 1600.

Today we can do so.

Therefore, the fact that science cannot explain, much less reproduce, perceive, quantify or analyze actions attributed to God cannot be seen to support any argument that such events did not occur as described or were not caused by the agency they are attributed to. It only means that human science may not yet (or ever) be able to apply it's scientific principles and practices of investigation to such phenomena. But again, this does not in any way provide any evidence or support for the notion that such events did not occur and were not the product of actions by God. Therefore, any conclusions drawn about the "miracle of Fatima" that claim the event did not happen or was not caused by a divine agency are based on bias and irrational thinking, not upon rational evidence. The only evidence we have about the event are the eyewitness accounts, which were investigated at the time and found to be mostly consistent. You may not believe that evidence, but it remains as the only objective evidence on the record, so pending some other objective evidence showing something different, the existing evidence weighs on the side of an act of God (or something else) that we cannot explain.

To flatly reject that evidence as being false without any evidence that it is in fact false is a conclusion drawn from bias and bigotry, not one drawn from reason and logic.

(This, of course, is different to a bald statement that such claims are wrong, it simply says that the claims cannot be included in the body of objective evidence which has underpinned a consistent picture of the material universe). Remember, most theists go beyond talking about a personal, spiritual god - they claim their particular deity as both a creator and an active agent in the material universe, a claim without a shred of evidence. Claims by scientists that the sodium atom has 11 protons, and is commonly found in an ionised form have evidence upon evidence...

Are you sure there isn't a shred of evidence?

You are straying into very dangerous territory when you adopt a stance of neutral relativity for different positions about any given issue. Utterly crazy left wing liberals have adopted the whole shtick of cultural relativity, which says that a particular tribe's creation myths have exactly the same credence as the detailed astronomical picture spanning the big bang to solar system formation, or that genital mutilation practiced by nasty bronze age religious fuckwits cannot be criticised from the point of view of western ethics.

Well, there's a good deal of philosophical debate that indicates that such matters are indeed open to both interpretation and further debate. Such philosophical debates have been going on for rather a long time now, long before Jesus showed up in fact, and the most famous and erudite philosophers in human history haven't been so arrogant as to simply dismiss such philosophical questions on the basis that those who make the claims are "religious fuckwits."

Strange bedfellows, Seth...

I'm used to it by now.

My point is not one of neutral relativity or cultural relativity, my point is an analysis of your arguments and their strengths and weaknesses. I make no claim one way or the other about theistic or scientific claims as to their veracity. My point is that it is sloppy thinking to draw highly-charged emotional conclusions about something for which you admit there is "zero evidence."

It is not the position of a rational person that the absence of evidence is evidence of absence, much less that it's appropriate to insult, vilify and demean others who happen to espouse this or that belief.

You can say that you have insufficient objective evidence to give you confidence in the truth of theistic claims or the existence of God and be perfectly correct and scientifically objective. But in the absence of objective evidence showing that such claims are false, it is not rational to claim that they are false, much less hurl abuse at those who disagree with you.

Why should you give such unsupported claims credence? You probably shouldn't. But your skepticism is not determinative of the truth and certainly doesn't license you (or any of you) to abuse other people who do, for reasons know to them but not you, give the claims credence. It is just possible that they know something that you don't know. Me, I choose to respect their claims and their dignity as rational individuals so long as they go about it peaceably. It neither breaks my leg nor picks my pocket for them to say there are many gods or none. I choose to respect the possibility that they may have experiences and knowledge that I do not upon which they are basing their conclusions, and I recognize that neither they, nor God (if he/she/it exists) is under any obligation to provide whatever evidence I might demand in order to prove or disprove their beliefs and claims.

Which is why I say "I don't know" and tolerate their peaceable exercise of their religious beliefs, just as I tolerate your peaceable exercise of your religious beliefs, of which you have many.

[Seth]

But that does not mean that something that is not testable or falsifiable or repeatable under scientific protocols does not exist or did not occur

Of course not for the scientific method is indeed limited to what can actually be observed though no scientist would actually dispute that

For there are plenty of hypotheses which science could conceivably test but because of limitations in technology are not actually possible

This is not news to the scientific community as scientists more than anyone are aware of such limitations and so work within them instead

"A man's got to know his limitations." Dirty Harry Callahan

[Brian Peacock]

Still don't get the point do you? The question is not whether science is reliable, it's whether YOU can rationally state that some claim of science is true without actually doing the experiment yourself. You cannot.

Shifting the burden. Strawman.
Science does not operate under conditions which YOU personally get to validate and assure.
Science does not stake a claim to truth in the objective sense but provides a range of methodologies for supporting claims provisionally as being reliable in terms of their explanatory cohesion and predictive power. (You really are the last person to lecture Jim on what science it your know.)

You have to rely on anecdotal evidence from others who have, according to them, done the experiment.

1) You seem to think anecdote is fine as evidence for God.
2) Peer reviewed papers are not anecdotes.

As we know from some "cold fusion" claims, some people claim something about science without having done the work.

Ad hom + Non sequitur = Red Herring.

They lie about it. Imagine that. But that's not even the point.

Not the point eh? So why bring it up? Answer: see above.

You reject theistic claims as being inconsistent, unreliable, not repeatable and rationally unconnected with observable reality. But you have exactly zero critically robust evidence that demonstrates this claim according to your own demands for scientific proof.

Shifting the burden. Special pleading.
The evidence which justifies the objection is the absence of evidence in support of the claim. To charge objectors with an obligation to provide special or particular evidence to support such an objection is fallacious.

The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. But you are making claims about theistic claims that are not founded in either reason or science because you have absolutely no evidence that supports your claims.

Shifting the burden. Special pleading.
What is particular and relevant difference with 'theistic claims' to knowledge that means that special conditions must be met and apply in order for them to be reliably dismissed, and what are those conditions?

You are rejecting theistic claims based on your religious belief that the entire universe is and can only be described by your understanding of the scientific method.

Shifting the burden. Double standard.
Please demonstrate by some robust means that theistic claims to knowledge can be and are supported by some robust but otherwise un-scientific means or method.

You label anything that looks to be outside of the realm of scientific knowledge and understanding to be "supernatural," but that's just a word that translates to "I don't understand what's happening and I don't believe it's true, therefore it must be supernatural."

Argument from definition. Shifting the burden.
Please demonstrate by some robust means that i) 'not understanding what's happening' does, can, and/or will have a supernatural explanations, and ii) something supernatural.

The problem with your reasoning is that by your own arguments, conclusions must be drawn based on an examination of the evidence and subjecting that evidence to analysis to determine its probative value in supporting the claims made. And yet you are drawing all sorts of conclusions about theistic claims in the absence of any evidence whatsoever, by your own admission.

Strawman. Shifting the burden. Special pleading.
Claims to knowledge must be justified on something more robust than anecdote and repetition. Please demonstrate how 'theistic claims' are a special category of claim that operate to different criteria to all other claims.
Claims to knowledge of something for which there is no supporting grounds do not get a free pass and stand as knowledge until proven otherwise. Please provide the special conditions which earmark 'theistic claims' as being exempt from the reasonable requirements of support.

You violate your own ethical structure, to which you attempt to hold others, by concluding that theistic claims are false because there is no objective scientific evidence that meets your standards to support those claims. But you cannot rationally draw that conclusion in the absence of any evidence of the falsity of the theistic claims. Once again, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Shifting the burden.
Please provide the appropriately 'objective scientific evidence' in support of theistic claims and/or define the special and particular objective standards by which theistic claims can, should, and must be assessed.

This has nothing whatever to do with the truth or falsity of theistic claims, this is about your ability to reason and think logically within the parameters that you yourself set as the metric for proper scientific investigation.

Ad hom. Assumption. Strawman. Shifting the burden.
Please demonstrate how framing objections in term you do not personally endorse or approve of is necessarily illogical, indicative of a deficit of morals or ethics, or symptomatic of a paucity of intellect or cognitive ability. In other words, please demonstrate your claims rather than asserting them.

If you have no objective scientific evidence that a theistic claim is not true, you cannot rationally conclude that the claim is not true. I'm just holding you to your own standards.

Special pleading.
Special pleading is the limit of your apologetics:

Applying standards, principles, and/or rules to other people or circumstances, while making oneself or certain circumstances exempt from the same critical criteria, without providing adequate justification. Special pleading is often a result of strong emotional beliefs that interfere with reason.

http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/inde ... l-pleading

In order to avoid the fallacy of special pleading please show how and why un-evidenced, un-grounded, un-supported 'theistic claims' get to stand as truth whereas any other un-evidenced, un-grounded, un-supported claim can be reasonably dismissed.

[Seth]

Still don't get the point do you? The question is not whether science is reliable, it's whether YOU can rationally state that some claim of science is true without actually doing the experiment yourself. You cannot.

Shifting the burden. Strawman.

No, that's always been the point of my criticism of Atheism.

Science does not operate under conditions which YOU personally get to validate and assure.

It's not about what science does or does not do, it's about YOUR faith in the reports of scientists.

Science does not stake a claim to truth in the objective sense but provides a range of methodologies for supporting claims provisionally as being reliable in terms of their explanatory cohesion and predictive power. (You really are the last person to lecture Jim on what science it your know.)

Not relevant.

You have to rely on anecdotal evidence from others who have, according to them, done the experiment.

1) You seem to think anecdote is fine as evidence for God.

It's "evidence." Whether it is "fine evidence" or not is a value judgment that depends on the knowledge and understanding of the person reviewing the evidence.

2) Peer reviewed papers are not anecdotes.

Sure they are. They are not first-person knowledge, they are reports by others which can be, and have been falsified or flatly wrong. Just because the vast majority of "scientists" in Galileo's time "peer reviewed" the notion that the sun revolved around the earth didn't make them right. Science, you see, is an iterative process where new discoveries may render old hypotheses obsolete because of new knowledge and understanding. The fact that the old hypothesis was peer reviewed at the time is meaningless because it's just ignorance piled on ignorance. The same applies to current hypotheses. Any peer review is based on the degree of knowledge and understanding of the peers who are doing the reviewing. If their knowledge and understanding is incomplete or simply wrong, their statements on behalf of the author are meaningless. Peer review does nothing more than increase the confidence level in the truth or existence of something not subject to immediate rigorous proof. Is it helpful in keeping errors out of science? Sure it is, but like any other human knowledge the accuracy of the science is only as good as the understanding of scientists. If they don't understand something, they don't know what they don't know about it.

That's the case when it comes to theistic claims. Science does not know what it does not know about such claims because it has nothing upon which to base its conclusions. Atheists insist there is "no evidence" pointing towards the existence of God, but what they mean is they are unaware of any evidence that meets their particular standards of objective scientific accuracy and repeatability. But since science doesn't know what it doesn't know, it is irrational for anyone to draw the conclusion that the absence of evidence of the existence of God is the same thing as evidence of the absence of God.

They lie about it. Imagine that. But that's not even the point.

Not the point eh? So why bring it up? Answer: see above.

The point, which you missed again, is that science is not infallible.

You reject theistic claims as being inconsistent, unreliable, not repeatable and rationally unconnected with observable reality. But you have exactly zero critically robust evidence that demonstrates this claim according to your own demands for scientific proof.

Shifting the burden. Special pleading.
The evidence which justifies the objection is the absence of evidence in support of the claim. To charge objectors with an obligation to provide special or particular evidence to support such an objection is fallacious.

Fallacy. The absence of evidence cannot be seen to provide evidence of absence. This is a fundamental understanding of science. Strawman. No one is saying that objectors have to provide any evidence at all to support their objection. The objection is valid: "I am not aware of any scientifically objective evidence pointing towards the existence of God." The conclusion is what's faulty: "Therefore, God does not exist." I reiterate: The only rational scientific claim that can be made about the existence or non-existence of God is, "Science has no answer to that question because no rational conclusion can be drawn in the absence of any evidence either in support of or denying the existence of God."

In other words, "I don't know" is the only rational answer possible.

The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. But you are making claims about theistic claims that are not founded in either reason or science because you have absolutely no evidence that supports your claims.

Shifting the burden. Special pleading.
What is particular and relevant difference with 'theistic claims' to knowledge that means that special conditions must be met and apply in order for them to be reliably dismissed, and what are those conditions?

Dismissing a claim (ie: ignoring the claim) is not the same thing as refuting or rebutting the claim. Dismissing the theistic claim that God exists consists of saying, "I do not believe God exists" and that is a valid statement. The claim "God does not exist because there is no objective scientific evidence of his existence" is an irrational conclusion.

You are rejecting theistic claims based on your religious belief that the entire universe is and can only be described by your understanding of the scientific method.

Shifting the burden. Double standard.
Please demonstrate by some robust means that theistic claims to knowledge can be and are supported by some robust but otherwise un-scientific means or method.

I don't need to because that's not the point. I make no claim either positive or negative about the existence of God, I simply point out that rational minds can make no such claims either, and that Atheism as a religion is founded on the false notion that the absence of evidence is evidence of absence, which is irrational.

You label anything that looks to be outside of the realm of scientific knowledge and understanding to be "supernatural," but that's just a word that translates to "I don't understand what's happening and I don't believe it's true, therefore it must be supernatural."

Argument from definition. Shifting the burden.
Please demonstrate by some robust means that i) 'not understanding what's happening' does, can, and/or will have a supernatural explanations, and ii) something supernatural.

I'm not claiming anything supernatural is or has happened, I'm saying that it is a conceit of Atheists, who, because they do not understand the concepts and nature of God, label God, and anything associated with actions of God (if God exists) as being "supernatural" simply because such events do not conform to their understandings of how the "natural" universe operates. That is irrational thinking.

The problem with your reasoning is that by your own arguments, conclusions must be drawn based on an examination of the evidence and subjecting that evidence to analysis to determine its probative value in supporting the claims made. And yet you are drawing all sorts of conclusions about theistic claims in the absence of any evidence whatsoever, by your own admission.

Strawman. Shifting the burden. Special pleading.
Claims to knowledge must be justified on something more robust than anecdote and repetition.

Sez who? You are trying to set the universal standard of truth to suit your own biases and ideas of what's justified and what's not.

Please demonstrate how 'theistic claims' are a special category of claim that operate to different criteria to all other claims.

I'm not claiming special pleading, I'm merely saying that science does not know what science does not know, and therefore merely because science does not understand the scientific basis for the existence of God cannot be said to demonstrate that God does not exist any more than 16th century understandings of physics, which did not understand particle physics, means that subatomic particles did not exist in the 16th century.

Claims to knowledge of something for which there is no supporting grounds do not get a free pass and stand as knowledge until proven otherwise. Please provide the special conditions which earmark 'theistic claims' as being exempt from the reasonable requirements of support.

Strawman. That's not a claim I'm making. The claim I'm making is that you don't know enough to know whether you know enough to judge whether God exists or not, and therefore the only rational conclusion you can draw about God's existence is "I don't know."

You violate your own ethical structure, to which you attempt to hold others, by concluding that theistic claims are false because there is no objective scientific evidence that meets your standards to support those claims. But you cannot rationally draw that conclusion in the absence of any evidence of the falsity of the theistic claims. Once again, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Shifting the burden.
Please provide the appropriately 'objective scientific evidence' in support of theistic claims and/or define the special and particular objective standards by which theistic claims can, should, and must be assessed.

You still don't get it. It is YOU who is assessing theistic claims and who is drawing putatively scientific conclusions about those claims in the absence of any evidence upon which to base your conclusion. That's not scientific thinking, it's religious dogma and it's irrational.

This has nothing whatever to do with the truth or falsity of theistic claims, this is about your ability to reason and think logically within the parameters that you yourself set as the metric for proper scientific investigation.

Ad hom. Assumption. Strawman. Shifting the burden.
Please demonstrate how framing objections in term you do not personally endorse or approve of is necessarily illogical, indicative of a deficit of morals or ethics, or symptomatic of a paucity of intellect or cognitive ability. In other words, please demonstrate your claims rather than asserting them.

Rational minds do not draw conclusions about anything in the absence of any evidence upon which to draw a rational conclusion.

If you have no objective scientific evidence that a theistic claim is not true, you cannot rationally conclude that the claim is not true. I'm just holding you to your own standards.

Special pleading.
Special pleading is the limit of your apologetics:

It's not special pleading at all. Theistic claims are not held to any different standards in my argument. It is you who is being held to your own standards, which you fail to meet when you draw conclusions about the existence of God that are not supported by evidence that meets your own standards of truth and knowledge. Since you insist there is no such evidence, drawing a conclusion about the existence of God violates your own criteria and is therefore an irrational conclusion.

Applying standards, principles, and/or rules to other people or circumstances, while making oneself or certain circumstances exempt from the same critical criteria, without providing adequate justification. Special pleading is often a result of strong emotional beliefs that interfere with reason.

http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/inde ... l-pleading

In order to avoid the fallacy of special pleading please show how and why un-evidenced, un-grounded, un-supported 'theistic claims' get to stand as truth whereas any other un-evidenced, un-grounded, un-supported claim can be reasonably dismissed.

Strawman. I'm not making any such claims.

[JimC]

Seth wrote:

You still don't get it. It is YOU who is assessing theistic claims and who is drawing putatively scientific conclusions about those claims in the absence of any evidence upon which to base your conclusion. That's not scientific thinking, it's religious dogma and it's irrational.

If you are talking about CERN, you are incorrect. The evidence for the Higgs boson, for example, has been widely disseminated and reported on in the scientific literature. I have read several reports, all of which contain quite detailed discussions of the data, and, as a physics teacher, I have the required background to make a reasoned assessment of their findings. A far cry from "no evidence"

You might as well say I have no evidence that New York exists, since I've never been there.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Seth wrote:

You still don't get it. It is YOU who is assessing theistic claims and who is drawing putatively scientific conclusions about those claims in the absence of any evidence upon which to base your conclusion. That's not scientific thinking, it's religious dogma and it's irrational.

If you are talking about CERN, you are incorrect. The evidence for the Higgs boson, for example, has been widely disseminated and reported on in the scientific literature. I have read several reports, all of which contain quite detailed discussions of the data, and, as a physics teacher, I have the required background to make a reasoned assessment of their findings. A far cry from "no evidence"

You might as well say I have no evidence that New York exists, since I've never been there.

You... you believe in New York?

[JimC]

I'm quite agnostic about New York. However, I will not assert it does not exist...

[piscator]

Seth wrote:

Still don't get the point do you? The question is not whether science is reliable, it's whether YOU can rationally state that some claim of science is true without actually doing the experiment yourself. You cannot. You have to rely on anecdotal evidence from others who have, according to them, done the experiment. As we know from some "cold fusion" claims, some people claim something about science without having done the work. They lie about it. Imagine that. But that's not even the point.

You reject theistic claims as being inconsistent, unreliable, not repeatable and rationally unconnected with observable reality. But you have exactly zero critically robust evidence that demonstrates this claim according to your own demands for scientific proof.

The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. But you are making claims about theistic claims that are not founded in either reason or science because you have absolutely no evidence that supports your claims. None. You are rejecting theistic claims based on your religious belief that the entire universe is and can only be described by your understanding of the scientific method. You label anything that looks to be outside of the realm of scientific knowledge and understanding to be "supernatural," but that's just a word that translates to "I don't understand what's happening and I don't believe it's true, therefore it must be supernatural."

The problem with your reasoning is that by your own arguments, conclusions must be drawn based on an examination of the evidence and subjecting that evidence to analysis to determine its probative value in supporting the claims made. And yet you are drawing all sorts of conclusions about theistic claims in the absence of any evidence whatsoever, by your own admission.

You violate your own ethical structure, to which you attempt to hold others, by concluding that theistic claims are false because there is no objective scientific evidence that meets your standards to support those claims. But you cannot rationally draw that conclusion in the absence of any evidence of the falsity of the theistic claims. Once again, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

This has nothing whatever to do with the truth or falsity of theistic claims, this is about your ability to reason and think logically within the parameters that you yourself set as the metric for proper scientific investigation.

If you have no objective scientific evidence that a theistic claim is not true, you cannot rationally conclude that the claim is not true. I'm just holding you to your own standards.

You clearly have no understanding whatsoever of the scientific method. It is an activity that depends on experiments being repeatable by any group. Most major areas of scientific theory have been assessed by experimental evidence from a wide range of people. The moment anomalous results appear, it is a spur to further experiments.

No one scientist could ever personally do every experiment - instead, there is a highly systematic procedure of peer review, which inevitably will detect fraud, even if there is some delay.

If there is no objective evidence for theistic claims, why should we give them any credence? (This, of course, is different to a bald statement that such claims are wrong, it simply says that the claims cannot be included in the body of objective evidence which has underpinned a consistent picture of the material universe). Remember, most theists go beyond talking about a personal, spiritual god - they claim their particular deity as both a creator and an active agent in the material universe, a claim without a shred of evidence. Claims by scientists that the sodium atom has 11 protons, and is commonly found in an ionised form have evidence upon evidence...

You are straying into very dangerous territory when you adopt a stance of neutral relativity for different positions about any given issue. Utterly crazy left wing liberals have adopted the whole shtick of cultural relativity, which says that a particular tribe's creation myths have exactly the same credence as the detailed astronomical picture spanning the big bang to solar system formation, or that genital mutilation practiced by nasty bronze age religious fuckwits cannot be criticised from the point of view of western ethics.

Strange bedfellows, Seth...

Sounds like someone never took a chemistry or physics lab? Or feels that saying posts needed holes back in grampa's day is a statement of Faith?

[Seth]

Seth wrote:

You still don't get it. It is YOU who is assessing theistic claims and who is drawing putatively scientific conclusions about those claims in the absence of any evidence upon which to base your conclusion. That's not scientific thinking, it's religious dogma and it's irrational.

If you are talking about CERN, you are incorrect. The evidence for the Higgs boson, for example, has been widely disseminated and reported on in the scientific literature. I have read several reports, all of which contain quite detailed discussions of the data, and, as a physics teacher, I have the required background to make a reasoned assessment of their findings. A far cry from "no evidence"

You might as well say I have no evidence that New York exists, since I've never been there.

Again you misunderstand. Assessing the claim that New York exists by referencing evidence available to you is perfectly valid. The problem is that you are assessing the claim that God exists by referencing...absolutely nothing at all. You say there is no evidence that God exists. Arguendo, I agree, there is no evidence that God exists. But you cannot draw a rational conclusion that God does not exist based on an absence of evidence.

There is still the matter of the evidence that God exists that you simply reject, but that's an entirely different argument.

What's being critiqued here is irrational notion that one can draw a rational conclusion about something in the absence of any evidence about that thing, pro or con.

[JimC]

Seth wrote:

But you cannot draw a rational conclusion that God does not exist based on an absence of evidence.

What makes you think any of us do that?

Consistently, all we say is that we see no valid evidence for the existence of a god, and so we have no belief in god. Logically, the absence of a belief is not belief of an absence, to use your own phrasing.

And, as usual, you did not address the main point of my post, which was that I have abundant evidence concerning the activities at CERN, and the scientific conclusions that can be drawn from its data. Earlier, you were saying there is just as little evidence for the CERN program as for god, which is arrant nonsense, of course.

[Seth]

Seth wrote:

But you cannot draw a rational conclusion that God does not exist based on an absence of evidence.

What makes you think any of us do that?

Decades of reading posts in atheist fora.

Consistently, all we say is that we see no valid evidence for the existence of a god, and so we have no belief in god. Logically, the absence of a belief is not belief of an absence, to use your own phrasing.

But you do have a belief. Merely by being informed of the controversy and having examined the evidence, which you find not to be valid, you formed a conclusion about the existence of God. "Belief" is "confidence in the truth or existence of something not subject to immediate rigorous proof." Keep in mind that "confidence in" goes both ways, which is to say either confidence or no confidence, and the "truth or existence" goes both ways too. You can have confidence in the proposition that the evidence that you have examined with respect to the existence of God is not valid. However, you cannot subject that proposition to immediate rigorous proof by showing that evidence is actually invalid, you can only have confidence in that conclusion about the evidence. Therefore your conclusion (confidence) is a belief and not "knowledge" or a fact.

And, as usual, you did not address the main point of my post, which was that I have abundant evidence concerning the activities at CERN, and the scientific conclusions that can be drawn from its data. Earlier, you were saying there is just as little evidence for the CERN program as for god, which is arrant nonsense, of course.

No, I said YOU cannot immediately and rigorously prove that CERN exists, therefore while you have confidence that CERN exists based on the anecdotal reports of others, you cannot claim it as knowledge, you can only claim it as a belief. This has nothing whatever to do with CERN's actual existence. It's a metaphor and an example showing that drawing conclusions about something based on a lack of evidence is an irrational act. Until YOU visit CERN and are able to fully analyze what they do there to be certain that they are doing what they say they are doing, YOU cannot claim knowledge of CERN's existence, you can only have some degree of confidence in the existence of CERN, which absent your going there, is not subject to immediate rigorous proof. All you have to rely upon is the statements of others, which may or may not be accurate, and therefore, according to your own arguments against theistic claims about God being anecdotal and therefore invalid as evidence, you cannot rationally claim that CERN actually exists.

If you DO claim that CERN exists based on the second-hand anecdotal evidence you are aware of, you impeach your argument against the anecdotal evidence of God's existence cited by theists. Had YOU visited CERN and confirmed their work yourself, you could claim knowledge (as opposed to belief) about the existence of CERN and it's functions. But YOUR report of what you found is, once again, merely anecdotal in nature and, according to your own arguments, cannot be seen to be valid evidence of the existence of CERN because you could be delusional or lying.

But YOU would know for certain that CERN exists, and you would argue that CERN exists because you had a personal experience in which sufficient physical evidence was provided TO YOU (your eyes and ears) to persuade you of the existence of CERN.

However, a rational observer of your claim would have to reject (again according to your own arguments against theistic claims) your claim as knowledge because he has no objective scientific evidence other than your bald assertion that CERN exists.

Now suppose that CERN was a top-secret government operation that nobody but the select few know about and only a very select few are permitted to tour the site. (Think Area 51)

If you tell someone that you visited a place where they had a giant supercollider that was probing the origins of the universe, but that you couldn't prove it to them because they wouldn't be allowed to visit the place and you have no physical evidence from your visit, you're doing exactly the same thing that a theist who claims to have had a personal experience with God is doing. You're relating an anecdote which you expect others to give credence to (place confidence in) that is not subject to immediate rigorous proof.

In other words, you are asking them to believe what you say. No one is compelled to do so, but some may if their experiences lead them to place confidence in your claims. Others may deny the validity of your claims because you have no physical proof such a facility exists, but you know it does because you were there, but you cannot prove it. And those skeptics are irrationally denying the existence of CERN based on a dearth of evidence that CERN exists. You know it exists, you've seen it, but for reasons beyond your control you have no physical objective proof that it exists. But you still know it does exist and you want to pass that message along to others who might benefit from believing that CERN does exist and will have some positive impact on their lives, even if they don't believe you.

Now replace "CERN" with "God" and see if you get it yet.

[JimC]

Still nonsense, Seth. Don't put words in my mouth; I stated my position quite clearly, it cannot be logically twisted into "I believe there is no god"

As for the CERN thing, again, what arrant nonsense. Your main comparison was, originally, to the historical truth of the bible. CERN (or any other well documented modern organisation/activity) is current, and many living observers are participating in it right now, and communicating their observations and conclusions to an interested world. Straightforwardly, it exists. Replace CERN with the NRA administration, or the Vatican bureaucracy, if it makes you happy...

When you examine the distant human past, however, it is a very, very different situation, and one's confidence into the details passed down could never be have the same degree of certainty as the examples above.