'Splain this one Atheists...

[pErvinalia]

He doesn't need your crazy scientific notions of "proof" and "evidence". He's got something WAY better than that: Bias! It's self confirming and self-perpetuating. No need for reality...

[Svartalf]

When it comes to god, I love that Laplace quote... when that hypothesis becomes needed, then it will, in the meantime we do without it.

[Seth]

Seth, you have hugely missed the point in terms of limb regeneration. To assert that it could actually happen in nature in the face of a total absence of limb re-growth in any mammal whatsoever is ludicrous. I can confidently assert that there are no mammalian hexapods, because none have ever been observed, despite an intense scrutiny of the world's animals for thousands of years, both by hunters, and scientists of all stripes.

And you can say with scientific certainty that no mammalian hexapods exist in the 70 percent of the planet that has not been thoroughly explored?

With the same degree of confidence, I assert that human limb re-growth is not a phenomenon that occurs in nature; thus making it an excellent candidate for a totally non-ambiguous miracle, whether via prayer or the whim of a putative god.

And yet we know that other earthly organisms have that capability which presumably exists because of natural selection and DNA modification. Therefore there is no reason to believe that DNA modification in mammalian DNA could not provide the same capabilities to humans.

To suggest that perhaps god doesn't like re-growing limbs is absurd special pleading at best.

How so? Special pleading doesn't apply because (arguendo) God is a sentient being capable of making choices about what actions to take and not take. Unlike the starfish, which responds to its genetic programming, God is not compelled to regrow any particular human limb, or any human limb at all. Therefore, the apparent lack of evidence of human limb regrowth is evidence of the lack of a DNA-based ability to do so, and it says nothing whatever about the existence or non existence of God. This is not a case of special pleading, of "the rule applies to thee but not to me" because whereas humans and starfish are ruled by their DNA, God is not necessarily constrained by the same set of rules that apply to other creatures. Therefore, no special pleading is involved.

It is well known that spontaneous recovery from coma or serious neurological conditions occurs, although at a low rate.

Yes.

Some of the recoveries may have been by patients who were prayed over, many would not.

And you know this how? Perhaps a "remote prayer" by some little kid praying generally for all the sick people of the world is sufficient motivation for God to decide to act.

The only way to test your hypothesis is not via a single anecdote, but by a double blind experiment. Take 2000 people in comas, divide them randomly into 2 groups, and have one group prayed for, and the other not, with both groups receiving the same medical care. After a year, see if there is a statistically different number of recoveries between the 2 groups.

And this is where your dependence on the religion of science causes your reasoning to fail. Let me give you a simple example. You and I are standing on opposite sides of a table. You place 10 pennies on the table and turn your back. When you turn around again, two of the pennies are missing. You would likely conclude that I took those two pennies, based on your religious beliefs that there is no "natural" answer that explains the missing pennies other than that I took them. You draw this conclusion based on your experience and your biases alone, but you have no critically robust scientific evidence that I did in fact take the pennies.

We repeat the experiment, and this time there are no pennies missing. You conclude that I made a conscious choice not to take any pennies and that this is the Occam's Razor answer to what did or did not happen to the pennies.

Now suppose that you are alone in the room with the table and the pennies, or at least you believe that you are alone. You put down the pennies, turn away, and turn back and find two pennies missing. Where did they go? You don't know, but you search for an answer. Perhaps you find the answer, perhaps you don't. Let's say you don't.

You repeat the experiment and this time no pennies are missing. You conclude that no mechanism for removing pennies existed in the room with you, therefore the pennies remained.

You repeat the experiment one more time and once again no pennies are missing.

So, you have an event that defies explanation by you (the missing pennies), and two that meet your expectations (the not-missing pennies) based on your observations and understandings of the physics of the universe that apply at the time.

But what you don't know is that in the first case, when you turned your back I emerged from a concealed room and took the two pennies. In the second case, I did not choose to emerge from the room and did nothing. In the third case, I emerged from the room, took two pennies, and replaced them with two different pennies.

So, you have no answer for the two missing pennies and might attribute it to a "miracle" or something, you assume that nothing happened with the second iteration, and you also assumed nothing happened but were unaware of the substitution in the third iteration.

But in all three cases you were wrong in your conclusions because of two factors: You didn't know what you didn't know, and you failed to properly examine your chain of logic as a part of your scientific analysis of the events.

Just because no pennies were missing in iterations two and three does not mean nothing happened, it merely means that i chose not to act, which you, due to a lack of knowledge, interpreted as nothing happening. And the two pennies that went missing that you cannot explain ought to lead you to a conclusion, when combined with the other iterations, that there is something important you do not know about the experiment, which in this case is that there is an intelligent actor manipulating the outcome of the experiment that makes any sort of reliance upon a scientific conclusion based on falsifiability and repeatability utterly useless.

The point I'm trying to make here is that you are erecting a strawman argument. You are saying "If God exists, God would regrow human limbs. No human limbs are known to have regrown, therefore God does not exist." Do you see the fallacy of this reasoning? You set the premises of the syllogism to be self-defeating by falsely presuming that God is under some obligation to regrow human limbs when that clearly would not be the case with any intelligent agent capable of making a voluntary decision whether or not to act in the manner that you expect.

Therefore, the presumed fact that God has not regrown any human limbs cannot and does not provide any evidence whatsoever either for or against God's existence.

PS - It would be a bit of a worry if the prayed-for group had significantly fewer recoveries; it would suggest a cranky god who is pissed of at being disturbed by annoying prayers!

And what gives you the idea that God cannot be "cranky?"

Try to understand, this is not about the existence or non existence of God at all, it's about your reasoning ability.

[Seth]

To suggest that perhaps god doesn't like re-growing limbs is absurd special pleading at best.

It is, isn't it? As if it's not ridiculous enough that some people like to claim invisible being exist, it becomes even more absurd when they start trying to impute specific traits on these beings, despite not being able to see them or communicate with them.

And you know that others do not communicate with or see them how, exactly? Just because YOU are not privy to such interactions does not mean they do not occur.

[Seth]

I, given enough gin, may assert that god is a giant green tree frog living in an alternative dimension of unending swamps. Our refusal to eat insects angers him greatly...

You may indeed. And no truly rational person can gainsay you because you may have knowledge that they do not.

[Seth]

Seth, you have hugely missed the point in terms of limb regeneration. To assert that it could actually happen in nature in the face of a total absence of limb re-growth in any mammal whatsoever is ludicrous. I can confidently assert that there are no mammalian hexapods, because none have ever been observed, despite an intense scrutiny of the world's animals for thousands of years, both by hunters, and scientists of all stripes.

All swans are white.

That said, I find the invocation of a god thingie for things that cannot be explained nonsensical (in the literal meaning of the word) and pointless. To me the use of a god of the gaps is a non-explanation - just another way of saying "We don't know".

As for the question "Does a god exist?" itself, .... we likewise can only say "We don't know".

And that's what I've been saying to you for years now. Why is it so hard for so many people to comprehend this simple fact? Why is there so much hysteria evoked by someone saying "I saw God and he's a giant green frog" when the only rational response is "Oh, really? How interesting, but I just don't know." You cannot create an experiment such as you suggest to test for the existence of an intelligent agent that is capable of avoiding the testing in the first place. I can't perform a scientific test to see if YOU exist if you refuse to cooperate with my collection of evidence, so a lack of evidence of your existence in my hands does not prove that you do not exist, does it?

Atheists constantly respond to theistic claims with all sorts of self-defeating syllogisms as to why God doesn't exist because God does not perform in the manner in which the individual thinks God ought to perform. It's abysmal logic and completely irrational do do so, but trying to get Atheist religious zealots to see the error in their reasoning is like, well, trying to get Theist religious zealots to see the error of their reasoning.

And that's my point.

[Seth]

Hermit wrote:

The universal non-existence of x cannot be proven.

That may well be true in an abstract philosophical sense, but in practice, when zero evidence of the existence of a putative phenomenon has been found, one has no need to incorporate it into one's working model of the universe.

True, for that one, unless that one is expansive of mind enough to realize that his understanding of the universe is incomplete and he does not know what he does not know, and that others may know things he does not and therefore chooses to keep all avenues of investigation and discovery open rather than excluding some because he does not acknowledge that he does not know what he does not know.

Others, on the other hand, might have those experiences and evidence and base their conclusions upon that. And its worth noting that for some reason, 80 percent of the human species claims to have some sort of religious experience upon which they base their conclusions about the existence of god(s).

So what does the preponderance of evidence with respect to the existence of god(s) suggest to the rational mind? Perhaps that god(s) may exist and that the lack of evidence in the hands of any one particular investigator, or 20 percent of the human population of the planet, does not lead to a rational conclusion that god(s) do not exist.

[Seth]

When it comes to god, I love that Laplace quote... when that hypothesis becomes needed, then it will, in the meantime we do without it.

Which may be a fine operative principle unless and until you're wrong. Ignoring the hypothesis that nitroglycerine is unstable and can detonate on shock can leave one without the ability to refine one's hypothesis to obtain a better conclusion.

As Pascal puts it, to ignore the God hypothesis may engender catastrophic consequences that one might easily avoid by not ignoring (or rejecting) the God hypothesis outright.

[pErvinalia]

Seth, you have hugely missed the point in terms of limb regeneration. To assert that it could actually happen in nature in the face of a total absence of limb re-growth in any mammal whatsoever is ludicrous. I can confidently assert that there are no mammalian hexapods, because none have ever been observed, despite an intense scrutiny of the world's animals for thousands of years, both by hunters, and scientists of all stripes.

All swans are white.

That said, I find the invocation of a god thingie for things that cannot be explained nonsensical (in the literal meaning of the word) and pointless. To me the use of a god of the gaps is a non-explanation - just another way of saying "We don't know".

As for the question "Does a god exist?" itself, .... we likewise can only say "We don't know".

And that's what I've been saying to you for years now. Why is it so hard for so many people to comprehend this simple fact?

That's because your biases make you unable to see that the VAST majority of atheists think exactly this way.

[Seth]

Seth, you have hugely missed the point in terms of limb regeneration. To assert that it could actually happen in nature in the face of a total absence of limb re-growth in any mammal whatsoever is ludicrous. I can confidently assert that there are no mammalian hexapods, because none have ever been observed, despite an intense scrutiny of the world's animals for thousands of years, both by hunters, and scientists of all stripes.

All swans are white.

That said, I find the invocation of a god thingie for things that cannot be explained nonsensical (in the literal meaning of the word) and pointless. To me the use of a god of the gaps is a non-explanation - just another way of saying "We don't know".

As for the question "Does a god exist?" itself, .... we likewise can only say "We don't know".

And that's what I've been saying to you for years now. Why is it so hard for so many people to comprehend this simple fact?

That's because your biases make you unable to see that the VAST majority of atheists think exactly this way.

No they don't. You certainly don't. You're as certain in your belief as any evangelical Christian or Muslim.

[pErvinalia]

Stop lying. You've never produce one shred of evidence to back this bullshit up. That's the beauty about biases, that I mentioned earlier. You don't have to produce evidence. You WANT to believe it is true, and therefore you do.

Back to ignoring you.

[Hermit]

Seth, you have hugely missed the point in terms of limb regeneration. To assert that it could actually happen in nature in the face of a total absence of limb re-growth in any mammal whatsoever is ludicrous. I can confidently assert that there are no mammalian hexapods, because none have ever been observed, despite an intense scrutiny of the world's animals for thousands of years, both by hunters, and scientists of all stripes.

All swans are white.

That said, I find the invocation of a god thingie for things that cannot be explained nonsensical (in the literal meaning of the word) and pointless. To me the use of a god of the gaps is a non-explanation - just another way of saying "We don't know".

As for the question "Does a god exist?" itself, .... we likewise can only say "We don't know".

And that's what I've been saying to you for years now. Why is it so hard for so many people to comprehend this simple fact?

Firstly, I trust that your use of the word "you" is meant to refer to atheists in general. Speaking for myself, thanks to one of my philosophy lecturers, Alan Chalmers, who wrote this rather good and best-selling book on the topic of epistemology, In my journey from being a practising Roman Catholic to becoming an atheist via deism I have never entertained the notion that the non-existence of a god thingie can be positively disproved.

Secondly, you seem to be determined to ignore the fact that the majority of atheists do not claim that the non-existence of a god thingie can be positively disproved. For example, I started a thread on this very question with an attached poll. You can find it by clicking on this link. While the number of forum members who declared themselves to be atheists ticked the "I know there is no God" option surprised me, 70% of all atheists who voted clicked on "I'm not 100% certain" Your response? Oh, they fucking lie. Somehow I don't feel excluded from your insult. Thanks for that, arsewipe.

[pErvinalia]

Seth, you have hugely missed the point in terms of limb regeneration. To assert that it could actually happen in nature in the face of a total absence of limb re-growth in any mammal whatsoever is ludicrous. I can confidently assert that there are no mammalian hexapods, because none have ever been observed, despite an intense scrutiny of the world's animals for thousands of years, both by hunters, and scientists of all stripes.

All swans are white.

That said, I find the invocation of a god thingie for things that cannot be explained nonsensical (in the literal meaning of the word) and pointless. To me the use of a god of the gaps is a non-explanation - just another way of saying "We don't know".

As for the question "Does a god exist?" itself, .... we likewise can only say "We don't know".

And that's what I've been saying to you for years now. Why is it so hard for so many people to comprehend this simple fact?

Firstly, I trust that your use of the word "you" is meant to refer to atheists in general. Speaking for myself, thanks to one of my philosophy lecturers, Alan Chalmers,

Awesome! I love his "What is this thing called science" book. Read it a few times. Seth could seriously do with reading it.

Secondly, you seem to be determined to ignore the fact that the majority of atheists do not claim that the non-existence of a god thingie can be positively disproved. For example, I started a thread on this very question with an attached poll.

So did I. He claimed we were all lying. Such is the way of the troll...

[rainbow]

For example, I started a thread on this very question with an attached poll. You can find it by clicking on this link.

I so can't.

Therefore it doesn't exist.

[Hermit]

I love his "What is this thing called science" book.

He was one of my lecturers before it was published, so he had his final draft of the first edition mimeographed and handed it out to all of us free of charge. Later I found a second-hand copy of it at the UoS Co-op bookshop and a few years ago I downloaded a tatty but searchable PDF version of the second. A fourth revised edition has been published in 2013.