Eveery argument in P&R boils down to:

and you like to tell us how intelligent you think you are and a lawyer too. lol.
do you understand what this means:

When we say "positive claim" we are normally talking about a claim that would extend ontology. "Fairies exist" and "fairies are imaginary" are both syntactically positive statements, but only "fairies exist" is ontologically positive, so it is this statement that has the inherent heavier burden of proof."

 

To all:

1) Has it ever occurred to you that the answer to, is there a Creator or not, is indeterminate through the system of classical logics? We have known since Godel that even simple statements (on the order of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times simpler than the existence or not of God) in mathematics can be shown to have no proof within a particular system of reasoning.

2) This is aimed more at the scientist arguments I see in these God threads all the time. You guys continually try to use classical logic to a problem that may require different types of logic. For example, in daily discourse something either is or it is not, otherwise known as the law of excluded middle. But that is just one system. There are systems of logic where it does not follow p → ~(~p)

3) Asking for a proof of God is silly on many counts, but usually what people mean is they want a constructive proof. This has been debated in Mathematics already and mathematicians today have grown way past that need. For example, using the Axiom of Choice was considered heretical by constructivists because there is no way to choose a member from an infinite set in all cases.

4) Finally, most of you guys aren't even using the same definitions!!! How can you even proceed? Here, both of you, define, a) God, b) Existance. I bet you can't even get past that!!! For crying out loud, we don't even know what an electron is


It is very possible that discussing anything of even mild complexity requires completely new forms of discourse and logic, for example

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_logic

You guys may think I have my head in th clouds with all this, but I swear it is at the heart of your disagreements.

More references:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel's_incompleteness_theorems

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_excluded_middle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom_of_choice

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existence_of_God

 

it's God, can't you figure it out

 

i suppose it could work. you suggest we throw out known logic to come to a way of finding a god. other theists suggest we throw out rules of evidence to make their god visible. i guess eventually we can construct a world where the imaginary becomes real. but do we want to?

 

At the age of 84, Russell added a five-paragraph prologue to a new publication of his autobiography, giving a summary of the work and his life, titled WHAT I HAVE LIVED FOR.

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.
I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy—ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness—that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it, finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what—at last—I have found.
With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.
Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a hated burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.
This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.
-Bertrand Russell

doesn't this have the ring of greater truth than any 'pie in the sky" BS ?

 

you are being really fucking dense.

I am not arguing I have proof of fairies. That is not the point.

You said you can prove fairies do not exist.


I say do so, because you are a fool for trying to prove a negative.

 

Vhehn is right . There is evidence to support non believers.
There is evidence there is no creator.

There are facts which are proofs which lead to theories (scientific propositions containing and based on facts) which makes up substantial evidence, that there is not even a need for a Creator (God) . That is evidence to support there being no Creator.

Now you can go poo poo all of it with your religious make-believe gobbledygook and start shifting goal posts and contorting meaning all you want, trying to suggest evidence should mean proof , but it remains whether you like it or not, that there is scientific evidence which supports there being no Creator and no need for one.

Because you cannot grasp how something like the Universe can come about without a Creator, but you can imagine how a Creator can come about without a Creator, does not alter the cogency of scientific evidence.

Why do you always try to blame others for your own shortcomings in understanding stuff?

 

Problems are often created unnecessarily, when "intelligent"(unlike other animals)/abstract thinking people get ideas.

 

Are yoy sure it`s healthy?

 

The evidence, sketchy at best, that supports the claim of no need for a creator in no way provides proof that a creator does not exist. You and everyone else has zero proof that a creator does or does not exist. Proof, not belief. Proof!