God: a failed hypothesis or something more?

@marvin

And so you make my point for me!

If you are worried about a proof that is not really a proof… and how easy it is to make the mistake…

then your earlier statement still troubles me.

You can say: “A belief can only be converted into knowledge by obtaining proof…”

But this is not the same as saying all this confusing chaos of linguistic vectors:

“. . . if you have proof of a dead body of A in front of you and that causes you to believe that A is dead you must be a bit daft as you should now know that A is dead.”

That is pretty awful.

You can Believe you have a dead body because of a hunch, or because someone proved it to you.

Insisting that 100% knowledge makes it impossible to “believe” is a travesty of linguistic logic.

We will go down a familiar path with this - what is a “God hypothesis?” What is the difference between professing faith in God, and some type of “burden of proof” that some atheists seek?

A very long time ago, I found Kant’s discussion of the dialectic in his Critique informative. In mundane terms, human reason can find many reasonable ways to believe God exists, and an equal number of reasons to believe god does not exist.

Biblically God has chosen individuals to be witnesses to Him - it is up to us to decide to believe them.

I cannot make sense of this comment - who has made an argument regarding a measurable aspect of God?

This last quote of yours seems to me to be the exact kind of reasoning that Stenger is using. I think it’s a valid form of argument, and I don’t see the need for any agreement about measurability. Some people argue that God created the world with dinosaur bones in the ground and the like, after all. Whether Stenger’s arguments are sound is another question.

When I stood in the morgue in front of my mothers dead body following her episode of pancreatic cancer I had no more option about believing that she was dead because I then knew she was. Before that I had the option to believe God might heal her by some magic from the sky. Now that is what physical reality is about. If you would carry on to believe she is still physically alive you would be quite correctly diagnosed with delusion. Now if you have a non-physical understanding of life and death you might still believe her to continue to be alive in a metaphysical realm, but for that you will have no evidence for that unless you derive your understanding of life from a metaphysical definition of life, e.g. the ability to move matter and energy at will.

Now tell me how you believe something to be true is you have accepted that it’s true status is proven to you. It is a bit like trusting your partner does not work if you have already foreknowledge of his/her actions as it does not leave you with the ability of taking a personal risk on your belief in their actions, e.g to give them credit.

Considering that we have only evidence that points to life originating from life and that the physical universe had a beginning you would have to conclude that the origin of life has to be metaphysical as well.

Who gave you the authority to speak for the scientific community as “we” and how do you define life?
Do you think logic evolved with matter or do you think matter was under the law of logic when it arose?

Do you think clouds form out of free will or do they follow instructions, e.g. are under the control of a metaphysical rule.

It appears to me that you look for a God of the gaps, a God that acts contrary to his will, causing things to happen that are unnatural. Such a God is logically incoherent as he would deny his own order he created. And people who are not strong enough to follow their own will are referred to as impotent, not omnipotent, so if you wish for a God that leaves you signs that are contrary to logic you are a fool. It is like wishing for a miracle that turns wine into water and to declare wine to have a higher value than the water of ritual cleansing. Only a fool would believe that Jesus would teach that because of his own materialism. If one does not have the brains to understand the bible hindered by one’s own materialism one won’t make it through the eye of the needle if looking only for the material baggage.

@marvin

You are wrapping yourself in knots. (By the way, my sympathies for you in the sad loss of your mother.)

As you said before, it is very easy to have something you Think is a Proof… when it isn’t.

So when you say that you have something proved to you … how do you really know? You can’t “never really know” one moment, and then be suddenly assured of the validity of a proof on another day in another situation.

Belief is what you hold to be true - - regardless of the validity of the “proof” or not.

Knowledge is the correct apprehension of facts, whether you have derived the facts from sound science or not.

If someone tells you that you need to boil a poisonous root 3 times before you can eat it, and they know this because of a nursery rhyme they were taught … is that really knowledge? Sure … if it is correct.

And in the long run, your semantic point you keep trying to make really doesn’t change the discussion by much either.

I will quote @gbrooks9 on this one, since he said it much better than I:

“oh, and @T_aquaticus, when it comes to beliefs, a Believer only comes under obligation to provide adequate evidence if he proposes that you should agree with his belief.”

If you profess a faith based belief then that is your belief. I don’t see why anyone would have a burden of proof in that situation.

The only time where a burden of proof would apply, at least how I see it, is if you claimed that God’s existence were supported by scientific evidence and/or logic. As I stated in previous posts, a hypothesis (in the context of this discussion) is a reference to science, so if you aren’t making a scientific claim then there is no need for scientific evidence (i.e. proof beyond a reasonable doubt).[quote=“GJDS, post:99, topic:37310”]
A very long time ago, I found Kant’s discussion of the dialectic in his Critique informative. In mundane terms, human reason can find many reasonable ways to believe God exists, and an equal number of reasons to believe god does not exist.
[/quote]

That goes down a post-modernist path that isn’t very fruitful, IMHO. How do we determine what is reasonable? Is reasonable whatever each one of us deems it to be? Is there a difference between a reasoned position and being convinced something is true?

Young Earth creationists, for one. They claim there is scientific evidence for God’s act of creation.

However, I was only trying to define what I would consider to be a “God Hypothesis”.

Why?[quote=“marvin, post:103, topic:37310”]
Who gave you the authority to speak for the scientific community as “we” and how do you define life?
Do you think logic evolved with matter or do you think matter was under the law of logic when it arose?
[/quote]

If there is a scientist out there who can produce evidence for the origin of life I would like to see it. Otherwise, the “we” would apply to humanity at large as determined by what I have read and seen. Again, if I am wrong I would like to see the evidence.

As to logic, from what we can observe the universe acts rationally and consistently. I don’t know how the universe came about, all I can do is observe how the universe has behaved since it did appear.[quote=“marvin, post:103, topic:37310”]
Do you think clouds form out of free will or do they follow instructions, e.g. are under the control of a metaphysical rule.
[/quote]

I think clouds form through natural processes without any evidence of an outside agency.

You seem to be the one who is claiming that God created life when natural processes were incapable of producing it.

Scientific proof is only to show something to be wrong as experimental or observational evidence is limited. So if you look at heat denaturation and you know what your toxin if you can check if heating destroys it and have an idea if the heat denaturation renders it safe. You will however know that statistically you will only render a percentage of the molecules / or bugs useless, e.g. log reductions so you can estimate the residual risk.
Now if you claim to have a gun handy I can believe you but when you pull it and fire a shot I know that you have a gun at hand and that it is capable of firing shots. If I still would only believe that you had a gun after you established the fact that you had one so I know you have a gun that would be futile.

Now what you are going to do with that gun remains a point of belief as I cannot know it because I cannot prove it.
In science the only proof available to us is falsification, e.g. to prove something wrong.

If heat does away with cytotoxic effects, does that prove the toxin was a heat labile protein?[quote=“marvin, post:108, topic:37310”]
Now if you claim to have a gun handy I can believe you but when you pull it and fire a shot I know that you have a gun at hand and that it is capable of firing shots. If I still would only believe that you had a gun after you established the fact that you had one so I know you have a gun that would be futile.
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I would agree that observations and hypotheses are two different things. What does that have to do with the topic?

However, we can prove theories true beyond a reasonable doubt which is the standard most people use.

The comments on beliefs avoids the central point, in that we profess faith in God.

I think you are stretching the point too far.

I directly addressed them. I don’t know what more to say. To reiterate:

I will quote @gbrooks9 on this one, since he said it much better than I:

“oh, and @T_aquaticus, when it comes to beliefs, a Believer only comes under obligation to provide adequate evidence if he proposes that you should agree with his belief.”

If you profess a faith based belief then that is your belief. I don’t see why anyone would have a burden of proof in that situation.

I think @gbrooks9 hit it on the head. Professing a personal belief of faith in God does not entail a burden of proof, at least for this atheist. It is only when you claim that atheists should believe as you do because of reason/logic that the burden of proof comes into play.

I agree, but I add this comment. Are you responding to some attempt to convince you, or try to change your outlook? If so give specifics; if not, then what is your motivation in questioning the beliefs/faith of others?

We provide reasons that show scientific insights are consistent with our faith based outlook, that God created everything from nothing (eg constants of science). Some atheists object to this with considerable vigour and hostility - why?

In this thread, marvin has claimed that the lack of evidence for a natural process of abiogenesis is evidence for a supernatural origin of life. That is an assertion of what the universe is really like and not simply a personal statement of faith. Those sort of claims need evidence to back them, as well as a logical argument instead of an argument from ignorance. I think it is very natural to ask for a person’s reasoning and logic when they make factual assertions about the observable universe.

What I am questioning is peoples’ conclusions, not their faith based beliefs.

Other atheists may see that as a scientific claim instead of a personal statement of faith. There are quite a few people out there claiming that the fine tuning of our universe is scientific evidence for the existence of God.

I stated that this is consistent with our faith, not a faith based statement. It is this “revision” of scientific insights (discussed by those of us who profess faith in God), by some atheists that I find objectionable.