I certainly have no problem with putting multiverses in the same category as Peter Pan, along with fairies, UFOs, ghosts, psychics, and god(s). There is no objective evidence for any of these.
Incorrect. Reasonable people restrict their knowledge claims to things for which they have proof, evidence, or personal experience. That is why reasonable atheists do not claim knowledge that God does not exist.
Youâve confused reason with empiricism.
Thereâs no such thing as a reasonable atheist (as reason proves the existence of God) and atheists by definition claim that no God exists. Some are just dishonest.
Spot the difference.
Science can prove that J. M. Barrie wrote a story about âA free-spirited and mischievous young boy who can fly and never grows up, Peter Pan spends his never-ending childhood having adventures on the mythical island of Neverland as the leader of the Lost Boys, interacting with fairies, pirates, mermaids, Native Americans, and occasionally ordinary children from the world outside Neverland.â. Millions of people have seen the story on screen and stage. I saw it at the the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford Upon Avon at the age of ten with my Lillington County Junior School fourth year under Miss Lugger. I was sitting with my best friend John McNally. No relation even by law as far as I know, although my fatherâs stepmother was a McNally and I knew her fearsomely diminutive mother, my great grandmother, as Gran McNally. He and I lived at opposite ends of Mason Avenue, a long street of '50s-60s social housing. At the most poignant moment he looked at me with a rictus of grief and brokenheartedly whispered âTinkerbellâs deadâ. We laughed so hard we cried all the way down our short trouser legs,
Was that reasonable?
Seriality being what it is, Gran McNally once summoned me to below her balcony as I walked home from school. John had given me a Peak chewy sweet which I was chomping away on and thought nothing of it. I went over to Gran, with whom he shared a surname but probably few consanguineous genes, his mother was Belgian, and she scowlingly inquired as to whether I was chewing gum, a capital offence in our petit bourgeois clan, which I politely but nonplussedly (thereâs a Pond difference there, beware) denied. Some days later I had to face a board of enquiry with my parents, as without telephones it had taken word of mouth for the news to percolate the entire clan that âMartin has been seen chewing gumâ. Nobody believed me. To this day, nearly sixty years later, the monstrous injustice is head shaking. So much so that yours is right now isnât it John? Go on, admit it.
She had a Yorkshire terrier. It looked like a bundle of knotted string. Its name wasâŚ
Tinkerbell!!!
And they say there is no multiverse! Ha!
I have frequently spoken out against empiricism. I shall just have to add empiricism to the long list of things which you clearly do not understand.
Sounds like peas in the same pod as those who say there is no such thing as a reasonable theist.
I have met far more dishonest people calling themselves Christian.
But I wonder what you think they are being dishonest about. About being atheist? Are you talking about those who during some rebellious years called themselves atheist just because they wanted to indulge themselves? Those are no more atheist than those who call themselves Christian to hide the moral depravity they indulge in. And then there are those who call themselves Christian when it is a Gnostic gospel of salvation by believing dogma, thinking that âJesusâ is just a password to endless indulgences for sin.
Who speaks out against empiricism? Reason is the use of the mind to think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic, often beginning with the recognition of true facts. Empiricism is a theory that states that knowledge comes only or primarily from sensory experience. I would reject it if itâs exclusive (âonlyâ) but accept it as a means of some knowledge. Empiricism is the means through which science works.
Science has shown, as in another topic, that the universe is created and cannot create itself. Reason would then conclude that therefore there must be a creator beyond the universe, beyond nature, thus, by definition, supernatural. Hence, God.
Atheism is the belief that there is no God. Itâs the most unreasonable faith.
Our finite, mediocre universe is not nature. If God has to make universes directly, He always has done, from eternity. Whether He does, which is very inefficient of Him, or not, either way, there is an infinite, eternal source of negentropy. Declaring it to be intentional makes no difference at all, explains nothing at all at infinite cost in complexity.
Which is why materialism is the first and pre-eminently, most rational, parsimonious story.
If God has only made one universe, that is contrary to His nature and infinitely anomalously complex.
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