# We don't need science to prove there is a God.



## kelly528 (Apr 21, 2010)

Mferko's discussion got me thinking... so much in fact that I FINALLY got a philosophy concept my headmaster taught me a few years ago. For those philosophers on the board, it has to do with Immanuel Kant's _Critique of Pure Reason_.

The whole thing started when a christian scholar who thought he could prove the existence of God through science was invited to one of our philosophy classes. Even though his rhetoric was good and his facts and arguments make perfect sense to a class of skeptics, our headmaster pointed out that he could argue until the end of time and it would all just be hot air. Why?

Many of you have seen the Matrix, perhaps read Descartes (I think, therefore I am) or Locke or Berkeley, or heard of the Brain in a Vat problem.

Basically, we cannot prove that anything external to our mind exists. This means that all your memories and everything you experience could for all you know be one super-realistic dream, a Matrix-style virtual reality, or the work of some mad scientist stimulating your brain in a certain way. For all you know, you could be rocking back and forth in a padded cell right now, simply imagining you are sitting at home in front of your computer reading this. If anyone can prove otherwise, my advice would be to publish it ASAP; you will sell millions of books and rack up honorary degrees from every philosophy department of every university in the world.

With this in mind, we can't prove that anything we know is true independently of our own beliefs, such as whether the universe was created of its own accord or by a higher power.

God, by definition however, is a mind-independent thing, meaning that if someone pulled the plug on the vat containing your brain, or that your mind ceased to exist, God would still exist but we can't say the same for the world.

Therefore, since we DON'T know if the universe is just the product of our imagination or whether it is completely real, AND we DO know that conceptually, God (if he exists) will exist way after our mind dies, it's completely useless to bring a bunch of scientific facts to the table and use them to debate God's existence. After all, we can't prove that we aren't dreaming and that either of them exist outside this 'dream'.

Therefore, our beliefs that we are/are not simply a Brain in a Vat, or that we really are sitting in front of our computer rather than rocking back and forth in a padded cell or that God does exist or that the universe was created by the Big Bang are all based on the same premise:

Blind Faith


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## neven (May 15, 2010)

i think one topic for this debate was enough, title should have remained what it was though on the old thread


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## kelly528 (Apr 21, 2010)

Well the other thread is long as heck. Plus this isn't science OR religion... its epistemology.


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## Mferko (Jun 8, 2010)

since facts dont support my beliefs i declare them useless
i reject your reality and substitute my own!!
im glad i got you thinking though

no but really, you cannot disprove a god, i'll give you that. it cant be done, anymore than you can disprove a celestial teapot is orbiting the planet or that there is an invisible pink unicorn or an invisible spaghetti monster going around and falsifying carbon dating results.

however, the fact that you cannot disprove something does NOT make it equally likely as the alternative.


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## kelly528 (Apr 21, 2010)

Mferko said:


> however, the fact that you cannot disprove something does NOT make it equally likely as the alternative.


Well this is open to huge debate. I'm writing a term paper on it and I can't even pick a side!

Basically all we can conclude is that facts are hypotheses about the world of the current state of consciousness that we are in. Maybe, there is an evil scientists stimulating our brain to make us believe those facts, or maybe there is a 'God' manipulating our minds to believe those facts.

The thing I love the most about the skeptical hypothesis is that it makes life a lot less serious... I figure, hey, I can't control or know whether I am living some grand delusion as a brain in a vat or not, so the only thing I can do about it is enjoy it!


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## Mferko (Jun 8, 2010)

yep enjoy life you only get one


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## e8c8k6ic (Jul 7, 2010)

*Omg*

... this is too philosophical for this fish guy to understand....

kidding aside, one can believe whatever one believes in as long as we don't impose anything to anyone.....


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## rescuepenguin (Apr 21, 2010)

hmmm..Don't forget the concept of a shared reality. From my perspective are you real? or part of an elaborate illusion. Since we have met (briefly), we have seen each other. If you are not real, someone or something has gone through extra effort to make you appear real. From your perspective am I real. There are many people reading this thread and sharing a reality. If we are not real then there is a huge effort on the part of someone/something to create a shared reality where we all interact. Mind you that happens in second life.

Any how its off to work I go, I somehow think if I tell my boss that my job is part of a grand illusion, I'll start getting calls from imaginary bill collectors.

Steve


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## curtisonrad19 (Oct 31, 2010)

It is a a dream within a dream perhaps?


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## kelly528 (Apr 21, 2010)

rescuepenguin said:


> hmmm..Don't forget the concept of a shared reality. From my perspective are you real? or part of an elaborate illusion. Since we have met (briefly), we have seen each other. If you are not real, someone or something has gone through extra effort to make you appear real. From your perspective am I real. There are many people reading this thread and sharing a reality. If we are not real then there is a huge effort on the part of someone/something to create a shared reality where we all interact. Mind you that happens in second life.
> 
> Any how its off to work I go, I somehow think if I tell my boss that my job is part of a grand illusion, I'll start getting calls from imaginary bill collectors.
> 
> Steve


Hmmm... maybe I should pull that on my Philosophy paper. I have a 50% chance of getting and A+, a 50% chance of getting a zero


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## Mferko (Jun 8, 2010)

consider this too for the paper, its a quote from one of dawkins's books, you might also want to read some of Bertrand Russel's works
i hope you pull off that A+ 

"Nevertheless, it is a common error, which we shall meet again, to leap from the premise that the question of God's existence is in principle unanswerable to the conclusion that his existence and his non-existence are equiprobable.
Another way to express that error is in terms of the burden of proof, and in this form it is pleasingly demonstrated by Bertrand Russell's parable of the celestial teapot

"Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my
assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time."
We would not waste time saying so because nobody, so far as I know, worships teapots;* but, if pressed, we would not hesitate to declare our strong belief that there is positively no orbiting teapot. Yet strictly we should all be teapot agnostics: we cannot prove, for sure, that there is no celestial teapot. In practice, we move away from teapot agnosticism towards a-teapotism. 
A friend, who was brought up a Jew and still observes the sabbath and other Jewish customs out of loyalty to his heritage, describes himself as a 'tooth fairy agnostic'. He regards God as no more probable than the tooth fairy. You can't disprove either hypothesis, and both are equally improbable. He is an a-theist to exactly the same large extent that he is an a-fairyist. And agnostic about both, to the same small extent. Russell's teapot, of course, stands for an infinite number of things whose existence is conceivable and cannot be disproved.
That great American lawyer Clarence Darrow said, 'I don't believe in God as I don't believe in Mother Goose.' 
The journalist Andrew Mueller is of the opinion that pledging yourself to any particular religion 'is no more or less weird than choosing to believe that the world is rhombus-shaped, and borne through the cosmos in the pincers of two enormous green lobsters called Esmerelda and Keith'.32 A philosophical favourite is the invisible, intangible, inaudible unicorn, disproof of which is attempted yearly by the children at Camp Quest.* A popular deity on the Internet at present - and as undisprovable as Yahweh or any other - is the Flying Spaghetti Monster, who, many claim, has touched them with his noodly appendage.33 I am delighted to see that the Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster has now been published as a book,34 to great acclaim. I haven't read it myself, but who needs to read a gospel when you just know it's true? By the way, it had to happen - a Great Schism has already occurred, resulting in the Reformed Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. 
The point of all these way-out examples is that they are undisprovable, yet nobody thinks the hypothesis of their existence is on an even footing with the hypothesis of their non-existence. Russell's point is that the burden of proof rests with the believers, not the non-believers. Mine is the related point that the odds in favour of the teapot (spaghetti monster / Esmerelda and Keith / unicorn etc.) are not equal to the odds against.
The fact that orbiting teapots and tooth fairies are undisprovable is not felt, by any reasonable person, to be the kind of fact that settles any interesting argument. None of us feels an obligation to disprove any of the millions of far-fetched things that a fertile or facetious imagination might dream up. I have found it an amusing strategy, when asked whether I am an atheist, to point out that the questioner is also an atheist when considering Zeus, Apollo, Amon Ra, Mithras, Baal, Thor, Wotan, the Golden Calf and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I just go one god further."

if you wish to read further its page 51-54 here http://uath.org/download/literature/RichardDawkinsGodDelusion.pdf


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## gklaw (May 31, 2010)

e8c8k6ic said:


> ... this is too philosophical for this fish guy to understand....
> 
> kidding aside, one can believe whatever one believes in as long as we don't impose anything to anyone.....


Thanks you !

As long as everyone remain fair and respect others opinion. The debate chellenge and deepen our understanding of ourselves and our universe. Hence how we should care for our world and others.

Mferko: Sorry, but implicating religious people are delusional may be just a bit unfair and disrespectful, would you think?


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## Mferko (Jun 8, 2010)

im sorry if you were offended, to clarify i dont think all religious people are delusional, only those that take creation according to scripture literally

according to the dictionary a delusion is an idiosyncratic belief or impression maintained despite being contradicted by reality or rational argument

creation according to scripture is contradicted by rational argument as we have discussed


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