I never heard that one before. Quite an impressive argument.

One thing that never fails to amaze me is how easily any proposition about God can be shown to limit God.

Perhaps the religious will say he is not all knowing/all powerful he’s just got an AA degree from the local community college and he’s moderately powerful. This is an argument where you could say that evil exists in spite of god because he’s no longer all powerful and all knowing.

You’re making no sense, and you answered none of my questions. I doubt I’ll be checking out your thesis on the razor.

Karen, I can give you one.

Actually, I was interested in Nina’s thoughts, since she brought up the topic.

I’ve been trying to find a materialist who would honestly answer it without some dodge about alleged “neural science” because I know the answer is not there. Where do you find “the separation of church and state” in science? I hope you can find it because I don’t want to do without it while you’re looking. That is if you take the superstitious ideology of scientism as your standard. And even if they don’t know what the word really means, that’s what just about all of this “I know there isn’t a God” type of atheism seems to boil down to.

Wow. Hostile, much? I haven’t even interacted with you and you’re already assuming I’m a “materialist,” addressing me sarcastically and referencing the “superstitious ideology of scientism.”

You’re also assuming, wrongly, that I and others here are “strong atheists,” i.e., people who make the positive declaration: “There is no god.” That is not true, at least for me and most of the other regulars here, who tend to be skeptics or “agnostic atheists.” That is, we declare simply, “I don’t see any evidence for a god or gods, and as such I do not hold any belief in gods. I am, however, open to new evidence as it arises.”

I don’t know, is there some point of pride that keeps you guys from taking the entirely impregnable stance “I don’t believe” instead of the easily shot down “I don’t know”? Because no one knows with certainty any of these issues.

See my point, above, about your tendency to jump to wrong conclusions.

Ok, if you don’t want to deal with “the separation of church and state” how about the phenomenon of “consciousness” because I know I’m conscious but I also know that science can’t get a handle on it.

I’m no scientist, so I wouldn’t presume to answer for science. However, the understanding of human consciousness is one of the most complex and cutting-edge topics currently being studied by neorologists, paleoanthropologists, linguists and other scientists. I have read some excellent work on the development of the conscious brain, which some scientists theorized was triggered by – or an immediate precursor to – the development of language in early humans.

So, again, you are jumping to premature and erroneous conclusions when you state that science “can’t get a handle on” human consciousness.

If your of a philosophical bent, how about finding even one “universal” with an entirely proven foundation. If you do, you should apply for all time fame because no one has found one yet.

Just as I’m not a scientist, I’m not a philosopher nor am I of a philosophical bent. Not even close. I took one philosophy class in college and thought I would die of boredom. I’m a pragmatist, through and through. So I can’t help you with your philosophical universals and so forth. Good luck with that, though.

I’ve written a little piece about Occam’s razor that might be fun for you. It’s sort of a late birthday present for Bertrand Russell. I’m posting it at my blog later.

You assume that the situation as you lay it out is all that there is to it. An “all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving God” (which I don’t KNOW exists) just might know a few extra vectors than you and the entire human population knows about. The idea that you can fully analyze the situation you, yourself describe on the basis of human experience alone fails just on the basis of logic.

I’m not assuming anything–I’m discussing the topic as it was presented. You say you don’t know if an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving god exists, but you posit that it might, and based on that you denigrate all human knowledge. Why? Humans don’t know everything–no shit Sherlock. Saying you’re ignorant is a poor agnosticism. It keeps you from thinking critically. There’s a lot we do know, and we’re learning all the time. If you want to be Mr. Doubt-It-All, why don’t you doubt that there is any other kind of knowing besides that of the more advanced terrestrial species? On what other basis would you analyze our situation besides human experience? Human experience is the only one I care about.

I don’t know the answer to the question but I do know the framing of the question is inadequate if you want to look at the entire picture. In that case the agnostic position is the only one that will truly state the honest conclusion. We don’t know.

Just how is it that you know my framing of the question is inadequate? Can you frame it better, or do you think that’s not possible, and how do you know that? Since all we can know is what we know, all we can know is good enough for me. Just because it seems not to be good enough for you, doesn’t permit you to include me in your ignorance. I trust my faculties because there is nothing else to trust. If I did not, then there would be no point in me asking or trying to answer any question.

In response to the comments about Occam’s razor…

I would agree that the simplest explanation is not always the correct one. If reality were simple, science education would be a lot easier. In a certain sense, it is true that simpler explanations are more likely, since there are only a few possible simple explanations and many, many possible complex explanations. But to go much further, I think, is a misuse of the razor.

Occam’s razor has many interpretations, but my favorite one is that given two equally good theories, we should choose the simpler one. This is not because it is more likely to be correct, but rather because it doesn’t really matter which is correct. If there were an observable difference between the two theories, then we could at least in theory test it, and then they would no longer be equally good theories. The reason to pick the simplest is purely practical, making calculations easier. Outside of science, you can freely choose to pick the more complicated one, if you derive comfort from it, or for any other reasons. Personally, I don’t derive comfort from ideas that are not observably different from the null hypothesis.

That should be ‘I know there isn’t a God”

I don’t know, is there some point of pride that keeps you guys from taking the entirely impregnable stance “I don’t believe” instead of the easily shot down “I don’t know”? Because no one knows with certainty any of these issues.

Ok, if you don’t want to deal with “the separation of church and state” how about the phenomenon of “consciousness” because I know I’m conscious but I also know that science can’t get a handle on it.

If your of a philosophical bent, how about finding even one “universal” with an entirely proven foundation. If you do, you should apply for all time fame because no one has found one yet.