Merry Christmas, you wonderful people.
MERRY CHRISTMAS DYSLEXIA!!!!
Naughty bah humbug Blatham!
Dyslexia...it was merely a bit of underdone potato...can I mail you a turkey?
I believe that God exists. Why because I choose to. Can I prove it no? Can anyone disprove it no?
What I don't believe in is any of the multitude of organized man made religions and their attitude that they and only they have a pipeline to God and heaven?
dlowan
As I was driving north yesterday up Vancouver Island enroute to my twin brother's home for Christmas celebrations, I found myself reflecting on your last argument (God hypothesis more likely than pink elephant hypothesis, thus perhaps burden of proof not quite so stringent in the former case) it occured to me that there are two rather interesting components at play here.
First, I really don't think that the God hypothesis is more likely at all. Of course, we need to establish which God hypothesis is at question, there being rather a lot of them about, but to make my point, let me take the classic 'old white bearded guy living in the sky who started it all, is all knowing, all powerful, and all good, who is aware of every drop of rain and molecular interaction and vault combination and, particularly, of all my many naughty thoughts.' Now, I consider this as improbable as any notion the human imagination might possibly come up with.
My pink elephant hypothesis asks far far less of us in terms of accepting violations of how we know the natural world to be.
I think that perhaps this argument came to your mind, and passed through mine without bumping into too much until I was driving, because it seems to gain in credibility simply in that it is familiar, and believed by many. Subjective reality is often very much a matter of agreement, and nothing much more.
Such relatively wide agreement, of course, doesn't really shift the burden of proof in any logical way, it just makes it more likely that people will yell at you when you evidence yourself outside of that agreement. They might feel, and commonly do, I think, that you ought to take on this burden because you 'not agree'.
So, I'd counter-argue that popularity of a notion doesn't change at all where the burden of proving it lies, and that it is the popularity of the notion itself which, on first glance, seems like it might.
blatham who you calling a turkey?
Blatham - so glad I occupied your driving time - I love having weird stuff like that to think about when I am driving - and I often do my best thinking then!
Yes - you are quite right, logically speaking - and I was partly having fun with the argument.
Nonetheless, I hold to my point, practically speaking.
Of course, we cannot prove that subjective reality exists - much less that the that the world we, as a human group, commonly (with a lot of differences, grant you) concur to exist, exists.
Nonetheless, we do, as far as we can tell, BEHAVE as though it exists - and it is difficult to imagine how we could, in practice, do otherwise.
I think back to someone or other's rebuttal to Descartes' (was it Hare's? - I sadly cannot recall - my philosophical training is sooooooooooooo long ago!!) challenge to prove that the world exists. (Descartes' own appeal to the benign intentions of a deity no longer working for many of us)
In effect, the rebuttal said that, given the apparent solidity and shared reality of our experiences, while it remained logically true that we could not prove the existence of the world, this was an effectively meaningless doubt - that we must, in the absence of some super-sense which informed us that out world was an illusion (he invented, for the purposes of the argument, such a sense for Descartes' posited Evil Demon who was tricking us for its own nefarious purposes - and called the sense "sulpicio" - but I digress...) proceed to behave as though it was real.
(Oh, I am having fun!)
Now - given that we must proceed as though the reality we more or less share (post-modernism aside for a moment) is more or less reality, then we have a basis for arguing that some things are more likely to be real than others (just as those who sort of argue that, in another answer to Descartes, the only way we can know that we think/experience is in the act of thinking about/experiencing something "other" than ourselves, and thus that something outside our perceiving self must exist).
Thus, we sort have a basis for privileging some perceptions and beliefs about reality over others - like, in our culture, the fruits of scientific method.
I would then, argue once again, that the notion of some sort of designer/first cause/top spinner DOES make more sense than the putative pink elephants - and since the common sense and experience of the human race over the millenia does, although changingly, guide our sense of reality - then the idea of a deity of some kind ought to be subject, at least, to less ridicule and medicating and popping in asylums of its adherents than the pink elephant folk!
I think we have got more sophisticated with our deities than the old fellow in a nightgown, too - you have made the deity as much like a pink elephant as you could - for nefarious argumentative purposes, I think!
What am I saying? God knows! I think I am saying that, while we all agree there are no ways of proving a god exists, just as we know there are no ways of proving an invisible pink elephant on your head exists - unless the droppings are not invisible, and even then 'twould be evidence, not proof - it is a little unfair of folk to liken the belief in a god to a belief in invisible pink elephants on people's heads, that cause headaches or something.
I guess I am not saying much, really - but, by golly, I enjoyed saying it.
pink elephants,elvin fok, ogres, gargoyles, angels on the heads of pins, prime movers, omnipotent cosmic meddlers with sadistic intent, all pretty much the same flights of fancy to me. interesting but nuts.
You calling me a squirrel?
wanna come outside and say that?
Gargoyles exist!
I have seen 'em - and I have a number of photos - I happen to like 'em!
....you'll keep - as we say in Australia.....
I would submit that it would be incumbent upon any invisible desiring attention of any sort to provide unambiguous, indisputable proof of its own existence. As this matter is neither indisputable nor unambiguous, there remains question.
Oh, and dyslexia, good taste may be timeless, but squirrel is best consumed fresh ... Uh, so I've heard.
timber
they say (whomever they are) you can catch more flies with honey that with vinegar but if you really want to catch flies its hard to beat a dead squirrel. (aged of course)
