Can you *know* there is no God?


mpp

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okay, but what if someone offered you a noncontradictory definition of god? would you know "well enough" then that it doesn't exists? do you know horses with a horn on the forehead do not exist?

If some one gives a non-contradictory definition of X, then in the absence of evidence for X, the best we can say is that X is possible.

Example: The neutrino was postulated to save the law of conservation of momentum and conservation of energy. It took 30 years to -find- the neutrino, i.e. produce empirical evidence that it exists.

Please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino

yes, but you'd have some pieces of evidence giving rise to the theory of neutrinos, it's therefore not at all asserted without basis, as the God idea or the unicorn idea or the your wife is an impostor claim would be.

if you only have an iota of evidence, you can say it's possible. but i'm saying: if you have NO evidence to assume it, your claim that it is possible is completely arbitrary. the only thing speaking for the claim is that it's not contradictory -- and that's a prerequisite!

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To "know" is to directly experience evidence of. It's a sort of reverse-induction thing, of all that you did NOT see, nor hear nor touch (of God-ness) - going back to a toddler. And, everything else no matter how mysterious it looked, you always uncovered a causal and physical connection for.

what's "directly experience" and what's "evidence" here? the experience must be either concrete or abstract, otherwise you have sensualism.

so you mean, that because you didn't not see any evidence for god you don't know there is a god. okay, true, but do you know there is no god?

you don't know it is, but do you know it is not? these are different things.

No, the direct "experience" is not abstract, the process is sensory and perceptual before it's conceptual. An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence, as someone said. Until then, and don't hold your breath, the 'god concept' is hearsay.

what i mean is, a lot of your knowledge you didn't experience directly but you still know it, because it's an abstraction from a direct perception.

"hearsay" is a hard to classify epistemologically. the good idea is true, false, unlikely, likely, etc.

i'm wondering if such a statement as i know god doesn't exist could be valid, even with a non-contradictory definition of "god". i'm thinking it might be if you look at "know" contextually; in the context of the evidence available to me, there is nothing to support this idea. i therefore reject it and in my context, i know there is no god.

but this gets more difficult if you try to apply this to other domains: in the observable context, i see no evidence, says the judge, to support your guilt, i therefor know your are not guilty. no judge would say that, it sounds mad. ..?

does from "it is possible that x" follow that you can never know or be certain that not-x?

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okay, but what if someone offered you a noncontradictory definition of god? would you know "well enough" then that it doesn't exists? do you know horses with a horn on the forehead do not exist?

If some one gives a non-contradictory definition of X, then in the absence of evidence for X, the best we can say is that X is possible.

Example: The neutrino was postulated to save the law of conservation of momentum and conservation of energy. It took 30 years to -find- the neutrino, i.e. produce empirical evidence that it exists.

Please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino

yes, but you'd have some pieces of evidence giving rise to the theory of neutrinos, it's therefore not at all asserted without basis, as the God idea or the unicorn idea or the your wife is an impostor claim would be.

if you only have an iota of evidence, you can say it's possible. but i'm saying: if you have NO evidence to assume it, your claim that it is possible is completely arbitrary. the only thing speaking for the claim is that it's not contradictory -- and that's a prerequisite!

The neutrino was a hypothetical particle postulated to save the law of conservation of energy and conservation of momentum. It was assumed for purely mathematical reasons. Later on, evidence was found for the existence of this particle. Nearly 30 years passed while this particle was "arbitrary".

Maxwell postulated the existence of the displacement current purely to maintain the symmetry of the laws of electrodynamics between the electrical field and the magnetic field. When Maxwell postulated this term for his equations there was not an iota of evidence to support the existence of the displacement current. Later on technology was invented to detect the displacement current.

Between Maxwell's publication of his equations in 1879 and the time Herz verified his equations in 1885-1886 no empirical evidence existed to support the equations in in detail Hertz established by empirical means that Maxwell's equations were correct.

Were his equations "arbitrary" for 6 years?

Einstein postulated the existence of a light particle (later on called the photohn). He postulated the existence of this particle to account for the photo-electric effect. Later on Milikan verified Einstein's hypothesis even though he (Milikan) doubted it. Milikan set out to disprove it but found solid evidence to support it. Once the particulate nature of light was established a stake was driven through the heart of the aether hypothesis. This was in 1914. All of the hypothetical items mentioned were consistent with known facts but their existences was not verified until later on. So the best that could be said of the hypothetical items were that they were possible. Consistence establishes possibility. Hard evidence establishes existence.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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J,

God, please don’t use “begs the question” when what is meant is “invites the question” or “suggests the question.” The phrase “begs the question” should be reserved for its designation of the logical fallacy of that name. Hearing it in the other, misnomer way is for some readers like chalk grating on the blackboard (yes, more so with somewhat older readers most likely).

I know well enough there is no such thing as intelligence without life, without fallibility, and without ignorance. It’s not the same way of knowing as when we know by a mathematical theorem. But it’s as good as one’s knowing these letters are not lime juice.

Some religious thinkers have wisely thought of God as a living intelligence (Pseudo-Dionysus, Anselm, Avicenna, Albert, Aquinas, Luther, and the apostle Paul [Acts 14:15]). But all life is mortal; this we know more and more profoundly by modern biology and thermodynamics.

This begs the question raises the question . . . .

--Brant

I can still learn! I can still learn! (This begs the question raises the question [as raises it in an elevator into consciousness] . . . . [i'm so worried about dementia, you know.])

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MPP,

You asked me about a whole number of things which could be possible.

They are POSSIBLE in the sense they don't violate an axiom. Logically speaking they're possible.

But I'm talking about the existence of Jehovah as described classically in most Christian theology. And this is NOT possible. Jehovah as understood by most Christian theology DOES NOT EXIST (and if a similar-yet-not-axiom-violating-entity did exist he'd be an evil disgusting monster, more evil than Cthulhu and deserving of nothing but the absolute hatred of every member of the human race).

Jehovah as described in classical Christian theology is CERTAINLY not real because the only way for such an entity to exist would be for the Law of Identity and the Law of Non-Contradiction to be false. A Is A, A Is Not B, ergo all existing entites are finite and thus Jehovah cannot exist as defined by classical Christian theology.

Jehovah as defined in OTHER theological schemes MAY exist (in theory) but I've seen no evidence for such a being and in addition, if such a being existed, he'd probably be a total douchebag.

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The Jehovah analog is merely the tribal patriarch ultimately morphed into the King. This was not admitted so the supernatural aspect was left hanging but unchallenged. (You can't challenge it without challenging the patriarch, one of whom was the Roman Emperor Constantine.) The ironic result was eventual moral equivalence (before "God") of ruler and ruled and the birth thereby of individualism in moral and political philosophy and the neutering of the ruler's power. Unfortunately, his balls tend to keep growing back--that is, one exemplar neutered is replaced by others waiting for a chance to get and use and expand on power, usually in the name of the people, through continual sundry bribes, some of which are likely to be psychological through the extant culture even to the point of marching off to war and its slaughter. Biologically, humans are made for the tribe. It's not accidental that banishment was a death sentence. Rand's civilization setting "man free from man" is setting man free from the tribe. What else it sets him free from is secondary but necessary and inevitable, or positively consequential generally speaking.

--Brant

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you can KNOW after you die..... bu in that state you'll never be able to convince others...

The Walking Dead?

What I want to know: When you die and meet again all your loved ones, will they be wearing their old clothes?

--Brant

you take them with you?

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Derek writes:

you can KNOW after you die..... but in that state you'll never be able to convince others...

...and that's exactly as it should be, so that nothing can interfere with everyone's free choice while they're alive.

Greg

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Brant writes:

What I want to know: When you die and meet again all your loved ones, will they be wearing their old clothes?

I unexpectedly saw my Dad years after he died and he was in his regular everyday work clothes. He was young healthy and happy and let me know he was doing just fine. Even though this was over 40 years ago, I still vividly remember seeing him like it was yesterday...

...and it never goes away.

Greg

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you can KNOW after you die..... bu in that state you'll never be able to convince others...

After one dies the brain rots and the deceased cannot know anything. One needs a working brain to know anything.

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Brant writes:

What I want to know: When you die and meet again all your loved ones, will they be wearing their old clothes?

I unexpectedly saw my Dad years after he died and he was in his regular everyday work clothes. He was young healthy and happy and let me know he was doing just fine. Even though this was over 40 years ago, I still vividly remember seeing him like it was yesterday...

...and it never goes away.

Greg

Thank you for the story.

--Brant

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you can KNOW after you die..... bu in that state you'll never be able to convince others...

After one dies the brain rots and the deceased cannot know anything. One needs a working brain to know anything.

Up to yesterday I learned something new everyday.

--Brant

I can't explain why it stopped

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Brant writes:

Thank you for the story.

And thanks for properly identifying it as such, Brant. :smile:

That's all any personal experience can be to others... just a story. Michael might even call it a core story... and not an argument for, or evidence of anything. I can only say that its impact has shaped my life.

Greg

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yes, but you'd have some pieces of evidence giving rise to the theory of neutrinos, it's therefore not at all asserted without basis, as the God idea or the unicorn idea or the your wife is an impostor claim would be.

if you only have an iota of evidence, you can say it's possible. but i'm saying: if you have NO evidence to assume it, your claim that it is possible is completely arbitrary. the only thing speaking for the claim is that it's not contradictory -- and that's a prerequisite!

If one can construct a model in which the claim is true, then one has demonstrated logical possibility.

If a claim is logically impossible (which implies false) then no model exists in which the claim is true.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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  • 8 months later...

The issue of atheism and "knowing there is no god" is complicated by the fact that in these discussions, "god" is typically defined in the terms of Abrahamic Monotheism (i.e. an omniscient-omnipotent-omnipresent-omnibenevolent creator-god whom created all of existence ex nihilo blah blah blah).

THIS concept of god is logically impossible and thus I can be 100% sure that this entity, as described (or any entities with the same description) does not exist.

When we look at non-self-contradictory conceptions of god/s (I think a small number of branches of Christianity, including Mormonism, have conceptions of god which aren't self-contradictory, and the vast majority of neopagan faiths have non-self-contradictory ideas of god as well), then the atheist case shifts to the Burden Of Proof argument; I lack belief in these gods because I have seen no evidence that these gods exist. However, at least THEORETICALLY, these gods COULD exist... but that doesn't constitute evidence that they DO exist.

In other words, I am a Hard Atheist (and also an anti-theist but that's a different issue) with respect to Jehovah (and similarly-situated entities). I am a Soft Atheist with respect to Thor (and similarly-situated entities).

Seems like Einstein, like many of us, have visited and revisited this issue throughout our lives...just like all the philosophers and sages and just plain folks have, since the beginning of our record of time...

With dependable frequency, the religious views of Albert Einstein get revised and re-revised according to some re-discovered or re-interpreted quotation from his scientific work or personal correspondence. It’s not especially surprising that Einstein had a few things to say on the subject. As the pre-eminent theoretical physicist of his age, he spent his days pondering the mysteries of the universe. As one of the most famous public intellectuals in history, and an immigrant to a country as highly religious as the United States, Einstein was often called on to voice his religious opinions. Like any one of us over the course of a lifetime, those statements do not harmonize into a neat and tidy confession of belief, or unbelief. Instead, at times, Einstein explicitly aligns himself with the pantheism of Baruch Spinoza; at other times, he expresses a much more skeptical attitude. Often he seems to stand in awe of a vague deist notion of God; Often, he seems maximally agnostic.

There is a photo of one of Einstein's last thoughts on the existence of a "God," in the form of a letter to Erik Gutkind.

Leading up to that letter, I found this paragraph in the article quite compelling:

Einstein rejected the atheist label, it’s true. At no point in his adult life, however, did he express anything at all like a belief in traditional religion. On the contrary, he made a particular point of distancing himself from the theologies of Judaism and Christianity especially. Though he did admit to a brief period of “deep religiousness” as a child, this phase, he wrote “reached an abrupt end at the age of twelve.” As he writes in his Autobiographical Notes, after a “fanatic orgy of freethinking,” brought on by his exposure to scientific literature, he developed a “mistrust of every kind of authority… a skeptical attitude toward the convictions that were alive in any specific social environment—an attitude that has never left me, even though, later on, it has been tempered by a better insight into the causal connections.” In contrast to the “religious paradise” of his youth, Einstein wrote that he had come to find another kind of faith—in the “huge world… out yonder… which stands before us like a great riddle.”

The letter to Erik Gutkind, a philosopher is reproduced in the article:

Einstein’s rejection of a personal God was undeniably final, such that in 1954, a year before his death, he would write the letter above to philosopher Erik Gutkind after reading Gutkind’s book Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt on the recommendation of a mutual friend. The book, Einstein tells its author, is “written in a language inaccessible to me.” He goes on to disparage all religion as “the most childish superstition”:

The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can change this for me. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstition. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong, and whose thinking I have a deep affinity for, have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power…

http://www.openculture.com/2015/11/albert-einstein-on-god.html

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Any knowledge of God can only be personal and non transferrable so as not to interfere with each person's free choice. This way there can be nothing else except the objective reality of the just and deserved consequences of their own actions to convince them should they wish to be. For even that reality can either be denied or affirmed.

No one who does not know God believes they are getting what they deserve in their life as the consequences of what they do. For them there is always the lie of someone else to blame (unjustly accuse) for their self inflicted pain, and not truth of their own personal responsibility. This is why you will typically find an underlying tone of bitterness and resentment in those who deny God... just as there will be an underlying tone of happiness and gratitude in those who affirm Him.

People who don't love what's right enough to do it can never know God, because loving what's right enough to actually do it is loving God regardless of whether or not they choose to recognize it. God does not need people to recognize Him because that recognition is for our own good and not His. Those who deny God have only stolen from themselves the joy of being grateful for the precious gift of their their lives. For it is impossible to experience the happiness of gratitude without an ultimate Source to Which that gratitude can be directed.

Greg

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Any knowledge of God can only be personal and non transferrable so as not to interfere with each person's free choice. This way there can be nothing else except the objective reality of the just and deserved consequences of their own actions to convince them should they wish to be. For even that reality can either be denied or affirmed.

No one who does not know God believes they are getting what they deserve in their life as the consequences of what they do. For them there is always the lie of someone else to blame (unjustly accuse) for their self inflicted pain, and not truth of their own personal responsibility. This is why you will typically find an underlying tone of bitterness and resentment in those who deny God... just as there will be an underlying tone of happiness and gratitude in those who affirm Him.

People who don't love what's right enough to do it can never know God, because loving what's right enough to actually do it is loving God regardless of whether or not they choose to recognize it. God does not need people to recognize Him because that recognition is for our own good and not His. Those who deny God have only stolen from themselves the joy of being grateful for the precious gift of their their lives. For it is impossible to experience the happiness of gratitude without an ultimate Source to Which that gratitude can be directed.

Greg

Then stop these transference attempts.

They are futile.

Do you know you are proselytizing by assuming for us the existence of Him?

Substitute "Green Cheese"--as the moon is made of it--for "God." You'd be saying the same thing.

--Brant

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Well, Brant... that's exactly the attitude I was just talking about! :laugh:

No one ever changes their chosen view unless the objective reality of the consequences of their own actions says otherwise...

...and even then they're still totally free to deny objective reality...

...even when that reality is their own life.

Greg

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