Author Topic: God and the supernatural have no objective existence...  (Read 10946 times)

Outrider

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Re: God and the supernatural have no objective existence...
« Reply #125 on: January 29, 2025, 03:04:27 PM »
Of course, You don't have to know how your sense of smell works to smell.

Isn't relying on your senses the very empiricism that's circular reasoning?

O.
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Walt Zingmatilder

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Re: God and the supernatural have no objective existence...
« Reply #126 on: January 29, 2025, 03:47:12 PM »
Vlad,

Oh of course - “innate God detector” eh? Riiiiggghhhttt… (backs away slowly, making sure to remove any sharp objects along the way etc).
Steady old chap.
Quote

So that would differ from my innate leprechaun detector how exactly?
Your innate leprechaun detector is your eyes, ears, nose, skin and tongue...of course you wouldn’t use your tongue, probably, but a leprechaun obsessive? Who knows?
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Of course we do though know how the sense of smell works
Yes but dogs don’t and they can smell better than we can.
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… so how does this “innate God detector” thingy of your work then?
I don’t know but then we are still speculating on awareness of qualia and why the red we see is inadequately described in terms of knowledge by it’s wavelength, for instance. In other words knowing how experience works is not the same as the experience

In terms of detecting one or many, have you heard of a condition called dipoplia?
« Last Edit: January 29, 2025, 04:02:20 PM by Walt Zingmatilder »

Walt Zingmatilder

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Re: God and the supernatural have no objective existence...
« Reply #127 on: January 29, 2025, 03:57:16 PM »
Isn't relying on your senses the very empiricism that's circular reasoning?

O.
Empiricism is relying on instrumentation whether natural or artificial for the detection of energy transfers.

Stranger

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Re: God and the supernatural have no objective existence...
« Reply #128 on: January 29, 2025, 04:09:28 PM »
With your innate God detector of course.

Clearly you're just making shit up again. If there were such a sense, then we wouldn't have people all over the world 'detecting' entirely different gods or other supernatural beings.
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Steve H

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Re: God and the supernatural have no objective existence...
« Reply #129 on: January 29, 2025, 04:14:48 PM »
Empiricism is based on a circular argument
Please explain.
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Walt Zingmatilder

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Re: God and the supernatural have no objective existence...
« Reply #130 on: January 29, 2025, 04:25:32 PM »
Please explain.⁵
The "circular argument for empiricism" refers to the criticism that the very idea of validating empirical evidence as the sole source of knowledge relies on a circular reasoning, where you must already accept the validity of sensory experience to establish the criteria for judging what counts as valid sensory experience, essentially using experience to justify the very notion of experience as reliable.
Explanation:
The core concept:
Empiricism states that all knowledge originates from sensory experiences, meaning our understanding of the world is based on what we see, hear, touch, taste, and smell.
The circularity:
To argue for empiricism, one would need to use reasoning based on sensory data, but to trust that sensory data is reliable, you must already accept the premise that experience is the primary source of knowledge, creating a circular logic.

Steve H

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Re: God and the supernatural have no objective existence...
« Reply #131 on: January 29, 2025, 04:39:25 PM »
In that case, surely any epistemological position is circular. You have to start with a basic, untestable assumption with all of them
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bluehillside Retd.

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Re: God and the supernatural have no objective existence...
« Reply #132 on: January 29, 2025, 05:03:13 PM »
Vlad,

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Your innate leprechaun detector is your eyes, ears, nose, skin and tongue...of course you wouldn’t use your tongue, probably, but a leprechaun obsessive? Who knows?

And that’s different from your supposed innate god detector how exactly? Try to remember here that if you want to assert into existence a non-material god able to make himself visible and invisible at will, I can do the same for leprechauns.
 
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Yes but dogs don’t and they can smell better than we can.

Relevance?

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I don’t know but then we are still speculating on awareness of qualia and why the red we see is inadequately described in terms of knowledge by it’s wavelength, for instance. In other words knowing how experience works is not the same as the experience

So certain phenomena have yet to be fully explained, therefore you can make up new phenomena entirely that have no evidence for their existence at all? Hmmm… 

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In terms of detecting one or many, have you heard of a condition called dipoplia?

I suggest you confine yourself for now to demonstrating that this supposed “innate god detector” exists at all given the total absence of evidence for it so far.

Good luck with that though.   
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bluehillside Retd.

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Re: God and the supernatural have no objective existence...
« Reply #133 on: January 29, 2025, 05:11:32 PM »
Vlad,

Quote
The "circular argument for empiricism" refers to the criticism that the very idea of validating empirical evidence as the sole source of knowledge relies on a circular reasoning, where you must already accept the validity of sensory experience to establish the criteria for judging what counts as valid sensory experience, essentially using experience to justify the very notion of experience as reliable.
Explanation:
The core concept:
Empiricism states that all knowledge originates from sensory experiences, meaning our understanding of the world is based on what we see, hear, touch, taste, and smell.
The circularity:
To argue for empiricism, one would need to use reasoning based on sensory data, but to trust that sensory data is reliable, you must already accept the premise that experience is the primary source of knowledge, creating a circular logic.


This car crash reasoning of calling empiricism “circular” only works if you straw man it. Empiricism limits itself to being “true” only insofar as its axioms are true, and nothing more. It makes no claims to absolute truths, which is why incidentally its crowning achievement of science describes its most robust explanations as "theories" and not "proofs".   

Try to remember this too, especially as you've been schooled on it so many times already.   
« Last Edit: January 29, 2025, 08:26:04 PM by bluehillside Retd. »
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Walt Zingmatilder

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Re: God and the supernatural have no objective existence...
« Reply #134 on: January 30, 2025, 07:27:23 AM »
Is the God detector an organ translating information or data on energy transfers, No. I can see how one might want to add it to the stock of empiricism as a temporary win. Does empiricism cover the spiritual? Who knows? What is different here is that it
Is God who is being detected and I'm not sure the empiricist would want that.

I could talk of Maths detectors or morality detectors telling us right from wrong.

Outrider

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Re: God and the supernatural have no objective existence...
« Reply #135 on: January 30, 2025, 09:05:59 AM »
Empiricism is relying on instrumentation whether natural or artificial for the detection of energy transfers.

Empiricism is relying on sensory experience - we augment it with instrumentation to make phenomena that aren't intrinsically observable somehow observable, but it's the sensory experience that makes something empirical, not how big your meter is.

Wiktionary - Empiricism (philosophy) A doctrine which holds that the only or, at least, the most reliable source of human knowledge is experience, especially perception by means of the physical senses. (Often contrasted with rationalism.) [from 18th c.]
A pursuit of knowledge purely through experience, especially by means of observation and sometimes by experimentation. [from 19th c.]

O.
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jeremyp

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Re: God and the supernatural have no objective existence...
« Reply #136 on: January 30, 2025, 09:18:01 AM »
With your innate God detector of course.

WTF is an "innate God detector"? My innate bullshit detector is pinging loudly.
Quote
Of course, You don't have to know how your sense of smell works to smell.

It's weird though, how, when I've recently had a bacon sandwich, everybody who walks into the kitchen can tell, even though I've cleared up the plate and the frying pan.
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Walt Zingmatilder

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Re: God and the supernatural have no objective existence...
« Reply #137 on: January 30, 2025, 09:53:43 AM »
WTF is an "innate God detector"? My innate bullshit detector
That which detects that the matter of God is close to or at hand, stimulating an engage or evacuate response, theism or antitheism. Drawing close or dodging. In terms of Bullshit detector, have you calibrated it to eliminate the high background level I notice in your posts?
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It's weird though, how, when I've recently had a bacon sandwich, everybody who walks into the kitchen can tell, even though I've cleared up the plate and the frying pan.
You need to get out more.

Stranger

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Re: God and the supernatural have no objective existence...
« Reply #138 on: January 30, 2025, 10:02:53 AM »
That which detects that the matter of God is close to or at hand...

Any why should anybody take your claim that this is actually something real at all seriously?

While we can clearly detect that (endless different, and often contradictory) versions of God exist as ideas in people's minds (and when they come up in conversation and hence produce a response), but detecting an actual God. You need extraordinary evidence or reasoning for that claim, of which you have provided not the first hint.
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jeremyp

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Re: God and the supernatural have no objective existence...
« Reply #139 on: January 30, 2025, 10:15:02 AM »
That which detects that the matter of God is close to or at hand, stimulating an engage or evacuate response, theism or antitheism. Drawing close or dodging. In terms of Bullshit detector, have you calibrated it to eliminate the high background level I notice in your posts?
A swing and a miss from Vlad.

Honestly, you are full of it.

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You need to get out more.

Says the man who is convinced his version of the Sky Fairy is true.
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Maeght

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Re: God and the supernatural have no objective existence...
« Reply #140 on: January 30, 2025, 10:50:48 AM »
That which detects that the matter of God is close to or at hand ....

Which is?

Dicky Underpants

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Re: God and the supernatural have no objective existence...
« Reply #141 on: January 30, 2025, 02:35:54 PM »
In that case, surely any epistemological position is circular. You have to start with a basic, untestable assumption with all of them

That sums it up. Start with the presumption that there is a God and you've had incontrovertible experience of IT, then you end up with - Vlad.
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Dicky Underpants

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Re: God and the supernatural have no objective existence...
« Reply #142 on: January 30, 2025, 02:51:55 PM »
With your innate God detector of course.

I was absolutely convinced I had one (but gave the 'whatever' the benefit of the doubt that I might not quite know how to use it). Now I'm pretty convinced 'innate God detectors' have all the flaws of a tool from Poundland.

So, returning to Isaiah chapter 6, that was Isaiah's innate God detector acting at full tilt, whilst there was nothing empirically detectable, and those around the prophet (had there been any) would have seen nothing?

Other explanations are available.

Innate God detectors would have trouble with the following, since it involves quite a few people at once:

Quote
Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel went up and saw the God of Israel.
 Under his feet was something like a pavement made of sapphire, clear as the sky itself. But God did not raise his hand against these leaders of the Israelites; they saw God, and they ate and drank.

Now there is a well-attested explanation for that: it is called a collective hallucination.

Or the wild imaginings of a biblical scribe.
« Last Edit: January 30, 2025, 03:05:31 PM by Dicky Underpants »
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bluehillside Retd.

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Re: God and the supernatural have no objective existence...
« Reply #143 on: January 30, 2025, 03:08:09 PM »
Vlad,

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Is the God detector an organ translating information or data on energy transfers, No.

Or is it just something you’ve made up with not a shred of supporting evidence to support the claim so as to retro-fit its supposed results with your a priori assumption “god”?

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Hmmm… I can see how one might want to add it to the stock of empiricism as a temporary win.

Why would anyone want to do that as, so far, it’s just white noise?

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Does empiricism cover the spiritual?

Does anything given the absence of even a coherent definition for the term, let alone any evidence that it exists at all? Does empiricism cover uy)*^&kjg? Who knows?

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Who knows? What is different here is that it
Is God who is being detected and I'm not sure the empiricist would want that.

Been a while since you tried the begging the question fallacy. So there’s an “innate god detector” that detects, well, god (or gods maybe?), and you know that’s true because “What is different here is that it Is God who is being detected”.

Does anything strike you as being just a teensy-weensy bit circular about that?

Something?

Anything?   

Quote
I could talk of Maths detectors or morality detectors telling us right from wrong.

You doubtless could, and if you did it would be as much utter bollocks as your bizarre claim of a (previously undiscovered) “innate god detector”.

Oh, and no reply to your falling apart when you claimed empiricism to be circular then I see? Fair enough – I guess there was no coming back from that disaster after all.     
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Walt Zingmatilder

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Re: God and the supernatural have no objective existence...
« Reply #144 on: February 04, 2025, 09:08:59 AM »
Vlad,

Or is it just something you’ve made up with not a shred of supporting evidence to support the claim so as to retro-fit its supposed results with your a priori assumption “god”?

Why would anyone want to do that as, so far, it’s just white noise?

Does anything given the absence of even a coherent definition for the term, let alone any evidence that it exists at all? Does empiricism cover uy)*^&kjg? Who knows?

Been a while since you tried the begging the question fallacy. So there’s an “innate god detector” that detects, well, god (or gods maybe?), and you know that’s true because “What is different here is that it Is God who is being detected”.

Does anything strike you as being just a teensy-weensy bit circular about that?

Something?

Anything?   

You doubtless could, and if you did it would be as much utter bollocks as your bizarre claim of a (previously undiscovered) “innate god detector”.

Oh, and no reply to your falling apart when you claimed empiricism to be circular then I see? Fair enough – I guess there was no coming back from that disaster after all.   
I think people are aware of not only my observation of interest and attraction of and to God talk, namely people feel the warmth of "God things" but also the vehemence and lengths gone to reject God when at too close a proximity e.g. opting out of sufficient reason when the necessary entity is mentioned.
That goes for gate keeping behaviour as demonstrated by some keeping their flock safely in the pen.

bluehillside Retd.

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Re: God and the supernatural have no objective existence...
« Reply #145 on: February 04, 2025, 10:19:15 AM »
Vlad,

Quote
I think people are aware of not only my observation of interest and attraction of and to God talk, namely people feel the warmth of "God things" but also the vehemence and lengths gone to reject God when at too close a proximity e.g. opting out of sufficient reason when the necessary entity is mentioned.
That goes for gate keeping behaviour as demonstrated by some keeping their flock safely in the pen.

What is this gibberish even supposed to mean?

You made various errors in reasoning. Those errors were identified and explained to you (again). You've just ignored the problem this gives you in favour of incoherent irrelevance. Why not instead try at least to deal with, say, your mistake about the nature of empiricism?     
« Last Edit: February 04, 2025, 10:27:09 AM by bluehillside Retd. »
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Walt Zingmatilder

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Re: God and the supernatural have no objective existence...
« Reply #146 on: February 04, 2025, 11:51:35 AM »
Vlad,

What is this gibberish even supposed to mean?

You made various errors in reasoning. Those errors were identified and explained to you (again). You've just ignored the problem this gives you in favour of incoherent irrelevance. Why not instead try at least to deal with, say, your mistake about the nature of empiricism?   
As I've told you before, when one looks beyond this forum, it's "Death of God" narrative has been greatly exagerrated.

Fallacy of composition indeed.

bluehillside Retd.

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Re: God and the supernatural have no objective existence...
« Reply #147 on: February 04, 2025, 12:06:00 PM »
Vlad,

Quote
As I've told you before, when one looks beyond this forum, it's "Death of God" narrative has been greatly exagerrated.

More incoherent avoidance. So about your empiricism screw up... (again)?

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Fallacy of composition indeed.

One of several fallacies on which you routinely rely.
« Last Edit: February 04, 2025, 12:26:55 PM by bluehillside Retd. »
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Dicky Underpants

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Re: God and the supernatural have no objective existence...
« Reply #148 on: February 04, 2025, 12:06:07 PM »
As I've told you before, when one looks beyond this forum, it's "Death of God" narrative has been greatly exagerrated.

Fallacy of composition indeed.
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Dicky Underpants

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Re: God and the supernatural have no objective existence...
« Reply #149 on: February 04, 2025, 12:39:46 PM »
As I've told you before, when one looks beyond this forum, it's "Death of God" narrative has been greatly exagerrated.


Which is not even argumentum ad populum. More like argumentum ad incertos sensus  animarum diversarum (argument from vague sensations of various 'spiritualities')
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