Transcending Proof

[Fundagelico]

I haven't posted here in a while, but for anyone interested, the Secular Web just published a paper of mine, a rebuttal to Richard Carrier's argument that the nonexistence of God can be easily proven:

http://infidels.org/library/modern/don_ ... proof.html

I realize that many atheists and skeptics do not believe theism to be falsifiable. For those who do believe theism to be falsifiable, I'll try to stick around and answer any serious or substantive counterarguments.

Questions for debate:

1. Do you believe that theism (particularly Christian theism) is falsifiable?

2. If yes, how would you propose to falsify it?

3. If no, why do you believe it to be false?

[DanieltheDragon]

[Replying to post 27 by SnpM]
There is a thing called cell decay. This generally occurs for a variety of reasons but primarily when the heart stops pumping or for other reasons oxygen is deprived in blood flow. Cells begin to die. Now your body has a lot of cells around 37 trillion cells for the avg adult male. It takes a while for all of these individual cells to die. However the first ones to go the most important ones are your brain cells. That is where your consciousness exists without your brain you are effectively dead. There are cases where the body is kept alive but the brain is not. What you have at this point is an unsustainable clump of cells. Take the body off life support and it will resume cell decay. There is no way to reverse cell decay once brain activity ceases.

Your heart can stop you can have collapsed lungs your body can essentially have organ failure but so long as your brain still has activity you are not officially dead(typically 3-7 minutes after heart failure). If your organs can be repaired or replaced to sustainable levels before brain activity ceases than you can be revived(again because cell decay has not destroyed the brain).


THIS IS NOT WHAT IS DESCRIBED IN THE BIBLE.


Matthew 27:52-53

52 and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; 53 and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many.


Here you have bodies that have clearly gone through cell death rising out of the grave without any medical interference. This is what I call imaginary hooie.

We can only revive people who have suffered severe organ failure with intensive modern medical care and devices. These bodies had been unattended in graves for some time.

If you would care to explain how the saints walked out of their graves and appeared to many in the city without modern medical treatment and life support on their bodies while still retaining the brain activity(which will decay after 3-7 minutes of heart failure) necessary to walk and appear to many.

[Tired of the Nonsense]

The border for death has always been very sinuous and unclear. Death in the past was the moment a person closed his eyes, whereas we can sustain a person who lost many major organ functions for a considerably long period of time. What about 500 years in the future? Will people get to respawn like they do in Call of Duty? The superstition of the past steps not too far from the imagination of the future.

By the way, we can still keep a person alive after brain death. They just won't be conscious again.

A person can be kept alive as long as the autonomic (involuntary) nervous system is still functioning. Death of the autonomic nervous system is generally the end of the line, although it is possible in some cases to employ artificial responses for a time. A body that has experienced no cardiac activity at all for several hours, let alone several days, will easily have achieved total brain death. There is no coming back from that. Except of course in make believe and science fiction.

[SnpM]

Okay, I'm going to do something that I'm very against and end this debate because of the resources I have chosen to use. Theoretically, any debater of enough skill can convince someone given of something given any circumstance. I don't think that I'm skilled enough so I have to ditch the Bible. I'm not christian; you can read all about it here: http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... c&start=30.

So I don't believe in Jesus. Well, I believe that he's a political machination grossly contorted to suit the whims of those in power so he's nothing like what he might've meant for himself to be.

With this said, death is an abstract concept. Death is the dichotomy of life. It's darkness to the light, and ambivalence to love. Thus, it makes sense to first highlight what life. At the most basic, life might just be animation - movement, energy, vitality, etc..

The meaning of life when applied to a biological organism, however, often means that the organism animates itself independently. It consumes energy, stores it, and uses it within a specific architecture. In other words, life can be defined as the universe on a small scale, or rather, the universe can be defined with life except on a large scale.

So the logical definition for death is the lack of life: the lack of consuming, storing, and using energy in that specific structure. The thing is though... nothing ever dies. Energy, as I'm sure all of you have heard, is conserved. When a cell decays, its matter and energy is absorbed by other cells (i.e. bacteria) which eventually get absorbed by plants, which get absorbed back by us so eventually many pieces of the death human are alive at any given time.

Okay, so maybe death is the consuming, etc. of energy in a single body. Now that's a definition I can make sense of. As soon as the matter and energy of the body is dispersed, that body dies. So there we have it. A completely abstract definition that is based on arbitrary extensions of the basic meaning.

Nobody dies, not really. Their identity may die, and so may their consciousnesses, but never will what makes them die. And after all, we are what we eat (this is a joke. Please don't take this literally).

Everybody is undoubtedly immortal and I mean this in the most literal sense. How about your identity and consciousness though? Those aren't immortal! Well, identity and consciousness are radiated off just like matter and energy an they are conserved in the people you interact with. I'm beginning to sound like my philosophy teacher now. Anyways, that's my perspective on immortality.

[Fundagelico]

From the OP:

For those who do believe theism to be falsifiable, I'll try to stick around and answer any serious or substantive counterarguments.

Being the paranoid sort, I'm always on guard when the one doing the answering is the one deciding which questions he finds worthy of an answer.

Don't like the question? Dismiss it as "not serious", or "not substantive", where subjectivity is the only determinant.

Well, right. There are certain questions I don’t like, and for good reason.

For instance, if someone were to ask me a loaded question, e.g., “Why are Christians so ignorant and closed-minded?�, I wouldn’t bother to answer it. I personally have to determine how to best utilize my time, and in my subjective opinion trying to answer such questions is a waste of my time.

But I ignore certain replies with the confidence that most observers can also recognize loaded questions and the like, and distinguish them from serious and substantive counterarguments. (Of course, I thereby incur the risk that most observers will instead think that I am merely dodging.)

Notice also that I said I will “try� to answer arguments that I believe to be serious and substantive, which means I may not answer even those arguments I believe to be more worthy of a considered reply. (Again, that’s a small risk I’m willing to take in order to make my own arguments.)

[Hatuey]

I haven't posted here in a while, but for anyone interested, the Secular Web just published a paper of mine, a rebuttal to Richard Carrier's argument that the nonexistence of God can be easily proven:

http://infidels.org/library/modern/don_ ... proof.html

I realize that many atheists and skeptics do not believe theism to be falsifiable. For those who do believe theism to be falsifiable, I'll try to stick around and answer any serious or substantive counterarguments.

Questions for debate:

1. Do you believe that theism (particularly Christian theism) is falsifiable?

2. If yes, how would you propose to falsify it?

3. If no, why do you believe it to be false?

No, Christianity is not falsifiable. It is not falsifiable because each believer has a unique definition of Christianity as well as a unique methodology for dealing with any point that may appear to refute his belief. So, the way Christianity might be falsified is up to each individual believer. (One Christian I knew felt that the creation account in Genesis was largely accurate; as he studied science and the facts evolution in college over many years, he began to understand that biblical creation was a myth, and after several more years he dropped his belief. His version of Christianity was falsifiable, but most Christians do not have a type of Christianity that can be falsified except through faith that it is wrong because faith is the only consideration when they consider it to be nonfalsifiable).

I wouldn't propose to falsify Christianity. All I can do is point out its stupidity and contradictions. The believer must decide how and whether to continue to believe through faith despite silliness and contradictions. Most Christians are pretty good at figuring out way to beat any criticisms because they're already so adept at utilizing faith.

I believe Christianity to be false because it has not demonstrated its viability. There are no measurements that can be made to demonstrate the Christian dogma to be accurate. It has what other nonprovable belief systems have, but nothing that they don't (as far as being demonstrable or "true" or viable). Since Christianity relies upon faith the way all nondemosntrable belief systems do, and because many of its ideas are so stupid as to assault reason, there are no reasons to believe it is true beyond brainwashing by authority figures--and that's not enough for me.

[instantc]

I wouldn't propose to falsify Christianity. All I can do is point out its stupidity and contradictions. The believer must decide how and whether to continue to believe through faith despite silliness and contradictions.

A contradictory statement cannot be true, and thus anything that involves a contradiction can be falsified without much difficulty.

[Hatuey]

I wouldn't propose to falsify Christianity. All I can do is point out its stupidity and contradictions. The believer must decide how and whether to continue to believe through faith despite silliness and contradictions.

A contradictory statement cannot be true, and thus anything that involves a contradiction can be falsified without much difficulty.

A person unwilling to change his views will accept any excuse that allows the survival of his viewpoint, and since there are no absolutely verified elements of Christianity or the bible or its necessity or its necessity of being utmost or correct by any believer, the falsification only "sticks" for those willing to "draw a line in the sand" concerning what must be true about their belief and then be honest about its inability to stand up under scrutiny.

For example, my acquaintance relied upon evolution being largely incorrect for Christianity to be true. Once he/she realized that evolution was largely accurate, she/he considered his/her faith falsified. One who allows the goalposts of his own Christianity to be moved where there is no danger of falsifiability is free of having ever put his faith in that position.

Similar to the impossibility of "falsifying" an invisible and undetectable alien abduction that relies upon faith alone, the Christian faith cannot be falsified. No faith-based dogma can be falsified because the person with faith is making all the rules of what does and does not constitute falsifiability, and there's no way to determine which beliefs are absolute or not, since all the beliefs rely upon the strength of the belief and no determinable, detectable facts or observations.

[instantc]

I wouldn't propose to falsify Christianity. All I can do is point out its stupidity and contradictions. The believer must decide how and whether to continue to believe through faith despite silliness and contradictions.

A contradictory statement cannot be true, and thus anything that involves a contradiction can be falsified without much difficulty.

A person unwilling to change his views will accept any excuse that allows the survival of his viewpoint, and since there are no absolutely verified elements of Christianity or the bible or its necessity or its necessity of being utmost or correct by any believer, the falsification only "sticks" for those willing to "draw a line in the sand" concerning what must be true about their belief and then be honest about its inability to stand up under scrutiny.

For example, my acquaintance relied upon evolution being largely incorrect for Christianity to be true. Once he/she realized that evolution was largely accurate, she/he considered his/her faith falsified. One who allows the goalposts of his own Christianity to be moved where there is no danger of falsifiability is free of having ever put his faith in that position.

Similar to the impossibility of "falsifying" an invisible and undetectable alien abduction that relies upon faith alone, the Christian faith cannot be falsified. No faith-based dogma can be falsified because the person with faith is making all the rules of what does and does not constitute falsifiability, and there's no way to determine which beliefs are absolute or not, since all the beliefs rely upon the strength of the belief and no determinable, detectable facts or observations.

So what are these contradictions that you were talking about?

[Willum]

[Replying to post 2 by Divine Insight]

In your paper you conclude: "To the degree that the repudiation of Christian theism depends on rational objections to omnipotence, then, we are left with no objection to the truth of Christian theism at all."

So any argument begins with what is presumed to be a fact. Example: The existence of God.

When you begin asking, "where is he?" "was he falsifiable" etc., and you have to answer with, he is a paradoxical implied liar and he can't be found, because is is ineffable, omnipotent and works in mysterious ways, you have lost your argument. Period. The fact is now wrong.

You have used an unverifiable, and more importantly you have used an assumption to prove your fact. It is made worse that the assumption is the only way to prove your argument, with no reason AT ALL to make such an assumption to begin with, and certainly no way to prove it.

Just how many times must man reach the next heaven and say, "I don't see any God up here." Before we acknowledge, there is no God there?

But perhaps I can help you, in closed form: If there is an omnipotent god, the only way for such a thing to exist is to be identically the Universe. You, me, our thoughts, your dining room table, -everything.

The downside now, is of course, motivation. Gods is already taking the best care of himself that he can, so what are you to him? What you believe means less than nothing, much much less than what you do. These things you believe so importantly are nothing to 2.2 Octillion tons of hydrogen that is our Sun. Our Sun has all the importance of a bright speck of dust.

It doesn't help me out.

Bottom line: Sure I'll give you perhaps there are things we don't understand. Your "transcended proof." But in order to use them in a proof you should have an unbiased reason to suppose their existence. Dark Matter, Dragons, vaccines.

You have no reason to suppose your transcendent fact except to prove an irrational assumption. If we take away the need for motivation, like any atheist has no motivation, the need for the transcended proof, becomes non-existent, or loses priority to things like cures for cancer, finding the top quark, and maybe, just maybe: Instead of killing each other over religions, working on a modus operandi for not hurting each other.

[Hatuey]

So what are these contradictions that you were talking about?

Various ones in scripture or in interpretation; they don't matter to the believer who has faith that they CAN'T matter more than the a priori decision he holds. Someone utilizing faith will simply move the goalposts and declare the contradiction to not be one, actually, as far as he is concerned, for his uses....with faith.