Dawkins, Scientific Atheism is a Fallacy & Intellectually Dishonest?

Here is my take to theists if I told you give me $1000 since I met the god Baal and he said he will destroy the city unless I build a alter to him and needed the money would you give it to me? Likely not without decent evidence that was a true deal you would not.

So why do that with any other religion?

No solid evidence should equal not spending resources and time on religion as an individual or civilization and deities unless they do something should expect that either, god eating nachos and melted cheese sitting on a couch doing nothing should get nothing/

 

¿To give you $1000?

Still I don't have a good idea about what you say here. Do you think it's better not to believe in god until something happens what forces someone to believe in god? In this case your belief seems to be: "God loves me - so I don't have to love him." Who is happy in this case? You? God?

 

If i told you to give me $1000 since i 'know' there is no God, would you give it to me? Your argument does not apply. Nobody is asking for money, or trying to convince you there is a god. this is a debate ABOUT the debate.. the tactics used, & the reasoning.

Why should the 'religion' of naturalism have ALL the funding, mandates from govt indoctrination, & censor any alternative beliefs about origins?

Why should the atheistic worldview be given more credence than a theistic one? Because they claim 'science!' as their god? They have no evidence for their beliefs, yet demand that ONLY their perspective about the universe be indoctrinated into the citizens.

 

Dawkins is a fad and the High Priest of the Militant Atheist movement. A small band of people as self-righteous as the biggest Bible-thumpers.

The only scientific and logical position on this is to be an agnostic. There is no proof either way to an existence beyond the mortal and Natural Universe. Since science concerns itself with only the Natural Universe, it would be silly for a person to be a scientist and claim to have proved or disproved the existence beyond the Universe.

 

Dawkins is a showman and milking his followers for money like a Televangelist on Sunday mornings. He hedges on his own scale and waffles when pinned about it. Further, in "The God Delusion", he claimed to be an agnostic (presumably to avoid looking like a crackpot) then has bounced around on claims to be a 6 on his spectrum scale and later, a 6.9 (7 is 100% Atheistic).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrum_of_theistic_probability#Dawkins.27_formulation

 

No the logical position is that if there is absolutly no evidence for something that something probably doesn't exist.

Trying to claim that belief in god and belief in no god are equivalent defys logic. It is more a last ditch effort by the god believers to pretend that the two choices are equally rational. It is like claiming that the probability of unicorns existing is exactly the samevas the probability that unicorns do not exist.

 

You should try looking yourself in a mirror and saying those things before posting them on the Internet for all to see: No the logical position is that if there is absolutly no evidence for something that something probably doesn't exist.

Probably doesn't exist? Does it or doesn't it? If you don't know, then what is the logical position to take?

 

I used probably deliberatly because it is not possible to prove god doesn't exist. That does not mean the probabilities of god existing and god not existing are equal.

And just so you know the logical position to take is the one with the higher possibility. But take my unicorn example and then tell me which position you think is the logical one to take.

 

No kidding. Great! What are those probabilities so we can have a nice logical discussion.

 

Armchair theories about his motivations are irrelevant to the conversation.

Once again, your presumptions about his motives are irrelevant, but the rest is correct. You just linked to the same article I did. So we both agree that he doesn't claim to know that there is no God and he doesn't claim to be able to prove there is no God. Good.

 

If you don't know, then the logical position to take is to admit that you don't know by clarifying with words like "probably."

 

I note you ducking my question. And if you were paying attention you would have noticed I used possibility in my question deliberatly to eliminate the expected pathetic attempt at dodging the question you employed.

 

So you admit you don't have any numbers? No actual probabilities for the existence or not of anything beyond the physical? No worries, it was a 10 to 1 against chance that you did.

 

Can you name any philosopher or scientist who has ever made this argument?

In all my years of working with programmers, I've never heard one pronounce this supposed "paradigm."

That's not even remotely close to what we are talking about. That is a (quite frankly really bad) maxim for designing a program. Not a statement about what one should actually believe.

All programs limit the user's choices.

Your argument is that if you can't prove something is false, you should believe it. I said your argument is wrong. You can't prove my argument false. Therefore, according to your logic, you should believe me when I say you are wrong.

There are two problems I brought up here: nonfalsifiability and contradictory beliefs. I'll start with nonfalsifiability. A nonfalsifiable claim is one that, even in principle, could never be proven false even if it is false. No amount of evidence could ever prove the belief false. The Flying Spaghetti Monster is one example. The Invisible Pink Unicorn is another. According to your logic, we can't disprove these things, so we should believe in them.

Next are the contradictory beliefs. If you believe everything that you can't disprove, then you end up having hold beliefs that contradict one another. For example, here are a few beliefs about God that I can't disprove. According to your logic, that means I should believe all of them:

-There is no God.
-There is one, and only one, God
-There are millions of gods.

 

Since no one knows, take your pick. It's a matter of faith, not fact despite those on this forum who claim to "know" or dance around giving you "odds" on which one is most correct and which is least correct.

 

Trying to shift the discussion to statistical probability is a standard evasion. Answer the question on possibilities which is how the question was phrased.

 

"No one knows" =/= all proposition are equally likely. If it were, then, the proposition "God is a green ostrich named Harriet who plays eternal hackey sack with the ghost of Salvador Dali" would be on an equal playing field with the others.

 

See you are resorting to the silly claim that it is equally logical that god exists or that god does not exist. They are not equally logical choices. Answer the unicorn question.

 

It's more correct to say "It's a silly claim to place probabilities on things that cannot be proved or disproved". They are equal because there are no numbers that can be used to prove they are not equal.

 

That is correct.

 

According to that logic, I can't say with 100% knowledge whether the next person I see to today will be one of my co-workers or a living avatar of Harriet. Therefore I should just take my pick.

 

Does she exist in the physical universe? Can her existence be proved?

 

She's omnipotent, so she can exist in the physical universe if and when she chooses to (hence the avatar comment). No, her existence can't be proved.

 

I also find it very bizarre, the argument, 'What about pink unicorns?!?', as if that addresses the BINARY possibility of a 'God/noGOD' scenario. It is a deflection, introducing absurd caricatures, to ridicule the opposition. It does not address the either/or possibility. A specific deity is not the argument, but whether the concept of a Supreme Being exists, or not.

And since there is no empirical evidence for EITHER the 'God/noGod' possibility, then either basic belief is just that: A belief.

I do believe that people have REASONS for their beliefs.. they do not spring from a vacuum, but are the result of experience, upbringing, indoctrination, etc. But for SOME 'believers' to pretend that their beliefs are somehow more valid, is nothing but the age old religious bigotry, that has been with us for millennia.

And of course, i include atheists & agnostics in this category of humanity. They are not immune from the normal foibles of humanity, even though they claim a Special Dispensation for their beliefs.

 

A scientific hypothesis must be falsifiable. The "god" hypothesis is not falsifiable, hence science won't deal with it.

No.

Maybe the author of the article needs to be reminded that science deals with observable reality.

The default position is "there's no need for gods to explain observable reality". If the "god" hypothesis can explain observable reality, there would be no need for science. Those two concepts are mutually exclusive. Science ignores the "god" hypothesis.

Scientific research cannot be based on a non-falsifiable hypothesis.

It would be logically inconsistent for a scientist to be agnostic, since science and god are mutually exclusive. Scientists agree we can't have complete knowledge, but no god is involved in the reasoning.

A journalist is not exactly authority for "elementary core tenants of the scientific method" purposes.

I haven't read Dawkins' book, so I can't discuss his methodology. But clearly the author of the article is not an authority on "elementary core tenants of the scientific method" himself.

All that scientists can do is analyze the claims of the religions. There's no other information available from independent sources about gods and supernatural. The burden of proof for those claims lies with those who uphold them - the religious.

If you think otherwise, prove there isn't a god named Krishna using scientific methods. Not your own sacred texts or subjective worldview. Only scientific methods. Show us the way.