Your type of atheist doesn't exist. Real atheists do not believe in
certain variations of "God". Like I said before, if you define God to
be the universe (many people do) then you won't find many atheists with
respect to that definition.
>>>1) The Iranaean version of God created the Universe, and all physical laws.
>>>He has the power to violate them at will, since he is their author and not
>>>bound by them.
>>
>>Fine. But if this version is detectable (affects the universe in any way)
>>then the claim that it exists enters the realm of science.
>
>But does not make it subjective to physics, which is the point.
Are the effects of his alleged interventions physical?
>>Is Whitehead's God detectable? Does His existence imply anything? If so,
>>then the claim that He exists is a scientific claim and therefore refutable
>>in theory.
>
>Refutable in theory? Demonstrate. Give me cases where it could be evidenced
>that God -- any God -- can not exist.
If God exists then situation X would be true.
Situation X is not true.
Therefore God does not exist.
(You will have to supply your own divine implication. If you can't then
God is undetectable and doesn't affect this reality.)
>>Question: would you say I am taking an illogical position by claiming that
>>there does not exist a living adult blue whale in my office?
>
>No:
>1) You can argue from experience. You, sitting there, can see there is no
>blue whale.[1]
>2) A Blue Whale is a concretely defined, clearly stated being. Your office
>is a finite space, most likely smaller than a blue whale.
>3) It fulfills the requirements of a scientific statement: The hypothosis
>(there is a Blue Whale in David McF's office) can be proven. If we see a
>Blue Whale there, there is a Blue Whale there. It can be reasonably
>disproven. If there is no Blue Whale visable, it's not there.
>
>Note that it is impossible to prove that there is not a non-corporeal,
>invisible Living Blue Whale in your office, however.
If there is no way to tell the difference between your God and a
non-corporeal, invisible Living Blue Whale then I rest my case.
>The statement "There is no God" can not be a scientific statement, because
>there is no way to prove the non-existence of God; just as the statement
>"There is no Living Blue Whale in anyone's office, anywhere in the
>universe" is a non-scientific statement. I mean, how would you check?
I think you missed my point. Some things cannot exist by definition.
The part about it being in my office is part of the definition that
which makes its existence impossible.
You can easily define a God that does exist. For example, Moku the Deity
is a small flower that lives on a planet in another galaxy. I have no
problem being agnostic with respect to Moku the Deity. It is when you
start attributing standard divine attributes to your deity that you
run into problems of logical incoherence.
Does your God ever communicate with humans? What powers does He have?
Can you say anything about Him at all? Unless you give me some hints then
there is no use talking about His alleged existence.
>No; I am attributing Athiests with the proper belief. Your position makes
>you Agnostic; an Agnostic of the "Not enough data to determine" flavor.
>
>Oh: you can say that you don't believe in God because there's not enough
>evidence yet. But an Athiest claims that there will *be* no evidence,
>because there IS NO GOD. So you remain an Agnostic.
Real atheists claim no such thing. Sorry, but I think you're merely
attacking a strawman here. If you don't believe me, I urge you to check out
http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/intro.html
-- David McFadzean david@lucifer.com Memetic Engineer http://www.lucifer.com/~david/ Church of Virus http://www.lucifer.com/virus/