Re: Popular Athiest Misconception : 'Atheism isnt a faith-based (secular) religion'


"PG" <pgk9@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:ft1rf8$d4o$1@xxxxxxxxxxx

"John Brockbank" <wagley@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> a écrit dans le message de news:
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"PG" <pgk9@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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< That does not equate to a statement that there is/are no
g(G)od(s).


I am afraid I cut out rather too much of your message but I hope you will
remember your general thesis. If I may say so without being rude, I
think you are making a slight mistake in logic, which in fact is shared
with Dawkins, though you changed a word.

You 'admit' the teeniest smallest however slight, 'possibility' of God,
and so does Dawkins, but he uses the word 'probability'. I hope you
don't mind if I lump you together and assume that you could equally well
have used the word probability.

It is commonly accepted that a probability of zero means that a thing is
impossible, and that if it is possible it 'must' have a probability
greater than zero however small.

That is incorrect in fact and is a layman's mistake which only a person
who both understands probability (which I at least almost do) and is
pedantic (which I certainly am) would bother about.

What is the probability that Lady Di is in fact alive and has married
Elvis and is living on the other side of the moon in a dome? You have to
admit the possibility however small. I am fairly sure that if you went
along to William Hill's you could only get odds of about a million to one
against its discovery by 2012 but they are biased on the side of their
own safety. <g> However I can assure you that it has a probability of
zero.

You will not want to accept this because it goes against the mistake made
all the time by nearly everyone and even la Dawkins, but they and he are
in fact wrong. A thing has a probability of zero if that is what
results from the calculation.

Anyhing which can be imagined is possible, but most are baloney and have
zero probability. If you can think of a sillier example than the Lady Di
and Elvis in the moon dome, please do so and satisfy yourself of its zero
probability. You won't be able to think of anything less probable than a
god.

The above is perfectly reasonable, I have no trouble with your
explanation, and I don't think that it contradicts my position in any
meaningful way. But the whole emphasis of this discussion has been on
matters allegedly metaphysical, where we simply don't have the tools to
measure probability. We can assert that the evidence in favour is close to
or actually nonexistent, but we can provide little in the way of evidence
against. Remember I'm not pigeonholing a deity as some kind of infantile
personal interventionist being, but as an all-encompassing label that
covers the deist and other concepts too.

With respect to more mundane, everyday issues, I naturally make many
assumptions and choices for practical, survival reasons. And as for your
example, we can of course provide evidence against the Lady Di / Elvis
theory. We can visit the other side of the moon, and we can disinter Lady
Di and Elvis, interview those who watched them die, etc. We won't bother
though, because it is one of a vast number of crackpot ideas, or baloney
as you put it, where we simply do not need to consider the degree of
probability in order to get on with life.

However existence, the reason underlying, is something that has concerned
thinkers throughout history, so I would rather be a little more rigorous
with respect to the degree of likelihood of there being an explanation for
our existence that we have yet to discover. So if the term deity can be
synonymous with a big '?' to put it simply, then I cannot rule out the
possibility. I would add though, that any such vaguely deist concept would
likely have little or no bearing on human existence, as it would probably
be completely unaware of and unconcerned with our presence in the first
place.

pga


I accept much of what you say, but in short the point I was making is that
the probability of a god's existence is zero. All the talk about fairies
and so on is muddle-headed and confuses the issue. My example was of
something with probability zero which might be taken as nevertheless
possible.

As to evidence where it is commonly said that there is none: this is a mind
block, resulting from getting into a rut and not actually thinking: I was
chatting to a man once who said that there was no evidence, not a jot, that
MMR jabs caused autism. That is the same type of mindedness. The point
about MMR is that there is an enormously huge piece of evidence about the
matter: the autism rates in children jabbed and not jabbed are the same.

I know people say things like that doesn't prove it, and one man even went
on about sampling error, which he quite refused to accept does not apply
except in a sample survey, which the jab /no jab/ autism figures certainly
are not.

There is of course a huge amount of evidence about the matter at issue, and
it just needs a bit of thought. Remember the word is evidence so do not
come back at me saying that it doesn't prove anything and that is different
and all that baloney. Evidence.

I have seen a large number of miracles which go against common sense and
seem to be impossible but they happen and must be miraculous magic miracles
and prove beyond doubt that things can be done by will and thought which are
truly and provedly absolute total magic miracles. So there.

Trouble with that is that a bit later on I have worked out how they were
done, or been told, or read about it, or seen it explained on TV. I have
(ahem he said modestly) even made up some such tricks myself and have
impressed and mystified friends and family with them but once it is known
how they were done, the magic goes out of them. I was mystified when a boy
by how oil patches on a road go rainbow coloured when wet, and I found out
in the sixth form why that happens. I could go on all day. There are
millions of examples of evidence of seeing miracles with our own eyes but
finding out that the explanations are a bit less magical. I even know that
sometimes the knowledge of how things were done is very disappointing
indeed, one does not want to know that it was only ......

Doesn't convince you? That is fine with me, but don't say it isn't evidence
because I can assure you it is.

Of course the next trick might really be magic and Uri Geller might be able
to really do it (unless one knows how he does it). But don't say it isn't
evidence.

I have heard it said that perhaps a god used perfectly natural processes and
methods to make the universe, which of course is a capitulation.

Besides, if there was a god he she it would not have allowed his follower to
type athiest in the thread title so there's another bit of evidence (only
joking Dave).


.

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