subgenius wrote:Now unfortunately you have also failed to see the inherent scientific fallacy in your statements, because the "supernatural" can also not be empirically evidenced, proven, etc...to NOT exist....a more agnostic approach yes, and one that any good "pensioner" would be aware of (in the USA typically referred to as a retiree). At least an agnostic is intellectually more honest albeit while straddling the fence. The one thing one must admit about science is that it can never prove the non-existence of anything.
I will concede your point if you can empirically evidence and prove with experiments to be conducted that are observable, repeatable and reviewed by qualified learned men that the following "exist":
1. Logic and/or mathematics
2. Ethical beliefs
3. Aesthetic judgments
4. Science (itself) and/or the scientific method
5. That any person loves any other person (ie. perhaps you have a spouse, and perhaps you claim that you love that spouse, but you can not prove that)
You would have us believe that "truth" "real" and "exist" are simply that which is a probabilistic prediction......wow, the irony is delicious.
Trying to use "science" as means to disprove the existence of God or the supernatural is just clumsy....it is rather like the guy who brings a knife to gun fight. The unjustified opinion that God does not exist is nothing more than an assumption
You are correct. In so far as you can state that I only see evidence of that which can be proven. To believe in that which cannot be proven is to believe in fairy tales. I am not an agnostic, since I do not believe in anything, not even science. I do not believe in anything....other than my conviction that all that we believe in today will likely be disproved in the future. I am A theistic.
I use science, not to disprove god or gods, but merely to show that the babble we consider to be the word of gods is fictive writing. If someone claimed to have the word of god and then nothing which that person stated holds up to fact (or should I say holds water....since we're talking about the flood) it is not too dis-parent to think that the person stating the word of god is dis-solutioned.
That your 5 points of existence:
1. Logic and/or mathematics
2. Ethical beliefs
3. Aesthetic judgments
4. Science (itself) and/or the scientific method
5. That any person loves any other person (ie. perhaps you have a spouse, and perhaps you claim that you love that spouse, but you can not prove that)
should somehow exhibit the fallibility of science is, as you put it, showing up at a gun fight with a knife.
In reverse order, 5: a man who can show sales receipts for gifts is not proving a love of spouse, nor is the absence of such proof a showing to the contrary. In fact, empirical evidence of love does not exist. Love does not exist, but is merely an illusion due to interpretation. Look up your Old Testament under Abraham offering his son. Whilst you might see an exhibit of love, I see a pathological belief in voices in the head.
4: Science and the acceptance of such science is however a belief system. We pick and choose which facts we choose to believe. You might think smoking beneficial to life, i think otherwise. We choose which facts to assimilate.
3: Aesthetic judgments are purely based on belief systems and cultural restraints. I tried to spell judgement with an "e", my spell corrector removed it.
2: Ethics are judgement calls. Again, society decides.
1: But I fail to see your argument is logic and mathematics. Define for me how logic and mathematics are judgement calls.
But the existence of god may fall within statistical probability if you show how many times his so-called decisions are evaluated against standard, modern, ethical judgements. Or test it against his own preferred scale, loving father. All that feared and loved crap. God so loved the world that he sent his only beloved rain and wiped it out.
And in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love...you make. PMcC
