God Doesn't Exist

[Minimalist]

Stevie...your god and the thousands of other gods which humanity has invented over the course of long, ignorant, centuries to soothe its fears and pretend to answer its questions are imaginary.  None of them are real.  Including yours.

Grow up, son.  You are on your own in this universe.

[airportkid]

... no credible research into the ways and means of every phenomena has ever found itself on a path that points to "a god musta done that" ...

Sorry for quoting myself here but this is to my mind the essential point.  What phenomena of any kind do the theists believe could only have been "a god doing that"?  I don't think there are any.

Asked another way, how would the world differ from the one we inhabit now without a god?  Answered not with unfounded speculations but competent observation and analysis of corroborating evidence.

Unlike science, which converges into coherent knowledge, all religion has ever produced are widely divergent speculations that when examined dissolve into absurdity.

[Alan V]

I disagree.  I was making an argument from evidence.

Philosophers may speculate otherwise, but I'm not a philosopher.

Then you can only conclude that God probably doesn't exist, providing your logic is sound.  It isn't.

When you're making a philosophical argument you assume the burdens of that and act as a philosopher.  Your problem is you suck at it.

I still disagree.  A good fish isn't a bad cake.

So then, what is your favorite argument for why God doesn't exist?  

[Alan V]

The existence of an immaterial God with consciousness is what's in question. You presuppose a naturalistic worldview that denies the existence of God. The argument doesn't provide evidence or reasoning to justify this assumption, making it circular.

What you fail to mention is that I and many people like me spent decades of our lives looking for evidence that God does in fact exist.  We did not find it.  We found the reverse.  It personally took me years to adjust myself to the facts, the most important of which I drew from studies on consciousness, specifically the books of Dr. J. Allan Hobson and our own lucid dreaming experiences.

The world looks exactly like it should if there is no God.  The absence of evidence is evidence of absence IMO.

And no, your Bible doesn't count as evidence because it has been formally discredited by scholarly experts.

This is decidedly NOT a matter to leave to philosophical speculations alone.  Facts stand on their own.

[pattylt]

My journey began with gods silence and finally was complete when I listened to some PhD talking about information storage and how it requires a physical media to contain it…from DNA to our brains. It’s no argument on its own, it was just my final straw.

[Dānu]

Funny, I'm returning to religion after many years away.

[Alan V]

My journey began with gods silence and finally was complete when I listened to some PhD talking about information storage and how it requires a physical media to contain it…from DNA to our brains.  It’s no argument on its own, it was just my final straw.

That is similar to what I was trying to convey.

In my own opinion, speculations about spiritualism, an afterlife, and God are all story-like elaborations to try to make sense of the mystery of consciousness.  But once scientific studies have explained many of the questions we had about consciousness, we don't need the speculations anymore.  That is experience rather than mere argument I suppose.

However, the stories have gained a life of their own for those who prefer them over facing the less-flattering facts.  Such people enjoy dishonesty instead, I guess.  But that really is irresponsible.

[Paleophyte]

Strictly speaking, what's been demonstrated is that the manifestation of consciousness in the physical world is dependent on the brain. No big shock there, physical consciousness requires a physical medium, and that's where most of us would end it.

The counter-argument is that consciousness extends beyond the physical. Whether they call it a spirit or a soul, certain people try to imbue consciousness with a supernatural component that doesn't require a fleshy home and grant non-physical consciousness a supernatural dwelling.

Researchers have shown that fantasizing, dreaming, and thinking are all brain-dependent too.  They can measure the activity of certain areas of the brain and compare them with subjective reports after the fact.  So consciousness research is no longer limited to behaviorism.

I know, but that rather misses the point. Even if you demonstrate that certain portions of the brain are active during consciousness and that that activity is necessary for consciousness you haven't demonstrated that these are the only processes involved. The spiritualists will simply invoke an interaction between the physical processes that you can very neatly demonstrate and the supernatural woo that you can't measure.

What you need to do is demonstrate that brain activity is the only process that is needed to produce consciousness. For that, I suspect that our best bet isn't neural imaging but true AI. The theists are going to have a hissy fit when a chunk of metal starts arguing good reasons to believe that Patsor Bob doesn't have a soul.

[Dānu]

[epronovost]

I know, but that rather misses the point. Even if you demonstrate that certain portions of the brain are active during consciousness and that that activity is necessary for consciousness you haven't demonstrated that these are the only processes involved. The spiritualists will simply invoke an interaction between the physical processes that you can very neatly demonstrate and the supernatural woo that you can't measure.

That could be very easily addressed with Occam's Razor. You can't gin up any conceivable, superfluous, process to salvage a debunked concept willy nily. That's neither logical nor rational which is precisely why Occam's Razor exist in the first place.

[SteveII]

This is my favorite argument for why God doesn't exist:

Science has shown that consciousness is brain-dependent.  All sorts of studies and observations support this: dementia, brain injuries, localization of functions, the effects of drugs, how consciousness changes with brain development, sleep and dreaming, and so on.

That means that when the brain dies, consciousness disappears.  So there is no afterlife.

Without a brain, there is no consciousness.  Therefore an immaterial God with consciousness cannot exist.

I had a more general thought about your favorite argument why God does not exist.

In a vastly improbable universe,
in an improbably solar system,
on a vastly improbably planet (necessary balance of elements, right size, distance from the sun, with a moon the right size)
where vastly improbably life supposedly sprung up from non-life,
where we eventually find a vastly improbably species of hominid with a brain that is probably the most complicated physical things in the entire universe and
finally this brain generated a sui generis emergent property: consciousness, with astounding abilities. Quite literally the most improbable thing that exists--and that's the most compelling reason you think God does not exist.

Interesting.

[brewerb]

Domesticated dogs have consciousness and gods. Interestingly enough they are both concrete, not abstract concepts.

[SteveII]

The existence of an immaterial God with consciousness is what's in question. You presuppose a naturalistic worldview that denies the existence of God. The argument doesn't provide evidence or reasoning to justify this assumption, making it circular.

That's an inaccurate way to show the fallacy of Alan's argument. It's true that Alan's argument is non-sequitur. It doesn't flow that the inexistence of the human soul and human afterlife prevents the existence of a personal/conscious god. It imply that said god would basically work exactly like any other animal on Earth which is a big leap to take. You could perfectly have a mortal humans without souls and afterlife and a god existing. Nowhere in the argument are the property of said god addressed 


Also, naturalism is not opposed or deny the existence of a god, it simply state that if there is one, that entity will be natural. Of course many theists, including yourself, tend to define their god as being outside of existence yet as real as a chair or a rock floating in space (the famous transcendental quality). This of course cannot apply within naturalism. Your deity though could absolutely exist in nature though it would require you to admit that there is, as of yet, no solid evidence for it.

You don't have the right concept of what Naturalism is. It is an ideology which has a fundamental principle that claims that only natural objects exists--it is explicitly anti-supernatural. God (as in the being we are all talking about) is a supernatural being. Naturalism entail rejecting the idea of God (so conceived) and that was certainly what Alan was talking about.

[epronovost]

You don't have the right concept of what Naturalism is. It is an ideology which has a fundamental principle that claims that only natural objects exists--it is explicitly anti-supernatural. God (as in the being we are all talking about) is a supernatural being. Naturalism entail rejecting the idea of God (so conceived) and that was certainly what Alan was talking about.

That's actually incorrect. Naturalism is a philosophy that does reject supernatural as an explanation as in that there are things outside of the realm of nature. You can have deities within naturalism. Those deities would be natural though and so would their powers. Yes, naturalism rejects the idea of a personal God being both outside of nature and at the same time it interacts with nature on a constant basis (the transcendental argument to have God have his cake and eat it too). For example, no argument from naturalism can be made against solar or god-kings worship for example. Naturalism cannot make any argument against conceptual deities like the "god of philosophers" or against pantheistic deities or just creatures who are functionally immortal and capable of incredible feats.

Alan's argument rejects the idea that consciousness can be immaterial. Which is absolutely correct when it comes down to human or animal consciousness as we can observe it. His argument is actually a rejection of God being purely immaterial which is technically correct within Christianity and Judaism since God, in those religion, actually has a body. More than that, in those religion not only has God a body, but it's a body akin to that of a man but too bright and radiant to be looked at directly. That God, being a physical creature, possesses a consciousness is actually a way to defeat Alan's argument.

[Inkubus]

This is my favorite argument for why God doesn't exist:

Science has shown that consciousness is brain-dependent.  All sorts of studies and observations support this: dementia, brain injuries, localization of functions, the effects of drugs, how consciousness changes with brain development, sleep and dreaming, and so on.

That means that when the brain dies, consciousness disappears.  So there is no afterlife.

Without a brain, there is no consciousness.  Therefore an immaterial God with consciousness cannot exist.

A beautifully concise description of the facts.

Then this prick appears and spams the thread with the same old copy-pasta twisted-fuck philosophy of his.

{usual boilerplate snip} Basically you are arguing: Your argument is in rough shape. As you wrote it, it is a non sequitur--the conclusion does not follow from the premises. All your premises show (if true) is that consciousness in humans is brain dependent. That's a tremendous leap from God does not exist.

And with that as always, he fucks up a perfectly decent thread. How the fuck many times does it have to be pointed out this guy has half the field on ignore, he's playing with a stacked deck. I think it's time some sort of sanction were imposed. I suggest the first step would be to disable his ignore function.

[no one]

Well, it's s a coward. A hollow, sanctimonious, self righteous coward. It has no actual evidence, just claims and pleas from its stupid book. And like all gutless warriors of godiboi, when their argument for their worthless godiboi are met with anything their utterly useless and idiotic scripture cannot contend with, they ignore it. Little stevieboi is one of the worst.

[Inkubus]

Dualists; please pay attention.

 

The reason why consciousness outside of the brain doesn't exist is for the same reason  gods don't exist. There is no possible mechanism for this to occur.

For the umpteenth time:

Claims that some form of consciousness persists after our bodies die and decay into their constituent atoms face one huge, insuperable obstacle: the laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely understood, and there’s no way within those laws to allow for the information stored in our brains to persist after we die. If you claim that some form of soul persists beyond death, what particles is that soul made of? What forces are holding it together? How does it interact with ordinary matter?

And there’s no way within those laws to allow for the information stored in our minds to exist outside of the brain. 

The linked article is an excellent read ~10 minutes.

[brewerb]

When I die my lack of belief in a god(s) will continue forever.

Actually my lack of belief will cease when the people that know me die.

[airportkid]

When you think about it, the grasping for the existence of an immaterial (and therefore COMPLETELY unknowable) dimension of the universe is itself an unwitting admission that the supernatural is sheer wishful fantasy.  Material evidence for whatever it is the theists think a god does has never been found - they have nowhere to go to support their belief so are forced to go beyond the material to the immaterial, which is, as a form of argument, immaterial.

[brewerb]

When you think about it, the grasping for the existence of an immaterial (and therefore COMPLETELY unknowable) dimension of the universe is itself an unwitting admission that the supernatural is sheer wishful fantasy.  Material evidence for whatever it is the theists think a god does has never been found - they have nowhere to go to support their belief so are forced to go beyond the material to the immaterial, which is, as a form of argument, immaterial.

but, but, but,................ it's outside of space and time.

[Dānu]

[Minimalist]

[pattylt]

The problem with them defining their god as outside space and time also removes the possibility of miracles. If something is outside our reality, then by acting within our reality, it would be provable. It would become part of the real world and testable…there would be evidence.

Instead, their god does non testable miracles such as healings for conditions known to have spontaneous remissions but never heals an amputee. It’s why the RCC never allows outsiders to test their bleeding hosts. Everytime a miracle has been testable, it’s also shown to not be a miracle.

[brewerb]

The problem with them defining their god as outside space and time also removes the possibility of miracles.  If something is outside our reality, then by acting within our reality, it would be provable.  It would become part of the real world and testable…there would be evidence.

Instead, their god does non testable miracles such as healings for conditions known to have spontaneous remissions but never heals an amputee.  It’s why the RCC never allows outsiders to test their bleeding hosts.  Everytime a miracle has been testable, it’s also shown to not be a miracle.

(devils advocate)
"........... outside space and time with magical real world powers. There, that should do it.

Amputees not healed? They are sinners unworthy of magic."

I can redefine god and read it's mind just a easily as they can.

[Inkubus]

I suppose it never occurs to them that by saying god is outside space and time they are defining god out of existence. What they are actually saying is, outside of the universe.

Mindless wankers!

This just popped into my head:

“It is complete loose stool water. It is arse-gravy of the worst kind.”

Stephen Fry