Totally not trying to sow discourse but I don’t think the person you are replying meant that any meaningful search has occurred beyond our planet. I believe they may have just been saying that over the course of human history so many people have been trying to prove it and none of them have made any real progress.
Now we have museums showing people living with dinosaurs because enough people wouldn’t believe the bones were buried by the devil to test our faith… I’m all up for any evidence someone has, history is terrifying beautiful, and the bible has some interesting stories, but it doesn’t seem very grounded in this reality (personal opinion I suppose).
Oh no I love a good discussion about this stuff! Also wasn’t trying to sow discourse so hopefully that’s not how it came across. I definitely agree, but the person I was replying too specifically referred to creation as one big crime scene across the universe and how we’ve investigated it, when we most certainly haven’t. But yes, limiting our viewpoint to here on earth, I could definitely see people going either direction with it
Well, again, it doesn’t matter that we’re only able to observe a tiny fraction of the universe. The simple fact that billions of people haven’t been able to come up with proper evidence in over two millenia alone is a very good reason to remain extremely sceptic of any claims to the opposite.
I frankly do not understand your argument “we cannot disprove it, therefore it is possible”. Well yeah, you can never disprove the existence of anything.
What I was saying is that so far, noone has been able to prove it. Many people have tried over a long period of time. Therefore it is highly unlikely to be true, and we should refuse to believe in it until there is evidence - at which point I would be happy to change my position.
“Highly unlikely to be true” based on our teeny tiny frame of reference is wild. Remember when it was crazy to believe dinosaurs had feathers? There was no evidence of it… Until there was. And that’s just staying local to the planet.
Also, the size of the universe and how much we’re able to observe DOES matter. Using my plate metaphor again, imagine a graphic on the plate. The chip you got is white. There would never be any evidence of other colors, or of the picture as a whole, until you start looking for and seeing other pieces.
I do completely agree that as long as humanity has found no evidence there’s no reason to humor the idea. But millennia of experience in our corner of space is a fart in the wind in the grand scheme of things, and lack of evidence in an isolated system should not be taken as proof to the contrary. That’s all I was saying.
A human saying they haven’t seen something in the universe and using that to say said thing is unlikely is the same thing as a goldfish in a bowl saying an octopus is unlikely
By the way, I am well aware of the well known saying you keep alluding to, while using other words - if we fill a bucket with ocean water, doesn’t mean whales don’t exist just because there isn’t one in the bucket. Or something along that line.
In the entire human history, and in all of the observable universe, no matter where we looked, no evidence for a god could be found - I never claimed that proved the non-existence of a god.
I even said that you cannot logically disprove the existence of anything. But the likelihood becomes very, very small indeed, and the claim becomes extremely far fetched. So far fetched that the amount of people still willing to believe in a god is way out of proportion. To me this shows how gullible people are, and how easy it is to fool them.
But I submit to you that it makes the existence of a god unlikely. Why? Because everything we can observe has also allegedly been created by God. And you have to admit, although it’s a very tiny part of the whole universe, it’s still a huge amount of things. Earth, animals, plants, evolution, chemistry, particle physics, elements, galaxies, everything. Nothing in the entire human body of knowledge shows even the slightest sign of having been created by a god or points to a creation.
And science does postulate that the laws of physics are the same in the entire universe, so there’s no good reason to believe God could be hiding somewhere else. The “god of the gaps” is nothing but an argumentum ad ignorantiam.
Funnily enough I haven’t actually heard of that saying XD I only kept thinking about Xeno Lovegood from Harry Potter and how NOT to sound like him lmao. He thought something existed, Hermione didn’t, so he says “prove that it does not.”
But I see where you’re coming from, I just don’t think the idea is that far-fetched or unlikely. I’m not even talking specifically about being a theist, but also even just the idea that we live in a simulation, like our whole universe was “created” as an experiment, or a zoo for aliens much larger than our universe, or shit like that. But I could see the argument for “life” being a “miracle” the same way I can see it as slightly more advanced than a plant, just buttons being pushed and reactions happening. I just think there’s SO much we haven’t seen and so much we don’t know that it’s hard to discount anything. Like we keep having to rewrite what we think the laws of physics are as our understanding of them changes. I know I’m not gonna change your mind, so agree to disagree, but it is fun to think about
It’s fun to think about a lot of things for sure. But everything you just said is well summed up in your sentence “I just think there’s SO much we haven’t seen and so much we don’t know”.
See, just because we don’t know everything, saying that god probably hides somewhere in what we don’t know yet, that’s called “The God of the gaps”. It’s what Christians have done over the centuries.
They claimed that God created the sun and earth and the solar system, and that earth is the center of it all. Then Kopernikus came along. They claimed that god created the animal kingdom and that all species are unchanged since creation. Then Darwin came along. Etcetera, etcetera. Science has kept disproving religious claims, and it still continues to do so. The gap is becoming smaller and smaller for God to hide in. Christians always point to what science doesn’t know yet (and it happily admits it doesn’t know) and say, see, that’s why God is still possible. It’s why I used the word “desperate” earlier in our debate.
In general, believing in something because one doesn’t know better is called an argumentum ad ignorantiam - and that’s a logical fallacy. There is no good reason to come up with a far fetched claim, just because you don’t have evidence to the contrary.
Have you ever heard of Russell’s Teapot? It’s a thought experiment that claims that there’s a teapot orbiting the sun somewhere in between Jupiter and Mars. Just because it cannot be discounted, does that make it likely to exist? Is it sensible to assume it does exist? No.
I think about God the same way. Everything indicates that mankind invented God. After all, we know over 3000 different deities. It just doesn’t make any sense to assume he’s real.
Totally not trying to sow discourse but I don’t think the person you are replying meant that any meaningful search has occurred beyond our planet. I believe they may have just been saying that over the course of human history so many people have been trying to prove it and none of them have made any real progress.
Now we have museums showing people living with dinosaurs because enough people wouldn’t believe the bones were buried by the devil to test our faith… I’m all up for any evidence someone has, history is terrifying beautiful, and the bible has some interesting stories, but it doesn’t seem very grounded in this reality (personal opinion I suppose).
Oh no I love a good discussion about this stuff! Also wasn’t trying to sow discourse so hopefully that’s not how it came across. I definitely agree, but the person I was replying too specifically referred to creation as one big crime scene across the universe and how we’ve investigated it, when we most certainly haven’t. But yes, limiting our viewpoint to here on earth, I could definitely see people going either direction with it
Well, again, it doesn’t matter that we’re only able to observe a tiny fraction of the universe. The simple fact that billions of people haven’t been able to come up with proper evidence in over two millenia alone is a very good reason to remain extremely sceptic of any claims to the opposite.
I frankly do not understand your argument “we cannot disprove it, therefore it is possible”. Well yeah, you can never disprove the existence of anything.
What I was saying is that so far, noone has been able to prove it. Many people have tried over a long period of time. Therefore it is highly unlikely to be true, and we should refuse to believe in it until there is evidence - at which point I would be happy to change my position.
“Highly unlikely to be true” based on our teeny tiny frame of reference is wild. Remember when it was crazy to believe dinosaurs had feathers? There was no evidence of it… Until there was. And that’s just staying local to the planet.
Also, the size of the universe and how much we’re able to observe DOES matter. Using my plate metaphor again, imagine a graphic on the plate. The chip you got is white. There would never be any evidence of other colors, or of the picture as a whole, until you start looking for and seeing other pieces.
I do completely agree that as long as humanity has found no evidence there’s no reason to humor the idea. But millennia of experience in our corner of space is a fart in the wind in the grand scheme of things, and lack of evidence in an isolated system should not be taken as proof to the contrary. That’s all I was saying.
A human saying they haven’t seen something in the universe and using that to say said thing is unlikely is the same thing as a goldfish in a bowl saying an octopus is unlikely
By the way, I am well aware of the well known saying you keep alluding to, while using other words - if we fill a bucket with ocean water, doesn’t mean whales don’t exist just because there isn’t one in the bucket. Or something along that line.
In the entire human history, and in all of the observable universe, no matter where we looked, no evidence for a god could be found - I never claimed that proved the non-existence of a god.
I even said that you cannot logically disprove the existence of anything. But the likelihood becomes very, very small indeed, and the claim becomes extremely far fetched. So far fetched that the amount of people still willing to believe in a god is way out of proportion. To me this shows how gullible people are, and how easy it is to fool them.
But I submit to you that it makes the existence of a god unlikely. Why? Because everything we can observe has also allegedly been created by God. And you have to admit, although it’s a very tiny part of the whole universe, it’s still a huge amount of things. Earth, animals, plants, evolution, chemistry, particle physics, elements, galaxies, everything. Nothing in the entire human body of knowledge shows even the slightest sign of having been created by a god or points to a creation.
And science does postulate that the laws of physics are the same in the entire universe, so there’s no good reason to believe God could be hiding somewhere else. The “god of the gaps” is nothing but an argumentum ad ignorantiam.
Funnily enough I haven’t actually heard of that saying XD I only kept thinking about Xeno Lovegood from Harry Potter and how NOT to sound like him lmao. He thought something existed, Hermione didn’t, so he says “prove that it does not.”
But I see where you’re coming from, I just don’t think the idea is that far-fetched or unlikely. I’m not even talking specifically about being a theist, but also even just the idea that we live in a simulation, like our whole universe was “created” as an experiment, or a zoo for aliens much larger than our universe, or shit like that. But I could see the argument for “life” being a “miracle” the same way I can see it as slightly more advanced than a plant, just buttons being pushed and reactions happening. I just think there’s SO much we haven’t seen and so much we don’t know that it’s hard to discount anything. Like we keep having to rewrite what we think the laws of physics are as our understanding of them changes. I know I’m not gonna change your mind, so agree to disagree, but it is fun to think about
It’s fun to think about a lot of things for sure. But everything you just said is well summed up in your sentence “I just think there’s SO much we haven’t seen and so much we don’t know”.
See, just because we don’t know everything, saying that god probably hides somewhere in what we don’t know yet, that’s called “The God of the gaps”. It’s what Christians have done over the centuries.
They claimed that God created the sun and earth and the solar system, and that earth is the center of it all. Then Kopernikus came along. They claimed that god created the animal kingdom and that all species are unchanged since creation. Then Darwin came along. Etcetera, etcetera. Science has kept disproving religious claims, and it still continues to do so. The gap is becoming smaller and smaller for God to hide in. Christians always point to what science doesn’t know yet (and it happily admits it doesn’t know) and say, see, that’s why God is still possible. It’s why I used the word “desperate” earlier in our debate.
In general, believing in something because one doesn’t know better is called an argumentum ad ignorantiam - and that’s a logical fallacy. There is no good reason to come up with a far fetched claim, just because you don’t have evidence to the contrary.
Have you ever heard of Russell’s Teapot? It’s a thought experiment that claims that there’s a teapot orbiting the sun somewhere in between Jupiter and Mars. Just because it cannot be discounted, does that make it likely to exist? Is it sensible to assume it does exist? No.
I think about God the same way. Everything indicates that mankind invented God. After all, we know over 3000 different deities. It just doesn’t make any sense to assume he’s real.