And then make assumptions beyond those limits.

( Aardvark and so at last, I understood, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 1:49, archived)

no no
no no no no
no no no no
( Sir Sand GOBLIN ^popular page dis, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 1:50, archived)

Don't ever change, SSG.

( Aardvark and so at last, I understood, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 1:53, archived)

i don't even know how :(

( Sir Sand GOBLIN ^popular page dis, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 2:04, archived)

HUZZAH

( TFD is sporting this season's finest necropants, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 2:07, archived)

we should start a new thread about me,
i will answer any question
( Sir Sand GOBLIN ^popular page dis, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 2:09, archived)

DONE

( TFD is sporting this season's finest necropants, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 2:14, archived)

yes yes
yes yes yes yes
yes yes yes yes
( mike woz ere 7442200 & 7696970 getter, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 1:54, archived)

not with that attitude

( Sir Sand GOBLIN ^popular page dis, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 2:05, archived)

like what?

( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 1:55, archived)

"God exists in some form or another"
(paraphrased, obviously)
( Aardvark and so at last, I understood, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 1:56, archived)

the whole point of this discussion is that I haven't assumed it.
I wonder if you have been following it. I come to this conclusion after rejecting other assumptions that I have identified as absurd and it is the only thing that remains. And whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Reality has to exist somehow. I take that to be a truism.
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 2:02, archived)

Woah, woah, woah.
Isn't there one final, counter assumption which is to simply say 'we don't know?'
( mike woz ere 7442200 & 7696970 getter, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 2:04, archived)

wot he said

( TFD is sporting this season's finest necropants, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 2:05, archived)

so what does it matter what we say of the what "we don't know"
as long as the how we react to it when we do know is right?
( Sir Sand GOBLIN ^popular page dis, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 2:08, archived)

Fine, it's not an assumption, it's just a largely baseless conclusion.
Like TFD sort of said, any position other than 'dunno' is absolutist and inherently unprovable.
( Aardvark and so at last, I understood, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 2:05, archived)

zacktly, s'metafisicks innit

( TFD is sporting this season's finest necropants, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 2:08, archived)

*mettafizzix five*

( Aardvark and so at last, I understood, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 2:10, archived)

I put it to you that it is a conclusion you refuse to come to.
Because I do know. I know that if I eliminate everything else that what remains must be the truth, that is what I call deduction. Call this faith in reason or whatever, but I know it and you don't know it and from where I'm sitting this puts me in the better position.
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 2:11, archived)

I reject that entirely.
You don't know. If we reduce everything down I could claim we don't 'know' anything, cogito ergo sum reduction and all that, but I'm not doing that. I'm saying that empirically, you can conclude that there is a god/God all you like, but there's as much evidence to actually support that theory, over others, as there is for imaginary unicorns fucking a leprechaun and creating the universe by chance.
( Aardvark and so at last, I understood, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 2:14, archived)

And I'm saying that "empirically" is a severly limited method,
and that pure logic can establish truth - not absolute truth, mind you, because of Tarski's undefinability theorem, but if we allow ourselves to take the mathematical definition of "exists" Godel's Diagonal Lemma helps us a great deal.
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 2:23, archived)

I don't have a fucking clue what half of that is.
But your logic is flawed.
( Aardvark and so at last, I understood, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 2:28, archived)

can pure logic establish truth or not?
or do we have to see something with the senses to know it? Because that puts a great deal of mathematics and theoretical physics in the dock.
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 2:32, archived)

Accepting an answer purely because it's the only one left is more delusion than deduction.
You're assuming you had every possible answer to begin with, when clearly you didn't because the answer you've arrived at is incorrect. I could make an equally wild claim that it is impossible to disprove, but that does not make it true.
( mike woz ere 7442200 & 7696970 getter, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 2:17, archived)

there you go again assuming that answer is incorrect.
I don't know what the point is in continuing if you are going to reject any line of reasoning whatever that proves something you've already decided isn't true. Except for fun.
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 2:25, archived)

It is you that is assuming every answer is incorrect.
I am merely stating that we do not know.
( mike woz ere 7442200 & 7696970 getter, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 2:36, archived)

No I quote you.
"clearly you didn't because the answer you've arrived at is incorrect."
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 2:38, archived)

Yes, the correct answer is "we do not know."
Not, "it must be God."
( mike woz ere 7442200 & 7696970 getter, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 2:43, archived)

this is like me flipping a coin and it shows heads and asking you whether it is tails on the other side
and you saying you don't know.

Yes. It must be God because I have eliminated all the other possible answers. There's no room for "I don't know" here. I do know. I've told you why because you asked.
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 2:48, archived)

Weren't you saying something about having to experience things to know they exist?
I can't 'know' for certain it's tails on the other side but it is highly likely.

Belief in God is not a coin flip, it is a monumental leap of faith akin to saying, when presented with a coin showing a head, that it is not tails on the other side. It is not an 'answer' it is blind faith and we are only discussing this because I cannot flip over your God coin and ultimately prove you wrong.

There is also a teapot that orbits around a star in our universe. Now that I have said this, it is impossible to disprove, therefore it must be true.
( mike woz ere 7442200 & 7696970 getter, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 2:54, archived)

I have ultimate faith in the teapot theory. I just KNOW it to be true, even though there is no evidence for it.

( mike woz ere 7442200 & 7696970 getter, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 2:56, archived)

We know something of coins,
from experience you might counter, but as far as the thought-experiment goes we know it from the definition of this abstract coin. Obviously the analogy didn't work as intended. Let me not muck about with analogies then. If there are two mutually exclusive claims and we know that one is wrong, we know that the other is right. There is no excuse for fence sitting. I know you are not yet convinced that we are dealing with mutually exclusive claims but can you at least agree with me so far in this?
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 3:00, archived)

Yes I agree, with regards to things like coins where there are always one of two answers, that if one is wrong, the other must be right.
What does that have to do with you believing in God?
( mike woz ere 7442200 & 7696970 getter, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 3:07, archived)

All the non-God answers are absurd.
I have enumerated them below.
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 3:09, archived)

Sorry, you mean to say the God answer is NOT absurd?
Imagine if only one person believed in God. They'd lock them up in a mental asylum.
( mike woz ere 7442200 & 7696970 getter, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 3:11, archived)

I'm still waiting for you to disprove my tea-pot too.

( mike woz ere 7442200 & 7696970 getter, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 3:16, archived)

if only one person wasn't deaf no doubt the same outcome would result.
this is not a very good line of argument.

You have assumed it is absurd, for some reason.
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 3:16, archived)

Yes but hearing isn't the same as someone, one day claiming "THERE IS A GOD" and then there just being a God.
Stop using terrible analogies.
( mike woz ere 7442200 & 7696970 getter, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 3:18, archived)

And you haven't answered my question on where God was for the other 190,000 years of our existence and why, when he did decide to make himself known, he did so in an uneducated, illiterate and consequently gullible part of the world.
He didn't make himself known to the Chinese, who could read.
( mike woz ere 7442200 & 7696970 getter, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 3:20, archived)

woah now wait a second,
are you saying I'm the first and only person ever to say there is a God? And that my saying so somehow makes it true?
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 3:21, archived)

No, I'm saying that at some point, someone did declare it and, in your mind, that made it true.
You did not come to this conclusion on your own.
( mike woz ere 7442200 & 7696970 getter, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 3:23, archived)

Come on MGT, you're clever enough to know that this logic isn't just flawed, it's complete balls.
Good joke though.
( TFD is sporting this season's finest necropants, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 2:56, archived)

I'm glad you're here, I'm starting to question my sanity.

( mike woz ere 7442200 & 7696970 getter, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 2:59, archived)

Off to bed now I'm afraid treacle, you're on your own.

( TFD is sporting this season's finest necropants, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 3:03, archived)

complete balls?
what? I know that a coin is heads on one side and tails on the other, let is take that as a given. What is the problem here? Is logical deduction completely useless in general?
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 3:03, archived)

Well firstly working out by deduction how reality exists is in no way comparable to flipping a coin,
your complete unflinching arrogance in thinking that you have discovered and considered all the ways in which the reality could have come into being is staggering. You haven't even considered all sides of the coin, let alone the universe.

Secondly, logical deduction might possibly be useless in general, it's just an idea right? Why does it have to correspond with anything absolutely true?
( TFD is sporting this season's finest necropants, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 3:08, archived)

It's arrogant to deduce anything now,
or maybe only when you don't agree with the conclusion. You'd rather it be vague and open-ended maybe so we can all agree to disagree and get on with living however we want. Well call me arrogant. But tough.

I have considered all the sides of the coin. There are two sides of an ideal coin as used in philosophical thought experiments, heads and tails. And that's it.
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 3:14, archived)

Firstly, is faith something you can know, or something you can have?
Secondly, your reasoning is faulty, as mike said, how can you have eliminated all other possible answers.
Thirdly, you wrongly assume that we categorically refuse to come to a conclusion which involves god. I'm not going to state that believing in god is a particularly illogical conclusion, I'm just saying it's one of many pretty illogical conclusions. I happen to really enjoy the massive variety and interesting features of all sorts of illogical conclusions without fetishising some sort of ultimate answer because, and I will happily admit this, I don't think I've ever going to properly work it out.
( TFD is sporting this season's finest necropants, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 2:25, archived)

faith is something one has, I guess, but one knows it when one has it.
I can eliminate answers by mutual exclusivity. There are four possible ways for the universe can exist, and three of them are absurd. Add to this list if you can think of any others, by all means.
1. circularity
2. infinite regression (turtles all the way down)
3. absolutism or "skyhook" i.e. "it just is"
4. self-reference

Thirdly, I'm not addressing you in particular on that one.
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 2:35, archived)

5. god made it.
6. someone shat it out of their arse

Both of these possibilities are equally possible.
( mike woz ere 7442200 & 7696970 getter, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 2:39, archived)

5=2 "gods all the way down" (who made god?)
6="god made it by accident"=2

or =3 if you prefer to say that "god just is".
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 2:45, archived)