Dogbyte

i think its interesting that you see very few atheists in academia these days holding the position that they merely have the absence of a belief in God, as if its some default position, and then try to play the burden of proof game. call it what you will, negative or positive statements...the fact remains that ALL of them are a claim to knowledge. its the agnostic that has the neutral ground, not claiming to know either way. Both sides of the assertion requires justification. yes there is a logical difference where you place the negation, between saying "i do not believe p", and "i believe not-p". So if atheism is merely some state of mind that doesnt hold the belief in God, then i dont see how it continues to be a view at this point. Since anything that doesnt have this psychological state is therefore an atheist, a baby, a dog, a cabbage perhaps. I think the term is being redefined by closet agnostics that want to side step their epistemic duty, and fly the flag of atheism from the neutral position. if the atheist insists on providing a negative definition, that they are devoid of a belief in God and therefore the theist shoulders the burden of proof, then what is stopping the theist from coming up with the exact same strategy? Just define the "anti-theist", and claim that anyone holding the opposite belief can now shirk the burden of proof? Its just word play now. Like this: the theist is someone that fails to have the belief that it is not the case that God exists, failing to have this belief is not making a claim to knowledge. So the burden of proof falls on the anti-theist. All the theist has to do, is not have the psychological state of mind that the anti-theist has...a theist merely lacks this belief or non-view or whatever you want to label it. The anti-theist is making the claim of knowledge. This parity of reasoning is why most academic atheists do not share in this redefinition of atheism that is so ubiquitous on blogs and forums, and youtube comments. Its not defensible at all, since its a game of semantics. You still need justification for either God exists, or God does not exist. Only the agnostic fails to have either belief, and thus has no claim to knowledge. Make up any definition you wish, if it makes you content.

ok i see. thanks

all of them. since you brought up contradictions, i wonder what you thought about the contradiction of having a cosmos precede itself with respect to causation? would the cause be material? or immaterial?

"Supernatural proof is a contradiction" -- what reasons do you have to think this?

not sure why you assume that i dont, but i do.

no im not cutting at all, and im sorry if it came across that way. its just usually the case when reasoning with folks that prescribe to some sort of verificationism. Ah the unicorn. Yes, I would press you on your definition of what a unicorn is, and what about this thing makes it a necessary being, it seems as if its existence is contingent upon you having a dream of it, so not a necessary being but a contingent one. There is no reason to say that it exists in reality because it is just a contingent being, you have to make a leap of modal logic in order to do so. A unicorn 's contingent existence in a possible world means it only may exist in a possible world, so at best a possibility in some possible world, and at worst, non existent in all possible worlds. Possible worlds do not exist in the mind, they transcend that. Possible worlds are logical constructs...they exist like logic does, abstract, true and independent of human thought. Unicorn's do not have necessity, which would mean it would have to exist in all possible worlds (a necessary being). Sure then, a unicorn exists in some possible world, how does that make it a reality? Or how does a contingent being suggest the reasonable conclusion that this contingency exists in the actual world? allowing for your idea of mathematics, " a set of valid concepts" sure sounds like an abstract to me. 2+2=4 would still follow necessarily whether humans could count or not, why? We dont know, thats the question. But we can ask what the evidence points toward, a universe that has a beginning, the structure and order, and laws all fitting and or working together. By implication if this physical reality had a beginning, then what was its cause? Is the cosmos a contingency? Logic would not allow a physical cause to be contingent upon itself. Its cause would need to come from beyond or before (not before, in a temporal sense). Do we have to know the answer before we can ask the question? Seems a bit backwards and not intuitive at all. as to your second paragraph, I could say the same thing about you having no experiment to prove the existence of an external world, how do you not know that you are just a brain in a vat of nutrients on some alien planet, hooked up to stimuli that creates the illusion that you are here reading this post, or that you should think its absurd to even think you are only a brain in a vat? Every observation or measurement would involve you depending upon your 5 senses, how do you even determine if they themselves are empirically proven and reliable? If we followed that very restrictive line of methodology, then you would have to follow your own advice in considering your claims wrong since there is no empirical evidence and thus no reason to claim it is real knowledge. So for two reasons, being an overly restrictive methodology and being self defeating, i dont see that as a reasonable way to gain knowledge. No experiment can "prove" logic or mathematics either, so do we throw them away as well? Surely not. Science cannot prove these truths without reasoning in a circle. We may ask why nature adheres to or encompasses mathematics, and the answers may range from a happy coincidence to intelligent design. Doesnt matter whether or not the universe behaves this way, or whether you call it an accurate concept that we humans can recognize, you still have the question of "why the exhibition in the first place?", i just dont make the mistake of assuming that anything can be answered by the scientific method alone, the question doesnt involve a scientific claim, and neither does the question "does God exist?".

"what else exists?", "What standard is there besides nature, science, etc?" Im not certain if you are asking an epistemological question, or ontological one. However i must admit by judging from your comments about the nature of science, i would guess that may you reject metaphysics all together. Regardless, no matter how confused i am, i want to point out that im not asserting that you or anyone else adopt some single methodology for finding truth, but rather the correct methodology appropriate to the claim. Sometimes you can only deduce from what evidence is left behind to reach a logical inference. You cannot always conduct an experiment. For instance, you cannot prove the claim that all truth comes from empirical evidence, with an experiment. This very claim cannot carry out its own methodology, so is it the truth? according to its own claim, it is not. Draw the most rational inference, where ever the argument leads. So whether the evidence is logic, mathematics, scientific, philosophic, or historical, ect...use the methodology appropriate to the claim. To me that seems the most reasonable. All i am saying is that the question "does God exist", is not a scientific question. you cannot run an experiment to determine whether or not its true, no more than you can for whether or not two people are in love, or if purple is uglier than blue. We can do experiments on the evidence we have, but not replay any event or take measurements. Negatives are used all the time in logical arguments, they are valid and doesnt leave anything open as long as the rest of the argument is sound. If the question concerns things outside of space-time, then of course we can only use the evidence we do have to create a philosophical argument that reaches the best plausible explanation. If you deny the conclusion based on your view of the premise, that only a natural reality exists, all well and good, but i think its reasonable to believe that you would only get half the picture by doing so. i think it lacks ability to explain a lot of fundamental things that we believe to exist, things that even science assumes to exist, like mathematics. no matter how many natural explanations you come up with, you still cannot account for why there are natural explanations to begin with, unless you believe its rational to think the natural world exists necessarily and infinitely. In which case if you do, then i would like to hear about the arguments that lead you to this belief.

i dont want to be viewed as hijacking this thread, thats really not my intention. so if i may, i will keep referring back to the OP as the context. the truth value of the existence of a supernatural being is the central idea behind the purpose of searching for "proof" is it not? In addition, "scientific" proof was specifically sought, as opposed to maybe philosophical proof. A proof can be evidence or an argument. Maybe some folks do not agree with the idea of allowing a definition of a supreme being, but for the sake of argument, you do need a definition if you are to either accept or deny the plausibility of the premise. God will be defined as non contingent by a theist, you are free to argue against this possibility, but nevertheless you are arguing against the premise. What if the premise lays outside of physical processes? Science deals with natural explanations. So unless you accept other methodological theses, you are limiting your findings to natural explanations, which is fine...if that is your method of belief, but you are assuming the nature of the thing in your question. What if the being has no physical contingencies? Im not saying they do either way, and im not offering any proofs. The word scientific in the OP question was the flag. If you dropped that off, then you leave open the proofs to being philosophical, scientific, OR some other discipline....get what i mean? If scientism is your method of how you accept or gain knowledge, then the OP question is moot, since you wouldnt allow for the possibility of the question "is there scientific proof that God exists?" to have a truth value in the affirmative....since it cant be empirically proven by its very nature.

well with regard to the OP, whether or not you believe in the existence of a being that transcends the physical world, nevertheless the definition of such would be dealing with a being who's non existence is not possible, or rather, a metaphysically necessary being. Science is the search for naural explanations, or causation of events or phenomena. THus, when you google for proofs that call upon science to deliver you results outside of what scientists presumes to measure, its worth pointing out the special pleadng.

well if we claim the article presupposes the existence of God and its therefore circular, then how is it any different then by presupposing the physical world is all there is, which is what is implied by appealing to science for the answer?