Read it with a more critical eye, and with your and mike’s comments, I have to say that instead of, say the 0.5 score on a scale of 0.0(utter atheist) to 1.0 (utter theist) I’ve now dropped a point to 0.4 the forever shrinking agnostic, I guess.

Still can’t help feel that the existence of (a) god(s) is somehow different from the normal philosophical bent, but hey, as you say, there’s really no rational explanation for it.

It amounts, I agree, to feelings and supposition. I guess we all have beliefs and if we have no evidential background, for them, then there’s no point in telling anyone else about them.

… incidentally, the transcendental qualities of God, for instance are nonfalsifiable because they exist outside of human existence.

This guys says it better:http://amichael123.atwebpages.com/induction.shtml

(This comment was automatically marked as spam by WordPress’s’s’s spam filters, which is why I’m commenting on it now)

I really didn’t read much beyond the claim that until the Magellan Voyage, everyone believed the Earth was flat. Given that the Magellan Voyage began in 1519CE, yet the circumference of the Earth was calculated (remarkably well!) by Eratosthenes in the 200’s BCE, it’s a crap – and frequently debunked – claim.

Do you believe I love my wife? Prove it.

“I love my wife” is not a truth claim about objective reality. It is a statement about your personal perceptions. Perceptions do not always coincide with objective reality. Furthermore, your perceptions exist only within your head.

Statements about god-existence, depending on how god is defined, generally come with claims about that god interacting with objective reality (e.g., if you pray/tithe, good things will happen). But the typical evidence only exists in one person’s perceptions (e.g., I know in my heart that he exists). Reminds me of this post about emotional vs objective truth, which I just found a few hours ago.

Still, the case for god-existence is in a worse situation. I can imagine a fMRI scan revealing activity in your brain which is usually associated with feelings of love, whenever you see a picture of your smiling wife. That would amount to some evidence for your claim. The same fMRI showing god-belief activity could only demonstrate that the subject really believed in god, but it wouldn’t be evidence for anything objective outside his/her brain.

Do you believe I love my wife? Prove it.

Okay. Let’s pretend you really are Mr Plank. Let’s pretend I don’t know you (which – frankly – isn’t far from the truth anymore). In which case:

No, I don’t. I don’t know you, and I don’t know your wife. I have no evidence to believe that you do love your wife. I have no idea whatsoever as to what your relation is to your wife.

I have no idea whether you treat your wife well, or whether you abuse her. I have no idea whether you see her as an equal or as an inferior. I don’t know whether you put her needs first or your own. I don’t know whether you spend your time down the pub on your own, or at home with her — or indeed, down the pub with her. I know nothing about you and your wife.

You have provided me with no evidence one way or the other as to whether you love your wife or not. But that does not mean that you cannot provide me with evidence to persuade me one way or the other.

I hope your wife does not share your opinion that your love for her exists independent of the evidence. Women’s shelters are full of evidence of what happens in those circumstances.

You want me to believe you love your wife, show me the evidence. You want me to believe that God is even a probability, show me the evidence.

Or are you just another troll.

The existence of God and love most certainly do not fall under the category of things “of which there can be no evidence”, as I have repeatedly shown.

I have read your post, and it doesn’t deal with anything that exists of which there can be no evidence. I think that the existence of god(s) and love fall under that category.

Do you believe I love my wife? Prove it.

Well, I was coming from an aspect of what is ‘reasonable’

What is un-reasonable about asking for evidence for something before believing it!

You stated, “It will rain in a million years”. If you were to make that rather bland statement, I would have no difficulty in believing it, because – as far as I am aware – climatology is not predicting the end of precipitation in a million years time. It is a statement quite in agreement with the available evidence.

If, however, you were to state, “On 1,002,008 AD, at 17:30 UTC, at latitude X, longitude Y there will be precipitation for 10 minutes followed by sunny spells with a cold front moving in from the south”, it would be rational for me to dis-believe you, because there is no evidence that it will, and meteorology is not currently able to make such predictions.

What point do you think you’re making? Once again, it comes back to that magic word: Evidence.

Yet you can see how unreasonable it is to make a prediction about rain on a specific date in a million years, but can’t see why it is unreasonable – and irrational – for someone to believe in the Magic Kingdom without a shred of evidence!

And again, I covered this in my post. Seriously Mark, did you even bother to read it?

This guys says it better:http://amichael123.atwebpages.com/induction.shtml

Well, I was coming from an aspect of what is ‘reasonable’ Indeed the notion of supernatural ‘things’ existing is, in theory, falsifiable. If God turned up and said ‘Hey -look I’m God’ and demonstrated omniscence, and showed that he could be omnipresent then it is falsifiable. I cannot, for sure, say that this won’t happen, but any reasonable person would probably agree that it wouldn’t. In pure logic terms, you are, of course, quite correct.

Re: non-sequitor:
P1+P2 are taken out of context. The thread of the argument is about physical manifestations that have a root cause that is, ultimately, unprovable. Existence of god, and love of my wife, therefore, are ultimately tied – creation, and cooking dinner, repsectively, are the physical manifestations -and are not non-sequitors being instances and examples of the same.

Re:P1
I am saying that the initial supposition: the existence of a supernatural, is not subject to the scientific method, because it is not (reasonably) falsifiable. I stand by that. The minute such a notion manifests itself physically, or, more accurately, someone claims that there is a physical manifestation then it becomes a matter that should come under the weight of scientific scrutiny, as you say.

OK, then. It will rain in a million years. Clearly a falsifiable statement. But it’s ridiculous all the same.

But it is, nevertheless, a falsifiable statement. Although, I would prefer you to be a little more specific before actually being surprised at its accuracy.

Why is it a non-sequitor? Stating it does not make it so.

P1; If a person claims that supernatural forces interact with the world, the burden of proof is on them to prove it. (true, incidentally, which is the opposite of what you’ve been saying all along)

P2: If you make dinner for your wife because you love her it is an irrational act.

These are two utterly unconnected statements.