A multiplicity of truths is decidedly different from a deficit of any.

That's old news regarding quantum physics by the way but the findings d make sense.

There is no logical path from the superposition of quantum states to the assertion that truth is dependent upon the observer.

If you really want to run with that, however, it doesn't work in your favor. Is the value of a Qubit zero or one? Both. Neither. What's the difference? Once it is "observed", however--and by "observe" I mean once its wave function collapses, which could happen just from bumping into something and has nothing to do with actual human observers--it has a definite value of either one or zero.

Either nobody knows what its value is, or everyone knows what its value is. There are no multiple truths here.

Uuuuhhh,  no.  "Multiple truths" are not equally valid.

Scientific reasoning holds that better evidence can give us a better understanding of something, be closer to the 'truth', if you like. But it doesn't support a concept of there being two equally valid 'truths'. Science is somewhat more democratic than that. If more people supprt the current 'truth' (understanding), with evidence, that is what's put in the books.

I think I see what you're trying to do. Justifying a belief in god by invoking some vague understanding of quantum physics and science in general. Post modern simply means future. From an atheist perspective, I'm not sure I see the point in your question.

from mirriam webster dictionary -- fundamentalist:

1 aoften capitalized : a movement in 20th century Protestantism emphasizing the literally interpreted Bible as fundamental to Christian life and teaching b: the beliefs of this movement c: adherence to such beliefs 2: a movement or attitude stressing strict and literal adherence to a set of basic principles <Islamic fundamentalism> <political fundamentalism>

I'm thinking Xango is using the term in the #2 sense -- saying that athiests can be overly dependent on what science has already discovered -- firmly stating "science has proven x and so x is all there is!" instead of recognizing that science continues to show us how complex and amazing the world is, and so we need to be open to realities that have not YET been proven.  Is that fair, Xango?

Scientists never deal in absolutes. They never dare to "prove" anything. The method always leaves the door open for more information and a more probable explanation.

"Absolute truths" are the domain of religion and there are currently at least a dozen or so conflicting "absolute truths" out there fighting over who's is the "absolute, absolute truth."

I used to be an atheist, until I realized I had nothing to shout during blowjobs. "Oh Random Chance! Oh Random Chance!" just doesn't cut it….

--Robert Anton Wilson

Xango,

I'd prefer #1 for fun...but here, I will illustrate further in my roundabout, long-winded fashion. Hang on :3

You've read my stuff on B.S. before -- we're all, right now, operating according to biases, certain things that we hold to be automatically true.

To survive as a species (heck, as an organism), we have to be able to predict what reality is going to throw at us. So, we take as an automatic given that reality doesn't 'lie' -- that we can make predictive models of reality and that they will account for reality.

(it looks as if this process can operate really quickly as well -- when someone throws a ball to us, we 'see into the future' by creating models of the situation so that we can actually catch the ball instead of letting it hit us due to the time lag)

We like certainty. Being uncertain is uncomfortable and, potentially dangerous.

So, when we communicate, what we communicate has a signal to noise ratio. The more the communication is understood, and the more predictive power it has, the more information it is said to have. The more meaningless the signal is, the more 'noise' it is said to have.

(Thus, in my original question to you, I'd consider one of those questions to have a higher information than the other)

Now, the whole notion of G_d I consider to be of low information -- I think I'm with Judaism (or rather, what I 'know' aboot Judaism) on this one. Any statements we can make aboot it are 'not up to snuff' -- and if they are up to snuff, they are the *responsibility of the believer*. eg my statements aboot it doesn't matter if the G_ddess exists or not, because all I can talk aboot is my experience of the G_ddess (which belongs to me). If something can mean anything, then...what of its predictive ability?

I do, however, entertain notions on such things as:

o ideas being the G_ddess and G_ds;

o the notions introduced with that fine novel Contact;

o the implications of our experiments with QM going backward in time and 'fine-tuning' the Big Bang so that the experiments can happen;

o we living in a kind of computer simulation.

I am also partial to NOMA -- I think that Science is important for the World and Religion is important for People. "Science without religion is lame and religion without science is blind," as that wise old man of science and imagination once said.

Just a model,
Inannawhimsey

You could always study people who experience God and see if there are observable differences in them.  If you were willing to entertain the idea that they might not be delusional/immature/duped/on drugs, you might learn something meaningful about God phenomena.

shalom!

Ahaa! the "experience" of god is something different than god itself (or not).

Hmmm, yes; I forgot about the cultural anthropologists who do that as a career. And the neurobiologists who investigate the (in)famous trans cranial magnetic stimulation of the temporal lobes to invoke the 'holy spirit' experience.

Choosing our words carefully - as they convey meaning - there is no "proof" and no attempts made to "prove" or "disprove" anything. There either is evidence, or there isn't. In other forums, other posters have made clear that the default position of anything is that it "doesn't exist". To claim something exists, demands that you also substantiate that claim with evidence that can be tested - and by extension, shared. If the evidence behind your claim to God is a personally subjective experience - how can that ever be tested or shared? By definition... it's personal. The only things we can share with any certainty are the common elements of our shared reality - the observable, testable reality.

Atheists are constantly saying they dont know everything. Read the more prominant authors of today - Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris - and you'll find they go out of their way to make it clear that since they don't have any evidence that points to the existence of a god - they must fall back on the default position that god doesnt exist. If the evidence turned up tomorrow - they'd stand up and say the evidence suggests god may exist. I think the problem is one of communication - atheists are confident in the lack of evidence - and therefore will be firm in that position.

Nice or not - it's not necessary. We're all individuals, and I don't need the collective's confirmation to feel more or less certain about my position.

Well said Atheisto!

So you obviously don't accept that we can equally state that unicorns exist to the same extent that god does.  Can I ask why?  Is it because of the numbers of god-believers? You have a "safety in numbers" argument?  There are more atheists in the US than Jews.  So by your measure we "win" over the jews there do we?  Just because many people believe in god doesn't mean anything.  If you want to really talk numbers then look in the other threads that equate the level of education with the level of dis-belief. 

Respectfully...you have to accept that there is as much validity in the statements "god might exist", "unicorns might exist", "flying spaghetti monsters might exist".  To do otherwise is to be so incredibly blinkered that frankly you'd have to do a double take to check which century we're in.

Your "faith" statements are opinions ungrounded in anything that most people would accept as truth when applied to any other situation.  If you can tell me where any of the above statements that you feel I have made that are disrespectful are incorrect I'll eat humble pie.

I'm waiting.

spockis53 I've seen you apologizing for your choice of words before, so I was hoping you'd be a bit more careful.  Show some integrity?  Can you demonstrate how I do not show integrity?

athiesto, since you keep claiming that "more educated people are athiests," isn't that the same kind of "safety in numbers" argument that you were criticizing me for?  Not that I've seen any evidence of this great hypothesis.

A curious question: does every scientific "fact" we know come from direct observation of X itself, or do we at times favour a hypothesis about X based on the effects it seems to have on something else? 

When he says "we could see their effects", he's saying that after repeated testing, in different experiments, the only thing that explained the results was the presence of a yet undiscovered particle. If I'm not mistaken, mathematically speaking, the neutrino existed - it just couldn't be identified by any known technique.

So for a long time we could see the effects of something, a yet undiscovered something, and through designing different tests and experiments, we were able to start to learn about what it was.  hmmmm.  Perhaps God exists but we simply can't yet identify her/him by any known technique?  :)

No. Not at all.

Perhaps unicorns exist and elves and pixies...and we haven't yet developed a way to detect them.  Before you get all upset again, those are also all rational statements as if you looked above I mentioned that we saw the effects of these particles and so rationalised that they existed.

We do not even have any trace of god.  There is nothing to suggest there is any god, never has been and I don't believe there ever will be.

Therefore there is no reason to think that we will discover anything that will show this god to the world.

No trace, no evidence, nothing except faith that has as much meaning as a mirage.

However much you really want there to be a god doesn't matter to the rest of us until there is something concrete that will prove your god, until then it's just an irrational (to many) desire that you have.  For something so supposedly incredibly powerful your god is really pretty crap at showing the world he's there.

Well, effects are, by definition, detectable, so to say God is undetectable is to say that God is irrelevant. *shrug*

Atheisto wrote: Of course we can say that perhaps science has not yet proven the existence of god."

EZ Answer: Agreed.  Now how about designing that research methodology to test the God hypothesis, eh?  Snap to it, buddy! 

...I mean, other than putting a Christian in a particle accelerator and analyzing the remains for trace evidence of the divine ;)

Xango wrote: "Are you guys still trying to determine if God exists or not? I just wanted to know if atheists accept postmodernism, and if so, how can those that accept it be so sure that their way of seeing things is the only way."

EZ Answer: My response to Atheisto is fundamental to your question.  Asking your question differently: does the atheist accept limitations to the scientific method?  If not, then design research methodology to test God hypothesis.

I'm not arguing that you should be willing to consider elves and pixies too...I'm saying that you should if you are also going to consider god.  As for me.....well...I'll be completely willing if I see even a minute trace of god.  I haven't yet, and everything I've read seems to support this observation.  Humans?  We are a product of evolution, not creation.

Finally you're back to your "faith in numbers" argument.  And again I'll refer you back to the fact that there are more atheists than jews in the US.  Would you then state, using your criteria, that in this case all the jews are wrong and all the atheists are right?

How about a more extreme example...in the not too distant future there will be more Palestinians than Jews in Israel...so right now...the Jews are "right" to believe in god, but in a few years time they will be wrong to do so and the Palestinians will be "right" to believe in allah.

The fact that there are millions of believers means nothing.  It just means that there are millions of people who want to see something so desperately, who have been told that they should feel something by their peers, who feel comfortable inside their bubble...the reasons are endless.  The commonality is that none of these people are believing in anything with any tangible proof.  Hence the word "faith".

Clergychick,

Are you open to a scientific exploration/explanation of how/why god(s) exists in the human mind?  It's an interesting area of study right now (outside of theology, of course).

So if science can eventually explain the pervasive nature of the god belief and religion, would you still be inclined to ignore it?

Ergo - of course effects are detectable, I don't get your logic.  I'm arguing that there are millions of people who would claim the "effects" of a relationship with God, and that the question is merely (!) how to find an instrument to identify the causer -- God.

Athiesto -- you keep putting forward the notion that jews and muslims and christians all believe in different gods -- the UCC don't believe that!  We follow Jesus, who was a Jew, after all, and the three traditions all share a common ancestor in Abraham.  YHWH = Allah = God.  Obviously numbers in support don't mean that a given argument is correct, but it is very confusing to me how athiests can look at how very very many people claim to have had an experience of God, and yet dismiss them all as delusional.  It almost feels like an emotional response...

And... evolution makes sense (so far) to me, but doesn't negate God's creative presence either.

spockis53 -- of course I'm open to that research, and very interested!  You said, "so if science can eventually explain the pervasive nature of the god belief and religion, would you still be inclined to ignore it?"  I'm not inclined to ignore much, really (except when my kids are fighting!).  I'd look forward to that day -- so that both of us could see if science explains it as a function of our brains, or the real presence of something "other."

peace!

There is a post-postmodernist view, to which I subscribe, that is beyond both atheism and postmodernism. This view regards the universe as self-evolutionary, and ourselves as ITs co-evolutionaries.