Hard Atheism

[Extropian]

Ultima22689 writes,
                             "Of course not, which is why I said, the biblical god, hard atheism has a case for however, if there is an actual higher being to discover out there, who knows what it could be like?"

 Extropian replies;                            
                           Exactly my point. No one knows what it would be like. It could be one of an infinite number of things, real or imagined.  

Ultima22689;
                    "Who knows what defines a higher being, i'm sure supernatural doesn't have to be an absolute condition."

Extropian;
               If we don't know what defines a higher being, then how could science recognise it for what it is? Among the infinite number of things it might be [including a genesis machine] which is more likely? Positing the existence of one or two units from an infinity of units is a futile exercise that has no end, it leads to absurdity. IMHO, it is folly to presume that which is unnecessary. Ockham's principal of parsimony [his razor] cautions us on this point.

               It profits humankind nought to presume the supernatural when we can do no more that imagine it to exist. Our five senses, our intelligence and our technology have revealed much of nature's wonders and secrets but not one whit of something that could be positively identified as a piece of the supernatural.

              The supernatural must be eternally beyond human ken and the enquiry of science. Were it not so then the supernatural becomes natural. If there were a supernatural realm and someone ascribed a new scientific discovery to revealing the validity of the supernatural, how could we possibly know certainly that the new discovery had been supernatural? Would it be labeled "THIS IS A PIECE OF THE SUPERNATURAL"? Of course, this "piece" suddenly becomes completely natural and no longer represents its former state. It follows as night the day that the supernatural maintains its integrity by being essentially unknowable.

Ultima22689;
                    "Do I believe any of that? Of course not, but I don't think it's logical to say that any of the above are impossible, just incredibly unlikely."

Extropian;
               When one must consider an infinite number of things as being faintly "possible" then any solution to a problem becomes a pursuit of the absurd. Living one's life allowing for such circumstances [being as open-minded as it is humanly possible to be] is to ignore Ockham's razor and leaves one in a state of constant bewilderment.

               The scientific method advances our knowledge but, IMHO, it is a futile exercise to saddle one's cosmogony with things [the supernatural] that science has no hope of dealing with, that are no more than figments of an active imagination. We'll never know anyway whether science has discovered anything that had been supernatural before its discovery. It is far better scientifically and philosophically to presume as little as possible and to conduct scientific endeavours in the same manner.

               I propose that it serves no useful purpose to presume possibilities when it is unnecessary. What is discoverable will be discovered soon enough.

              Thank you for your thoughtful response.

Extropian

[Extropian]

Spot on Fester30.

But I think it would be better to work on the presumption that all gods are units in an infinity of units that comprise just one aspect of the supernatural. But we can know little if not nothing of the supernatural and we will endure that condition for a time beyond comprehension, given that the supernatural is essentially unknowable. Ergo, we can never know if it has any dimensions, we can only know that it dwells in the human mind and has no independent existence.

I have presumed for the sake of the argument that your "god" is a generic term for all gods.

Extropian

[fester30]

You have presumed accurately.

[Recusant]

A fine article which explores the idea of "supernatural" and whether it really has a useful meaning:

"Against the Supernatural as a Profound Idea" by Paul Almond

Abstract

This article will show that the term "supernatural", and similar terms, cannot have any of the profound meanings that people normally think they imply. This leaves a choice of discarding the word as incoherent or accepting its use but only with less profound meanings. This has implications for the frequent theistic claim that a "supernatural" god exists who is profoundly different to anything else.

[Ultima22689]

I do not think there is any foundation for the supernatural, nor do I look for evidence for it. I don't hypothesize about are supreme, robotic galactic overlords or the magical space man that pooped out the big bang, I simply believe, it is contradictory to make an assumption and accept X thing as fact simply because there is no evidence for it despite there being no evidence against it. Which is why I think that hard atheism succeeds when it meets the belief in the abrahamic god but not the general idea of some deity because we simply don't know. Fifty years from now, physics is probably going to look very different. The amount of things we have learned in only the past ten years is staggering, in the past 15-20 years we have made "big bang machines", discovered new subatomic particles, new theories for the origins of the universe, etc.

Who is to say that one day, we may not find some sort of source of energy that can only be described as magic or supernatural with actual science behind it? I don't think any of that loony crap will happen but you never know, bottom line, Science is a process, so to a make a claim of absolute certainty(without empirical evidence) is a contradiction to science, is it not?

[Twentythree]

Does it really matter whether an obscure fundamental creator is behind the vastness of the cosmos. Sure we could all postulate all sorts of crazy possibilities, like god is energy or god is the collective force in the universe, or god is really an alien scientist are we are all just in a test tube in his lab or any other sort of far reaching obscure definitions of god. What we have and can easily disprove is the interventionist god that most religions are rooted in. We can also disprove any purported factual content in any of the holy texts. We can however show that humans are predisposed to form meaning systems, and that those meaning systems take all sorts of shapes and each harbor its own group of moderates and extremists. What we need to be concerned with is not allowing ancient ideologies and false institutions to influence societies too greatly or to become harmful. There are certain things about existence that may well be outside our ability to perceive it. But of the things we can perceive, none of it when viewed logically, points to a substantial truth in any modern religious organizations. That is the battle that rationality has to take on, not proving or disproving an abstract non conditional idea of a possibility of god, but the fact that a majority of the world as we know it is influenced by myth, fantasy and irrational meaning systems that give them false justification in their irrational behaviors.

[Ultima22689]

Does it really matter whether an obscure fundamental creator is behind the vastness of the cosmos. Sure we could all postulate all sorts of crazy possibilities, like god is energy or god is the collective force in the universe, or god is really an alien scientist are we are all just in a test tube in his lab or any other sort of far reaching obscure definitions of god. What we have and can easily disprove is the interventionist god that most religions are rooted in. We can also disprove any purported factual content in any of the holy texts. We can however show that humans are predisposed to form meaning systems, and that those meaning systems take all sorts of shapes and each harbor its own group of moderates and extremists. What we need to be concerned with is not allowing ancient ideologies and false institutions to influence societies too greatly or to become harmful. There are certain things about existence that may well be outside our ability to perceive it. But of the things we can perceive, none of it when viewed logically, points to a substantial truth in any modern religious organizations. That is the battle that rationality has to take on, not proving or disproving an abstract non conditional idea of a possibility of god, but the fact that a majority of the world as we know it is influenced by myth, fantasy and irrational meaning systems that give them false justification in their irrational behaviors.

I think we all agreed on this already, at this point, I think we're just curious and bored.