KevinSim wrote:What DrW said goes way beyond "not believing things for which there is a major lack of evidence." He made statements about "any" deity at all.
KevinSim wrote:I just don't see how DrW can be certain that any deity is a product of human creativity, without appealing to something inherent in alleged divinity, and he definitely didn't appeal to something inherent in alleged divinity.
Themis wrote: HuH? You are not making sense. You are again making an assertion about human creativity that you have no idea about. It's just what you want to believe. Dr. W is just taking the reasonable position from a lack of evidence while you are taking to unreasonable position for a huge desire to believe it. I suspect his high degree, not absolute, of certainty is from looking at all the evidence humans give us about them probably making things up. Humans want answers so humans have been making them up for as long as humans have been walking the earth.
Hello, Kevin.
I have to agree with Themis on this one - and with Bazooka when he asserts that your reasoning is flawed, and in some cases, yes, even circular.
I do understand that you firmly believe that your reasoning is sound, and are unlikely to see things differently than you do now, no matter what evidence in brought to bear against your worldview.
Nonetheless, being the eternal optimist, please allow me to explain where I think you, and millions of other believers in magic, go wrong - dangerously wrong.
Let's start with the hardware (or "wetware") that affords your mind consciousness, and allows you to think at all - that wonderful hominid brain that has evolved over millions of years.
The human brain has a relatively large and complex neocortex compared to that of other primates. This neocortex is relatively thin with a large surface area and is comprised of tens of millions of microscopic columns, or stacks of cells, which function as pattern recognizers.
These are further organized into groups and levels such that small pattern components recognized by lower level cell groups are assembled into more complex patterns by higher level centers, with all cell groups "voting" their pattern recognition result, until a useful decision can be made. Such a decision might involve the ability to distinguish between the letter V and the letter U, for example.
At still higher levels, words are recognized, and at higher levels concepts are formed. At each level, these pattern recognizers vote on what the best decision is regarding what is being perceived.
To make things more efficient, there are groups of cells that stand ready to speed things up by contributing information, and voting, on the basis of what is expected in a given situation, based on past experience. If the pattern recognizers see "
supercalifragilistic", the expectation cells can reasonably and safely provide "
expealidocious" (having been so trained from the experience of having seen or heard of, Mary Poppins.
Direct measurements on optical path neuronal signals have shown that these "expectation modules" really do a lot of the work in the mind's interpretation of a scene, for example. Such measurements have shown that only a small fraction of the information needed to interpret or build a visual scene in the brain is coming along the optical track, and a lot of this is from "change detectors". The rest of what we "see" - most of what we see in a scene, is a "hallucination", if you will, based on past experience and the information provided by what I will call the "expectation modules".
This is the brain we humans evolved to help us stay clear of predators, cooperate with one another, and build communication and common belief systems. Much of what comprised these belief systems was, of necessity, myth. These myths included beliefs regarding the existence and influence of spirits and demons, ghosts and gods.
As humans progressed to scientific age, the enlightenment, and on to the present time, many of these myths persisted as traditional explanations for how the world worked. Problem is, most of them were, and are, just plain wrong.
And science can prove it. At least science can prove it to individuals who are willing to accept reproducible evidence, as opposed to those who insist on burning bosoms and good feelings to determine reality, even when such burning bosom bred beliefs fly in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Now that we understand a bit about how the brain works and how it generates its own internal view of reality, how is it that one can be confident that no magical being such as described in the Old Testament, New Testament, and Book of Mormon actually exists in the real world?
We now know that this universe started with a singularity, followed by rapid inflation, some 14.7 billion years ago. As the universe cooled sufficiently for particles to form, the laws of physics that we know and understand today took over.
Our solar system formed, in accordance with these laws, a little over 4 billion years ago. And, thanks to a planet that formed in a carbon based life friendly zone of the solar system, and subsequent evolution, here we are.
The laws of physics that govern this universe simply do not allow for a supernatural (magical) being of the kind in which the Abrahamic religions traditionally believe.
Before the singularity event from which this universe evolved, there was nothing: no matter, no space, no time, no gods - nothing.
And that is why one who cares to distinguish fact from feeling can be highly confident that a magical supreme violator of the laws of physics, as you describe, simply does not exist.
That just isn't the way nature works. Not even close. And we know it.