This might be the first time I've seen someone openly admit to using a God-Of-The-Gaps argument.

I'm only saying can't be applied by us in our current state of knowledge. I'm not saying that it can't, in principle, be caused (or not caused). The proposition being addressed is "The universe must either be caused or uncaused". "Must either be caused or uncaused" applies fine to everything in the known universe, but I reject the idea that that means we can apply it to the universe itself.

This proceeds from the idea that my shirt is subject to the same fundamental assumptions as your wife and your neighbour's car - assumptions of what we can and can't say with truth about them. I am saying that the universe is not known to be subject to the assumptions which allow us to say that everything in the universe is either caused or uncaused.

I'm rejecting the assumption that observations of and conclusions drawn from objects which compose the universe, including fundamentals like causality, non-contradiction, etc, can be applied to the universe itself.

Consider three scenarios.

1) The universe is a plastic bag containing glass marbles. Are you, as one of those glass marbles, justified in concluding that the bag you are in must likewise be made of glass?

2) The universe is a plastic bag containing glass marbles and wooden toy soldiers. Are you, as one of those glass marbles or wooden toy soldiers, justified in concluding that the bag you are in must be composed either of glass or wood?

3) The universe is a plastic bag full of scrunched-up plastic bags. Are you, as one such scrunched-up plastic bag, justified in concluding that the bag you are in must be a plastic bag?

For me it is No, No, and No (and note scenario three well; it doesn't matter if you're right, the point is your position is unjustified). Your likely objection to the first scenario is covered by the second scenario.

OP,

Treating this debate as an exercise in logic leaves neither side able to prove their conclusion. So it usually reduces to asserting the superiority of one's premises, also without proof.

It sounds to me like you are saying that there cannot be evidence for God in science, is that right?

If so, then what makes your position more reasonable than my position?

Wow...no offense but being locked in an obsession with logic is really cruel.

I usually grant myself permission to rate the subjective as high as I want.

Perception is the basis for all reality and logic too I imagine.

No. There are no intended implications of that scope to what I'm saying. I'm saying only that the 'caused/not caused' distinction is based on the false premise that we can apply concepts grounded in the universe to the universe itself.

But if we cannot apply concepts grounded in the universe to the universe itself then we could not ascribe any attributes to the universe itself. If we cannot ascribe any attributes to the universe then how could come to a conclusion whether or not it was the product of a creator or not?

How is it that you can to the conclusion that you "hold no belief in God" then?

No.

Ba-BOOM you get it now! Though the question you ask is interesting. Say a meteorite crash-landed on Earth and had the entirety of Genesis in the original Hebrew perfectly inscribed on it. I'd consider that 'evidence' (pretty bloody strong evidence at that) for the existence of 'the Christian god' - whether it would be 'scientific evidence' is going to depend on some things.

If, on the other hand, you want 'scientific evidence' solely to mean 'evidence drawn from professional scientific inquiry into the natural world' then it's quite hard to say. I've seen proposals for findings that would be such evidence if they were found (I AM HE WHO IS CALLED I AM encoded in binary on DNA or similar). So I'll give you a tentative 'No' on the question of whether scientific evidence for a creator is excluded.

Because I cannot come to a conclusion. If I roll a die and can't see where it lands, I can't come to a conclusion about what number it landed on. This means that I don't believe it rolled a one, but doesn't mean that I believe it didn't roll a one. And the same for all numbers it could have landed on.

Why not? If I roll a die and you can't see where it landed, must you be able to name a number that it did land on to reject my claim that it landed on 'one'?

I agree, although that's true no matter how you treat the debate. (Whether as an exercise in logic or as an emotive appeal, a spiritual quest for understanding, an attempt to derive meaning to life, or anything else...). It's all about premises and whether they are reasonable/plausible/comforting/useful/whatever criteria you judge to be important.

My point is not that we can get to the correct answer if we follow the correct rules (well not in this thread anyhow). My point is that, if in trying to argue for theism you put forward an argument against atheism it is necessary to argue against a broad definition of atheism, not some parody or distortion of what atheists claim to believe.

In the same way, an atheist advancing a "Theists are morons because the Earth is not 6000 years old" is not really addressing theism (no matter what they claim) they are presenting an argument against a particular 'brand' of theism, then erroneously trying to extend that to encompass all theist positions.

If I claim there were 6,654,234,186 people alive midnight, Greenwich time 3rd March 2010 - you can't reject that claim without putting forward your own number?

Isn't it enough to say that nobody is in a position to know? That my method for coming up with the number is extremely unlikely to be correct, so it's probably wrong and definitely not good grounds for believing the claim?

If that's the case, do you find yourself accepting my answer or do you have an answer of your own?

I think I understand what you mean, however, it seems to me you're using a different meaning of "uncaused" than "not having a cause". "Uncaused" doesnt mean "popped into existence on its own" there may well be an infinite number of ways in which it doesnt have a cause, it may not be the sort of thing which can even have a cause in principle.
I don't think it proceeds from this assumption, I think it proceeds from the law of the excluded middle (which is also an assumption of its own, just not related to a distinction between things in the physical universe and the universe itself).

I tried to indicate this with the wet/dry example, so I guess this is repeating myself:

Numbers are not the sort of things which can have colour. It isnt meaningful to ask what colour the number six is or the number seven is. Therefore six is not yellow. This doesnt imply it's some other colour (a meaningless idea) it just means it doesnt have the property of being yellow (because it cant).

The hope here is to suggest that things which don't have a particular property can be subdivided into two classes - those which fail to have that property because they have a different property and those to whom the category cannot meaningfully be applied.

I do not think I agree with this in the sense that it seems inconsistent with the way the English language is interpreted, at least in the US.

For example, if you and I were talking and you asked "What is the weather supposed to be like tomorrow" and I answered "I do not believe it is going to rain" would you assume that I had no information about the next day's weather or would you assume that I had some knowledge that indicated that rain was unlikely? If the latter (which is how I would interpret the statement) then that could be some of the issue around the meaning of belief when applied to unknowns. To state that you do not hold a belief is stronger than to state that you do not know, IMO.

But the law of the excluded middle may not apply to the universe.

I can see that seeming ridiculous, so I'll flesh it out a bit. I'd be surprised if the law of the excluded middle didn't apply to the universe, and I'd be surprised if the universe didn't fall into one of two categories, caused or uncaused. But the reason that it would surprise me is that I can only proceed from assumptions that seem consistent with the universe as I find it. Since that is all I can do, I can't proceed from any assumptions about the nature of the universe's origin.

You're right that there are cases in everyday speech where the same construction has different meanings. The difference is in the intention. If I say "I don't believe it's going to rain tomorrow" then my intent is to communicate to you that I believe it won't. "I don't believe the die landed on 'one'" isn't intended to convey belief that it didn't - only the absence of a belief that it did.

I still think that the choice of wording is causing some of the problem. If a die was rolled and I did not know the state of your knowledge of the result, there is a difference between you stating "I do not believe it rolled a one" and "I do not know what it rolled". Certainly strictly speaking, the first statement is correct if you have no knowledge, but it implies knowledge in colloquial English when you single "one" out from the other equal probabilities. If you wanted to avoid any confusion in this situation, you would use the second statement which avoids any suggestion of knowledge.

Ok, at least I have something to go off of. In your meteorite analogy, the rock with said verse would not really show the biblical God to exist. It would only show that there is a being that associates with the biblical God. That being could be some for of intelligent life, but it does not follow that said being created anything.

This would surely show that we are a product of a designer. But like above, said designer cannot be show to have created the universe.

If something like DNA inscription would be sufficient evidence for you, why not another equally as astounding attribute that is less personal? In other words, could biology discover a "signature" of an intelligent designer that is not a "message?"

So you believe that currently God existing/not existing is currently underdetermined? I would probably say that you are one of the few atheists here that I would have to say that hold pretty consistently with this position. I can respect that, even if I don't agree with it.

You have been participating in the free will thread over in SMP, do you notice the extreme difference in conversation over there? If atheists held consistent with what they claim their views are (which is more what like what you are stating here), I believe that the conversations should flow more like the free will / determinism debate. What do you think the difference is?

Some of us cant be consistent in our atheism, as depending on the definition of God it changes from strong to weak.

Maybe if theists were consistent with their definition of God and didn't bait and switch the undefined watchmaker God for their own it would help.

Well, yes, but my initial example was meant to represent a response to someone who claims the die landed on one. Maybe that wasn't clear.

A similar example would be where Andy says that Bob has chlamydia. The response 'That's not true' can refer both to the case where Andy is lying, and where Andy is mistaken. It's not important that the case where he's mistaken is more clearly represented by "Andy is wrong" - "That's not true" is still perfectly accurate.

Edit: I realise this forum isn't exactly a symposium of professional philosophers, but I don't think it's useful to bring ambiguities of colloquial usage to a relatively technical discussion.

Maybe it isn't useful, I am not sure. It does seem like those ambiguities get involved in the discussion from time to time, but I could be mistaken.

Well said.

The thing jib doesn't seem to understand is that most (all?) atheists around here hold the exact same view he describes in this quote...

But if you replace "God" with a particular God such as the Christian God, it changes.

Yet he's claiming that AIF is one of the few atheists holding steady with that view, which is simply not true.

Well, sure - evidence isn't proof. Neither would it describe which version of the Christian god exists - ie, which branch of Christianity, if any, is correct. Maybe we should change it to the Gospel of John, as an inscription of Genesis is equally compatible with it being the Judaic god. :razz:

You mean unwitting or unintended evidence, ie evidence which the designer did not intend to be evidence? I don't know. I'm not awware of anything that's been presented as such that isn't equally compatible with natural means, and the 'appearance of design' is a term I find impossible to correctly apply to either life or the universe.

In the free will/determinism debate there is a far less clear correlation between one underdetermined position and another. Which is to say that while both you and AaronW are theists, durkadurka33 is not. It would be possible for a person to try to attack an LFW proponent on the grounds that they 'only believe it' because they are theists, but they would be beaten over the head with counter-examples like durka and madnak (who rejects LFW but IIRC is a compatibilist). It also would be very questionable to bring theism up at all in SMP.

It's also possible that discussions on a whole forum devoted to the free will question would tend to resemble more the discussions here.

Finally, neither LFW nor determinism are seen as intrinsically tied in to 'hot-button' social issues in the way that Christianity/atheism are (rightly or wrongly). If I understand your question correctly, that's why I think the tone of discussion in the free will thread differs significantly from the general tone of discussions in RGT.

Maybe I've misunderstood what you're saying here, but I'm not strongly atheistic wrt to any god, except if you refer to trivial examples, such as the god who created a universe in which I could never exist - my existence negates such a being and I believe no such being exists (at least not in this universe ).

I regard more specific versions of gods as less likely to exist, since the more specific the description of an unknown quantity is, the less likely the description is to actually match that quantity - 'It will rain on this date 400 years from now' is of necessity more likely to be correct than 'It will rain for twenty-three minutes starting at 14:21 GMT on this date 400 years from now'. I do not believe that either of these statements is untrue - they may be, the point is that acceptance of either is unwarranted.