From: epowers@mccoy.NMSU.Edu (POWERS)
Subject: Re: Assertiveness of Non-divinity
Organization: New Mexico State University
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1992 06:42:24 GMT

In article <1992Oct30.153523.18547@dcs.warwick.ac.uk> simon@dcs.warwick.ac.uk  
(Simon Clippingdale) writes:
> In article <Mew_tsK00iUyQ8DAU=@andrew.cmu.edu> "Jordan M. Wolbrum"  
<jw67+@andrew.cmu.edu> writes:
> 
> > I was just wondering how many people here assert that there is no God. 
> 
> "Assert" might be a tad misleading because it implies unsupported or dogmatic
> assertion; I have come to the conclusion that there is no God and feel able
> to defend that position, at least until some decent evidence to the contrary
> comes along.
> 
> > I personally have said "There is no God,"(without proof) while denouncing
> > Christians for saying there was one(without proof). Does this make me a
> > hypocrite?  
> 
> No, because the two positions are not logically equivalent. "There is no
> God" is a position falsifiable by production of evidence of a God. "There
> is a God" is not falsifiable because falsification requires that an  
exhaustive
> search of whatever space the thing is supposed to inhabit be conducted,
> spanning all points of the space simultaneously (so that It can't dodge the
> search), and that the search be fruitless.

	Even this would be useless, because it assumes God to be bound by  
"space", something we Christians would claim He invented.  Also, you limit the  
search for God to scientific methods, which have two main drawbacks in this  
case:
	The first is that scientific methods always assume the non-interference  
of the supernatural (imagine if Newton had said "Oh, it was an ANGEL who  
dropped that apple on my head"), so anything observable cited as evidence is  
automatically discounted as having an unknown natural explanation.
	Second, science proceeds by weeding out worse theories in favor of  
better ones (which also get modified eventually).  Nothing is ever known to be  
true in science, it's just that some things are known to not be true in  
particular situations.

> 
> Not only is your advocacy of the falsifiable theory (the null hypothesis)
> not hypocritical: in the absence of falsifying evidence it is actually
> demanded by logic, unless you choose to adopt no position whatever, which
> while logically defensible (provided, of course, that you don't break the
> symmetry by taking *any* position on *anything* *ever*), is at best rather
> boring. [c.f. Doug Graham's recent post on whether/how one should respond
> to people who claim to have invisible pink unicorns living in their walls.]
> 
> > If pressed on the issue, I do admit that I don't have all of the
> > answers, but that mine seem much more logical and reasonable than the
> > answers of the theists.
> 
> You are on even firmer ground than you perhaps realised.
> 
> > I'd like to know what happened to the bologna guy who used to post
> > here. He sent me a note and said "read my next post" which never
> > showed up. Did something happen to him? I mean, some people here
> > were pretty fed up with him!
> 
> Well, on 10 October I mailed him/them Chris Colby's evolution FAQ from
> talk.origins following his and Thiagaraj's droolings about evo, and have
> yet to hear a peep in response. Then again, it is 53kB long and rather
> more technical than the evo-is-crap-God-says-so stuff from which they
> had doubtless gleaned their comprehensive ignorance of matters evolutionary.
> 
> But I don't expect it to change anything; we'll probably see more or less
> the same posts again before too long. If you want to chivvy 'em along,  
though,
> the address is ebolog@elaine.ee.und.ac.za and you could say hello from me.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Simon
> -- 
	I would be interested in seeing this.  I am a Christian working in an  
evolutionary biology lab on speciation, and I think I can handle it.  (By the  
way, this is not some creation research lab in disguise, in case you wonder.  I  
am thoroughly outnumbered in the Christian:Atheist ratio.)
				
							Erik Powers