Are you an atheist?

[AccessBlaster]

Like Frothy said, reconstructing human events from the past is a very different matter from understanding the forces in the universe.

When we look at the universe are we not reconstructing the past?

 

[Frothingslosh]

I agree, although the method they used does not have endless possibility's. The laws of physics were used. They were under the same restraints we are. So that narrows the options considerably. Ancient man must have been smarter.

Or ancient man didn't worry about working slaves to death.

It is quite possible to move several-ton rocks long distances. It's just a LOT of work. Also, people today tend to underestimate what can be done without high tech.

 

[Libre]

When we look at the universe are we not reconstructing the past?

If we're trying to reconstruct the past we're guessing and estimating.
They can narrow things down to 500,000 years +/- or even a billion years is a rough estimate on the scale of the BIG BANG. Ancient human history can maybe be estimated to within 500-1000 years depending on what evidence they have.
But you can observe and measure an event in a laboratory to the picosecond.
The laws of physics were the same in ancient times, but what does that tell us? We know what they could NOT have done. They couldn't have just beamed boulders from one place to another with teleportation. But exactly HOW they DID move them is another matter.

 

[AccessBlaster]

Or ancient man didn't worry about working slaves to death.

It is quite possible to move several-ton rocks long distances. It's just a LOT of work. Also, people today tend to underestimate what can be done without high tech.

I suppose that theory would work with the large stones but, how do we explain this. Could you beat slaves to produce thousands of exact duplicates?

 

[Frothingslosh]

Short answer: Yes.

Do you realize you're posting something from Ancient Aliens?

Primitive, non-technological people did quite a number of amazing things. The Easter Islanders made and buried gigantic statues. All sorts of cultures all over the world built structures that allowed them to predict solstices and equinoxes perfectly. The greeks developed a liquid sticky fire that we STILL can't reproduce, the chinese managed to create this weird mixture of sulfur, charcoal, and bat crap that explodes when you expose it to fire, and the vikings may well have been able to navigate using a sundial.

And those lines WERE created, and by civilizations that were known to be in the bronze age at BEST. It's not hard to create straight lines with a work crew, and we already know the people living then were capable of building. People have done crazier things for, say, religion, than creating the Nazca lines.

Or do you think stonecutters were unable to cut straight lines without modern technology?

 

[speakers_86]

What is your point Access Blaster? Because we can't explain it the bible is right? I'm content not knowing everything, but I will strive for it anyway.

 

[AccessBlaster]

What is your point Access Blaster? Because we can't explain it the bible is right? I'm content not knowing everything, but I will strive for it anyway.

No religious link, sorry to disappoint. Just curious about skills and techniques once known now lost forever.

 

[Libre]

Ancient and prehistoric people were just as smart as we are. We may have more facts at our disposal but other than that, a person living 75,000 years ago would be as smart as anyone today - minus the formal education. The tendency to think of early homo sapiens as knuckle draggers is a result of stereotyping - cartoons, movies, TV commercials. Doesn't seem as harmful as racial stereotyping - and cavemen aren't really complaining about it (except for the Geico caveman, that is).
The iconic "caveman" is the BC comic strip guy - loin cloth, club in hand, dragging cave woman by hair, whatever. We need a placeholder in our minds for every abstract concept (PREHISTORIC MAN) in our consciousness. That's so when somebody says PREHISTORIC MAN I get this image and know what the speaker is referring to, and the conversation moves on.
But this image we get - and not only for cavemen but for EVERYTHING - they are just tiny icons. They're like Monopoly tokens to move around the board. Placeholders. This is where stereotyping comes in. We forget the Monopoly pieces aren't really spinning wheels, sports cars and thimbles. We forget they're just icons that represent something much larger because it takes effort and because we have a thousand other things on our minds and we need these icons to keep things organized in our minds or we'd go crazy - which we do anyway.

So after all that - yes, ancient people could certainly have devised ways of carving stone and moving boulders. For carving the stone, a template or a stencil would work nicely. Not really all that intricate a design.

Don't underestimate our ancestors. If they weren't damned smart we wouldn't be here.

 

[Galaxiom]

Could you beat slaves to produce thousands of exact duplicates?

Because it is clearly arduous labour, it had often been assumed that slaves were used to create ancient megastructures. However recent research shows that to be unlikely in the case of Egypt's Pyramids.

Most ancient structures were monuments to religion in one way or another and religion is a powerful motivator.

Moreover they had no television to keep them entertained.

 

[AccessBlaster]

I agree, I believe it was a privileges or honor to work on such structures. I think these artisans were well taken care of. Just my opinion.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

In post 5626 I offered the statement:

I think I would be satisfied if your side of the aisle could just acknowledge that we who do NOT believe have at least some legitimacy to our doubts.

I didn't think anyone from the religious side would provide such acknowledgment. After all, it IS a "gotcha" statement. If they had agreed our doubts were legit, they would have had to admit their beliefs were questionable. So, as usual, the religious side of the aisle side-stepped the issue by trying to attack science. Nothing new under the sun, I'm afraid.

The phrase "Most scientists agree" reminds me of that TV commercial that has five dentists trying some product, and the first four loudly sing its praises. The fifth dentist, however, gets attacked by a squirrel or some other pestiferous creature, gets terribly bitten, and screams "NO, NO, NO" before he passes out. At which time the announcer sonorously intones "Four out of five dentists agree...." Sorry, that image just popped into my mind. Had to express it to get it out of there.

 

[Frothingslosh]

As the one who actually started the whole kerfluffle by using 'most scientists', let me point out that it was when I stated that 'most scientists agree that believing Aliens are God is idiotic'.

If there were an actual survey out there asking scientists if they believed that 'God' is some magical amalgamation of all non-Terran life, I'd have used its results. As there isn't one that I'm aware of, I simply had to interpolate based on the higher-than-average occurrence of atheism among scientists, the fact that most religious scientists follow the more 'traditional' religions such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and the like, and the fact that scientists, even religious ones, tend to at least TRY to use logic from time to time.

If I had any way to quantify it, believe me, I'd have said something like '99.999999999999%' instead of most, but if you disagree with my statement that 'most' scientists don't think God is all alien life, then you would by necessity be saying that most scientists really do believe that God is all non-Terran life.

I just don't see that happening.

 

[AnthonyGerrard]

Mike375, we can argue the fine points all day, but in the end analysis, this isn't like a quantum probability function. Either God exists or does not exist. Atheism merely says that the starting point is that God does not exist because there is no proof that He does. Religion says that the starting point is that God exists because there is no proof that He does not. (I'm trying to keep this simple, but I think this is a fair summation with limited intent.)

OK, so ... here is the crux (pardon that pun) of the dilemma. Atheism can be proven wrong by producing a god. Religion, on the other hand, to be refuted requires proof of a negative assertion, which is not possible in simple logic. It is something that has been known for millennia when elementary assertoric logic was first devised. (Or, if you are of a religious style, when logic was first divined.)

Atheism, however, is not a faith in a deity. It is simply saying that until/unless you can produce your deity, I don't have to accept your argument. Where we usually come into the big disagreement is that in Biblical times, God was ALWAYS exerting direct intervention, showing Himself before many, performing large-scale miracles that affected the Red Sea or the entire basin of the Upper Nile River or the destruction of two cities (Sodom and Gomorrah) or a world-wide flood or many other whiz-bang effects. Now... all we hear is crickets chirping. We see challenges to the Biblical God's power in the threat of ISIS taking over the world (if they could).

Atheists are essentially the ultimate skeptics. Give us evidence that we can comprehend. If you give us nothing but mysticism and redirection of attention and tales of events that patently cannot be true without having left more evidence, what do you EXPECT us to believe?

There is that old saying, "There are none so blind as those that will not see." However, it cuts both ways when those who claim their beliefs will not see the many causes - all of them quite legitimate - for our skepticism. To you, we are blind. To US, you see illusions, delusions, and confusions.

In the final argument, Mike, you ABSOLUTELY have the right to believe as you wish. I think I would be satisfied if your side of the aisle could just acknowledge that we who do NOT believe have at least some legitimacy to our doubts.

Yes you can prove that something does not exist. If you have the parameters inside which you should be looking.

Many of religion have their test of faith, and their doubts, so of course atheists may be right.

I am not sure why you find it necessary to pretend they dont.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

AnthonyG:

I am not sure why you find it necessary to pretend they dont.

It was actually more of a targeted statement to see if any of the exceptionally zealous members of our group would bite. They did not.

As to proving that something does not exist, that is possible if and only if you have one of two cases: (1) a highly constrained domain in which to search so that a complete search is possible or (2) some sort of logical situation that allows you to use a reductio ad absurdam argument.

In the case of proving that God does not exist, you cannot constrain the domain because religion says that God is not of this world. That leaves the entire rest of this universe plus any and all other alternative quantum realities and multi-dimensional domains that might exist. Physics says that such things could exist so we can't eliminate them.

As to the possibility of using logically exclusionary arguments that lead to self-contradictory statements, the problem again is the claim that God is not of this world. This means that what is exclusionary here might not be in another extra-dimensional reality (if such a thing exists). It is the big IF that blocks both approaches.

Therefore, it is logically impossible for us to prove that God does not exist. We can build induction proofs that show how UNLIKELY it is for God to exist - but there is no absolute proof. In the final analysis, it is a matter of how far your credibility will stretch. You know my position so we don't have to belabor that point.

 

[AnthonyGerrard]

They wouldnt being zealous, in the main anyone outside the zealous left this thread alone long ago. I agree with what you say. I agree that science struggles. But it's gone fair way to explain how things happen . If it can explain why. That's were god resides in my opinion. If science can't answer those questions t's not fair to blame religion for sciences short coming. If it can answer why all good it will either show or exclude god. They go hand in hand to me rather than fight against each other. That's how my world religion as a child explainred it's role in the world anyway. I don't follow any more. It has its faults and dodgy politics like all institutions and some doubtful interpretations. But at its core I have no problem with it. It's far more reasonable on most things than lots of people are on anything. More reasonable and subtle than this thread of accusations and jibes allows anyway. It's Christmas. I'm now on holiday so whatever you belief have a good one!

 

[Libre]

As to proving that something does not exist, that is possible if and only if you have one of two cases: (1) a highly constrained domain in which to search so that a complete search is possible or (2) some sort of logical situation that allows you to use a reductio ad absurdam argument.

I don't see how nonexistence can EVER be proved. Certainly you can rule out highly improbable scenarios when searching for an explanation of an event - but that's just using probability to narrow the search. It does not constitute PROOF, which implies that EVERY alternative explanation has been shown to be IMPOSSIBLE.

Let's take case 1- a highly constrained domain.
Let's say the domain is an auditorium and you want to prove/disprove that there is an individual in the auditorium named "Mike".
You can question everyone and still fail to locate an individual named "Mike".
Does this PROVE that there is NO individual named Mike?
Not really. You proved that you are unable to locate such an individual. Suppose your search and detection strategy is defective or erroneous? Maybe you asked the group but the one guy named Mike is deaf and doesn't respond? Or maybe he lied? Suppose there is a change of state (somebody changed their name to Mike) after you interviewed them? There are too many variables and unknowns to ever be SURE that you totally and completely searched EVERY member of a constrained set.

You can prove something exists by producing it.
But you can't prove it doesn't exist just because you can't produce it.

Let's take case 2 - a reduction ad absurdum argument. This is in essence an affirmation of a fact because denial of it results in an impossible situation. Sort of like saying, "There CAN'T be anyone in charge here because if there WERE, things would be a lot different!"
Or any kind of argument of that form.
It still relies on assumptions and complete knowledge of ALL the variables. Assumptions and claims of omniscience can always be challenged or questioned and so again, the proof fails.

I suppose you can come up with a logical conundrum in which the only solution is that something doesn't exist. But that's not going to convince anyone or result in anything useful or meaningful. Might be fun, though.

 

[Frothingslosh]

You have a ramp, 12 balls, and two deep (to prevent bounce-outs) buckets at the base of the ramp.
You roll all the balls down the ramp aimed at the right-hand bucket.
You can prove none of the balls went in the left-hand bucket simply by counting the balls in the right-hand bucket and finding all 12 there.

So yes, in sufficiently constrained scenarios, you CAN prove a negative.

It's just that in wide-open issues like 'Does God exist' that it's impossible. (Note that this is separate from the Problem of Evil, which is a paradox, not a proof.)

Also, with your Mike question, what about if you fingerprinted and DNA matched everyone in the auditorium and matched them up against assorted federal databases, getting confirmed ID's for everyone? Now we're back at having proven there are no people named Mike there.

 

[Alc]

Also, with your Mike question, what about if you fingerprinted and DNA matched everyone in the auditorium and matched them up against assorted federal databases, getting confirmed ID's for everyone? Now we're back at having proven there are no people named Mike there.

Yes, that example was more to with bad examination technique than a lack of proof.

 

[Libre]

You have a ramp, 12 balls, and two deep (to prevent bounce-outs) buckets at the base of the ramp.
You roll all the balls down the ramp aimed at the right-hand bucket.
You can prove none of the balls went in the left-hand bucket simply by counting the balls in the right-hand bucket and finding all 12 there.

So yes, in sufficiently constrained scenarios, you CAN prove a negative.

It's just that in wide-open issues like 'Does God exist' that it's impossible. (Note that this is separate from the Problem of Evil, which is a paradox, not a proof.)

Also, with your Mike question, what about if you fingerprinted and DNA matched everyone in the auditorium and matched them up against assorted federal databases, getting confirmed ID's for everyone? Now we're back at having proven there are no people named Mike there.

I can poke holes in your ramp scenario.
It doesn't matter that the holes I poke are incredibly unlikely. They are not impossible.
You say that the balls can't bounce out of the bucket. Can you prove that? How many trials would it take? An infinite number. Or would you use physics formulas to have me infer that a bounce out is impossible? I remain unconvinced.
Unless you want to claim that in this constricted domain, balls just CAN NOT bounce out of a bucket - because, it's your domain and you say so. Now we're getting closer to the reduction ad absurdum type scenario, which is a logical "proof" and does not operate in the real world.
Another thing, you are not proving exactly what you said:

none of the balls went in the left-hand bucket

You are in fact proving something different. You are proving NOT that they NEVER went in the left-hand bucket - you're only affirming the positive statement that they are currently only in the right-hand bucket. How do I know they NEVER went to the left and were moved later? For that I'd have to observe the actual event for myself - but if you don't think that such an apparatus can be rigged - you didn't grow up in the big city.

With the Mike question, you can certainly run into gray areas. Such as, "My name is NOT Mike. It's Michael. But everyone calls me Mike."
Or
The FBI screwed up yet AGAIN (not the first time by any means).

I'm working now - can't give this my full attention.
I'm sure we can all come up with scenarios that for all practical purposes, a negative is proved.
That's for all practical purposes.
There are always absurd outcomes that are incredibly unlikely but still possible.

 

[Frothingslosh]

Yes, that example was more to with bad examination technique than a lack of proof.

Well, the most common refutations of findings in peer reviews always seem to be variants of 'your controls/techniques/measurements suck'.