It's the exact opposite.  "God" doesn't explain anything.  It is simply a new word for "I don't know."

Scientists keep looking for the answers.  If they run across anything god-like, I'm sure they'll mention it.

Allowing religion to tell us ANYTHING about reality is the same as throwing our hands in the air and saying, "Well I guess this is how it happened."

I refuse to follow that idea.

Whenever scientists say that they don't know everything about something it is obvious that they really mean they don't know everything about something yet.

Allowing faith to take over is the same as stopping the study of proof and the goal of understanding reality.

I'm sorry, but I can't accept that.

Bullshit! Typical of the theist when called on an absurdity to mimic the skeptics objection. It is quite the reverse, theism teaches you to accept a prepackaged answer.

The theist puts a cap on knowlege by saying "God did it". In your case, "A universal conciousness did it". Neither of wich has any evidence.

The atheist faces reality while still trying to expand the limits of knowlege. But we dont delude ourselves thinking the species time will continue indefinatly. On the contrary,theists think that they outlive themsleves after they die. I am not talking about the memory of a dead person. I am talking about live people who think somehow they continue beyond worm food or energy transfer.

If we had forever to learn everthing, we could, but we dont. I dont see that as giving up. I see that as a NO SHIT SHERLOCK. Lets enjoy the ride, try to expand it as long as possible.

The atheist says, lets know as much as we can. The theist has already precluded themselves from expansion by incerting a conclusion.

The worst part of theism is that it is myth based in its guesses. Good scientific method should follow with self correction. Theism adapts to marketing. Scientific method is not dependant on marketing, but solid data. You dont have to sell gravity by offering a coupon "buy one get one free".

No, it's ""Well I guess this is why it happened."

No, religion requires you accept a pre-packaged answer. I'm talking about God, not religion.

I'm not trying to 'cap' knowledge. Quite the contrary.

What? 

 Even if everything was knowable, the point was we may never know in our life time.

 No, 'inserting a conlcusion'  does not prevent expansion.

Exactly, science must have data. Use data when available. If not, then if you want to know, you must use wonder. 

I actually have to give Pineapple credit on this one.  I believe this is the first time I've seen a fallacy of equivocation between wonder and faith.

I'm saying wonder can lead to faith.

Many Theists wonder where everything came from and insert God. That is their faith is a product of their wonder.

I thought I made that clear in my last statement. I said there will always be Theism, because people will always wonder the why. And that wondering gets them to believe in God.

You deserve your title Captian, but your suffex should be "Obvious".

Again, DUH, it is in human nature to guess, but if you were to chart all the guesses every human made in human history, MOST GUESSES ARE BAD! Life is a crapshoot, sometimes we figure out how to improve, but most of the time most of the people will fail, just like all sperm but one fertilize the egg. That is not pessimistic. That is facing reality in order to possibly improve the odds.

Which proves Dawkins point that we tend to, just like the moth falsely try to navigate by the light of a lightbulb vs the moonlight. Theism is a missfire. It is a bad guess that we havent evolved yet to discard. 

The equivocation you are committing is that wonder is equal to faith (perhaps you already knew, but I wanted to spell it out for my own benefit).

The problem is that faith is an end to wonder (something that the other replies have also been saying).

If faith is not an end to wonder, then god is not an answer, and the belief in god is completely unfounded (i.e. it serves no purpose, which is the point the person who said "god doesn't explain anything" was making).

Consider your child analogy:

The child asks "why?" You reply "god." If the child says "oh" and accepts god as the answer, then the wonder has been ceased. No new investigation is conducted by the child. If the child again asks "why?" then god has not explained anything, and it is a useless concpet (at least in terms of providing an explanation).

Simply put, what is the difference between answering "god" and "nobody knows yet", except that one answer creates an opportunity for an end of inquiry?

I think you may be begging the question, here assuming god questions have special validity over other speculative ideas. In the scheme of things, the god question has been used to fill in for many points of human ignorance, and slapped down in each field we've been able to inform ourselves in. I think its failure to explain previous questions hurts its credibility as an explanation for more sophisticated ones. Our wonder, ignorance, has been pushed so far into the abstract, that god, too, has become an abstract idea -- which makes it sound more credible than it perhaps should. It wasn't always so, though; the idea used to have a physical presence, it used to be defined by miracles and extraordinary suspensions of everyday experience. I know you haven't used this argument, but if you look at something like TAG, I think the popularity of that argument supports my position; that most religious arguments started with the extraordinary, and then that didn't materialize, were forced to take credit for the ordinary.

I understand your point about agnosticism, but I think the god question comes from tradition, or anthropomorphism, rather than coming to use through speculation. I think the question precedes and imposes itself on speculation.

I dissagree.

People should be open to future discovery based on solid data=agnostic atheist. But should not be afraid of throwing out debunked claims=Thor, Isus, Osirus, Peter Pan.

"It is possible for a theist to be an agnostic theist= I dont know what is out there, but I think there is a god" 

And "I dont know what is out there, but I see no evidence for a god"

HOWEVER, no deity claim in human history or modern theology or even new ageism has any credibility. It is all myth based superstition.

IF and I see no need to do this, but to humor you for arguments sake ONLY, but if one were to look to the future the only way "god" should possibly be considered is to dicard all the bullshit myth of the past.

However, what we do know time after time in scientific history is that ceilings were hit and people atributed that "beyond the ceiling" to God. But only later to discover that what they thought was "super natural" was merely  unexplained prior.

"God" of any kind is non-explanation for "how" or "why" questions. It is pure empty speculation, story-telling. Why did "God" come into existence, or do any particular thing? IOW, no actual 'knowledge' content whatsoever.

The idea that the 'ultimate cause', or reason for, some event must be greater than, or even comparable to, in some aspect, what it effects is a persistent misconception at the root of many Theistic ideas.

"Why" in the sense Capn SpikeyFruit seems to be using it is pretty meaningless outside the context of a sentient entity, one who can be asked "Why did you do that?". So in puuting the question this way he is actually assuming a particular answer, ie a God critter of some variety.

Why did this particular Universe come into existence? Why did a particular atom of uranium decay at a particular instant? The answer in both cases is quite plausibly that the ultimate random quantum 'twitchiness' at that point just happened to twitch over some threshhold level just enough to trigger the event.

IOW, the answer to "why" may be not particularly interesting, even if we could find it. Alternatively, if you look at the chance that we came into existence from such an ultimately random event may provoke a different kind of wonder.

edited on second thought

It's pretty clear that there is no one "correct" response to the questions of "why" and "how," and I believe Watcher was illustrating the point that they are vague and ambiguous enough to allow for a large range of valid answers to those questions.

What Pineapple seems to be doing is making the claim that the question "why is the sky blue?" includes both the question "what (physical properties) make the sky blue?" and "for what purpose is the sky blue (as opposed to some other color)", and that both questions should recieve equal inquiry, but science "stops" people from asking the second.

This is a flawed argument however. We know that the sky is blue, and so it natrually follows to ask what makes it appear that way.

However, there is no clear indication that the color of the sky has a purpose, and to ask "what is the purpose" requires that assumption. A more appropriate question would be to ask "does the sky have a purpose?" and the answer to that so far appears to be 'no'. (as an alternative, you could accept "none" as an answer to the question "what is the purpose", but this is no more a "stopping of wonder" than any other answer would be)

You did a lot of snipping on my post, so I'm not going to quote at this point. Your argument doesn't make any sense to me, and my reply to it would be a reiteration of what I've already said.

To quote the Geico caveman comercial, "Yes, I do have a response........WHAT?"

I think what you want to say is, science doesnt have all the answers. But sceince is based on prior data which is what theories are built on. Science is not a process where you make shit up and call it a theory.

We've been over this multiple times. I think I'm going to coin a new fallacy. I'll call it the "fallacy of scientific terms." Pineapple seems certain that because he uses scientific terms to explain his "I give up" answer, it must be true. After all, he uses the word, "multiverse" in his explanation of god. That makes it scientific, right?

In his infinite consciousness explanation of god, he still makes an unfounded leap by presupposing consciousness, which he can't explain other than to say, "It's conscious. That's how it's conscious."

I suspect that over the next decade or two, we'll see a lot more fallacies of scientific terms. God has gotten backed much farther into a corner in the last few years as more people have become aware of the epistemological problems with supernatural. People are going to have to start using scientific terms to try to explain him. Of course, they're still going to commit the same fallacies. They'll just be using bigger words to do it.

Everything works without adding more complexity.

There is no need to plug it in.

I think what you're saying is 'why put in God into the equation in the first place'?

Because, for me personally, I wonder 'why is there something rather than nothing?'

Some may say that begs the question of rather 'nothing' is the natural state of things, but I have yet to see a decent explanation.

Ah, thanks for responding to the full text. 

I think it begs the question to assume that there's a why. We know 'purpose' as a function of consciousness, which, unless you're holding out evidence on me, is only demonstrated in animals such as ourselves. Purpose, as in intent, is distinct from action: we can do other than what we intend to do, and things can happen without an apparent goal. Whether a goal can be assumed of a seemingly unconscious action isn't informed by anything I'm aware of.

Not knowing whether there's a god (substitute it for any equivalent claim) is less important to me than understanding where the question came from in the first place. In the absence of any evidence (or internal consistency, or consistency across cultures, or even many adherents) supporting such a claim, I think the origin of it bears on its validity as a question. Why ask about gods? The question seems intrinsic to the species, but I think it's only one among our anthropocentric assumptions to figure intent into our observations, or to assume intent is even a meaningful concept outside the parameters of our experience.

Coming in a bit late, but I'll chip in, I suppose.

Science starts from wonder, but it works out its answers empiracally. Philosophy is also helpful to science, but not so much in finding the answers as much as it helps science to ask the right questions. So already we're missing our exit to theism road, it would seem.

I think you're missing Dawkin's point.

Nobody argues that science can't explain everything. We can't know whether or not this is true. All we know is that science has NOT YET explained everything, and certainly seems a long way from doing so. But we can still see in retrospect that science HAS EXPLAINED an amazing number of phenomena in the world around us. When was the last time theism provided an explanation? Theism simply acknowledges the answers discovered by science, nods in agreement, and stoically replies "Yeah, well god did it." Whether or not a god actually did do it, theism (or faith) is not a means to knowledge.

Faith is in the knowledge business like a barnacle is in the shipping industry. If you can sufficiently prove it with reason (science), then you don't need faith. The only way you need faith is if you show that reason (science, knowledge) is somehow ABSOLUTELY INCAPABLE of knowing the answers. But, as has been shown already, we don't know that we CAN'T know the answers, we only know that we don't yet have them. It seems more likely that there are too many questions and too little time rather than that we are simply incapable of knowing.

Like it or not, you are making an argument from ignorance.

And what purpose would it serve to "interpret" empirical facts? Objective observations aren't like Shakespeare. There is no need to "interpret". A happened, which caused B, which caused C. End.

Your "why did it happen?" question (aka the "to what end/for what purpose did it happen" question) is a silly one. It's just a few steps away from the same mistake made from the first cause argument.

C happened.

Why? For what purpose?

No purpose. It was just a result of B.

Why did B happen? For what purpose?

It was just a result of A.

Why? For what purpose did A occur?

I don't know that yet, so it's only reasonable for me to suggest god set the whole thing in motion for a purpose that is beyond my understanding.

But to follow this line of thinking is to say that everything must have a teleology EXCEPT FOR GOD.

Why is god? What is god's purpose? Everything needs to exist for a reason except for god?

Plus the arguments you're already familiar with: "why" begs the questions, and "something instead of nothing" is presupposing that "something" is not the natural state of things.

And then add on the fact that even if this unknowable, undetectable god is out there (which still doesn't seem likely), then what good is it to talk about him? He obviously can't lead us to any knowledge or tell us anything about the universe. He's just kind of out there, undetectable, hovering, not doing anything. The sole purpose of your even bringing him up is so that you can say, "Wow..."

"God", in the way you are positioning the word, has no purpose to his existence other than to be marveled at.

The "why" approach once again fails to be a persuasive one.

Which particular alternete answer did you have in mind?? Whatever, the obvious fact that you do find it more satisfying than what you assume our answer would be, simply tells us something about your thought processes, rather than anything about the nature of reality.

I, and I think most of us here, do not find 'God' even a real answer, let alone satisfying. I base this on contemplation and study of science and philosophy in the broadest sense for many decades, and observation of many cultures all over the world. What background of experience and/or study informs your judgement, that we should take note of your naked assertions?

This is the point: if you have something other than your personal speculation and what is 'satisfying' to you personally, then let's see it - we can study it scientifically. If not, you have nothing to give your ideas any more substance than anyone else's ideas.  

You are extremely incorrect. My car is light green, because that's supposed to be the color that is most visible under all conditions.

Your arrogant assumption that there is no purpose lead you to believe that you didn't need to investigate if perhaps there was a purpose.

So again I ask, why are you allowed to give up wondering and stop talking about something, but yet complain when someone else does?

I'm not talking about it becoming knowledge, I'm talking about it adding on to  knowledge.

This reminds me of the C.S Lewis quote:

  "I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun has risen; not only because I see it, but by it I see everything else."

The alternative that there is no God? 

My backround is in physics, so that's what I'm basing it off of. Wavefunctions, and information theory. 

I'm not using science to prove it, I'm using science to justify it.

Yes, I am. I am putting my belief up against the data and seeing if it will fit.

That's not what I meant.

Your car will still function (serve it's purpose) if it wasn't light green. Just as the sky will still function if it wasn't blue.

That's just an indirect way of saying "You haven't proven I'm not right, therefore I can assume that I am."

After all (excuse the borrowed argumentation), a teapot in orbit around Neptune would "fit" with science since physics does not indicate that such a thing would be impossible if a teapot were, in fact, out there. We haven't made enough observations of Neptune to know for absolute certain that there is no teapot---or even a teapot shaped rock for that matter!---in orbit around Neptune. It fits, but does that give us permission to believe it?

Like I said, since we are not omniscient and our observation of the universe is limited, it allows for the possibility  of countless, seemingly ridiculous propositions about what exists to be true. But we can speak of probability and rule out the majority of them. And for the rest (the saner ones), we would not be justified in believing them until we had at least a shred of positive evidence in its favor.

To use a more realistic example, many people believe that, given the vast size of the universe, that life has most likely arisen on more than one occassion; however, we haven't yet found any such life, although we have searched for it. Therefore, no one can say positively that there is life elsewhere until we have a reason for believing it. And even if there is life elsewhere, we have no reason to believe it is different from us in any way until we have a reason for believing so.

You have no reason for believing your god proposition is true. Your "reason" is "it fits".

Well, technically, so do giant polka-dotted penguin-like creatures on an unobserved planet in a far off galaxy, but that gives us no reason to believe it's true. That only tells us that there are things we don't know.

In order to prove you wrong, man would have to be omniscient. Your claim is not falsifiable and, therefore, not worth arguing about. You might as well be attaching a "times infinity" clause to the end of your proposition.

Okay... so explain what you mean? 

That depends on your definition of "sky".

If you're talking about "sky" as in the thing that is blue and contains clouds, then it probably wouldn't still exist if it was another color, because that would mean that its composition had changed and probably would alter the life on earth completely, or cause it to vanish.

If you mean "sky" only in the sense that it means a layer of gas around the earth, then what you say would be true, but it would no longer be doing us a service in that case; it would be existing just because, which is what layers of gas around other planets seem to do.

Also, making any analogy between the universe and man-made devices is automatically fallacious. You're comparing the thing with its "purposeness" in question to something that obviously has purpose, therefore stacking the deck in your favor.

1. My car will function without windows, headlights, a roof, a muffler, tires, etc. That doesn't mean that these things don't have a purpose.

2. What is the function of the sky?

3. Why are you allowed to give up wondering and stop talking about something, but yet complain when someone else does?