Oof... Salty loser... Spamming is not cool, mkay
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I see my comment at https://scored.co/c/Conspiracies/p/1994owaTre/oof-salty-loser-spamming-is-not-/c/4ZDugTT19UX had its link helpfully broken by the platform when it intended to point to https://communities.win/c/Atheist/p/141reluACp/-burden-of-proof-is-on-the-one-m/c/4OUfR2Rkd1Q which starts with:
If nothing exists, nothing can be proven (Provine).
Things exist (Descartes).
Things are measurable (Democritus).
A greatest thing can be detected, defined according to its measurability (Adler).
Is it testable to you, via observation of things, that something that exists is measurably the greatest?
I don't cite the Bible as a source to you when you don't accept it; rather, I pointed out (also in that link) that when you pursue truth you naturally consider all the candidates and in this the Bible commends itself. Comparing it to other theories of everything, all of which have untestable claims and unknown laws of nature and alleged contradictions, it excels. But for you to see that you'd need to start with the basics such as whether some greatest thing exists.
Correct! A book can only be a communication about the unknown or unknowable, not the thing itself. Now we're making progress. Do you recognize that the universe contains the unknown and/or unknowable? Does this give you any pause when you criticize others for saying so? If you only criticize me for saying I know something, well, we can test the things I think I know, one proposition at a time (above).
Excuse me... Where is the testable proposition that confirms Christianity?
Thanks!
I don't understand your word salad here....
Please give me a test that confirms Christianity. Thanks.
But it is in fact YOUR source, is it not? You're just afraid to admit it because you know it's stupid.
You are claiming to know the answer though... GAWD did it.... That's the answer... That's where the universe came from.
So since you are claiming to know, I don't accept your appeal to the unknown as supporting evidence.
Christianity makes many propositions. Mortimer Adler indicated a good proposition to start with is that "one thing in existence is measurably the greatest". This is shared by both Christianity and many other positive systems, but is rejected by nihilistic systems. If you agree with that proposition, then we can exclude the nihilistic class and proceed to narrowing the positive class, by investigate what this "greatest thing" consists of. It seems that every test and corollary has demonstrated that things are measurable and thus one thing is the greatest.
If instead you want to jump ahead, it would be more proper for you to express a proposition that disconfirms Christianity. You may have tried this direct route already, but I've answered in place and we may need to continue to engage that. I admit the Bible is my source, but if you want to investigate the truth claims it needs to be done without the informal logical fallacy (well-poisoning) of declaring it stupid without testing the evidence. You may, for instance, object to "miracle" as being "supernatural", but Christians believe all events follow laws and so they realize (C. S. Lewis, Miracles) that we only call it "magic" until we understand the laws at work. If you were previously exposed to Christians who officiously refused to investigate topics labeled "miracle", that's not the only kind of Christian there is. (Per your first question, they and I would be happy to dialogue toward agreement in one spirit.)
I claim to know enough answer to put it into words and to indicate the part of the answer I don't know. Every origin theory does the same. I was reading an eminently reasonable black-hole paper where it's properly indicated that we can't know anything about black holes by direct observation; but what we do know is that black hole theory is the simplest explanation and anything else would require greater complexity and have less probative power. All scientific progress depends on finding, not the perfect theory of everything, but the theory with greatest explanatory power. If my theory happens to encapsulate everything under the name "God", and a different one does so under the name "many worlds hypothesis" or "strong anthropic principle", there is no prima facie reason to prefer one over the other.
By objecting, you imply you're claiming to know definitively it wasn't this "God". Your evidence for that implication is not forthcoming. But I'm very thankful to you that you keep trying.
Okay... I think I know where you're going with this now... This is pure sophistry.
This is wrong on 3 main points.
1.) "Greatest" is a subjective opinion, and therefore not something that can be measured. You would have to define an objective trait that can actually be measured such as "largest" or "fastest" or something that's not an opinion.
2.) In order to be testable you have to limit the range of the test. You can do a test to find the biggest animal at the zoo, but finding the biggest animal on earth is nearly impossible. If you're trying to test which animal is the biggest in the universe it's totally untestable. No matter how big of an animal you found, you could never say it's the biggest in existence. And so once again it's not testable.
3.) Even if this argument didn't suffer from those 2 fatal flaws, it still fails because it's logically unsound for the following reasons.
Having the most knowledge in existence ≠ All knowing
Having the most power in existence ≠ All powerful
So even if you could determine which being in the universe knows the most, that doesn't mean it knows everything, or that it matches your conception of god.
Let me apply this same exact argument to my house and you'll see the flaw.... I say I have 80,000 sq foot room in my house filled to the ceiling with gold.
Here's my argument in support of that.... The size of a room can be measured. The amount of gold in a room can be measured. That means out of all the rooms in my house there must logically exist a room that is the biggest. And there must also logically exist a room which contains the most gold.
Therefore with that logic alone, you can know that I have an 80,000 sq foot room in my house full of gold.
Did I just prove I have a Scrooge McDuck sized gold vault in my house, or was that just sophistry?
I'm glad you have a good grasp of logical fallacy, so we can speak more briefly.
I didn't specify the measurement standard, but by my reference to Democritus extent in spacetime is sufficient.
Science operates by reasonable inference from observation. We don't need to measure everything to know the Universe (or Cosmos, says great atheist Sagan) is the most extensive thing in spacetime.
I wasn't arguing for omniscient or omnipotent (yet), nor did I argue that the most gold means nothing but gold.
The most convincing argument that gods are fake is in a different class from the most convincing argument that some god is real, so we need to compare the two classes.
Now, given that, we can measure other aspects of this Cosmos. Since Sagan defines it to be all that ever was, is, or will be, by that definition it comprises all else, including all action (power) and all encoded information (knowledge). There is no power or knowledge held by any part of the universe that is not also held by the universe itself, as Adler would proceed to demonstrate. Is that clear?