At 6:04 Exactly, Derek Durski pwns Dinesh D'Souza.

Guest_1 · Post by **Guest_1** » 10 Mar 2008 19:57

http://www.facebook.com/share_redirect. ... 0931251473

Dinesh then wrote on his blog about the exchange:

"Finally there was a lengthy question-and-answer session. Given that the audience was mostly made up of Tufts students sympathetic to Dennett's atheism, a majority of the questions was directed at me. Most memorable for me was the philosophically-minded savant who pooh-poohed the possibility of God's existence on the basis of what he called the Principle of Parsimony. He argued that either propositions are true by definition, or they are true by empirical verification. If a proposition cannot satisfy either criteria, then it is meaningless. Since God does not exist by definition, the young man insisted, and since we cannot verify His presence empirically, clearly God has been refuted by the Principle of Parsimony."

lol!

Jeremy · Post by **Jeremy** » 11 Mar 2008 00:32

Sure, and a good example of how philosophy is meaningless, but the person simply worded his question badly.

If there is no evidence to suggest something is true, why would you believe that it is true? Wouldn't it mean, by definition, that beliefs that have evidence to support them, such as religious beliefs, are inherently irrational?

QuantumBalance · Post by **QuantumBalance** » 11 Mar 2008 01:03

People that spend a lot of time trying to prove that God doesnt exist, are either gonna be dissapointed and pissed off when they find out they are wrong, or just dead and have wasted their life on a stupid pursuit.

Jeremy · Post by **Jeremy** » 11 Mar 2008 01:10

Nobody spends time trying to prove that God doesn't exist. How could that be done.

Prove to me that there invisible elephants don't exist.

BainbridgeShred · Post by **BainbridgeShred** » 11 Mar 2008 04:51

Jeremy wrote:Sure, and a good example of how philosophy is meaningless, but the person simply worded his question badly.

And you aren't guilty of having dismissed anyones remarks based on bad wording or faulty representation of other peoples views? I think it comes with being contrived.

Sporatical_Distractions · Post by **Sporatical_Distractions** » 11 Mar 2008 11:25

Jeremy wrote:Nobody spends time trying to prove that God doesn't exist. How could that be done.

Read more existentialist arguments. several, not all, writers are trying to do this

Jeremy · Post by **Jeremy** » 11 Mar 2008 14:35

Dan wrote:And you aren't guilty of having dismissed anyones remarks based on bad wording or faulty representation of other peoples views? I think it comes with being contrived.

No doubt I have dismissed people's remarks based on the way they are presented to me. I'm not at all critical of D'Souza for his response. In fact if you read my post again, you'll see that I'm criticising philosophy, not his answer. I mean why does this guy stand up and ask his question, using words like "Parsimony" when all he needed to say is; "what evidence do you have, and if you don't have any, why would you believe something without evidence?"

There's a great John Safran clip about atheism;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBkUWbFjdpg

I'm sure I've showed it before.

Not that I think humanities students can't be atheists, I just think that there are a lot of atheists who can't express the reasons for their beliefs very well. I could train a parrot to express the reason I'm an atheist; "what is your evidence, what is your evidence, what is your evidence?" So it's always frustrating when you hear philosophy students give long talks about meaningless concepts and about how they'd like the world to be. In fact I dismiss their claims for the same reason I dismiss religion; "what is your evidence?"

If somebody asks a question badly, you should answer their question, not the better question on the same theme. D'Souza did the right thing, and I'm not critical of him for that answer at all.

Kevin wrote:Read more existentialist arguments. several, not all, writers are trying to do this

You're absolutely right, and so is Sam. There are people who waste their lives trying to prove God doesn't exist. They should take a science class. You never "prove" things in science and you could never prove the non existence of something that doesn't exist. So these existentialist philosophers spend their lives trying to prove something that cannot be proved. What a waste of time. What have they achieved through such a process?

Switch Kicker · Post by **Switch Kicker** » 14 Mar 2008 08:52

Jeremy wrote:What have they achieved through such a process?

Well, if it was proven to such an extent that the whole world (at least a VAST majority) believes that God doesn't exist, we'd have more time to do whatever the hell you're gonna do on Sundays.

Jeremy · Post by **Jeremy** » 14 Mar 2008 14:50

You misunderstand. The question is; "What have they achieved?" It is not; "What could they achieve?"

Switch Kicker · Post by **Switch Kicker** » 14 Mar 2008 21:38

Jeremy wrote:You misunderstand. The question is; "What have they achieved?" It is not; "What could they achieve?"

I read it differently. I see it as if they HAD proven that God doesn't exist, and you were asking just exactly what did it acheive... As though you assume that the world wouldn't really care that it was proven, that they would continue to practice their religion despite the proof.

Either way, it wasn't a serious comment, I was kidding.

Jeremy · Post by **Jeremy** » 15 Mar 2008 18:22

I know you read it differently. That's why I started my last post with "you misunderstand..."

james · Post by **james** » 16 Mar 2008 14:24

Disproving god 101:

The only way for god to exist is to be undefinable and infinite.

Infinity is nothingness.

You do the math.

Jeremy · Post by **Jeremy** » 16 Mar 2008 14:56

That's rubbish. How can you define God as being "undefinable?" What about clearly defined Gods like Zeus, or even Jesus? What evidence do you have that God is "undefinable?"

I'm also not sure how "infinity is nothingness." Can you prove that statement, or is supposed to be a given. My dictionary doesn't define infinity as nothingness.

james · Post by **james** » 17 Mar 2008 15:56

I didn't define god as undefinable. Nothing can be undefinable, that's why god cannot exist. Besides all the obvious reasons of course.

My dictionary does.

Jeremy · Post by **Jeremy** » 17 Mar 2008 16:21

So how do you know that God is undefinable? My dictionary doesn't mention anything about that under the definition of God at all (MacQuarie Dictionary - Revised Third Edition). If I can define a possible God, does that mean that your claim that God is undefinable is wrong?

Guest_1 · Post by **Guest_1** » 17 Mar 2008 18:57

Jeremy wrote:So how do you know that God is undefinable? My dictionary doesn't mention anything about that under the definition of God at all (MacQuarie Dictionary - Revised Third Edition). If I can define a possible God, does that mean that your claim that God is undefinable is wrong?

um...I think he's wrong too. You can definately get a grasp for the logic of G-d. Written by Rabbi Moishe Luzatto, Derech HaShem (The Way of G-d) is a very good approach to the rational definition and understand of G-d.

Guest_1 · Post by **Guest_1** » 17 Mar 2008 18:58

*understanding

james · Post by **james** » 18 Mar 2008 04:21

I never once said that god in undefinable. What I said is that NO THING can be undefinable, including 'god'. If god is definable, it is finite. Now you can check your dictionary, because I'm pretty sure that one of god's 'properties' is infinity.

I'll try to explain a different way.

Is god even 'something' in the first place? If it's not 'something' than it's 'nothing'.
If god is a 'something' it must obey the rules of 'somethingness' which would make for a very poor god. Not the kind of god that can assure you an infinite afterlife I would think.
Fear of death is the reason such a ridiculous notion (god) is even possible (which I'm sure you're already aware of).

existence necessarily implies nonexistance. It's as simple as that. (that means that anything that exists, will inevitably cease to exist for infinity)

There isn't even a point to god if there isn't an 'afterlife'. And there most certainly isn't; refer to previous statement.
I know you know there isn't an afterlife. What exactly are you trying to argue? That I can't know something with certainty? That I need some kind of proof for my statements? They don't need proof, they're self-evident. But there's plenty of proof if you need it. They follow from every other accumulated objective piece of knowledge of reality (i.e. I'm basing them on what we (as a species) know to be true about everything around us).
And yes, we can know things.

agnostics are pussies (no offense of course, to any agnostics out there).

I hope I've explained myself sufficiently.

Jeremy · Post by **Jeremy** » 18 Mar 2008 05:06

God;

1. A supernatural being or entity which is worshipped, revered, propitiated or entreated according to particular conventions, and is believed to control nature or human destiny, often being associated with a particular aspect or facet of these: among Hawaiians the god of war was called Kukailmoko.

2. The image of such a being or entity; idol: she refused to bow down to any god of stone.

3. (According to Jewish, Christian, Islamic and certain other theologies) the one Supreme Being, the creator and ruler of the universe: in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

4. Any person or practice to which excessive attention or devotion is given: George made a god of horse-racing.

The rest of the definitions are expressions and colloquialisms that I'll mention but not write out the definition; "oh god" or "my god," "for god's sake," "God's gift to..." "God's own," "good God(s)," "The gods" (in a theatre).

Absolutely no mention of "infinite" and not only that but there are plenty of religions where the gods are clearly not infinite. The earliest records of infinity are from about 400BC. The idea of Gods is far older than that.

Jeremy · Post by **Jeremy** » 18 Mar 2008 05:18

james wrote: Fear of death is the reason such a ridiculous notion (god) is even possible (which I'm sure you're already aware of).

Sorry, no edit.

I completely disagree with this. I'd suggest you read; Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast by Lewis Wolpert and Breaking the Spell by Daniel C Dennett; both of which put forward extensive evidence based arguments for how religion formed, neither of which has anything to do with a fear of death.

Dennett argues that because dead bodies are dangerous to be around, but we often feel strong connections to the dead person, the invention of souls and ancestor worship was an important development in ensuring that we stay away from dead bodies (people who didn't have this meme would be more likely to die from disease - hence an evolutionary advantage in a belief in souls). This belief in souls or ghosts slowly evolved over tens of thousands of years into specific souls or ghosts with special powers that eventually became gods.

Wolpert argues that as we developed tools it became more and more useful to have greater dexterity in our fingers. This pushed the evolution of our brain, and it also meant that as we got better at developing and using tools it became more and more necessary to be able to think abstractly. We developed a need to see purposes in everything; which offered a strong survival advantage - if we could pick up somebody else's tool and figure out its purpose we didn't need to invent it again, and if we met a new person or animal and could figure out if they were friendly or hostile, this would help us. Because we had evolved into seeing things as having purposes, we looked at things like the Sun and the Moon and assumed that they had a purpose as well. This slowly evolved into religions.

Most likely the true answer is a combination of these theories and a few others I could mention.