Great content, but I'm getting dizzy with the camerawork.

Penn is 100% right in all of his language here. It is a very confusing subject, so don't hate on the people that get it wrong, but all his definitions/understandings are correct. For the interested, I am going to spell them all out there explicitly.

Belief: Any cognitive content held as true.
           Everything is a belief.

Atheism: An absence of belief in Deities.
               Atheism can be explicit or implicit.

Theism: The belief in Deities.

Agnosticism: A belief that the belief in, or non-belief in Deities and metaphysical beliefs is unknown/unknowable. In other words, it questions weather is it possible to turn any belief into knowledge.
                     There is both strong and weak form of agnosticism.

Knowledge: This refers to belief. Knowledge is true belief; or to say it backwards, knowledge is belief in something that is true.

Truth: Your fat. No wait, that's not it. It is conformity with fact or the ultimate reality (Your fat, AND lazy).

Implicit Atheism: Is lack of belief in Deities without actively rejecting the idea of Deities. The example would be someone whom has never been exposed to the idea of a Deity. Children could be counted in the ranks (before they are exposed to the idea) as well as people isolated from these ideas, like tribal people, or people incapable of forming that idea.

Explicit Atheism: Rejection of the idea of a Deity. Most atheists you would meet are explicit atheists.

Strong Agnosticism: A belief that the existence or nonexistence of a deity (or deities), and the nature of ultimate reality (truth) is unknowable.
                              
  This is the ultimate skeptical position.

Weak Agnosticism: The belief that the existence or nonexistence of a Deities (or Deities) is currently unknown but is not necessarily unknowable.
                              
 This is opinion; The highest level of skepticism you can have while also being completely rationally consistent (I am a weak agnostic atheist, so totally no bias at all).

Many of these are mix and matchable. You can be an agnostic atheist. You can Be an agnostic theist. You can be a weak agnostic atheist, which are the most sexy and have large reproductive organs. Everything is a belief here, so try not to abuse that word theists. Off to go be verbose somewhere else! And correct me anywhere I made a mistake and I will fix it, it all gets so confusing and I might of mistyped.

Fucks sake the camera work is a joke.

cannot evan wach this lol just going to listen with another webpage open total fail lol .

lol EVAN with it minimaized the sound is all over the fucking place whoever decided to do this like this should be exicuted.

+1 on motion sickness.

The only atheists I consider dogmatic are the ones that believe no gods can possibly exist (I've met a few), though I suppose that depends on the definition of "gods". For some reason that group (definite belief against) seems to be what many think of as "atheists".

I think QualiaSoup has one of the best descriptions of "lack of belief": http://videosift.com/video/Lack-of-belief-in-gods

@Psychologic it depends on the definition of a god. If a god is like the regular God, a deity that just is eternal, then no they cannot exist. If it's just a vastly superior race, then sure they can totally exist.

>> ^gwiz665:

If a god is like the regular God, a deity that just is eternal, then no they cannot exist.


"Cannot"? As is the existence of a being that exists outside of what we perceive as time is impossible? How can that be known?

It can be known, because that's the way the world works. There is nothing "outside" the world as it exists. While you technically might say that there could be something wholly removed from the physical universe, there is no overlap - there is no manifestation here or there of the other. Therefore, even though you could on a purely theoretical basis make the argument, it is ultimately a waste of time and futile.
>> ^Psychologic:

>> ^gwiz665:
If a god is like the regular God, a deity that just is eternal, then no they cannot exist.

"Cannot"? As is the existence of a being that exists outside of what we perceive as time is impossible? How can that be known?

@gwiz665
That claim requires proof. I have yet to find such proof. The absence of evidence isn't the evidence of absence, which I am sure you are already familiar with; so I would be interested in your evidence to support this claim. You just replied to this above so I will address it in a second!


@Psychologic
Indeed, cannot is a claim. Cannot needs evidence. The difference between "there are no white ravens" and "there cannot be white ravens" is huge. Science doesn't deal in the realm of "cannot's" either, so we can't consort it on such matters.

>> ^gwiz665:

It can be know, because that's the way the world works. There is nothing "outside" the world as it exists. While you technically might say that there could be something wholly removed from the physical universe, there is no overlap - there is no manifestation here or there of the other. Therefore, even though you could on a purely theoretical basis make the argument, it is ultimately a waste of time and futile.
>> ^Psychologic:
>> ^gwiz665:
If a god is like the regular God, a deity that just is eternal, then no they cannot exist.

"Cannot"? As is the existence of a being that exists outside of what we perceive as time is impossible? How can that be known?



I just think it's a logical fallacy to draw any conclusions about things we can't measure or observe.

We can't currently see outside of our perceivable reality, but that doesn't mean nothing else can possibly exist... it just means we don't know anything about what may or may not exist there, so drawing conclusions is, at best, unsupportable.

That's half the problem with discussing this crap. Many people can't agree on the definitions. It's hard enough debating this shit even when you can agree on definitions.

I'm pretty sure there are a group of atheists out there that want to lump everyone under the Atheist umbrella, just for the sake of providing a united front and swelling the numbers so that they can have a better shot at challenging Deists

But it's the same damned thing with Christianity too. Everyone believes slightly differently, from the abortion doctor killers to the people who only go to church as a means of socializing/networking. But they all get to be called Christians.

This is exactly what I worry about when it comes to challenging Christianity. If you're not careful, it very quickly becomes a situation where you're just trading one dogmatic tyranny with another. Same BS, just different people.

The way I look at it is that religion and dogma are just symptoms of the human condition. Bottom line is that humanity still has a lot of growing up to do. You can take away religion and dogma, but that doesn't suddenly mean that humanity magically becomes less corrupt or more evolved. Corruption and stupidity does not require religion and/or faith.

There are some major problems with this claim, IMO. I would like to clean up the wording of your second sentence. Something that doesn't interact in anyway with the cosmos, doesn't exist meaningfully. So something that does not, cannot, and will not interact with an object doesn't exist to that object. Indeed, when our own galaxy is racing away from the other galaxies at a speed faster than the speed of light (the space in-between being created at a rate which pushes us away faster than the speed of light) you can say the same thing, that our galaxy is the only object that exists in the universe. Other objects existed, but the no longer do. They might "exist" in some theoretical way, but they don't meaningfully exist. I completely agree with this position. If a being we want to call God doesn't exist here in any way physically, than he doesn't exist.

Which brings us to your first point. How does the universe exist? I assure you we have more question in that than answers. And every answer brings forth new questions. We are no closer today to understand basic ideas than thousands of years ago. For instance, how to objects move? If space is infinite, how do finite objects transverse infinite space in a finite time? What determines gravity attract at the rate it attracts? Why are macro objects analog and quantum objects digital? We can't even show that the sky is blue, only that it exists as a wavelength of light that human preservers sometimes interpret as a mind object of blue, we are no closer to understanding if blue is a real thing or a thing of mind. I think you give to much credence to our understanding for this claim to be sufficient. To my knowledge, we have little understanding of the functional dynamics of the cosmos. We have pretty good predictive models, but that is a far cry for absolute certainty, a necessary for a claim such as this.

There are many metaphysical examples of all powerful beings and absence of their direct physical interactions being detectable as well. One of the more famous is of the "God mind" example. In a dream, you are in control of all the elements. Let's call all the elements of your dream your dream physics. The dreamer is in 100% control of the dream physics. The dream itself is a creation of his dream physics. The dream physics themselves are evidence of the dreamer. In addition, the dream, being wholly created from dream physics is also evidence of the dreamer. Parallel that back to us and you have one of the easiest and elegant explanations of the universe. Indeed, it is so comprehensible other views of the metaphysical nature of the cosmos will seem overly complex and lauded with burdensome hyper explanations, making this model satisfy an occam's razor over other possibilities. But complexity is hardly a model for evaluating truth, so I leave that just as an aside.

Indeed, there are further explanations that would seemingly leave little evidence for God except for things happening just as they "should". One being the Occasionalism model, which interestingly enough, comes from the same mind as the previous example, George Berkeley. There is no proof that causation is the actuality of the universe. Just as if I setup a room full of clocks, and from left to right the clocks would sound off 5 seconds from the previous clock. To the observer, the clocks "caused" the next clock to sound, and on down the line they go. The problem is, there is actually no causal link to bind them, I created it after seeing A then B happen again and again. The fact is, no such link is there, I, the clock creator created it to appear that way, or maybe I didn't and you just jumped to conclusions. It is a classic example that Hume also highlights in his problems on induction.

I will leave it there. I am resolved to say I don't know. I also don't know that can or can't know. I am uber agnostic on all points, I just can't say. And I don't even know if time will tell.
>> ^gwiz665:

It can be know, because that's the way the world works. There is nothing "outside" the world as it exists. While you technically might say that there could be something wholly removed from the physical universe, there is no overlap - there is no manifestation here or there of the other. Therefore, even though you could on a purely theoretical basis make the argument, it is ultimately a waste of time and futile.
>> ^Psychologic:
>> ^gwiz665:
If a god is like the regular God, a deity that just is eternal, then no they cannot exist.

"Cannot"? As is the existence of a being that exists outside of what we perceive as time is impossible? How can that be known?

Here's the other part that pisses me off. Every religion seems to claim that they know what god is all about and the other religions are wrong. There is this attempt to claim god as their own and make god and their faith inseparable.

God is not important to me. Whether he/she/it exists or not is irrelevant to me as far as my daily existence is concerned.

The problem is not god. The problem is religion. So all these definitions revolve around whether or not god exists. So when it comes to the existence of god, I'm agnostic, but i'm pretty sure the Christian faith is bull, I'm pretty sure the Muslim faith is bull, etc, etc.

I can't say this enough. God is not the issue, the followers are.

You can skip to 3:24 without missing anything.

Can't we all agree that the everyone of you fuckers is annoying regardless of your beliefs?

I agree with that 100% even though I am christian

anytime vids like this get posted you get rabid teeth gnashing tards trying to rip each other apart on both sides which is quite entertaining for the lulz

>> ^Yogi:

Can't we all agree that the everyone of you fuckers is annoying regardless of your beliefs?


I know you are but what am I!

I've always faltered between calling myself agnostic or an atheist. I tend to gravitate towards the latter as I have no belief in God,gods or other various superstitious religious hoodoo. But I've never liked how atheism is portrayed as a statement of knowing there is no God et. al and answers to all the important questions. The issue isn't that I don't know what I am, its the ability to correctly convey my stance to others in a single word that causes me to wonder which is the best description. Which would be both and neither for reasons pointed out by Mr. Jillette.

Statistically speaking Gods do not and can not exist.

Penn, I think you're awesome but please get someone else to do your camera work/editing. Or just pick an angle and stick with it. I could not watch this video because the angle kept flipping back and forth and back and forth.

>> ^Crosswords:

I've always faltered between calling myself agnostic or an atheist. I tend to gravitate towards the latter as I have no belief in God,gods or other various superstitious religious hoodoo. But I've never liked how atheism is portrayed as a statement of knowing there is no God et. al and answers to all the important questions. The issue isn't that I don't know what I am, its the ability to correctly convey my stance to others in a single word that causes me to wonder which is the best description. Which would be both and neither for reasons pointed out by Mr. Jillette.


You sound like a weak agnostic, explicit atheist. Trying to fit something into a single inaccurate word does your belief a injustice. Atheist refers to not currently holding a theist position; you know of the idea of Gods but don't currently believe in it. And also agnostic to the position that it can be positively stated either way. Most atheists are agnostics. I am in the same category as you I think, for short hand, I just call myself an agnostic atheist, as most agnostics are weak, and most atheists are explicit.
>> ^Drachen_Jager:

Statistically speaking Gods do not and can not exist.


Says what statistic? Statistically speaking, you are closely related to a banana...you are far different from a banana. Truth isn't statistical, it's absolute. 99.999% isn't truth. Highly accurate isn't necessarily true. Undeniably certain is truth. And "cannot" claims can never be gained from statistical knowledge, ever, so I would embolden you to expand on this claim if you would be so kind. 1,1,1,1,1. What the statistical probability that 1 is the next number is high, but it isn't certain. "Cannot" can't be used via statistical analysis. It is why we still cannot predict if prime numbers are truly random or not...for now they appear to be, but appearances aren't certainties. The statistical probability that PI is irrational is completely unknown. Statistics are very useful, just not in the way you wish to use them, IMO.

@GeeSussFreeK

Some statistics are absolute. The probability of a deity existing are finite:infinite. In other words 0.

There is no chance that God, Jehovah, Mamut, Kali, Osiris, Thor, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster exist. None whatsoever. It is not 'wrong' for atheists to claim an absolute lock on logical certainty. If you are bright enough and you follow the trail of breadcrumbs the conclusion is inevitable.

@Drachen_Jager

Finite:infinite isn't a statistic of deities. You assume existence is finite, and Gods are infinite, which isn't certain in either case. I also call into question the entire logic of that assumption that somehow dividing by infinity represents anything at all. You can't technically divide by irrational numbers, all attempts are estimations. So even if I believed your proof, which I don't, it is still only an estimation, not absolute.


Edit: comment explosion!

It's simple. There are an infinite number of possible 'guesses' one could make about the universe with no observation of reality. Yet the number of statements about the universe which can be true are finite. Yes you cannot divide infinity, that is why I said at first that 'statistically' God cannot exist (try to follow along here and keep more than one post in mind at a time, I don't want to repeat myself). Because, as you say, it is an estimation. The number may not actually be 0, but it is close enough that it makes no difference.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

@<a rel="nofollow" href="http://videosift.com/member/Drachen_Jager" title="member since April 18th, 2007" class="profilelink">Drachen_Jager
Finite:infinite isn't a statistic of deities. You assume existence is finite, and Gods are infinite, which isn't certain in either case. I also call into question the entire logic of that assumption that somehow dividing by infinity represents anything at all. You can't technically divide by irrational numbers, all attempts are estimations. So even if I believed your proof, which I don't, it is still only an estimation, not absolute.

Edit: comment explosion!

First off, I still refute your statement that there are a finite number of statements about the universe that can be true. For instance, Hawking has proposed that there are perhaps an infinite number of parallel universes causing an infinite number of truth statements about the cosmos. Already, we have programs that can write additional complexity in themselves, causing an infinite rule-set of truths to be created. Also, any statement about truth being finite would itself be about the set, not in the set, causing a new set to be created to include that truth. Any statement about absolute absolute finiteness statistically can't be shown. (This was the same fate the logical positivists suffered. For something to be true, to them, it had to be verifiable. But you can't apply the verification principle to itself nullifying its usefulness as method for determining absolute truths.)

Plus, the way you setup your statistic is to show that for a finite universe, the probability of an infinitely increasing number of Gods being true goes to 0. But no religious person even holds to the idea that all religions are true simultaneously. This statistic is meaningless as it is measuring the value to wit no one is asserting is the possibility of the conditions of deities.

Furthermore, if we disregard your strict adherence to the idea that the cosmos must be finite, we can, in fact, have an infinite number of religions true simultaneously. It would be the limit of x infinity^infinity/x as x goes to infinity. My calculus I is rusty, so I think that is either 1 or infinity, I don't know which.

For me, though, estimations are never close enough to make no difference when Truth is concerned. I hope you don't take my tone as argumentative. I have taken it as two folks with a difference of opinion. However, I do think that statistics are a poor model for evaluation the likeliness of deities. It doesn't matter if all are true, only one needs to be for us to be satisfied. It would be akin to relating the belief of the big bang to a religion and discounting it because it can't be simultaneously true with conflicting theories of existence.

>> ^Drachen_Jager:

It's simple. There are an infinite number of possible 'guesses' one could make about the universe with no observation of reality. Yet the number of statements about the universe which can be true are finite. Yes you cannot divide infinity, that is why I said at first that 'statistically' God cannot exist (try to follow along here and keep more than one post in mind at a time, I don't want to repeat myself). Because, as you say, it is an estimation. The number may not actually be 0, but it is close enough that it makes no difference.

@GeeSussFreeK "For instance, Hawking has proposed that there are perhaps an infinite number of parallel universes causing an infinite number of truth statements about the cosmos."

That is not possible. If it were possible, one of the "truth statements" you could make would be. "There is an evil god in one of the parallel dimensions with the power and the will to utterly destroy all parallel dimensions now, in the past and in the future."

Obviously we are here, therefore you cannot make an infinite number of "truth statements". There must be some limit. Either Hawking is wrong or (more likely) you have misinterpreted him or learned from someone else who misinterpreted him.

@Drachen_Jager
@GeeSussFreeK

In response to the Stephen Hawking Infinite Universes and Reality theme... (Videosift ate my quote...)

Not saying I don't agree as it sounds like brain vomit with no proof, but an interesting idea. But, if the system that you speak of is balanced then there is also a Universe where they protect everything, canceling out any effect on us. This will always be true with "parallel Universes" as they exist only to be cancelled out elsewhere.

Quantum mechanics takes it one step further and says that if such a Universe knew about us in anyway our Universes would become entangled and our combined wave functions would collapse and create a new one. It would also mean that the "Evil God" is now beholden to OUR physics as well as theirs; our reality would become a hybrid of the two realities. This potentially would make the "Evil God" look like an idiot, destroy his conduit for power, or worse make him a literal baby under our combined mechanics. In fact he may lose any ability to control a single iota of minutiae of our now, combined realities.

This becomes a problem with our "classical" Gods, for if they interact with our reality then they must obey some physical rules; this lends credence to being able to dismiss a supreme power either MAN-MADE or a GOD. As both have to obey rules and these rules allow others to balance the control the "God or Man" can have over time. Truthfully, the rules/physics are more powerful than any God could hope to be.

They will always dictate and give definition from one polar opposite to the next; or three opposites, four, five, six... Math works because all it does is give meaning to boundaries that have always existed.

@Drachen_Jager

You assume that because you can make an infinite number of statements about the truth of something, that all statements must be true, which is a fallacy. There is, correspondingly, an infinite number of false statements that could be made. It would be as high an order of infinity as the number of truth statements. There is also a corresponding theory of the quantum multiverse where all of reality exists as a quantum reality, and all realities are realized. Creating a infinite set, of infinite sets to the infinite power.

The most important thing is that all statements are not true statements, even if they are infinite in number (of both true statements and statements in general). You can't make a statement that is false, say it's true, and by that virtue discredit my metaphysic's truth value if you knew it was false in the first place. You are creating the same fallacy people make when they say "Can God make a rock in which he cannot lift?" Something that isn't logically consistent (like stating something that is true which isn't) is a pseudo-question like "Gods that can make square circles".

But now, I sleep, so no responses for awhile. I feel as if you are talking to me like I am a "believer", which I am not. There is a certain condescending nature in your tone that I get from people who "know better" than those silly people of faith. Perhaps I am wrong, but that is the perception I have of some of your phrasing.

Penn's just arguing about definitions, like most people who think they have something to say about this subject. When the theists can agree on a definition for what their particular god is, we may come to a point where the argument over definitions can begin to make sense: where it can stop being an argument about what should go under what heading in the dictionary and actually begin to be a discussion about things that exist (or don't exist) in the real world. Until then it's all just semantic masturbation.

I'm sick of this pedantic whiffling about definitions. What really matters isn't definition, but evidence, and the real debate is about how much evidence there is to support the existence of a god or gods.

quoting bible, Luke 19
12He said therefore, A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return.

13And he called his ten servants, and delivered them ten pounds, and said unto them, Occupy till I come.

14But his citizens hated him, and sent a message after him, saying, We will not have this man to reign over us.

15And it came to pass, that when he was returned, having received the kingdom, then he commanded these servants to be called unto him, to whom he had given the money, that he might know how much every man had gained by trading.

16Then came the first, saying, Lord, thy pound hath gained ten pounds.

17And he said unto him, Well, thou good servant: because thou hast been faithful in a very little, have thou authority over ten cities.

18And the second came, saying, Lord, thy pound hath gained five pounds.

19And he said likewise to him, Be thou also over five cities.

20And another came, saying, Lord, behold, here is thy pound, which I have kept laid up in a napkin:

21For I feared thee, because thou art an austere man: thou takest up that thou layedst not down, and reapest that thou didst not sow.

22And he saith unto him, Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked servant. Thou knewest that I was an austere man, taking up that I laid not down, and reaping that I did not sow:

23Wherefore then gavest not thou my money into the bank, that at my coming I might have required mine own with usury?

24And he said unto them that stood by, Take from him the pound, and give it to him that hath ten pounds.

25(And they said unto him, Lord, he hath ten pounds.)

26For I say unto you, That unto every one which hath shall be given; and from him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away from him.

27But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.

God is a spritual concept. Does god exist? That's a metaphysical question, best to totally ignore it. Does a river exist as it changes from instant to instant?

Rather when I say to you, "you are against god" "God will protect you" "God will avenge me"
these are spiritual concepts. unbelievers may laugh, but spiritually minded people (who aren't as filled with prejudices as you wish to think) understand the meaning perfectly.

Sorry If I judged all you unbelievers.

>> ^Drachen_Jager:
Statistically speaking Gods do not and can not exist.
[...]
Some statistics are absolute. The probability of a deity existing are finite:infinite. In other words 0.

By that logic humans can't exist, because the probability of any specific individual you could imagine existing is practically 0.

You can point out a lack of evidence for the existence of gods, and I would agree with you on that point, but statistics cannot disprove the existence of something.

If you want to think of it in mathematical terms... 1/X approaches zero as X approaches infinity, but 1/X cannot equal 0. You can't just divide something by infinity and proclaim it is therefore impossible. Mathematics do not work that way, goodnight.

@GeeSussFreeK

"You assume that because you can make an infinite number of statements about the truth of something, that all statements must be true, which is a fallacy. There is, correspondingly, an infinite number of false statements that could be made."

That's the opposite of what you said before, but you are right this time. Except about my assumptions, you have that bit backwards. I was merely extrapolating from your fallacious argument to show you that it's fallacious, which you somehow agree with but attribute to me... Weird.

So we are in agreement. There is a finite number of true things and an infinite number of false things you can say about the universe. Therefore any statement you make without evidence is infinitely more likely to fall into the infinite false category than it is to fall into the limited true category.

If, after all this you don't get it, re-read what's been posted. I've covered the bases.

Over and out.

Drachen proves my point about why Atheists need better PR

I'm not religious.

Thats what I am.

Just not religious.

I'm not terribly complicated.

There is a finite number of true things and an infinite number of false things you can say about the universe. Therefore any statement you make without evidence is infinitely more likely to fall into the infinite false category than it is to fall into the limited true category.

As a statistician, I can with no malice inform you that the above statement is incorrect. Statistics does not presume to arrive at definitive conclusions. Statistics merely comment on probabilities in relation to the reliability and repeatability of a particular population of observations.

If there are an infinite number of false statements, and an infinite number of true statements, then the probability that is most likely is that any statement a person makes is likely to be both true and false relative to context.

I don't always agree with Teller. His logic is a bit haphazard. However, he does at least try to approach things fairly, and I respect that. Religion by its very definition is not a matter of physical observation. It is a matter of personal faith. As such, it is a qualitative observation rather than a quantitative. Attepting to cast the discusion in terms of 'proof' or 'statistics' is meaningless.

Many atheists/agnostics refuse to discuss religion unless it is confined to terms of experimental scientific methodology. Such an approach is futile. Discussing issues of faith using such limited terminology is like trying to discuss 'flavors' with someone who has no taste buds. There is no way you can wrap up and quantify the flavor "Vanilla" so as to make a man without taste understand it. With such a limited capacity for input the best you can do is give a soul-less, heartless, vague skeleton of the experience.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
Many atheists/agnostics refuse to discuss religion unless it is confined to terms of experimental scientific methodology.

Depends on the subject. When someone claims that they believe gods exist outside of what we can perceive then they're talking about something outside of science.

However, when people claim that the earth is less than 10,000 years old or that gods actively participate in our physical reality then that is very much a question of observation and testability.

If there weren't numerous people advocating for the dismissal of evidence within the realm of our physical world then I doubt there would be so much tension between science and religion.

Sweet Jesus. "SOMEONE IS WRONG ON THE INTERNET"

What do you call someone that has a belief that there is an equal probability of truth to the following two statements:

There exists a supernatural being.
There does not exist a supernatural being.

I call that person agnostic with regards to the whole debate. Would you prefer disinterested?

Stop counting me amongst your ranks. I care about accuracy in the reporting of data. Particularly when reporting data that is used to influence policy. Agnostic != Atheist, though the opposite has been claimed here many times.

@GeeSussFreeK I'm going to pick and choose from your comment instead of quoting, since it's huge.


There are some major problems with this claim, IMO. I would like to clean up the wording of your second sentence. Something that doesn't interact in anyway with the cosmos, doesn't exist meaningfully. So something that does not, cannot, and will not interact with an object doesn't exist to that object. Indeed, when our own galaxy is racing away from the other galaxies at a speed faster than the speed of light (the space in-between being created at a rate which pushes us away faster than the speed of light) you can say the same thing, that our galaxy is the only object that exists in the universe. Other objects existed, but the no longer do. They might "exist" in some theoretical way, but they don't meaningfully exist. I completely agree with this position. If a being we want to call God doesn't exist here in any way physically, than he doesn't exist.

I'm not sure you can say that something doesn't exist, just because we cannot observe it directly anymore. Galaxies moving away from ours at greater than light speed still have had an effect on things around them and we can see the "traces" of them, which at least suggests that they exist - like black holes, which we cannot see directly either. Futhermore, we can observe on the galaxies moving parallel or at least along side our own, how they move and can thus estimate the position of the big bang and theorize from the given evidence that galaxies moving in the opposite direction should exist even if we cannot see them or in essence EVER interact with them again.

A similar argument can't be made for God.


Which brings us to your first point. How does the universe exist? I assure you we have more question in that than answers. And every answer brings forth new questions. We are no closer today to understand basic ideas than thousands of years ago.

You are being a bit facetious here, I suppose? We are quite a bit, actually a huge leap, closer to the basic ideas than we were thousands of years ago. The problem is that the target keeps moving further back. First cells, then molecules, then atoms, now quantum entanglement (or what its called).

For instance, how to objects move? Force is applied to an object making it move relative to the world. The world moves in the opposite direction, but only relative to the opposite force, which means very, very little.

If space is infinite, how do finite objects transverse infinite space in a finite time?
It isn't and they wouldn't.

What determines gravity attract at the rate it attracts?
I'm not a physicist, so I won't venture too far off ground here. It's understood as far as I know. @Ornthoron could you perhaps confirm for me?

Why are macro objects analog and quantum objects digital?
Macron objects are perceived as analog, because we don't look closely enough and in short enough time spans. Any perceived analog object can be simulated digitally if you use enough data to do it. This is my understanding, anyway.

We can't even show that the sky is blue, only that it exists as a wavelength of light that human preservers sometimes interpret as a mind object of blue, we are no closer to understanding if blue is a real thing or a thing of mind.
This is a distinction between what is and what something is perceived as. Essentially you're touching upon qualia, which some cognitive scientists believe in and others don't. Blue is a real thing in so far as it's a wavelength of light. As for the rest, I don't know. It's a much harder question than you lead on, because a theory of mind is one of the hardest questions there are left.

I think you give to much credence to our understanding for this claim to be sufficient. To my knowledge, we have little understanding of the functional dynamics of the cosmos. We have pretty good predictive models, but that is a far cry for absolute certainty, a necessary for a claim such as this.


There are many metaphysical examples of all powerful beings and absence of their direct physical interactions being detectable as well. One of the more famous is of the "God mind" example. In a dream, you are in control of all the elements. Let's call all the elements of your dream your dream physics. The dreamer is in 100% control of the dream physics. The dream itself is a creation of his dream physics. The dream physics themselves are evidence of the dreamer. In addition, the dream, being wholly created from dream physics is also evidence of the dreamer. Parallel that back to us and you have one of the easiest and elegant explanations of the universe.

I think you are confusing a dream with the idea of a dream. You rarely have any control in dreams and even lucid dreamers don't have 100 % control. How a dream actually is made/dreamed is also a point of discussion in itself. A fundamental problem with this hypothesis is that WE think. Actors in our dreams don't think or do anything that has any effect in the world other than our memory of them. Like our thoughts, dreams don't have wills of their own.

Indeed, it is so comprehensible other views of the metaphysical nature of the cosmos will seem overly complex and lauded with burdensome hyper explanations, making this model satisfy an occam's razor over other possibilities. But complexity is hardly a model for evaluating truth, so I leave that just as an aside.

All other things being equal, the simplest explanation is usually the right one. But all other things aren't really equal here. Some thing are just inherently complex, like gravity or magnets. When you don't think about the details, it's easy to think your hypothesis is correct, but when you dig deeper it falls apart.

Actually, even if you accept the premise, it still means that the dreamer is completely removed from us; he has no control, because not even traces of it has been observed in our reality (the dream). So the complete lack of evidence also points to this hypothesis being false.

When you think it even further, we run into the ever present homunculus argument. Who's dreaming of the dreamer? And so on.

That our reality is actually a real, physical one is a much better explanation, because it neatly explains itself more completely - thereby actually fulfilling Occam's razor better.


Indeed, there are further explanations that would seemingly leave little evidence for God except for things happening just as they "should". One being the Occasionalism model, which interestingly enough, comes from the same mind as the previous example, George Berkeley. There is no proof that causation is the actuality of the universe. Just as if I setup a room full of clocks, and from left to right the clocks would sound off 5 seconds from the previous clock. To the observer, the clocks "caused" the next clock to sound, and on down the line they go. The problem is, there is actually no causal link to bind them, I created it after seeing A then B happen again and again. The fact is, no such link is there, I, the clock creator created it to appear that way, or maybe I didn't and you just jumped to conclusions. It is a classic example that Hume also highlights in his problems on induction.

Correlation does not imply causation. We have much supporting evidence of causation though. Forces are demonstrably interactive. Whether they were secretly set up to seem as if they interact aren't necessarily relevant, because demonstrably they do. There is no evidence to the contrary at all.

In your clock example, it is a physical room, so there are plenty of things to test the hypothesis that the clocks cause each other to ring. Are the clocks identical? Are there cogs inside the clocks? If we break one, will the chain still go on without it? Etc etc.

From observing X number of clocks you cannot strictly speaking extrapolate that to all clocks. That's the essence of the induction problem. Your hypothesis is based on limited data, and on further analysis it falls apart. Causality itself hasn't fallen apart yet. I'd like to see a proper argument against it, for certain.

I will leave it there. I am resolved to say I don't know. I also don't know that can or can't know. I am uber agnostic on all points, I just can't say. And I don't even know if time will tell.

It's a good start to all questions to say "I don't know". I do that too on many, many things. It's a much better starting point than when preachers usually say, "I know".

Your questions are interesting to me, because they deal with a lot of philosophical and physical stuff, I like those.

On a purely pragmatic level though, they are largely not that important. look at it this way, do you live your life as if causality exists? If you do and it works as you expected, then causality probably exist. If you live as if it doesn't exist, then the world is suddenly a very strange place. Do you live as if what you observe as blue is actually blue? Do others see it as blue as well? If they all do, then it's probably just blue. Does it make a difference if some people see it as green? Not really, I'd think.

Do you live your life as if there's a God? Do others? Does it make a difference? That's a very basic test of whether he actually exists. I argue that it doesn't make any difference at all, other than expected behavior of either party - some live as if a God exists and other live as if he doesn't exist. If the only difference in the people themselves, then the God falls out of the equation.

I think I've sufficiently trudged through this now. Sorry for the wall of text, hope it makes sense.

The Content was great but damn Penn looks like the missing love child of Che Guevara & Muammar Gaddafi in this clip

Tags for this video have been changed from 'penn jillette, atheism, agnosticism, christian, religion' to 'penn jillette, atheism, agnosticism, christian, religion, penn point' - edited by xxovercastxx

The "cartoon" he talks about is http://xkcd.com/386/

I've come to love the term ignostic.

Put simply, the ignostic response to the question, "Does God exist?" is "What is meant by 'God'?"

Until "God" is clearly defined, there can be no discussion. Some definitions are quite easy to refute, others impossible, but there are as many "Gods" as there are believers.

First of all, your "statistics" is anything but. I don't know where you're pulling these pseudo-mathematical concepts from. Statistically "proving" or "disproving" a deity exists is simply fallacious.

Secondly, there are different types of infinity. See "cardinal numbers".>> ^Drachen_Jager:

@<a rel="nofollow" href="http://videosift.com/member/GeeSussFreeK" title="member since August 1st, 2008" class="profilelink">GeeSussFreeK "For instance, Hawking has proposed that there are perhaps an infinite number of parallel universes causing an infinite number of truth statements about the cosmos."
That is not possible. If it were possible, one of the "truth statements" you could make would be. "There is an evil god in one of the parallel dimensions with the power and the will to utterly destroy all parallel dimensions now, in the past and in the future."
Obviously we are here, therefore you cannot make an infinite number of "truth statements". There must be some limit. Either Hawking is wrong or (more likely) you have misinterpreted him or learned from someone else who misinterpreted him.

Something else not pointed out in this thread. There are so many facets of the world we don't understand, or have theorized, but cannot observe, I don't see how anyone can say that physical evidence for a deity exists/doesn't exist. It could be that we don't have the capability to observe such evidence.

I'm not a deist, but I definitely think that lots of atheists are as dogmatic as fundamentalists.

@gwiz665

If you're referring to the question "Why is the gravitational constant at the value it is?" Then you could go around in circles with the answer, i believe. It's like the idea that changing Planck's constant by even a small amount would then have resulted in a universe that was inappropriate for sentient life. And that ties into the anthropic principle and the phrase "things are as they are, because if they were not how they are, we would not exist to question why they are how they are" will crop up. Often, the "reason" behind something is merely something you would question further. I mean, what answer would satisfy you? If i said that G is the value it is because of the way heat was distributed in the big bang, you would then need to ask why heat was distributed that way. And then the answer to that would have another question attached.

It's questionable whether half of any of the things under discussion here are even questions in the realm of science to answer. Whenever i've head a scientist asked something that is unanswerable in the realm of science (such as "what's the inside of a black hole look like?") then the answer usually boils down to a cheeky "ask a philosopher."

>> ^longde:

Something else not pointed out in this thread. There are so many facets of the world we don't understand, or have theorized, but cannot observe, I don't see how anyone can say that physical evidence for a deity exists/doesn't exist. It could be that we don't have the capability to observe such evidence.
I'm not a deist, but I definitely think that lots of atheists are as dogmatic as fundamentalists.


Isn't this the precise thing that Teller was trying to address and clear up in his video?

. <-- this is the point, you missed it

"Why is the gravitational constant at the value it is?"

I'll "try" to take this one.

It took a long time for me to make the connection as to why it is that number (I used to ask my physics teachers the same thing and got a blank look in response). If you believe in something outside the Universe I can't help you, sorry. This is a scientific response.

At the beginning of our Universe a certain amount of energy was in play and in turn eventually physical laws and so forth. But, the gravitational constant along with every constant we have is entirely based on the geometry of the Universe. It's shape and form; it's breadth and width of time. These numbers give a higher meaning to the simple form of energy that the Universe once was. It literally gives you all your abilities in life, as do all the other fundamental forces.

The reason they are "that number" is merely due to our defined state. Why they ended up as those numbers most likely go back to the very instant the Big Bang began; and if the Universe has been here before then perhaps it's been decided by other means (perhaps through quantum mechanical interactions with virtual particles or QED).

These numbers represent the energy structure of our Universe and show that at the Big Bang we "may" have interacted with something that gave rise to an unbalanced system, with dominant energies (what I mean by that is that we don't find huge clumps of anti-matter anywhere, even though it makes little sense math wise; but, recently we have shown that anti-matter innately shows up in smaller quantities than our normal baryonic matter--the question is why...). This energy differences and the fact the numbers are distinct and knowable mean that our Universe will have shape and reason based entirely off of these numbers.

If you believe that there might be alternate Universes then the thing that would most likely change first are these numbers or constants. That Universe will be fundamentally different and alien to us.

This thread proves they're both as annoying as the other to 99% of the population.

Maybe I'm just weird like that for being puzzled here, but if something is "outside of science" or "outside our universe", then by what magical method of knowing do people claim to know or suspect it exists in the first place? Shouldn't the most parsimonious answer be a provisional designation of non-existence until shown otherwise?

Something that can be asserted without evidence can reasonably be dismissed without evidence. It's not up to the unbelievers to prove a negative.

I understand people do not want to appear to be extreme or dogmatic, but an appeal to the middle ground (a 50/50 split probability for or against; a false equivalence) in the name of moderation, is still fallacious.

>> ^AnimalsForCrackers:

Maybe I'm just weird like that for being puzzled here, but if something is "outside of science" or "outside our universe", then by what magical method of knowing do people claim to know or suspect it exists in the first place? Shouldn't the most parsimonious answer be a provisional designation of non-existence until shown otherwise?

The error people run into is the false dichotomy that a person has to either believe something unobservable definitely exists or definitely cannot exist.

Both of these positions are unsupportable because they claim knowledge of something unobservable. We can neither test for presence nor absence.

All we can really say is that we don't know what can or cannot exist beyond what we can observe, be it gods, orbiting teapots, or invisible garage dragons.

>> ^AnimalsForCrackers:

Maybe I'm just weird like that for being puzzled here, but if something is "outside of science" or "outside our universe", then by what magical method of knowing do people claim to know or suspect it exists in the first place? Shouldn't the most parsimonious answer be a provisional designation of non-existence until shown otherwise?
Something that can be asserted without evidence can reasonably be dismissed without evidence. It's not up to the unbelievers to prove a negative.
I understand people do not want to appear to be extreme or dogmatic, but an appeal to the middle ground (a 50/50 split probability for or against; a false equivalence) in the name of moderation, is still fallacious.


It's not entirely clear that people mean something that is "outside of science," and I certainly don't see many claiming that their god is "outside the universe." Most claim to have had direct personal experience with a deity. Many of whom are people I trust. Further, they seem to be honestly recounting their experience, and seem to have no motivation to deceive me (unlike claims of spaghetti monsters or martian teapots). While typically I wouldn't consider such reports particularly strong evidence of anything, it is certainly as strong (if not stronger) than the evidence opposing the existence of a deity, which are typically inferred from vague concepts like "parsimony" (aka Bayesian kool-aid). All evidence of existence (e.g. your existence) is tenuous at best, and all of it is inferred from internal mental states. That's why I find that the null model is typically derived from commonsense, not any hard and fast rules about existence or nonexistence. In this particular case, I find that people are relatively split. I have accordingly split my prior.

@Psychologic

Both of these positions are unsupportable because they claim knowledge of something unobservable. We can neither test for presence nor absence.

@AnimalsForCrackers: Apparently I'm not wrong on the internet!

@bmacs27

Touché, madam.