Getting random stuff organised
There is clearly a deep-seated and widespread tendency towards megalomania in some members of the human race. Many, many people seem to desperately need to feel that they are in some sense important to the universe. The whole of religion, in fact, can be seen as an expression of the desire to be regarded as …
Continue reading “We’re just not very important. Sorry and all that.”
Rational people will adopt the simplest and most obvious explanation as why there isn’t any proof that gods exist, and conclude that it’s because no gods exist. If and when we find that there’s any flaw in this reasoning, then we can change our minds and consider other possibilities; but until then there is no reason …
Many people don’t find the simulation hypothesis interesting. Whether it’s an ‘argument’ or not depends on whether you think there’s any evidence for it; but it’s hard to see what could count as evidence for a claim that the world is different from how we think it is, but looks exactly the same. And like the other …
The reason most atheists give for not believing in gods is that there is no evidence of gods. Since there is also no evidence that we are ‘living in a simulation’—whatever that actually means—most atheists can be expected to regard this claim in exactly the same way.
Atheists are generally rational people. Rational people believe propositions that there is clear objective evidence for. If there was clear objective evidence that gods existed, then atheists would believe in gods. But there isn’t, so they don’t. And that would require more than just visibility. To be accepted as a god, the candidate of your …
The absence of any evidence for gods is the proof that they don’t exist. If super-powered sky folks actually were running the universe, then we would expect to know all about it, just as the citizens in the Marvel Comic Universe know all about the Avengers. Nobody has ever given us a convincing reason why gods, if …
It really depends what you mean by ‘proof’. Many people—possibly including the people who ‘taught’ you this—seem to think that ‘proving’ something to them means ‘making me say something I don’t want to’. If you accept that definition, then it’s clear that you can’t prove a negative, or a positive, or anything else, to someone who’s stubborn …
Science doesn’t do ‘proof’. It recognises that humans are limited and fallible, and that any answers we come up with may turn out to be wrong. Unlike religion, it doesn’t claim to have a hotline to eternal truths about reality; so, unlike religion, when science turns out to be wrong, it can put itself right. …
Continue reading “If evolution is a fact then why is there no proof?”
Sense-data, direct and indirect, is ultimately all we have. If there’s some other source of information, then we don’t have access to it, and so it’s useless to us. We have to build our science on sense-data because there is no alternative, and hope that it works. Luckily it does work. Generally speaking the observations we make …
My claim to be a strong atheist, and to know that no gods exist, is founded on my understanding — as an educated and fluent speaker and writer of English — of the way that the word ‘know’ is used in ordinary English speech and writing. This allows me to make claims like the following, …
Continue reading “I am not an agnostic, because I understand what ‘know’ means”
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