Good Argument for God

Recently I have been going around and debating with people about the existance of God. In my travels so to speak, I came accross a theist who made a very strong argument. In the philisophical paradigm there are considered to many different "levels" of existance. By this I mean that each thing that is considered to exist is ranked based upon how certain we can be that it exists. So, the primary level of existance consists solely of the mind. This is the case in that the mind logically proves itself. If one were to doubt the existance of their mind, they would be using their mind to doubt it. Thus, it must exist. The colloquial version of this proof is the simple phrase "I think therefore I am."
Secondary existance consists of things that we can percieve with one of the major senses. Tangible objects which we can feel and see. It is rare to find someone who refutes an object of secondary existance. So with this background, the theists argument went as follows.
1. Things we can feel or see have secondary existance
2. I can feel the love of God in me.
conclusion: God has secondary existance.

The strength of this argument lies in the fact that it is valid through simple logical proof.
the argument parallels the following.
If A then B
Given A
Therefore B

The validity is irrefutable thus one must attempt to reject the premises so as to prevent soundness of the argument. The first premise is generally accepted so I cannot challenge that, and the second can only be determined by the theist so I cannot refute that either. I had no counter to his argument and he won the debate.

Faith and Science

In response to various comments, it becomes necessary to examine the relationship between faith and science. In short, there is no relationship because faith and science are mutually exclusive. As a prerequisite for something to be considered a scientific discipline, it must not include any leaps of faith. This is not to say that everything must be proven for a topic to be discussed scientifically, but rather that unknowns be considered uncertain. Speculation can be made about these unknowns in the form of a hypothesis. Hypothesis are similar to faith in that they make statements about an unknown, but there is one key difference. This key difference is that any hypothesis must include a counter-hypothesis that can be proven. Some abbreviations used to denote the counter-hypothesis and that hypothesis are H0 and H1 respectively. So, a hypothesis about the effect of a vaccination for HIV might look like this.
H0: the HIV virus continues to exist in the host.
H1: the HIV virus has been either reduced or eradicated as a direct result of the vaccination.

The H0 or the counter-hypothesis can easily be proven true by a simple blood test. If the H0 is proven true the hypothesis will be discarded and the unknown will remain an unknown. In the event that the experimentor cannot prove the H0 true then statistical tests will determine the likelyhood that the H1 is true. Keep in mind that it is impossible to prove the H1 true since the result could always be due to an extraneous factor or simple experimental error. Thus, statistical tests will be run to determine the chance that the result was due to the treatment. Repeating the experiment and achieving the same results will increase the chance that the result is due to the treatment and only once the chance of the result being due to chance is sufficiently low, will the hypothesis be regarded in the scientific community as true. Faith works in exactly the opposite way of a hypothesis. In a faith based argument the H1 can be proven and the H0 cannot. For example, the most common faith based argument goes as follows:
H0: God does not exist.
H1: God does exist.

It is philisophically impossible to prove that something does not exist, but fairly easy to prove that something does. In this example God could simply appear and thus prove its existance. So, in summary, a hypothesis attempts to disprove a claim while in a Faith based argument it is impossible to disprove a claim. Thus, I use the above argument to defend a point I made in a previous post that it lies in the hands of believers to prove the existance of God as it is impossible for scientists to disprove it.

Rik pointed out that superstitions are another form of faith which brings me to my next point: Faith is in the eye of the beholder. A religious person has faith in the existance of god, while a baseball player has faith that not changing his socks will increase his batting percentage, and a child has faith in the existance of Santa Clause. One could even argue that the existance of Santa Clause is as real to a young child as the existance of God is to a believer. I would like to use this to defend my previous analogy which compared God to Santa.

In conclusion, I do not intend to shoot down all of your comments, but rather to encourage you to post counter-arguments to my counter-argument. Furthermore, I do not intend to offend anybody of faith and I truly believe that many good things can come from faith. It must simply be recognized that faith and science are mutually exclusive.

Plausibility of God

I would like to start off by responding to a post by nic32. The intent of this blog is not to discredit the beliefs of religious people, but rather to encourage philisophical thought. That being said, nic32 brought up an interesting point when he talked about the lack of proof of a god is not sufficient to disprove god. While this is logically true, the same could be said about anything. For example, the lack of proof supporting the existence of Santa Clause is not sufficient to disprove his existence. (I return to a childhood made up character because it serves as a good example of something that is generally regarded as fictitious) Despite the fact that the lack of proof does not support disproof is a valid statement, I argue that it holds no value. This is the case because it simply cannot be proven that something does not exist. Thus, the ball does not rest in the hands of the atheists to disprove god's existence, but rather in the hands of those of faith to prove or at least provide evidence of his existence. Without evidence of existence, any idea about the origin of the universe is equally unlikely. This is the case in that an infinate amount of possibilities could be considered yet only one can be true. Thus, each idea without any supporting evidence has about a 1/infinity chance of being the actual origin of the universe. While this quantitative number was made up arbitrarily, I use it merely to show a qualitative lack of probability. In conclusion, while one cannot say that god does not exist, one can say that his existence is rediculously unlikely.

Thank you, Rik, for commenting about the Easter Bunny analogy as I had been very unclear. The parallel I had intended to draw is that both The Easter Bunny and God are simply not scientific concepts. This is the case in that for a topic to be scientific, it must be possible to disprove it, and it is philisophically impossible to disprove either the existence of God or the existence of an Easter Bunny. It is impossible to prove something does not exist because we may have simply not been made aware of it. This becomes evident by the fact that new species are still being discovered on a regular basis.
Another parallel that I would like to demonstrate between the Easter Bunny and God is that their functioning contradicts the laws of the physical world. The Easter Bunny can impossibly carry an infinate number of eggs, while God is "omnipresent" which is physically implausible.
I hope this clears up any confusion I may have caused.

Agnosticism

Hello, and welcome to a newly created blog about atheism. This blog will discuss many highly debated arguments for and against religious belief. As such, this blog is dependant upon your input and any argument you post will be welcome even if it is contradictory with what I have written. This weeks topic will be religious agnosticism.

Agnostics assert that the existence of god cannot be determined based upon the fact that it cannot be scientifically proven nor disproven. Thus, they reject the certainty with which atheists claim there is no god and that with which theists claim there is.

I however, reject the agnosticist's argument based upon the the following premises.

1. The existence of god highly unlikely.
2. A strong enough extent of probability is sufficient
for one to make a judgement with certainty.

Since there has never been found any evidence to support the exisence of a god, the existence of god in the scientific world is on par with the existence of the Easter Bunny. Furthermore, it would sound absurd to say that one is agnostic about the existence of the Easter Bunny. Thus, I believe that the scientific world is certain enough that there is no god so as to be atheist as opposed to agnostic.