Magi Mike’s Blog

Scientifically, or any other way, we cannot prove anything that is imaginary or simply a thought. Centaurs, vampires, werewolves, philosophers’ stones, elixirs of life, fairies, demons, angels, gods, God—such things can be imagined, but cannot be proved because they are purely imaginary, figments, and so do not exist in reality to leave behind any evidence for them. The absence of evidence for them is evidence! It is evidence against them.

A basis of science, a feature without which it could not work, is skepticism, one does not postulate anything for which there is no evidence. Its opposite is credulity, the inclination to believe anything on the least of evidence or none! Related to skepticism is the principle of Ockham’s Razor, or Parsimony, which says that one postulates only what is necessary and feasible—one does not glibly invent things. Using these principles science has no need to hypothesize God. Nor does it have to disprove God, an entity for which it has no need, any more than it has to disprove centaurs or elixirs of life, etc, or needs them.

An agnostic is deliberately wavering, wavering out of choice and not reason. To claim there is no evidence either way, is simply to say there is no evidence, and so to be scientific and skeptical the postulate of God has to be rejected until convincing evidence forces a reassessment. It is impossible to be simultaneously a scientist and a believer in God, so long as science cannot accommodate credulity. Credulous science becomes religion!

Moreover, if God existed and has the effect on the material world that believers think He has, He is necessarily leaving evidence behind. Science ought to be able to detect it. As Victor Stenger shows, nothing so far suggests anywhere in the universe that we have checked out that requires a God to explain it. Science is highly successful at explaining things without the hypothesis of God. So, if God exists, He is not manifestly changing the world in any discernible way. Worship and prayer are having no effect.

Of course, a purely mental God, a purely imaginary or psychological phenomenon, can effect one. It is a form of autosuggestion. That is probably why people are able to convince themselves that God does answer prayers. It is the Placebo God.

This photograph is proof of creationism according to a creationist, Terry Hurlbut. It shows what purports to be a monster akin to the Loch Ness monster, called Nessie by journalists, except that this one is on Lake Windermere in the English Lake District. The press have dubbed it Bownessie.

It proves creationism because it shows that the dinosaurs and human beings lived together simultaneously, or rather they do now, so must always have done. It is therefore an evolutionist myth that the dinosaurs preceded humans by some 60 million years and so humans and dinosaurs never occupied the earth together. As they actually did—according to this proof, still do—live together, God created them all, once and for all, just as Genesis says.

Now, I confess that this photograph is a fake, made by me using photo retouching software in about half an hour. But there is a “real” photo which has been published in various newspapers like the Daily Mail, and which “experts” say may be a fake but they cannot tell! Well, the one above is a fake, and the one below is the genuine one.

I mean it looks real, so it must be proof of God. Mustn’t it?

Oops! I hope I didn’t mix up the photos.

A Mr Dale writes online:

1. Any declaration of truth, like: my hair is brown or God exists or there is no God requires evidence.

   Not so. These are apples and pears. “God exists” requires evidence, as does a statement about the colour of something, but “there is no God” neither requires evidence nor can there be any other than the absence of evidence that there is a God. When something is imaginary, it does not exist in the material world and so there can be no material evidence of it. When there is no material evidence of something, then the skeptical attitude at the base of science declares that it does not exist. If material evidence arises, then science is corrigible. It can change its previous conclusion. Meanwhile God does not exist because there is no evidence He does. If Christians demur then they must produce the evidence for God.

2. What evidence does anyone have for atheism? What evidence could be provided to support it? How do you measure spirit? It’s impossible to measure fully the states of an atom, which is a material construct. How then can you disprove something which is immaterial?

   Something immaterial, like spirit, can have no effect on the material world. So far as we material things are concerned, spirit does not exist because there is no material evidence for it, nor can there be unless spirit is in some sense material, in which case we can detect it. No one has, and the skeptical view is that it does not exist. See 1.

3. As pointed out, time and again. There are many arguments for God’s existence. There is physical evidence to support the general historicity of the Bible, esp. the New Testament. And there is God’s promise of self-revelation to the earnest seeker.

   None of the “many arguments” are given. The historicity of a book is no proof of God, and God’s self-revelation is not a self revelation at all but merely a statement of certain authors and preachers, all men.

4. But even if you could dis-prove the theist’s arguments that’d still only lead you to agnosticism.

   Not so. Agnosticism is sitting on the fence. The skeptical conclusion from a lack of evidence for God is that there is no God.

5. Consequently one has to ask; how can anyone hold the strong belief: there is no God, in the absence of any suporting evidence. Surely the best any rational person can do is say. I don’t know if God exists.

   Not so. See 1 and 4.

6. On the other hand the Christian can look at the argumentation. Can balance the evidence and can receive God’s self-revelation and consequently, rationally state: God exists.

   Not so. Mr Dale proves that the Christian does not look at the evidence, or the arguments, and does not balance the evidence but counts as evidence that which is not evidence and that which is irrelevant. In short, they are indoctrinated and deluded.

7. Considering human beings are pre-programmed to believe, something long, argued for by Christians and the rationality of Christian belief as opposed to the no-God hypothesis, would it not be rational to actually look for answers to some of these questions?

   Rationality is something Christians like Mr Dale should try.