Good read Tarot, thanks, but I don't quite buy it.
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Imagine that, despite none of the tests being successful, you wish to be scrupulously open-minded. So you don't outright reject the notion that there's a fire-breathing dragon in my garage. You merely put it on hold. Present evidence is strongly against it, but if a new body of data emerge you're prepared to examine it and see if it convinces you.
He goes with the above quote, then after a couple more examples he goes on to say:
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Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.
He says "once again", as if that was the exact same thing he said. But it's not. Putting it on hold and not "outright rejecting" the notion is a bit different than rejecting the hypothesis altogether. After reading it several times I really don't see how he came to the conclusion that the hypothesis should be rejected outright.
Syuni:
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An open book is testable. It is an alteration. Let's review the physical evidence for a moment.
Did you leave epithelials? Did you compress the carpeting during your journey? A fingerprint on the doorknob? Altered the O2 content in the room? Did your sweat stain a page? Was there a crystalline structure change as result of the heat of your touch? Could a wind strong enough to open a book be focused in this enclosed space as to alter no other object? And so on, and so forth.
Even if there is NO physical evidence of your journey, the fact that the book is now open -is- an external and testable event. This is where testable events and evidence diverge.
We're assuming here that I found a way to leave no physical evidence. Maybe I floated(or smoothed the carpet), wore gloves, etc etc.
The problem with the book being open is that there's no way to know HOW it opened, ESPECIALLY if there's an easy alternative explanation. IF a god somehow does his stuff via the actions of humans, HOW would that be testable assuming he did it through a stealthy undetectable means? He obviously left something changed, but that can easily be explained away by the human merely performing an action on his/her own will.
The problem is with alternative explanations. The book could have been blown open by the wind, OR opened by me. Both are, in this instance, completely valid explanations(though less evidence of me opening it). Despite lack of evidence, there is a possibility I opened it. It remains untestable, and even though I really did do it, for all intents and purposes I still don't exist?
DoctorX:
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Then it ceases to be relevant and some would argue ceases to be a ghost.
Yet again, if it does something that leaves an impact, it is relevant - because without that action something changed.
That impact may or may not be detectable, and may not be attributable to the correct source.
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Never said it did, but you have just defined an attribute to the deity:
I'm submitting that as a hypothetical, that's not something I believe is a defining attribute. Irrelevance is simply one potential defining attribute that may or may not be the case. I think this may have been more in response to Syuni's statement.
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My compliments.
"And" it would upset many people who want a deity to be a Personal Friend and Wish-Granter as some HERE seem to want.
I will agree that may well be the case.
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Depends. A deity could also be stupid. The "vernacular understanding" of "incompetent."
That would fall within the boundaries of being "anything except all-powerful and all-knowing". How far can we take his fallibility before we accept it as falling within the definition of incompetent?
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Then he becomes Evil and/or Incompetent.
Let's say that evil is out of the picture, that would leave incompetence. So if you accept an extremely broad definition of incompetence which is "anything except all-powerful and all-knowing", then yes it fits. Otherwise, there's nothing that would suggest God would be incompetent by our standards assuming he still retains supernatural ability far beyond humans. If he, for example, played a critical role in stopping the Nazis by influence or taking control of human actions, he would have saved many lives.. but he failed to save many. If such a case was true, he did much good for the world by eliminating them, but also failed to save many. Still qualifies as supernatural ability.
Yea, Godwin etc, but it works =)