muso wrote on Mar 10
th, 2012 at 6:25pm:
How would you use statistical methods to prove that a particular natural vista is beautiful, or that Colombian coffee is the best, or that you love somebody?
If that statistical technique showed that it was contrary to your beliefs, would your beliefs suddenly become false? - or in the flawed illogical 100% natural brain of a human being, do you think that individual perception might just be a factor?
How do you categorise the supernatural in terms of existence? How would you define that which is supernatural, and how would you define a god in a mutually acceptable way to every human being in the world?
Quote:It important to remember that the range of infinite possibilities as to the creation of the universe is so so so large the human mind could not even comprehend because many possibilities may not even make sense to our cognitive abilities.
PP - we're bordering on the same territory. I agree with that last point, but that doesn't make me either an agnostic, an atheist or a theist. To be one of those, we needs to pretend that the definitive questions make sense, except for the case of some theists who believe that they know what the question means.
Those things you listed are opinions, the origins of the universe would be a fact if we knew what it was; which is vastly different to an opinion.
If you were to say for example Colombian coffee is the best because it has the strongest aroma you could look at what causes strong aroma in coffee, apply that to growing conditions of beans from around the world and see which has the highest probability of being aromatic as a result of the best conditions.
Of course if you had the coffee beans right in front of you, you could test the smell of beans from around the world and know definitively which is the most aromatic.
But god or the cause of our universe is not right in front of us and we can only evaluate it by what we know, which is nothing.
And the equvialant to comparing the coffee beans growing conditions in my analogy is being done today on ficition, with no evidence what so ever; which would be like guessing the growing conditions (of which we don’t even understand the concept) and trying to somehow get the right answer; i.e. this god or that god.
Science looks to find the information of which we can evaluate and thus understand.
But at present no such information exists.
So we can sit in ignorance and believe that a certain god is the truth for absolutely no reason, or we can embrace science and actually work out reality and fact.