comments on "Top 10 arguments for the existence of god"

[awjohnson]

I just wanted to mention that I have completed my initial survey an analysis of your basic assumptions as revealed through our conversations thus far, and through things I've picked out of various other places on the website.

I am preparing a response that will explicate upon false assumptions and inconsistencies in your reasoning that make it difficult for us to develop a methodology together.

Thanks...

[awjohnson]

You ask for tangible indisputible evidence

I have some objections to this on epistemological grounds. Tangible evidence (i.e. physical substance) doesn't prove anything. You observe a bunch of meaningless sensations. The proof lies in your discernment of what it is abstractly. "Indisputible" is a subjective judgment. Ask for a proof that leads to a high probability given reasonable presuppositions instead.

Your presuppositions are kind of bizarre, as I mentioned, such as your ultimate presupposition of the reliability of tangible evidence. Which makes your worldview somewhat unintelligible. If you want to have a debate, you need to accept the reliability abstract truth. You've created a false dichotomy in thinking that abstract truth can only be physical or metaphysical. This reflects the false orientation of your abstract framework (perception).

I feel that the cosmological argument is more than sufficient to establish the reasonability of the presupposition of God. You accuse me of "special pleading" or "begging the question" to deny it. You mean the kind of "special pleading" which prevents you from having an infinite regress in your worldview? You mean the kind of "begging the question" you did when I asked you to justify your certainty in your perception? You weren't even correct in assuming I was begging the question. All things that are part of a deterministic process must have a cause. Due to the fact that God precedes the structure of the universe, we cannot speculate as to the nature of "causal" arguments regarding God's existence.

You don't seem to understand that ultimately no assumptions are certain about anything (see Münchhausen Trilemma), so special pleading and circular logic are fallacious fallacies to some degree. All people start at an arbitrary ultimate presupposition, and formulate a worldview around it. That presupposition is the thing that is most real to a person. Yours just happens to be unintelligible.

You say love is an abstraction, and doesn't necessarily have any relevance to real world impulses.

If all impulses are incidental then it is not possible, even in theory, to understand them on a conceptual level because there are no concepts! Once again, this throws out logic and the scientific method, the very basis of your worldview!

Are you saying that everyone who values something is delusional?
Are you saying that anyone who uses antithesis is delusional?

Because if real world impulses are ultimately meaningless, then if we give them any real credit, we are delusional. However, if the real world impulses have meaning, then we can discuss them abstractly, making your point invalid.

Please establish your epistemology. The only thing I can gather with certainty from your worldview is that it's self refuting. The things you believe are definitely far from obvious. It seems to me that you don't even fully understand the things you believe.

God is my ultimate presupposition. God is my presupposition because I have questions that are categorically unscientific that need an answer. For example, the mechanical universe is deterministic, but I have the freedom to make choices in an indeterminite manner. How is it exactly that a deterministic universe can produce something that isn't intrinsic to its structure? You cannot explain freedom through the scientific method. If it is free then there would be no criteria with which to analyze it. It's not like we can peek inside of the human mind and say "wow, we've found the part of the brain that makes freedom! Look at all the little mechanisms that are necessary to make a human function indeterminitely!" You can't engineer freedom. You can't deconstruct it either. Therefore science is forever silent on this issue.

I also presuppose God because I believe there must be some kind of ultimate absolute origin of all things absolute. Something that explains everything. The determinism of observable reality, and hierarchy of human thought suggest that there is an answer. Science, to me, is a tool, but not the answer to everything. Science can answer everything within the machine, but reality is more than a machine. If you don't think so, just give me a little time. I can prove that you in fact agree with me already.

Which brings me to another point... you have this notion that science can answer questions it can't. It's not a matter of time. There are things that exist that are unscientific in nature. Even worse, you assume science can solve things simply because it has before, which is a fallacy. If you cannot define precisely, in an abstract process, how one would even go about answering a question scientifically, then it is an irrational leap of faith to assume the question will be answered by science at all. The scientific method is insufficient due to its dependence on deterministic physical structure to arrive at any relatively certain conclusions. In any case, this does seem an awful lot like "Godidit".

You can't use the "leap of faith" excuse to dismiss my conclusions as unreasonable as you've demonstrated that you have the same leap when it comes to your own presuppositions. Neither can you use "arbitrariness" as an excuse, as the God I've discussed is related to, and has effected, all of reality. Also keep in mind that your ultimate presuppositions of the existence of reliability of tangible "evidence" (a subjective judgment) and the possibility of indisputable evidence are actually utterly ridiculous.

This is all to say, please try to be reasonable. Ask me to prove God to you in a way that actually makes sense. I'm willing to do it!

[awjohnson]

My previous response was a bit more hostile then I intended it, I apologize. I was more or less reacting to the tone of this website.

[wayneNilsen]

First, I would like to thank you for your generous contribution. Also you have a good point about the IPU. And now, down to business.

Your presuppositions are kind of bizarre, as I mentioned, such as your ultimate presupposition of the reliability of tangible evidence.

Certanly not my presuppositions, for I try not to have any, the best way that I can. René Descartes in his first Meditation on First Philosophy entitled "Concerning Those Things That Can Be Called into Doubt" unvails that everything that you "know" must be called into doubt.[1] In this way you can eliminate all presuppositions. This is what I have done with my life lately. This is what encouraged me to join this forum as well. Unfortunatly Descartes wasn't around today because I believe he would be a monist. Being that we have a much greater understanding of how things work.

I do enjoy the challenge of the cosmological argument. Unfortunatly If you do believe in that it's based on the premice of causation. What "caused" existance of god? You may also find much evidence that the cosmological argument is flawed based on other premises, while I have just focused on one premise.[2]
*****

You cannot explain freedom through the scientific method.

You say love is an abstraction, and doesn't necessarily have any relevance to real world impulses.

There are many things in this world that emerge as beautiful patterns but are in fact just simple things in their own right such as fractals. The easiest of which to understand would be the kotch curve.[3] I believe thoughts and the mind to be one of these things. In the wrelm of artificial life in computer science one studies how simple things following simple rules can create fantastic results, such as working together to achieve a task. Conway's game of life is a fine, but simple, example of this.[4] The way these things work together is much the same way that our neurons work together to create a brain. They are simple things following the simple basic rules of physics and chemistry.
Our thoughts such as freedom or love follow simply as our neurons reacting to electrical and chemical signals they recieve says science. The abstract has developed as a result of natural selection. Humans with things like love and fear survived and were more likely to reproduce. Others emerged as our complex memeplex did. This is oppinion.
*****
You are obviously very intelligent. To support the idea of a philosophical god is not unintelligent by any means.[5] So I now pose this question to you. Which god would you have me believe in? Yahweh, Jesus Christ, Amun Ra?

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditations_on_First_Philosophy
2. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2006/entries/cosmological-argument/
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractals
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_game_of_life
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_religion (see the "who is god?" heading)

[pile]

As always, I appreciate the dialogue and hope you aren't put off by my more acerbic style... it's just the way I write..

You ask for tangible indisputible evidence

I have some objections to this on epistemological grounds. Tangible evidence (i.e. physical substance) doesn't prove anything.

What? Tangible evidence proves:
1. Your God exists
2. You're not delusional
3. Scripture is accurate
4. Fundamentally changes literally thousands of preconceived notions scientists have about how the world and the universe works
5. Sociological and cultural systems all around the world are either wrong or right

If you could actually provide physical evidence that your god exists, it would be an amazing discovery.

You observe a bunch of meaningless sensations. The proof lies in your discernment of what it is abstractly. "Indisputible" is a subjective judgment. Ask for a proof that leads to a high probability given reasonable presuppositions instead.

Indisputable could be "subjective" depending upon whether or not there are certain guidelines indicating what is and isn't acceptable evidence.

Freethinkers rely on the Scientific Method to determine what is real, factual, indisputable. This is a time-tested and time-honored way of qualifying things in our universe. This is the standard by which we determine what is and isn't factual and it is reliable and dependable, and ultimately not subjective.

For example, let's talk about the term "wet." We go out side and it's lightly raining. Are you "wet?" Maybe I say you're not, but you say you are. That is subjective, but if we apply the scientific method we can determine a means by which we can measure the amount of precipitation that permeates your clothes and skin, and establish a certain standard for wetness, at which point we make an objective, repeatable measurement and we can indeed determine, regardless of what you think, whether or not you're "wet."

Using the Scientific method, assuming we can agree on a standard, even something as nebulous as "wetness" can be clearly quantified. Compare this to some of the claims in the bible and it becomes obvious qualifying such claims would be just as easy if not easier. For example, in Genesis, a snake talked to Adam and Eve. Produce a talking snake... it doesn't have to be the original one, and suddenly that myth doesn't seem so irrational.

Religious people constantly seek out this type of evidence -- they're fond of looking at geology to claim there's physical evidence for the flood in the bible, but they intentionally ignore the additional evidence that suggests floods are localized and not on the scale outlined in Genesis, as well as the observable evidence that floods happen routinely and are seasonal in many parts of the world. As well as the psychological and sociological evidence that more likely explains the stories to be exaggerations or works of fiction rather than accurate depictions of actual historical events.

It's ironic that religious people use the excuse of "you can't qualify god" when there is no evidence, but when they can find some physical evidence they can twist to support their claim, then all of a sudden they forget they previously talked about how "you can't prove god because he's in another realm" and start citing cherry-picked physical evidence. You can't have it both ways.

Your presuppositions are kind of bizarre, as I mentioned, such as your ultimate presupposition of the reliability of tangible evidence. Which makes your worldview somewhat unintelligible. If you want to have a debate, you need to accept the reliability abstract truth. You've created a false dichotomy in thinking that abstract truth can only be physical or metaphysical. This reflects the false orientation of your abstract framework (perception).

You use a lot of two-dollar words, but you don't seem to be saying anything. What presupposition(s) are you talking about? Cite them. One thing that bothers me about these arguments is often I will make very specific claims/counter claims, and theists will respond back with vague generalizations, often centering around how I'm "wrong" or creating my own straw man, but they don't cite examples. You're doing the same thing.

You say:
You've created a false dichotomy in thinking that abstract truth can only be physical or metaphysical.

What the heck does that mean? Truth is that which can be provable. As I've said before, we live in a real, tangible world and have developed ways to qualify what is real and what works in our world. If you make a claim as being "truthful" we can qualify it. I have no idea what you mean by "abstract truth" - this seems to be something made up to confuse people. Is abstract truth a new phrase you've made up which is the same thing as, "weird stuff I believe in that I can't prove?" It isn't truth any more than cool whip is cream.

I feel that the cosmological argument is more than sufficient to establish the reasonability of the presupposition of God.

The cosmological argument doesn't justify anything; it simply creates a "hole" into which you stuff "God". The cosmological argument could just as easily establish the "reasonability" of the flying spaghetti monster according to your flawed logic.

You accuse me of "special pleading" or "begging the question" to deny it. You mean the kind of "special pleading" which prevents you from having an infinite regress in your worldview?

An infinite regress of what? What are you talking about? Again, you make vague references to things I am supposedly doing wrong, but you don't offer specifics so I can't refute your claims. This is a red herring.

You mean the kind of "begging the question" you did when I asked you to justify your certainty in your perception?

Perception of what? Show me where I created circular logic in response to a specific question. Be specific.

You weren't even correct in assuming I was begging the question. All things that are part of a deterministic process must have a cause. Due to the fact that God precedes the structure of the universe, we cannot speculate as to the nature of "causal" arguments regarding God's existence.

1. You make a naked assertion (fallacy) that "god precedes the structure of the universe" - there is no evidence whatsoever for this

2. Where's your evidence for your claim that "All things that are part of a deterministic process must have a cause." I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but where's your evidence for such a wide sweeping generalization?

And there's a difference between a cause and an "intelligent cause" and I bet you arbitrarily mingle the two when it suits your argument.

For example, a rainbow is caused by suspended water vapor in the air. That doesn't mean there's intelligence behind it. So be careful what claims you make when you start following this line of reasoning, because you can't arbitrarily inject "god" into just any point and make it jive. Just because some scientists theorize that there must have been a "cause" for the universe (i.e. Big Bang) does not mean God is anywhere involved in that.

You don't seem to understand that ultimately no assumptions are certain about anything (see Münchhausen Trilemma), so special pleading and circular logic are fallacious fallacies to some degree. All people start at an arbitrary ultimate presupposition, and formulate a worldview around it. That presupposition is the thing that is most real to a person. Yours just happens to be unintelligible.

Ok, now we're getting somewhere... you actually cited a reference.. yay!

Let's talk about this Münchhausen Trilemma:

All justifications in pursuit of certain knowledge have also to justify the means of their justification and doing so they have to justify anew the means of their justification. Therefore there can be no end. We are faced with the hopeless situation of 'infinite regression'.

First off, this theory of infinite regression as it relates to truth makes sense from a pure logic standpoint, but then again if you apply the Münchhausen Trilemma to the concept of logic, we end up in another infinite regress trying to qualify what is and isn't logical, so the whole goddam thing is a meaningless exercise in mental masturbation. This kind of reasoning is mainly employed to irritate and confuse people. It doesn't really serve any productive purpose.

Let me give you an example of why this approach is profoundly stupid and a waste of time...

Let's say I give you a vegetable or fruit you've never seen before. You are starving and it's the only thing available to eat. But it could be deadly.

We have a number of established ways in which we can test fruits and vegetables to insure they are safe to eat, right? But according to the Münchhausen Trilemma, the "ultimate truth" of whether or not the fruit is deadly can never be ascertained because any test we can run on the fruit would in itself need to be verified, and that verification process would need to be verified ad infinitum.

At some point you have to accept what is and isn't reasonable based on acceptable standards, and in this case, an acceptable risk, assuming the tests performed on the fruit offset the potential risk/reward. In this case, assuming the fruit isn't deadly, we know there's an immediate, obvious reward of giving our body nutrition (no to be confused with a totally unqualifiable reward of what might after after death according to scripture)

So if we gave any credence to the boneheaded philosophical masturbation that is Münchhausen Trilemma, everyone on this planet would starve.

Let's use another example of why this Münchhausen Trilemma is a total waste of time...

If you walk out your front door, you could potentially get struck by lightning and die. As confident as you are that this won't happen, whatever methods or evidence you're citing that suggests it would be safe to go outside, is ultimately not 100% certain according to the infinitely-irritating and pointless philosophical circle jerk of Münchhausen Trilemma, so I guess you should never leave your house...

The world doesn't work like that.

There's an acceptable, reasonable level of "truthiness" mankind generally agrees upon that stops this infinite regression, because otherwise we'd never accomplish anything!. And what you've done is cherry-pick this obscure, controversial, laughable philosophical concept and used it to try to shoot down rational arguments.

Let me ask you something... why is Münchhausen Trilemma worth contemplating? Can you name even one example outside of our argument (where you use it like a blind man going after a pinata to strike down all arguments), where this ridiculous line of infinite regress serves a valid purpose?

For example, I cite the Scientific Method as a way by which I qualify truth. And there's thousands of years of history and discovery, cures for diseases, technological advancements and much more that can be attributed to what following the Scientific Method can offer humanity. Explain to me what Münchhausen Trilemma offers except a frustrating way to terminate an argument by suggesting anything we talk about is meaningless?

I have to give you credit though... even though it's a really obnoxiously desperate argument, it's one I haven't seen used like this and I thank you for bringing it to my attention. It still proves nothing. It's a desperate attempt to grasp at inconsequential philosophical straws to create another "gap" into which you can arbitrarily stuff god.

[Barry]

If God is everywhere all the time as many believers like me think, simple observation is enough proof. I don't feel the need to prove anything to those who fail to look for themselves. Seeing God requires self-effort, the same way seeing a movie does. I don't need to prove Batman. Go to the theater, buy a ticket and see for for yourselves. Q.E.D.

[IgnoranceDeified]

Greetings everybody. I've been trying to make sense of awjohnson's post and feel that I have some insight to put forward. I hope that nobody minds my jumping in here. His post seems to me to be mostly smoke and mirrors and here's why.

I feel that the cosmological argument is more than sufficient to establish the reasonability of the presupposition of God. You accuse me of "special pleading" or "begging the question" to deny it. You mean the kind of "special pleading" which prevents you from having an infinite regress in your worldview?

I personally don't feel that cosmological argument is sufficient to establish anything. But, let's assume for the sake of argument that it does. The most you could say that is that is says that something caused the universe. It takes a leap to then assume that that something is god and a monumentus leap to assume that something is your particular interpretation of what god is. Further, I have know idea what you are talking about concerning, "the kind of "special pleading" which prevents you from having an infinite regress in your worldview?" Could you enlighten us please?

All things that are part of a deterministic process must have a cause. Due to the fact that God precedes the structure of the universe, we cannot speculate as to the nature of "causal" arguments regarding God's existence.

It's not even clear that all things that are part of a deterministic process must have a cause. Could you point me to what causes a radioactive nuclei to spontaneously decay? Is it that they don't have a specific cause, or maybe your god has a hand in that too. Secondly, your claim that, "God precedes the structure of the universe" is nothing but a bare assertion and still special pleading.

You don't seem to understand that ultimately no assumptions are certain about anything (see Münchhausen Trilemma), so special pleading and circular logic are fallacious fallacies to some degree. All people start at an arbitrary ultimate presupposition, and formulate a worldview around it. That presupposition is the thing that is most real to a person. Yours just happens to be unintelligible.

I find this means of argument odd. It really seems to be a nuclear option since it pretty much undermines any reasoned discussion that we may have if we are to take it seriously (this includes your defenses of the theistic position). You position seems to be that reasoning is unreliable since it relies on reason and so on. Yet you've come to this conclusion using reason yourself. That seems a bit odd, doesn't it?

If all impulses are incidental then it is not possible, even in theory, to understand them on a conceptual level because there are no concepts! Once again, this throws out logic and the scientific method, the very basis of your worldview!

It's quite amusing that you yourself are using logical arguments for the existence of god to support your claims. When shown that these arguments are indeed not very logical, you make the claim that it's logic itself that's faulty! Let's say that logic is unreliable. Then what is the point of even having this discussion since any logic we may use for or against the idea of god are flawed? In future debates, it may be wise to not build up your arguments and then destroy their very foundation.

Please establish your epistemology. The only thing I can gather with certainty from your worldview is that it's self refuting. The things you believe are definitely far from obvious. It seems to me that you don't even fully understand the things you believe.

Is this more handwaving? I think it is. If you want to make claims like this, it is useful to provide examples and explanations, yet I see none here.

Which brings me to another point... you have this notion that science can answer questions it can't. It's not a matter of time. There are things that exist that are unscientific in nature. Even worse, you assume science can solve things simply because it has before, which is a fallacy.

I'm having a hard time finding where any of these things are asserted. Even more than that though, this claim does nothing to support the existence of god or even your belief in god.

For example, the mechanical universe is deterministic, but I have the freedom to make choices in an indeterminite manner. How is it exactly that a deterministic universe can produce something that isn't intrinsic to its structure? You cannot explain freedom through the scientific method. If it is free then there would be no criteria with which to analyze it. It's not like we can peek inside of the human mind and say "wow, we've found the part of the brain that makes freedom! Look at all the little mechanisms that are necessary to make a human function indeterminitely!" You can't engineer freedom. You can't deconstruct it either. Therefore science is forever silent on this issue.

Once again you are just making bare assertions. The universe may be deterministic on our scale, but things get a bit fuzzy when you look closely. The best you could say about quantum mechanics is that it is probablistic. Then you go on to talk of free will. Unfortunatly for your argument, free will has never been shown to exist and there are good reasons to suspect that what we percieve as free will is anything but. Science is not "forever silent on this issue". I can assure you that it is an area of active research.

You can't use the "leap of faith" excuse to dismiss my conclusions as unreasonable as you've demonstrated that you have the same leap when it comes to your own presuppositions. Neither can you use "arbitrariness" as an excuse, as the God I've discussed is related to, and has effected, all of reality. Also keep in mind that your ultimate presuppositions of the existence of reliability of tangible "evidence" (a subjective judgment) and the possibility of indisputable evidence are actually utterly ridiculous.

This just continues to get more amusing. You've claimed leaps of faith when it comes to our presuppositions, but once again failed to provide any examples. It seems as if you are using the word 'faith' as a tool by which you can avoid justifying your belief and sidestep awkward arguments and to disguise the fact that atheism is far more reasonable than theism (“But they’re both faith positions!”)

When we finally wade through your post to get down to the meat of it, we find out it is this: science can't disprove god so therefore my belief in god is justified and rational. When we take this to its logical conclusion, we can easily see why it's absurd. Say that I believe that having sex with virgins will cure my aids. Sure, science can show me many reasons why this belief is not justified and even contradicted by the evidence, but can it ever really prove that having sex with virgins doesn't cure aids? The way that this cure works is outside of the realm of science, I claim. Therefore, my belief is completely reasonable. Science can't disprove my belief that there are invisible pink ponies on pluto, so that's a completely reasonable belief too, right?

This is all to say, please try to be reasonable. Ask me to prove God to you in a way that actually makes sense. I'm willing to do it!

That's all these fine people have been saying all along! Please try to be reasonable? You claim that your god created everything, is everywhere, and affects everything. I don't think it's at all unreasonable to ask for evidence of that. You know, the kind of evidence that we demand for everything else in life. It does your argument no good to show that it's possible that your god does exist. I don't think that's in dispute. You must show us why it's reasonable to believe he does exist. This is something that you've completely failed to do.

Cheers

[IgnoranceDeified]

If God is everywhere all the time as many believers like me think, simple observation is enough proof. I don't feel the need to prove anything to those who fail to look for themselves. Seeing God requires self-effort, the same way seeing a movie does. I don't need to prove Batman. Go to the theater, buy a ticket and see for for yourselves. Q.E.D.

Barry, seeing god requires the power of suggestion and self deception. To use your movie analogy, It a bit like going to see Batman with a friend, but when you walk out of the theatre your friend claims you just got done watching Casablanca. You say that Casablanca's black and white and involves no caped crusaders and he says, "yes, it looks like Batman, but underneath all that it is clearly Casablanca at work. Casablanca works in mysterious ways, you see." You ask him if there's anything that he can do to convince you that it is Casablanca and he returns with, "I don't feel the need to prove anything to those who fail to look for themselves. You can see that it's Casablanca in every frame if you really look for it. You have to look with your heart and not with your mind. See it for yourself. Q.E.D."

Does this look ridiculous to you? It should.

[pile]

If God is everywhere all the time as many believers like me think, simple observation is enough proof. I don't feel the need to prove anything to those who fail to look for themselves. Seeing God requires self-effort, the same way seeing a movie does. I don't need to prove Batman. Go to the theater, buy a ticket and see for for yourselves. Q.E.D.

Barry, seeing god requires the power of suggestion and self deception. To use your movie analogy, It a bit like going to see Batman with a friend, but when you walk out of the theatre your friend claims you just got done watching Casablanca. You say that Casablanca's black and white and involves no caped crusaders and he says, "yes, it looks like Batman, but underneath all that it is clearly Casablanca at work. Casablanca works in mysterious ways, you see." You ask him if there's anything that he can do to convince you that it is Casablanca and he returns with, "I don't feel the need to prove anything to those who fail to look for themselves. You can see that it's Casablanca in every frame if you really look for it. You have to look with your heart and not with your mind. See it for yourself. Q.E.D."

Does this look ridiculous to you? It should.

Nice response. I grow weary of the argument from personal experience.

[awjohnson]

I initially wrote a long an disorganized response to you, but several of the modifications I made to it were apparently rolled back due to an issue you had with your database, or something along those lines. So I decided to create a more organized and direct approach.

I want to apologize for all lack of clarity coming from my end in this discussion. I've been struggling to try to understand your view and articulate my own position. It's proved quite complicated.

Further, I have know idea what you are talking about concerning, "the kind of "special pleading" which prevents you from having an infinite regress in your worldview?

Munchaussan trilemma. You perceive because you experience because you perceive your experiences. To attempt to justify your perception, you have to use it. When you work with a system of justification you ultimately can never be justified so you are stuck with circular logic or special pleading.

You say that love is an abstraction. You also say the concept of love is subjective. I asked you to apply this to the concept of logic. Logic is an abstraction. Logic is subjective. Yet logic is also a standard. Specifically, logic is the standard for abstraction. Therefore, if logic is subjective, your methodology refutes itself, because at no point is there a standard. To say that logic is the way that your brain processes information puts a prerequisite on establishing the standard of logic, namely the prerequisite of proving that the concepts of logic coincide with the processes of the brain. You haven't done this, and you can never do it, because you must use logic in order to determine the way the brain works. You can avoid this circularity by making the assumption that logic exists, and is determinate.


Your methodology can clearly be demonstrated in your example of scientificially evaluating wetness. You say that by defining a standard between two people, you essentially have one. Outside of the obvious fallacious reasoning that caused you to arrive here (a naked assertion), you have 3 additional problems:
1. You presuppose the objectivity of communication before the objectivity of logic. This is what you are trying to do by defining a standard, and yet, communication is a process that depends upon logic, the standards of which have not yet been established.
2. Defining terms, then, must be done Ad Infinitum, until every term in existence is defined. You can tell that it must be done Ad Infinitum because you must use new words to define your old words in order to avoid circularity. Thus you have met an infinite regress.
3. You presuppose the objectivity of the conclusions of logic without presupposing the objectivity of logic. You come to a conclusion of a method for scientific experimentation by means of logic. Then you communicate that conclusion, making the conclusion itself objective.

The infinite regress of defining terms is also conceptually proved to be impossible, in addition to being impossible in practice. It is conceptually impossible because words themselves are symbols of the things they are trying to convey, and not those things themselves. Therefore they are always abstract, and never “real world”, and the abstract realm (abstract truth) is what you claim to be subjective. I think that what maybe you are intuitively recognizing is that abstract concepts are objective in nature, and tangible things are objective, but there is not a discernible objective relation between the two?

You are requiring me to establish proof by means of
1. Indisputable evidence.
2. Tangible evidence.
However, you fail to provide a standard for indisputability (say logic?). Then you fail to provide a standard for tangible evidence. This is because you are attempting a bottom up approach to epistemology (i.e. logic needs to be abstracted from tangible things, which is impossible). Logic itself is an absolute objective standard of every human being that cannot be established, but discovered. Since it is a process of the brain, it is genetically imposed upon you. It is grasped conceptually. It is an objective, and not subjective, concept. By saying it is subjective, you have undermined your refutation of the ontological proof (and literally all other refutation you attempt to do, ever, of anything) because you have undermined the possibility of certainty.

Explaining your dilemma
Your dilemma can be defined in terms of the Munchausen Dilemma, or Godel's incompleteness theorems in mathematics. You try to create a standard instead of acknowledging that standards cannot be created, but discovered. I'm not in this predicament, because I do not try to prove a standard, neither do I attempt to provide a standard. I merely accept the standard of logic because to do otherwise is self refuting (because logic exists) or else reality itself becomes meaningless nonsense.

In my faith, we have a proverb: Never answer a fool according to his folly.
I will not adhere to your self refuting epistemology.

You need to have a hypothesis of a standard, then test it. This is what I do with God. This is the only “proof” of God that is conceivable. God can never be proved, any more than anything else you believe can be proved, but reality can be interpreted by means of the hypothesis of God, and tested for internal coherence and consistency. The motive for testing the hypothesis of God is ontological questions, which I will get to shortly.

You want to start with neutral or no presuppositions.

I'm sorry, but this is just not possible. You cannot think without assuming. You assume so many things all the time that you don't realize. You assume your memory is correct. You assume I can understand the things you say. You assume there is such a thing as knowledge. You assume your perception of reality is real, or at least, that it could be real. You have to start somewhere. These are all presuppositions. You can't help but starting somewhere if you are anything but insane, because in an act of thinking you have genetic standards imposed upon you. What if those standards were unreliable?

I think such standards are quite reliable, and I will (arrogantly I guess?) accept them. To do otherwise is to create unintelligibility. Does that make my worldview less that neutral? Yes. In the same way, it does so to you. We can agree on certain things because we are human. If we cannot agree, we do not prove inductively that one of us is probably right. We prove it deductively by testing one another's hypothesis on the standards that we have already accepted. I apparently have a hypothesis that is distasteful to some people. That's fine. But do not be so naïve to believe because I can't “prove” it, it is unreasonable or false. If you think my hypothesis does not coincide with reality, you need to disprove it by means of deduction. You can do this because I will define precisely the relation between reality and God. If in so doing, I require a contradiction to exist, you can assume my hypothesis is false. Pile is incorrect in saying that I cannot shift the burden of proof. I can, and I must. Just as you can, and must, for any hypothesis which you accept that I haven't. We need to keep at a reasonably modest scope.

So what is abstract truth?

This is actually a really important question, and I want to take time to be clear about what I'm referring to. For future reference, I use abstract truth, conceptual reality, and relational knowledge interchangeably. Abstract truth refers to the fact the concepts are true regardless of how they are manifested. Conceptual reality is implicit in physical things, but it is not those physical things. Conceptual reality has no explicit language. So if I use the word “bike” you know the actual object I'm referring to. The physical composition of the printed word bike is not actually the physical bike. This is how communication is possible. The concept of abstraction is meaningless unless there is a conceptual level of understanding that has no explicit language. Another way to say it is that abstract truth is relational knowledge rather than object oriented knowledge. Objects are specific and explicit but relationships can only be implicit. The concept of abstract truth is exemplified in perception. We see how things relate to one another, and thus are able to define what such things are. There is actually a bible story about this. A man was healed of his blindness, but was not able to comprehend what he saw. Jesus had to fix his perception in order to allow him to understand that humans were not trees. The mystery of abstract truth is that it is nothing, but it is in everything. Natural laws, for example, are perceived relational laws, but not tangible objects. You cannot see them, though you perceive them.

Logic is relational knowledge. When you talk about logic being abstracted, what you're failing to realize is that abstraction is a logical concept. What do you think logic is abstracted from? You could say it is abstracted from processes of the brain, but the only reason you can do so is by means of an intangible relationship between that process and logic. I could say that the universe is an abstraction of a human, but I need to explain how. The "how" is relational. Maybe it is because I am inside the universe. "Inside" is a relationship. You could point to physical locations, but the concept of being "inside" of something is a relational, intangible concept. Try denying this relational knowledge, and still try to explain reality. You could even go smaller scale and say that "human" is an abstraction of "me". But how? You identify a relational pattern in the nature of a specific human being and apply that relationship to other things. Gravity is an example of relational knowledge. Gravity is not something that "actually exists" (according to you), it's the way to explain a phenomenon.


So, regarding the concept of tangible evidence... It's not the tangible evidence itself that proves anything. It's your perception of such evidence that proves something. There exist stimuli in an evironment which you may interpret and apply your own conclusions to. Thus you could perceive the stimuli of a "miracle" to be another natural law based on what your conception of a natural law is. You could also perceive it to be any of numerous arbitrary psychological phenomenon. The problem is that you (and I'm speaking of you guys specifically here, not all people) cannot precisely define your criteria for tangible evidence, nor can you justify such criteria. Your worldview never escapes subjectivity in the process of trying to interpret tangible evidence, and though you may reject this in practice, it is what you think you believe. If objective standards pre-exist, then you no longer have a basis for ignoring ontological questions. Furthermore, you have already accepted ontological inquiry as a legitimate process. It is where science begins. You recognize that there is some concept implicit in reality that you do not readily understand. You are only able to recognize it by means of abstract conceptual reasoning (i.e. your perception).

Ontological inquiry is a valid process. If I have ontological questions, you have them too. You need answers to them. I posed the specific ontological request of explaining the existence of freedom in the context of a deterministic universe, which is the reality we live in. Free thought and movement necessitates some other origin than a deterministic universe. Whether it comes from God or not is up to you. But because I have observed a relationship between contradictory things, I have a hypothesis: an indeterminite God exists from which freedom is derived (created) that possesses intellect in order to implement structural reality. I can then test that hypothesis. You have the same ontological questions as I do. Your worldview must be false if there exists something which creates a logical condtradiction with something else in your worldview (transcendental argument). It may only be some small thing, but depending on how many other beliefs are derived from the presupposition of determinism, you may potentially have destroyed the majority of your worldview. You could deny determinism, but then that would mean that the universe could be chaotic. If you assume that, you could not have reliable conclusions ever as long as your discussion revolves around anything inside of the universe (which is really what I think you intend as the scope of science). This means your whole scientific approach is smashed. All I'm asking for is a coherent methodology, which I am trying to provide, and you fail to. Is that so irrational? Of course not.

The very idea of "proof", in the context of this classical self refuting model that you accept, is an unintelligible delusion. You accept something as true if the opposite is false. It's not possible to prove anything. It's only possible to disprove things. Restated, it is not possible to know if something is true, only if something is false. It's so funny that you criticize me for bringing up the Munchaussen trilemma when really all it says is what the scientific method does. Science operates on the same assumption! That's why you need to test your hypothesis, to see if you can deduce that it is false by means of it being contradicted. If it isn't contradicted, it's a viable theory.

Let me give you an example of why this approach is profoundly stupid and a waste of time...

Let's say I give you a vegetable or fruit you've never seen before. You are starving and it's the only thing available to eat. But it could be deadly.

We have a number of established ways in which we can test fruits and vegetables to insure they are safe to eat, right? But according to the Münchhausen Trilemma, the "ultimate truth" of whether or not the fruit is deadly can never be ascertained because any test we can run on the fruit would in itself need to be verified, and that verification process would need to be verified ad infinitum.

This is an Ad Hominem argument that you've made. Not that I care, I just am kind of annoyed at your logic centric name calling. It's something you use to avoid putting concepts together. The trilemma proves that our method of argumentation needs to consist of disproving assumptions, which is what I'm trying to do. If I define what God is, and how God relates to reality, you can respond by showing that such things are inconsistent with what we know. All you're doing here is nearly repeating verbatim the exact things I've said. I'm trying to get you to let go of this rediculous notion of "proof". From now on, I expect you to never use the word truth, because what is true cannot be determined according to your worldview. Everything is arbitrary, and you cannot explain why people agree on anything.

and that verification process would need to be verified ad infinitum.

Only if you personally are the one doing it.

It's not even clear that all things that are part of a deterministic process must have a cause. Could you point me to what causes a radioactive nuclei to spontaneously decay?

Granted. However, can you prove that it does not have a cause? (I'm not using this for the cosmological argument). The only reason I say this is that when you start to believe that undetermined events actually exist, you run into problems. Furthermore, if it does continue in a deterministic way, it is only the cause that is unknown. The process still exists.

Once again you are just making bare assertions. The universe may be deterministic on our scale, but things get a bit fuzzy when you look closely. The best you could say about quantum mechanics is that it is probablistic. Then you go on to talk of free will. Unfortunatly for your argument, free will has never been shown to exist and there are good reasons to suspect that what we percieve as free will is anything but. Science is not "forever silent on this issue". I can assure you that it is an area of active research.

The mere prospect of being able to determine anything about anything requires determinism to be true. You're trying to avoid the problem by using quantum mechanics, even though experience readily identifies that you can suspend an impulse to allow another impulse to proceed. If determinism is false, then your scientific readings could be false, and your scientific instruments could be false, Ad Infinitum. You don't operate under that assumption. According to you that would mean you are irrational. This argument is invalid. Regardless of what people perceive of quantum mechanics, in real experience, indeterminacy of the universe proves false. A more accurate statement about quantum mechanics is that it isn't fully understood. Your assumption that science will solve this issue is based on nothing. This is the same old argument "Because it has succeeded before", which is an irrational and baseless assumption. Quantum mechanics, which consists of the inability to determine things is different from the clearly present ability to consistently defy determinism. Think about the nature of freedom and your experience of it, and you cannot possibly suspend belief in it. You don't believe this. You don't act on it. Does that make you irrational?

science can't disprove god so therefore my belief in god is justified and rational.

Wrong. I have was laying the ground for my eventual argument for God's existence. I am refuting your methodology first because it is wrong.

It's quite amusing that you yourself are using logical arguments for the existence of god to support your claims. When shown that these arguments are indeed not very logical, you make the claim that it's logic itself that's faulty! Let's say that logic is unreliable. Then what is the point of even having this discussion since any logic we may use for or against the idea of god are flawed? In future debates, it may be wise to not build up your arguments and then destroy their very foundation.

Wrong again. I am proving that you are functioning under a system of determinism in which you are trying to suspend belief. Logic is a determinate concept. You cannot take a middle ground on logic. Either it exists, or it doesn't. If it doesn't, then why are you even bothering to do science at all?

There's an acceptable, reasonable level of "truthiness" mankind generally agrees upon that stops this infinite regression, because otherwise we'd never accomplish anything!. And what you've done is cherry-pick this obscure, controversial, laughable philosophical concept and used it to try to shoot down rational arguments.

"truthiness". You're avoiding providing me with any kind of clarity about what you're saying. The trilemma is not controversial, obscure, or laughible. The trilemma is solved by genetic standards imposed by us that we cannot deny. We just need recognize them, and submit to them. What else can we do? It's not like we can reason according to a system that we don't have. It has nothing to do with reason though.