Except things like law exist in a measurable state. Violating a law has a measurable outcome in the physical world. That’s the difference. If you run a stop sign in the presence of observers such as a police officer (such that it has an impact on that observer) you will be issued a citation for violating that law. We can test that hypothesis.

If something has no measurable presence under any observable state it is indistinguishable from that which does not exist. And to assume it does is tautological and a fallacy.

How would the world change if god didn’t exist the way I described, as being socially real? There’d be no churches, no religious art, no pilgrimages that attract tens of millions each year.

That is tautological and presumes the antecedent. It’s true because they have these experiences and produced these objects. It wouldn’t be true if they hadn’t done that.

I didn’t ask, how would the world would change if people did not believe that God existed. I asked how it would change if God actually did not exist whether they believed or not. 

I’m looking for the major distinguishing characteristic that would differentiate belief in something untrue versus the actual no existence in that. It’s accurate to say that if belief was none existent, those buildings, rituals, etc. would not exist, but that doesn’t distinguish between people believing it to be true yet it not actually comporting with reality.

Those things you mentioned aren’t reliant on being consistent with reality only on people believing that they experience something that is unmeasurable in any actual sense. Our history is full of times where people believed something and developed practices, rituals, stories, and structures in recognition of those beliefs and purported to experience the presence of that belief target only for later peoples to recognize that those beliefs weren’t based on any thing that comported with reality.

For in book reasons yes, for real world people not so much. That was my point. These can be logically consistent within a work of fiction but nonsensical when carried over into reality.

That’s a lot of words that don’t tell us anything other than people created art and rituals they found meaning in. People do that with books and stories that we recognize as fiction all the time without us elevating that to a religion.

Is it epistemologically consistent to say that something that cannot be measured or observed in a replicable manner exists? How would the world be conclusively different from that thing if it didn’t exist if it exhibits no measurable or replicable and observable outcome?

Without knowing the situation, in the world as it exists today, there’s a lot of racist people that use Muslim or anti-Muslim rhetoric to refer to or denigrate any person of roughly Middle Eastern descent. Think of how many stories there were of Sikhs that were assaulted physically or verbally after September 11.

A moderator or admin who is aware of this could easily still allow criticism of Islam, the religion, while taking actions against those who are just being racist assholes with a veneer of anti religion. I have seen this many times before.

I don’t know, saying “I don’t have proof, I just believe” doesn’t seem like any sort of internal “logic” to me.

And while there are a lot of vocal people who are anti theists, most of us just look at believers like we would real people who are too afraid to say Voldemort’s name so he won’t come back because they can’t separate stories from reality.

This guy seems to think so :)

“Fake cryptocurrency”

Phone call from the Department of Redundancy Department on line one…

We just finished binging it. Aside from Neil and Mozzie together being Masters of Everything, it really held up well imho.

Looking forward to the reunion season.

That was probably for the extremely outdated and racist use of “chinaman”. Even if you were using like Florida Man, it’s still a good word to avoid.

But Putin is afRAid of Trump, don’cha know.

I’ve spent the last 10 years honing my ability to screetch like a modem/fax machine. Jokes on them…

Wait, you mean doors work for other people too?

She was on White Collar as a main character and they are prepping a reunion season right now.

They usually remind me they’re in business once a year when I see people online complaining about them killing off something else that was incredibly useful but that Google just got bored with.

That doesn’t work. This one does, look at the full picture with a double tap.

In Minnesota, this is Salt Life.

Is this a proto-Piper Perri meme?

In Waldo/Wally books there’s a character called Odlaw/Yllaw that is identical but in black and yellow (which usually ends up looking black and white.