I hate to break it to you, but the ancient term "America" refers to the whole continent, Canada included.

I am intrigued by your theory and wish to subscribe to her newsletter.

> But what about sites that don't have any other comms channel with their users?

They never have been secure and they will never be, because an early enough MITM attack renders checksums, certificates, and certificate authorities potentially irrelevant. You got your certificates from the internet or from a preinstalled OS which has likely been vetted by some agency. Your packets travel along thanks to routers with closed source OS. Your cellphone is designed as to permit the modem to do what heartbleed did. And so on.

In other news, 100% of facebook users have never booked a face.

> while others are making 'infinite assumptions' when they provide a counterexample

- "15 is a prime number"
- "what about 3x5?"
- "oh yes sry."
The counterexample had the same scope of the assertion, else it's not even definable as example.

In the case of "who created god" two words out of three are undefined, out of their scope. Creation is dependent on the concept of time, time is defined as a property of THIS universe. Thinking that "creating" can be applied to god is plainly a logic trainwreck. Do you use variables out of the scope where they are defined in your programs? Then why do you apply time to a hypothetical god's dimension? Are the conway's game creatures logical when arguing about how many cells make up their supposed god?

Your counterexample sounds like:
"15 is a prime number"
"nope, no green number is prime"
"WTF?"

The assumption must be made infinite times, else:

"who created god?"
"pffft. a god, obviously"
"and who created that other god?"
"pffft. another god, obviously"
"Ah, ok then."

But the first time is already flawed.

> Ironically the only person here who keeps bringing up the word 'proof' is you

And this is a problem, I guess. So if somebody says Dare X and I punch your face! is not implying that a rational discussion about X has been proven impossible. He might want to practice boxing. OK.

About the rest of your post, the assumption vs. assumption is, I say it again, a mere arbitrary choice of words. There is one meaning of assumption vs. another one that can be called assumption but is quite more often called supposition.

- "I borrow mom's car so I will be in time for my appointment"
- "do not assume you will, mom never fills the tank much"
- "well, you are assuming there is not enough gas in the tank, assumption vs. assumption"

Now, if you are thinking that the initial implication borrowing car => arriving in time has not been rendered false, it is not strong anymore, we have a problem. If you think it has, it follows that we agree and the guy punching in the face is wrong as outlined in my very first comment.

U mad.
There is no premise. There is a counterexample. One guy said one cosmological theory with sound math behind it puts the words GAME OVER to the debate about god, so anybody who brings a god again into the discussion deserves to be punched.
I made an example of a universe without intervention and freedom which is still not godless. I made another more general example in another comment where proving that the universe arises from complete nothingness AND that no other way for the universe to exist is rational, would be a great achievement for science but still not sufficient because the assumption that what is inconceivable for us is meta-inconceivable everywhere, even in the scope of universes' creation.

A counterexample is not an assumption, it is the exploration of a particular case to see whether an assumption somebody else made has any worth. Picking a particular case assumes all other things do not happen, but that is not an assumption because we are not ending up with an implication. If you read my comment like it is a proof, it is your problem.

Whitehead and Copleston sounds like a good name combination for alcohol related products BTW.

well if the programmer made many of them they would be assumed as the normality and creatures' logic theories would take them into account. Because a theory that does not model their reality would be crazy.

My theory is that if there are twelve socks in the drawer and i take two, twelve remains in the drawer.
It is crazy here.
What if I designed a universe with an "always 12 things in any container" patch? then logic principles would have to be built according to this or they would not model the truth.

> A god would be pointless. Unless, of course, the programmer takes part in the virtual world
OK, let's assume this and follow it to the consequence, which is the absurd that the programmer does not exist at all. Since we are wrong we have made an error somewhere. Easy to spot.
You cannot define the usefulness of a supernatural entity, especially from the inside, even if you have bet succesfully that the concept of "useful" exists at all in the programmer's world, and derive anything by it. If you did, you would have created a metagod called Usefulness and said whatever is supernatural must abide by it. You went beyond religion, you entered metareligion.

If the creatures in the example had been more conservative they might have said it still cannot be ruled out that something supernatural exist, well, that was the entire point of the comment in the context of the story.

>The atheist is pointing out that there are plenty of assumptions happening either way

An alternative scenario disproving assumptions is not an alternative set of assumptions.
- "I can buy you dinner with these 100 dollars"
- "what if I want dinner on that 300 dollars restaurant?"
- "why couldn't you choose a cheaper one?"
see? it is a cop-out. Atheists say proof, religious men say belief, they have more experience and it shows.

Every level of a simulation can have an upper level... provided that "upper", "have", "level" are concepts definable there.

Let's play my favorite one: "if this world needs a creator, the creator's world needs a creator".
Nope. "creator" means guy who does something that result in a creation. Cause -> effect. Wait. Cause and effect need an unidirectional time axis. So you have to assume that one exists in the creator's world. True for the Game of life example. But the atheist's reasoning is that it goes into an infinite loop so you have to assume it in the creator's creator's world, and so on. Logic trainwreck, the "proof" is valid by making infinite assumptions, and fails for gods defined as eternal and creators of all things (so there is no time at all)

Eternal is not necessarily "forever". Eternal means also without time, which is more in line with the dimension of a god. What if eternal damnation is final damnation, eternal salvation is final closeness to a god?

But I am substituting a flawed model with another flawed one, let first the problem arise then you can file a complaint. :)

> this life is quite shitty and yes, I could easily design a better and more just system

You'd fail because you'd set a different arbitrary threshold for injustice, that's all.

The only continuously just system I can conceive is a particle or an equally spaced grid of identical particles at the same mutual distance in all dimensions. Any perturbation would cause injustice. Why that particle has one less neighbour than the rest? UNJUST.

The eventually just system on the other hand can be whatever, it all depends on how it ends up.

> They are absolutely correct, there is no creator, he doesn't exist inside their universe.

Correct for every creator of abstractions. You are not in the game of chess you are playing, yet no whatsoever move is done without you.

Problem, you have used an "is" defined relatively to the game grid, part of the abstraction, and applied to the creator of the abstraction who is defined as being outside the game, so the creatures have still made a logic error. They applied a concept outside its scope. They would have been more correct, but at the same time more explicit in making their assumptions stand out, by saying: "then, provided that a concept like existence is translatable outside our plane of existence, let's call it meta-existence, the creator does not meta-exist".

Of course the not-strictly-existing god is still potentially able to do all the things ever written in all religious books.

I was saying the same thing to a "Scotsman" just the other day.
As we all know no Scotsman was born in Cuba.
Well here was this "Scotsman" born in Cuba.
I said to him,"No true Scotsman is born in Cuba, that makes you a Cuban"
He replied,"Well I was born in Cuba!"
I said,"As I said,'No true Scotsman is born in Cuba'"