Split Thread Atheism and lack of belief in the afterlife

[JoeMorgue]

Even so what's the argument, "I define god as being magical and undetectable so him being magic and undetectable is different than the dragon being magic and undetectable" is the most specialist pleading that ever pleading a special.

I feel like that's still the rub here. One side operating under "Well duh of course god is special" assumption.

That's all the classic apologetic excuses are. "You have to have a god because you need a first mover. And god doesn't need a first mover because god is defined as not needing one." It's so absurd.

Also can we acknowledge that the first mover, the prime cause, the watchmaker... they are all the same thing? Aquinas just made up one excuse and repeated like 5 times like he as grade schooler trying to pad out the word count an essay, and again that's the last actual intellectual defense any put up for god.

"In the 13th century some guy invented the concept of special pleading, wrote 5 different versions of it, and we've been coasting by on that ever since" is an accurate summary of the history of god arguments.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Sometimes Sagan was wrong. No big deal.

Religious apologist love stuff because since they can only conceptualize someone being in infallible authority they think we do as well and they'll break us if they prove Sagan or Darwin or Dawkins or whatever was wrong/inconsistent about something.

Atheists don't have priests to give us orders, only experts to teach us things. The dynamic is totally different.

Thermal is trying to "gotcha" us as if what Sagan said was holy writ instead of a useful metaphor.

 

[Steve]

These threads go on and on. Everyone pulls out their favorite definition. Some lean on (rather cherry picked) quotes by their favorite scientist, or philosopher. Those that believe in gods go right on believing. Those who are atheists go right on maintaining that no gods exist. And some few oddballs argue that our position re gods is not what we say it is. Maybe one day someone will come up with a unique argument, hopefully backed by some small level of evidence, that will make the discussion interesting again. My imaginary gods and I are not holding our collective breaths.

 

[JoeMorgue]

These threads go on and on. Everyone pulls out their favorite definition.

That's a defeatist copout. People talk as if no example of "being wrong" has never once been accurately countered/eliminated.

There is wrongness that people used to believe in that they don't anymore. This is not a lost cause.

 

[Olmstead]

Unfalsifiable in the here and now, sure. So is interstellar travel, In a sense. Slamming that door shut to, are we? Or just maybe keeping an open mind and keep poking around?

There's some actual science and data behind speculations on interstellar travel. There's math!

Let me put it like this, I'm as open to the possibility of a god as I am to the possibility of an invisible dragon in my garage. When someone shows me incontrovertible evidence pointing to an invisible dragon, I'm not going to close my eyes to it.

Does that make me "agnostic" with regards to the existence of an invisible dragon, or "gnostic" with regards to the non-existence of a god? I suppose that's semantics, but the two will always be the same until one of them has something, anything, to back them up.

 

[Leumas]

I think the Dragon is a restricted use analogy, not a catch all.

That is not how analogies work.

It makes perfect sense for refuting a god an adversary claims specific knowledge about.

Which is 100% of the gods invented by humanity.

But carrying it beyond our reference frame of what we can/can't see from here is where it fails to keep working.

Moving the goal posts is not a rational discourse.

Just like beer in the fridge. It only works as an analogy when parameters are restricted.

Again... restricted parameters are what 100% of god-hawkers peddle.

When they are not strictly limited, it's a stupid comparison.

Only in the minds of the casuists and apologists who keep trying to move the goal posts and special plead and waft red herrings whenever their god-hawking stops being an effective sales pitch.

Kind of like saying "dripping water on your granite countertop won't wear a hole in it in our lifetime, therefore water cannot wear a hole in stone. QEMFD".

No it is not at all like that... if you just give it a little more consideration you would see how they are not alike at all.

 

[Leumas]

Even so what's the argument, "I define god as being magical and undetectable so him being magic and undetectable is different than the dragon being magic and undetectable" is the most specialist pleading that ever pleading a special.

I feel like that's still the rub here. One side operating under "Well duh of course god is special" assumption.

That's all the classic apologetic excuses are. "You have to have a god because you need a first mover. And god doesn't need a first mover because god is defined as not needing one." It's so absurd.

Also can we acknowledge that the first mover, the prime cause, the watchmaker... they are all the same thing? Aquinas just made up one excuse and repeated like 5 times like he as grade schooler trying to pad out the word count an essay, and again that's the last actual intellectual defense any put up for god. "In the 13th century some guy invented the concept of special pleading, wrote 5 different versions of it, and we've been coasting by on that ever since" is an accurate summary of the history of god arguments.

[imgw=250]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_5128262d9c9b14905d.jpg[/imgw]​

Thomas Aquinas was the 13th century equivalent of these guys for the FIRST CAUSE claptrap...

[imgw=500]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_5128263e2bfd0c18c5.png[/imgw]​

 

[Chanakya]

What do you mean, "don't do that"? It's exactly what we are talking about. What we don't or can't understand drops right into what may be a god.


Unfalsifiable in the here and now, sure. So is interstellar travel, In a sense. Slamming that door shut to, are we? Or just maybe keeping an open mind and keep poking around?

Heh, isn't the highlighted a textbook definition of the god of the gaps?

Afraid the line you're taking with the prime mover thing is wrong, because to qualify as God, then surely it needs, at a minimum, to be conscious and intelligent? Isn't that dragon territory?

 

[Chanakya]

Call it whatever the **** lets you sleep at night then. "People believe in god, nobody seriously believes in the garage dragon, therefore god is more likely to be true or has to be taken more seriously or any version of anything that sounds like that" is still wrong.

Not just semantics, not just the terminology.

People believe in god, so god is likely true --- that is fallacious.

People believe in god in hordes, and not in dragons, so the god question might demand greater attention than the dragon question --- that is not fallacious, no.

And nor, like I'd showed back then, was this Sagan's intention, with his dragon.

But not to beat this to death. I find your endless "fringe reset" on this curious, is all, so I thought to flag this, one time.

But that's just a minor thing, an incidental thing. The important thing is this:

The actual physical and logical evidence for god and the garage dragon remain the same, none.

And I agree 100% with that.

 

[Leumas]

First Causes and the Watchmaker are not the same argument. And you damn well know it.

Yes they are both irrational and rely on SPECIAL PLEADING to obfuscate from their irrationality.

You can claim whatever you like. It doesn't change that some kind of god is an independently arrived at possible explanation for others.

And so are Leprechauns and Chupacabras and Toothfairies etc.

You rely heavily on the Invisible Dragon to make your point.

Because it is an excellent analogy and metaphor for the god-hawkers' fallacious rationalizations and special pleadings and moving the goal posts and red herrings wafting they do while wriggling around the failures of their peddling.

Ya might want to recall what the originator of that analogy had to say about atheism.

Utterly and totally immaterial and not at all relevant...


The Dragon in My Garage

... an analogy where the existence of God is equated with a hypothetical insistence that there is a dragon living in someone's garage. This is similar to Russell's Teapot in the way it forms an apt analogy for the concepts of the burden of proof and falsifiability. .... the proponent employs increasingly ad hoc reasoning to describe their belief in the face of further questions. Eventually, the goalposts are moved in such a way as to render the initial assertion practically unfalsifiable.....

Dragon-style arguments originate in what Daniel Dennett terms "belief in belief":... This is often rationalised away in much the same manner that the metaphorical dragon is, by changing the rules to say that the dragon doesn't really need to have a real effect on our lives to have a real effect on our lives. What? Exactly.

 

[ChrisBFRPKY]

In fairness, the latter can have a mathematical likelihood, just based on the sheer number of detectable and inferred planets, especially in the Goldilocks Zone. The former not so much.

Ah, the Drake equation. That's a good one to impress first year Astronomy students but it relies on the addition of data that is unproven and unknowable.

Remember, according to SETI the correct number to consider when determining possible alien civilizations is "0". Any other number entered into the Drake Equation great than "0" is fudging. Science cannot rely on "fudging" evidence. That leads back to "faith".

 

[catsmate]

It's funny how many of the same individuals that ridicule belief in God will readily accept we may not be alone in the Universe when it comes to belief in aliens.

A rather silly comparison, though typical of the drivel passed off as valid by god-botherers.
You may not have noticed but we know life exists in this universe, hence more of it elsewhere isn't that unlikely.
We have absolutely no evidence that any of the myriad gods that have been imagined
actually exist.

 

[catsmate]

<drivel snip>

"You can't believe in God, it's just a made up story."
"It's likely we are not alone in the Universe."

One of these beliefs is exactly like the other...

No it's not. That's just silly.

 

[catsmate]

I find "belief" to be a faith based concept. You can try to justify or rationalize your faith in many ways but in the end we're still talking about "faith" and not evidence.

Sigh. No, just no.

 

[Olmstead]

Ah, the Drake equation. That's a good one to impress first year Astronomy students but it relies on the addition of data that is unproven and unknowable.

Remember, according to SETI the correct number to consider when determining possible alien civilizations is "0". Any other number entered into the Drake Equation great than "0" is fudging. Science cannot rely on "fudging" evidence. That leads back to "faith".

What are you on about? Science speculates based on incomplete data all the time. It's part of the process of discovery. Then you go out and look for more data. Sometimes it takes a long time.

And this is where the difference between extraterrestrial life and god comes in: There's incomplete data pointing to the existence of extraterrestrial life. There's absolutely zero data pointing to the existence of god.

 

[Leumas]

...
People believe in god, so god is likely true --- that is fallacious.

People believe in god in hordes, and not in dragons, so the god question might demand greater attention than the dragon question --- that is not fallacious, no.

Yes it is... it is called special pleading and argumentum ad populum.

...
People believe in [all sorts of codswallop] in hordes, and not in [Flat Earth], so [codswallop] might demand greater attention than the [flat earthers'] question....

 

[ChrisBFRPKY]

Nope. Apply Occam's razor. Believing in God requires the postulate that there is an entirely unknown class of entity, of which we have never directly observed a single one, with abilities and characteristics of a type we have never observed, despite having extensively searched for any such observations. Believing in the possibility of life on other planets requires the postulate that known laws of nature, acting in a wide range of circumstances, may in similar instances produce similar results. There is very little, if any, similarity between the two positions.

Dave

Dave if we apply Occam's razor you can use the same logic for alien life.

IE: Believing in Alien life requires the postulate that there is an entirely unknown class of alien life of which we have never directly observed a single one, with abilities and characteristics of a type we have never observed, despite having extensively searched for any such observations.

We have a good idea how life on the Earth works, we can't create it out of the basic building blocks yet, but we know how its put together. Yet there is no evidence that life exists anywhere else in the Universe. Though we can hope, and have faith that there may be.

 

[Resume]

It's funny how many of the same individuals that ridicule belief in God will readily accept we may not be alone in the Universe when it comes to belief in aliens.

Not even remotely analogous.

 

[ChrisBFRPKY]

What are you on about? Science speculates based on incomplete data all the time. It's part of the process of discovery. Then you go out and look for more data. Sometimes it takes a long time.

And this is where the difference between extraterrestrial life and god comes in: There's incomplete data pointing to the existence of extraterrestrial life. There's absolutely zero data pointing to the existence of god.

The hilite is intellectually dishonest. There is zero data for the existence of both.
One can neither prove nor disprove either with current data. The best you can hope for is faith in both, or one over the other if you choose.

 

[Chanakya]

Yes it is... it is called special pleading and argumentum ad populum.

facepalm