Almost everything? Can you give an example of a logically possible impossible thing?
It's logically possible that I don't exist. I do not understand why it's so important to you that I can do this though.
That latter definition goes to the heart of claim of whether belief in God is rational or irrational. Going by this definition, it's going to depend on the person whether the subjective spiritual experiences people have are evidence for God or just delusions. You can rationally go either way on it.
I disagree. Rationality is about sound judgment. Just because a person can subjectively believe whatever the hell they want to, doesn't mean it's rational to subjectively believe whatever the hell you want to.
It sounds nice and politically correct to say it's all subjective, but at some point, you have to have someone left to call irrational. Otherwise, well, people might get the impression that they can believe whatever they want to believe, instread of being biased in ways I want them to be biased in, and we can't have that.
For the FT argument, we have God is possible, God may or may not be though of as probable. To avoid bias, an agnostic value should be used.
But... Malerin... I've already explained this to you.
I
am biased! Avoid bias you say? Why would I want to do such a thing? Could you please explain to me the particular problem you have with being biased?
Again, this will depend on the person.
In the same way that reality and truth depend on the person, yes. But so long as you are in my reality, we have a problem.
For me, God is credible and believable. If someone thinks God is unbelievable, they should either have evidence or a good reason to support their view.
For me, reality is credible and believable, and fantasy comes a priori. If someone thinks a God actually exists, they should be able to demonstrate that they obtained their belief from reality somehow--how else are you going to avoid fooling yourself, or are you under the impression that fooling yourself isn't a problem to worry about?
Defaulting into a belief that an infinitely complex mind with powers never observed to be had by any other entity, or even said entity, simply because you have a mind, is not getting beliefs from reality. It's not impossible said being exists, but it's an absolutely
terrible epistemic approach to just start out believing something this different from you exists, simply because you have a mind.
You can accuse me of bias all day long. I don't pretend I'm not biased--I openly proclaim that I am. But you're going to have a hell of a time convincing me that my bias is wrong, and that yours is rational. My bias is specifically designed to filter for reality based conclusions...
...which is what sound conclusions are, right?
Your bias works in the complete opposite direction. Yours is designed to justify the "rationality" of people who believe things because they seem reasonable to them; you're filtering for belief that arises solely in the mind.
...which is where fantasy comes from, right?
And whether we're at probable or not will depend on the metaphysical views of whatever person you're asking.
Sure would. But not all metaphysics is equal; not all metaphysics is rational.
You can't prove an idealist or materialist wrong, and one is likely to think God is very probable while the other will think God is very improbable.
"Can't prove my view wrong" isn't quite a defining trait of rationality. You seem to think that your burden of establishing rationality is simply that you get to believe something.
Then just go with God as powerful supernatural being.
I'm sorry, but I find it hard to take seriously that you are proposing that a fairy in a jar would count as God.
There is no evidence against that, just as there is no evidence against the claim carbon-based E.T. life exists (as opposed to E.T. life exists).
I'm sorry, but did you straight out commit to argumentum ad ignorantiam?
Evidence can't be post hoc. A hypothesis or theory about the evidence can be post hoc (which I think is what you're trying to say). My claim is that certain subjective experiences are evidence for God. These experiences themselves can't be post hoc, because that would mean they happened after they happened.
Post hoc in the sense that you reach your conclusion, then you form your evidence after the fact. This is a belief-centric system. I prefer doubt centric. Again, the theory is that the information which leads to belief come somewhere from the real world.
Post hoc itself simply means "after the event".
No wonder they call it post hoc!
Every prosecutor in the world tries to convict with post hoc theories. What, you think people are arrested before they commit crimes? A crime is comitted, a theory is developed that best explains the evidence. In the same way, a person has an experience that they believe is best explained by God.
But the prosecutor has to put the suspect at the scene of the crime. Imagine how the court case would go if the judge doesn't even know for sure that the suspect even exists!
God is an extrapolation from what we know exists (mind). Matter can't even be called an extrapolation. There is zero evidence that external objects made of some physical substance exist. There is sense data, but that sense data is consistent with non-materialistic models of reality, and therefore, can't be considered to be evidence for the existence of physical objects. Anyway, that is the gist of the argument Hypnosi and I were making.
Okay, let's get this straight. You're claiming that because you have a mind, it's much more rational to posit an infinite transcendent mind with capabilities heretofore unobserved in the natural world, than it is to suppose that the keyboard you are typing on has substance. And you're using this to try to argue that you are rational.
Let me phrase this very carefully, and kindly... it's... not exactly convincing.
I started off agreeing with you, but now I'm not so sure. Suppose we think other universes actually exist (a rational belief). Do we know anything at all about these universes?
The answer is, tautologically, yes. It's virtually one of your givens. You told me this was a rational belief in the parenthetical. Therefore, simply by supposing that this belief is rational, we would certainly know something at all about these universes.
We don't even know what kinds of physical laws they have. Is it possible there's a force we can't even conceive that exists in these other universes? Is it possible that some don't have gravity at all?
It would depend on what "(a rational reason)" we have for believing that other universes exist.
But let's assume that God requires a greater degree of extrapolation. "God exists", as a theory, has an advantage over "E.T. life exists". "God exists" has greater explanatory power than "aliens exist". "Aliens exist" explains nothing because there is no evidence to be explained. "God exists" explains a number of interesting phenemena:
Veridical NDE accounts
Subjective spiritual experiences
Anecdotal supernatural experiences
Children's accounts of living past lives
(I would normally include the precise life-permitting values of the physical constants, but that is the argument in question, so it's off limits for now).
Let me show you how this
really works.
Prior behavior of slot machine|I played and...|...because...
Hit recently|lost|machine already payed off
Hit recently|won|machine was hot
Didn't hit recently|lost|Having a bad day
Didn't hit recently|won|Having a good day
Didn't hit in a long time|lost|machine was unlucky
Didn't hit in a long time|won|machine was due
Now,
that has explanatory power. It explains why I won, or lost, given a machine that hit recently, didn't hit recently, or didn't hit in a long time. And you can take that to the casinos.
Should you happen to not be impressed, you may see why I'm not impressed. It explains things, sure. It explains everything, sure. It would explain everything anyway. There's nothing it can't explain. And if I go even further, I could reinforce said system of belief--every time my theory explains a result, I grow more confident in it.
Also, the actual probability of a claim depends on the supporting evidence, not on how much it explains. Your bias towards explanations is based on your answers based approach.
I'm not claiming that "God exists" explains these completely, or is the only theory on the table, but it is a competing theory to the naturalistic accounts. "Aliens exist" is pure spculation which explains nothing. Yet the belief in alien life is rational, but the belief in God is irrational?
What it explains is irrelevant. Where the belief comes from is everything. True beliefs tend to come from reality. False beliefs tend to come from lax epistemologies.
Answers are easy--they are for the lazy. Truth is hard--it is a product of much discipline and sweat.
Well, stuff that has zero evidential value probably isn't evidence for the proposition at all, but yes. Some evidence certainly is stronger than other evidence.
Good.
Well, not really. Weak evidence is weak evidence. There is not enough evidence by which you can provide a probability for aliens or gods, certainly not a probability greater than 50% (by which you could say that one is likely).
Horrid. Why do you keep wanting to peg me on a thing I've never said?
Why? We don't know the conditions and events by which we exist, so how is there a high degree of plausibility that intelligence could exist elsewhere as opposed to a low degree of plausibility?
...
I never argued that it was improbable, so that's a straw man. I also don't think there is sufficient evidence to argue that the existence of a god is improbable.
Uhm... you are aware that "improbable" means "not plausible", are you not?
The fact that there's no compelling evidence of a god doesn't mean you can conclude that it's unlikely that one exists.
There is no hyperbole so grand as to describe how extreme of an entity we're talking about "possibly" existing with no compelling evidence that said entity actually exists, so, sorry. I damned well can conclude that it's unlikely that such an extremely grand elephant not in the room doesn't exist.
There's no compelling evidence by which you can conclude either way. The same with aliens, by the way.
Don't care!
The fact is, though, it's a hell of a lot more plausible to think that there's an intelligent alien not from this planet, than it is that there's an intelligent alien mind not of this universe that is transcendent and has heretofore unobserved super powers.
I don't see a difference in quality of evidence between aliens and gods.
Can we say conjunction fallacy then?
Yet atheists get away with underspecifing all the time. What kind of universes exist, what kind of alien life exists?
It has zilch to do with being an atheist, and hell yeah, proponents of extra terrestrial life, or any other thing argued to be held rationally, have the same problem.
Regardless, this particular reply seems to betray your lack of reading ability, as all throughout you were saying something that had absolutely nothing to do with what I posted. It's nothing but a giant combination of tu quoque, straw man, and red herring all blended together in a mess--my best rebuttal is simply to ask you to reread the post you think you replied to.
As you can see all you gave me as a response was alist of one word assertiosn without supporting argument or evidence!