Are Agnostics Welcome Here?

[The Norseman]

What is left in the non-overlapping bit is god and everything organized, not just god.

I already told you why this is a god; it acts intentionally. It has intelligence and creates the universe. It is eternal. That is the sort of being that FattyCatty was talking about.

You still haven't been able to identify or describe this 'god' that is capable of having the secondary characteristics of 'intelligence' and 'creativity' and is also eternal. Therefore, the proposition 'god' is nonsensical.

If you say, "the dress is red" and I ask you, "what is a dress" answering that it is red does nothing to actually answer my question. What is it that you call 'dress' that has the capability of being 'red'?

 

[TheGoldcountry]

You still haven't been able to identify or describe this 'god' that is capable of having the secondary characteristics of 'intelligence' and 'creativity' and is also eternal. Therefore, the proposition 'god' is nonsensical.

If you say, "the dress is red" and I ask you, "what is a dress" answering that it is red does nothing to actually answer my question. What is it that you call 'dress' that has the capability of being 'red'?

You stated it better than I ever could. If one is incapable of defining something, trying to define it's characteristics is meaningless.

 

[FattyCatty]

Yes, that is why I addressed it to Belz. He seemed to write to me that he was proposing something nearly 100% certain but not absolutely certain. I hoped to clarify the situation.

People often structure inductive arguments in the same form as deductive arguments; I think it is important to highlight the distinction because this issue arises in more than one context here. I noticed that Belz did not signal his conclusion with a 'therefore' or 'so', as most do with deductive arguments. Whatever deficiencies anyone shows and for whatever reasons, I think it is safe to say that both Piggy and Belz are proposing inductive arguments; they are stating them very forcefully, though.

It must be a misunderstanding on my part, then. Because the way they state their arguments is the way deductive arguments were described in the classes I'm watching - an argument where the truth of the premise(s) guarantees the truth of the conclusion. How can you say that an argument presented as a deductive argument is an inductive argument? I understand that they are meaning to make an inductive argument, but that is not what they are doing because they insist on certainty in their conclusions; hence, not inductive arguments.

Aside: They seem to fit the example given for disjunctive syllogism: P or Q; not-P, therefore Q (god exists or God doesn't exist; there is evidence against god's existence; therefore, god doesn't exist). Is this the type of deductive argument they are making? Am I right that it is a circular argument? Or would it be modus tollans: If P then Q; not-Q; therefore, not-P (If god exists then there is evidence; there is no evidence; therefore; god doesn't exist)? And isn't this an argument from ignorance?

Is it too much of a derail to ask this here or should I start a new thread with questions? Close Aside.

If they were making inductive arguments, wouldn't they be stated so that the premise gives reason to believe in the conclusion as more or less likely, but not does not give certainty (as defined in the class)? Also, I don't see where their arguments fit into the categories of inductive argument mentioned in the class (inductive generalization, causal generalization, argument from analogy, and argument from authority). I see Wikipedia adds statistical syllogism, simple induction, and prediction; it doesn't include argument from authority. Another source gives extrapolation as a type of inductive argument, which sounds like what they meant to do.

Arguing against such an inductive argument is easier in one sense -- you can say, 'see there is a possibility of god(s)' -- but it is much harder in another sense since you must provide a better explanation of the evidence than they have. You beat an inductive argument only with a stronger inductive argument.

Don't they have to show that their premise is true? That is, show their evidence so that it can be evaluated?

I'm sorry I'm so late replying to this. Things came up and I lost track.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

You still haven't been able to identify or describe this 'god' that is capable of having the secondary characteristics of 'intelligence' and 'creativity' and is also eternal. Therefore, the proposition 'god' is nonsensical.

If you say, "the dress is red" and I ask you, "what is a dress" answering that it is red does nothing to actually answer my question. What is it that you call 'dress' that has the capability of being 'red'?

Well, some of it has been spread out a bit in the thread. How much description would suffice? It's been proposed as some sort of hyper-dimensional being with intelligence that shapes the course of the universe. It therefore has no morals that we could identify since good and evil appear in roughly equal quantities (maybe). If you want specifics about how it is capable of intelligence, let's just say the mechanism is unknown. Are you asking of what substance is it made and how it interacts with the universe to direct it? The usual answer theists provide is spiritual stuff and magic, though they usually try to dress the language up a bit. So, let's jettison the hyper-dimensional talk and just call it an intelligent, amoral, spirit being that interacts with the universe to direct it and keep it together by means of magic.

 

[Piggy]

What is left in the non-overlapping bit is god and everything organized, not just god.

I already told you why this is a god; it acts intentionally. It has intelligence and creates the universe. It is eternal. That is the sort of being that FattyCatty was talking about.

So you're proposing that the grad-student doesn't die?

Why?

And anyway, how is that a god?

You're willing to say that a grad student whose lab work generates micro-universes (from his perspective) is the same type of thing that has historically has been known as, and which is currently accepted by believers as, a god?

I beg to differ.

 

[Complexity]

Well, some of it has been spread out a bit in the thread. How much description would suffice? It's been proposed as some sort of hyper-dimensional being with intelligence that shapes the course of the universe. It therefore has no morals that we could identify since good and evil appear in roughly equal quantities (maybe). If you want specifics about how it is capable of intelligence, let's just say the mechanism is unknown. Are you asking of what substance is it made and how it interacts with the universe to direct it? The usual answer theists provide is spiritual stuff and magic, though they usually try to dress the language up a bit. So, let's jettison the hyper-dimensional talk and just call it an intelligent, amoral, spirit being that interacts with the universe to direct it and keep it together by means of magic.

"I have no need of that hypothesis."

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

It must be a misunderstanding on my part, then. Because the way they state their arguments is the way deductive arguments were described in the classes I'm watching - an argument where the truth of the premise(s) guarantees the truth of the conclusion. How can you say that an argument presented as a deductive argument is an inductive argument? I understand that they are meaning to make an inductive argument, but that is not what they are doing because they insist on certainty in their conclusions; hence, not inductive arguments.

Keep in mind before I start that I am no expert in any of this; I'm relearning much of it myself right now (thanks MattusMaximus), but I've had plenty of dealings with the basic types of arguments. There are people here who know much, much more about logic than I. I've never taken a class in it, only been introduced to the ideas and used them frequently in the few philosophy classes I took in college.

Some folks will put premises down in sequence as is commonly done with deductive arguments with inductive arguments; they should then follow this with "so x is likely true" though. The back and forth I had with Belz led me to believe he meant it as an inductive argument. He didn't seem to state it originally, at least what I saw, as an inductive argument, though. I think it might have been miscommunication, but I don't know.

I'm not entirely sure that they mean certainty so much as they are stating their argument very forcefully, but I could be wrong. If they mean absolute certainty then I am clearly wrong and they are trying to construct a deductive argument. I've heard Piggy's argument before, though, and I'm almost certain that he means it as a very strong inductive argument however he might have stated it here. Honestly I haven't been following closely enough to be able to tell you though.

One thing I think I can say to clear things up -- when they use the word 'know' they do not mean 'absolute certain knowledge' but rather something more along the lines of how we know the sky is blue. We could be fooled into thinking it is blue, so there is no 100% about it. It just isn't worth talking about how we might actually be in a Matrix or there might be an evil genie perverting our senses.

Aside: They seem to fit the example given for disjunctive syllogism: P or Q; not-P, therefore Q (god exists or God doesn't exist; there is evidence against god's existence; therefore, god doesn't exist). Is this the type of deductive argument they are making? Am I right that it is a circular argument? Or would it be modus tollans: If P then Q; not-Q; therefore, not-P (If god exists then there is evidence; there is no evidence; therefore; god doesn't exist)? And isn't this an argument from ignorance?

Is it too much of a derail to ask this here or should I start a new thread with questions? Close Aside.

I think that's the structure of the argument but I don't think that either Belz or Piggy think that it follows necessarily from the fact that there is evidence against god that god(s) can't exist.

They both employ modus tollens to some degree. As does SG, but she's busy writing a novel now. Part of their argument, and I think it is a part where you can easily shake the argument is any attempt to use modus tollens because the premise, I think, is clearly wrong. I do not think that if god(s) existed that there would necessarily be evidence for them. But if you are stuck with a god void of evidence then that says something about that god and not in a positive way.

If they are constructing a deductive argument and want to use the strong form of modus tollens -- it can be used in a weaker form in inductive arguments -- then you could certainly argue that they have committed a fallacy of argument from ignorance (they may not know if gods would necessarily leave evidence, for instance). If they use the weaker form as part of an inductive argument (if god exists we should probably expect to see evidence, no evidence, therefore god is very unlikely), then it is not an argument from ignorance.

If they were making inductive arguments, wouldn't they be stated so that the premise gives reason to believe in the conclusion as more or less likely, but not does not give certainty (as defined in the class)? Also, I don't see where their arguments fit into the categories of inductive argument mentioned in the class (inductive generalization, causal generalization, argument from analogy, and argument from authority). I see Wikipedia adds statistical syllogism, simple induction, and prediction; it doesn't include argument from authority. Another source gives extrapolation as a type of inductive argument, which sounds like what they meant to do.

Don't they have to show that their premise is true? That is, show their evidence so that it can be evaluated?

I'm sorry I'm so late replying to this. Things came up and I lost track.

Yes. They have to show their premise as very likely if it is inductive; not necessarily true. They would have to show the premise as true for a deductive argument. And, yes, showing the evidence and how it relates to the reasoning is vitally important. The strength of an inductive argument depends on the strength of the evidence and the degree to which that evidence is relevant to the actual argument. Strength of evidence depends on the degree of ambiguity in the way it is used. So, to use the same example I've used several times, if I find your gun next to a dead guy, the argument I can make about you as a murderer depends on how much ambiguity there is with this gun. If you fingerprints are on it and you have power burns on your hand and the bullet was fired from that gun and someone saw you pull the trigger with the gun pointed at his head seconds before he fell to the ground there is little ambiguity involved. If it's just your gun and the bullet in his head doesn't match your gun, etc. then there is considerable ambiguity.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

So you're proposing that the grad-student doesn't die?

Why?

And anyway, how is that a god?

You're willing to say that a grad student whose lab work generates micro-universes (from his perspective) is the same type of thing that has historically has been known as, and which is currently accepted by believers as, a god?

I beg to differ.

No, this god actively holds it together and directs what happens. His direction just looks to us, on the inside, like the laws of physics.


ETA:

I should restate that. His direction looks to us on the inside like the unfolding of the universe. We try to describe it and our description of how this god works is the laws of physics.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

"I have no need of that hypothesis."

I agree.

 

[punshhh]

I'm not sure that we do or can know it all that well. We are made of a specific form of the single substance -- the manifestation we call matter -- but whatever it is, it's extraordinarily strange. If there is a single substance it is also expressed as energy and space-time. What could be both vibrating strings of energy and space-time?

I don't know quite how a physicist would describe the situation. The way I see it is that the process or event resulting in the dimensional extension found in matter also results in space and time, in one action. They are inextricably linked like two facets of the one substance. One cant be without the other.

If god is an emergent property of nature then we have no way of even postulating what god is, does, or looks like.

Just like the god outside the universe, I see no difference.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

I don't know quite how a physicist would describe the situation. The way I see it is that the process or event resulting in the dimensional extension found in matter also results in space and time, in one action. They are inextricably linked like two facets of the one substance. One cant be without the other.

Just like the god outside the universe, I see no difference.

But space-time, from what I understand about some of the latest thinking, appears to be a 'thing' like energy is. I don't think we can picture it properly as simple dimensional extension. I don't know enough about it, though, to be anything but flummoxed by it.

 

[annnnoid]

But this sort of entity -- what I think FattyCatty and punshhh were talking about -- we simply cannot prove or disprove. It might not exist. It might direct everything that does exist. It might be all of existence. We can't possibly know.

What we can say is that it is much less parsimonious to propose another entity that directs the world as opposed to the world just being and doing it all on its own because a single substance involves fewer entities than does two substances (and a god plus the universe requires two substances). And we can say that if the universe is god, then we are just actions/thoughts in the mind of god and that's the exact equivalent, at least for us, of there just being 'stuff'.

…’a god plus the universe requires two substances’. This, of course, depends entirely upon what is meant by ‘universe’. Above we have FattyCatty concluding that ‘universe’ = God. It is at least interesting to note the conclusions of recent research (discussed a while back on another JREF thread) that accurately point out that particles are informational in nature and their physical form is a derived state. The most parsimonious interpretation of this ‘metaphorical’ understanding of ultimate reality could arguably be addressed as follows (taken from another JREF discussion many moons ago):


All you really know about the universe and all therein is that it's objectively independent of you in some way (realism) and that it works just fine according to chemical/physical laws and processes (naturalism).

But that's all you know. You don't know what its ultimate nature is.

Furthermore, as soon as you accept that all the things we experience about the universe are filtered through our senses - which they are - you're accepting that we can never truly know the ultimate nature of neumenal reality.

So I'm left to wonder. We have:

A) A magical self-perpetuating and self-generating non-conscious powder or power behind it all.

Or

B) A magical self-perpetuationg and self-generating consciousness behind it all.

Without any way to conclusively answer the question I'm wondering why you don't just apply Occam's razor instead of multiplying unknown entities?

Consciousness can create, store and retrieve information and we all, intimately and directly, know that consciousness exists.

Is it really logical to assume that a Universe (composed ultimately, of massless wavy-gravy information) is more likely produced by an unknown thing (that is pure conjecture) than a consciousness which has a firm theoretical grounding being based upon something we do know exists (i.e. our own individual consciousnesses)?

....parsimony is in the eye of the beholder.

 

[Leumas]

Good point, I had been grappling with the word "know".

I agree, for all practical purposes unless you are actively seeking God, gods can be regarded as not existing.

I can be walking in a room in the dark. I am not actively seeking a table. Nevertheless, I bang my toes against it and I get pain.


It is not a matter of KNOWING something that makes it exist or not. Objects exist even if no human being ever laid eyes on them.

So the question of whether we seek gods or not does not affect whether they exist or not.

However, what you said is correct when it comes to the "god" object.

Gods are human DELUSIONS..... so they only exist as far as human philosophy is concerned ONLY... the moment humans stop DELUDING themselves god would cease to exist in this delusional construct.

 

[FattyCatty]

I'm not sure what you're trying to do here. It just seems a mess. As an argument, it would be, with p=live elephant in this room:

Premise 1: There is evidence of p
Premise 2: p is impossible
Conclusion: p

No, it's consistent.

The first statement is that I see a live elephant in the room.

The second statement is that an elephant can't be hidden in that room. (Which is why I can see it -- if it were hidden, I wouldn't be able to see it.)

Here is where I made my mistake. I thought you were saying an elephant can't be in the room. So Premise 2 would be: p can't be hidden.

In this case, the second statement isn't needed to reach the conclusion: There's a live elephant in the room.

Based on what I've been learning, this is an invalid deductive argument, as the truth of the premise doesn't guarantee the truth of the conclusion. So if you are claiming certainty for the conclusion, your argument doesn't work.

If you meant it as an inductive argument, the conclusion would be "p is more or less likely". The "more or less" would depend on your evidence.

But that was just an illustration to show why both statements are necessary in the first case:

I don't see an elephant here.
It's not possible for an elephant to be hidden here.
Therefore, there must not be any elephants here.

So your argument, with P as an elephant here:

Premise 1: I don't see P
Premise 2: It's not possible to hide P
Conclusion: Not-P

Which seems to be a valid deductive argument; if Premise 2 is true, it would also be a sound argument, I think.

But if you're trying to replicate tsig's argument, that's not what he said.

It's the lack of facts and evidence for god that informs my judgment that there is no god.

His argument didn't include your premise 2.

We can contrast that with this situation:

I don't see an elephant here.
It's possible for an elephant to be hidden here.
Therefore, I don't know if there's an elephant here or not.

The argument, with P=an elephant here, seems to be:

Premise 1: I don't see P
Premise 2: P could be hidden
Conclusion: I don't know whether or not there's P

I think this is a valid, sound deductive argument.

Or this:

I don't detect any harmful radiation in this room.
I have no way to detect radiation.
There might be harmful radiation in this room.

So if P=radiation, the argument is:

Premise 1: Given that P can be harmful
Premise 2: I don't detect any harmful P in this room
Premise 3: I can't detect P
Conclusion: There might be harmful P in this room.

This appears to be a valid, sound argument using Premise 1 (which gives your assumption) and Premise 3. You don't need Premise 2.

The point is, the lack of evidence only leads you to a conclusion if you've looked where the evidence must be if a thing is true, and the evidence is missing.

And tsig didn't do this in his argument. He also made the conclusion certain, and so it was an argument from ignorance.

This doesn't lead to a certain conclusion, as that would be an invalid deductive argument. As an inductive argument with a more or less likely conclusion, you have to show the truth/strength of your premises. How strong is your evidence? Who gathered it? How did they gather it? How do you know where the evidence must be? How possible is it to look everywhere the evidence must be? Who decides what "everywhere" is? And so on.

In the case of God, a new worldview has replaced the old mythological one, and in doing so has made the old one impossible.

To paraphrase another poster, I don't know what you mean here, but I'm pretty sure it's wrong.

So it's not just the fact that we lack evidence for God, it's also the fact that the evidence we do have about the world contradicts what we'd expect if people had been right about God.

Well, if you mean it contradicts all the very many different ideas about God, that's pretty comprehensive. And I'm not sure it's true. Some things may be contradictions, others are considered by some people to be evidence for the existence of God.

There's also the possibility that people were right about the fact that there is a God, but wrong about how they characterize him. Or that God can be all things to all people who believe in him (i.e., all gods are God).

That's why I compare the situation to the phlogiston situation.

Note that I'm not comparing God to phlogiston, which is what makes it different from an argument which says what's true for a ratio like pi might be true for God as well. It's not that God is anything like phlogiston, or shares any qualities with it... it's that both are examples of cases in which one way of seeing the world has been debunked by a new way of seeing the world which has been put to the test and passed it.

But this new way of seeing the world will probably be debunked as well, so how can it be true. It's just what we know now, with the proviso that we don't know everything and there may be change. To me, that means God remains a possibility.

 

[laca]

I would take what Dafydd says about me with a pinch of salt if I were you.

dafydd is correct, you have stated on multiple occasions that you consider all ideas equally. If you won't acknowledge this, I will look your posts up and show you for the liar that you are. Again.

 

[laca]

The argument, with P=an elephant here, seems to be:

Premise 1: I don't see P
Premise 2: P could be hidden
Conclusion: I don't know whether or not there's P

I think this is a valid, sound deductive argument.

Sorry, but I must LOL. "I don't know whether or not there's P" is translated into "P or ~P" which can hardly be called a conclusion of anything, much less of a valid, sound deductive argument.

Anyway, seeing you're into logical arguments, how about defining your god in a logical framework so we can take it from there?

 

[laca]

But space-time, from what I understand about some of the latest thinking, appears to be a 'thing' like energy is. I don't think we can picture it properly as simple dimensional extension. I don't know enough about it, though, to be anything but flummoxed by it.

Too bad you're not a mystic, you could get past such problems easily.

 

[punshhh]

dafydd is correct, you have stated on multiple occasions that you consider all ideas equally. If you won't acknowledge this, I will look your posts up and show you for the liar that you are. Again.

How do you get from"consider all ideas equally" to,

"treats all beliefs and possibilities with equal regard"?

 

[dafydd]

How do you get from"consider all ideas equally" to,

"treats all beliefs and possibilities with equal regard"?

Very easily in your case.

 

[dafydd]

dafydd is correct, you have stated on multiple occasions that you consider all ideas equally. If you won't acknowledge this, I will look your posts up and show you for the liar that you are. Again.

I was thinking of digging up some of his posts but he'd only lie about them.