Are Agnostics Welcome Here?

[FattyCatty]

You see with titles like Warranted Christian Belief I can hardly take the guy seriously.

At this point, I am interested in his arguments for the existence of God, not his Christian sentiments.

Have a look at this post of mine to see why I think that there is ABSOLUTELY NO warrant in any thinking brain for the Christian belief system......unless God is an UTTER MORON and a heinous vile monster that is.

Thank you for the link. Your post addressed the Christian God. As I mentioned above, right now I am interested in the existence of God, not in the Christian God.

Neither can I take Polkinghorne seriously with a title like Quarks, Chaos & Christianity: Questions to Science And Religion

I feel the opposite. I like having a scientist explain their thinking on the existence of God; they know how to think and how to lay out reasons for what they think. And my belief in a God is in a God that fits with science (or with whom science fits). Also, Polkinghorne addresses some issues that concern me (e.g., free will, evil, and why bad things happen to people).

You see if anyone wants to argue for a DEITY using some "science"....fine….despite the benightedness.

But if anyone wants to argue for Jesus or YHWH or Allah or Vishnu etc. using "science" then I can only LAUGH but with a CRINGE OF PAIN.

I have not read the above guys....but I have read numerous other legitimate scientists' attempts at “proving” God......most of them are quite TRITE and HACKNEYED rehashing of stuff from St. Augustine onwards but with the added twist of trying to CRAM new knowledge into the HOLE of God.

Your first two paragraphs are diminished by the first sentence of your third paragraph.

Most of the works had numerous logical fallacies and WISHFUL THINKING.

However.....if the guy was just arguing for a DEITY in general without trying to bring in the PUTRID Judeo-Islamo-Christian excrement into the picture then I found the book a stimulating exercise in logical failure.

But when a "scientist" starts trying to WARP and WRIGGLE "science" into proving Christianity (usually) or other specific religions then I invariably found the book to be an infuriating pile of excrement.

Most of the attempts usually boil down to one thing....

I want a big sky daddy to hug me when I die.​

Which is fine if only they did not also add to it

I cannot get beyond my ingrained inculcations of the religion I was born into and thus this Daddy is the stupidity envisioned by morons from thousands of years before me and the only reason I believe in him is because my ancestors were conquered and raped and tortured into believing in him.​

This didn't seem to have much content beyond an acrimonious statement of bias, so I ignored it.

 

[Piggy]

I'm not sure I don't agree with you. The argument that tsig presented is an argument from ignorance and a fallacy. Whether we expect to have "any normal experience" of God doesn't change the invalidity of his argument.

Your argument seems to be:

Premise 1: There is no evidence of live elephants in this room.
Premise 2: A live elephant is too big to be hidden in this room.
Conclusion: There are no live elephants in this room.

This, I think, would be a valid argument based on Premise 2. Premise 1 is unnecessary; on it's own it would make the argument invalid as an argument from ignorance.

However, I don't see how your argument relates to tsig's argument about god. Premise 2 doesn't apply to arguments about god; and with just Premise 1, you have the fallacy of an argument from ignorance. Is there something here I am not seeing?

You need both, in my example, because there's also this scenario:

* I see a live elephant standing in the middle of this room.
* A live elephant is too big to be hidden in this room.
* There is a live elephant in this room.

And that's what you left out of your analysis of tsig's argument.

The fact that we haven't discovered any planets with life on them does not mean that there are no such planets, because we've looked at so few planets.

Similarly, if I don't see any Salmonella in this room, that doesn't mean there isn't any here, because it's too small for me to see in the first place.

But I know there aren't any elephants in this room, because if there were, given the nature of elephants and the size and decor of the room, I would be able to see them.

Given the nature of God -- that is, a supernatural being which does things like create the world, answer prayers, cause miracles, generate the weather, send prophets with magical powers, implant souls in bodies, judge us in the afterlife, and so forth -- it's also something which, if it existed, we would have in some way detected by now.

But we don't.

So the only answer for people who want to hold on to God, without simply making statements that contradict fact, has been to push God completely outside of everything we know (contrary to the beliefs of the faithful, and annulling the "exists" part of the claim "God exists") and/or to refuse to attach any sort of features or behaviors to the term "God" (making any and all claims about "God" meaningless or absurd).

In short, tsig is right because God is a kind of thing we should have evidence for at this point if it existed, and we don't.

 

[Piggy]

Not exactly, I'm talking about something I don't know about, if its there then it is what I am talking about and thats not nothing. If its not there the implication is that there is nothing beyond human perception.

Stop here.

You really shouldn't go any further in your thinking before you've clarified this.

If you really "don't know about" what this thing is, then it cannot either be there or not be there, because you wouldn't recognize it if you ran across it.

So you're talking about nothing.

You have to have something in mind if you're not, in fact, talking about nothing.

You've said that this something is an intelligent creator of this universe, but the "grad student god" example shows that this isn't an adequate description.

Now here's the problem.... If this God not only is intelligent and not only created this universe but also in some way knows what's going on in this universe, as gods do, then we have to account for how this intelligence -- which itself must depend on some kind of dynamic structure to maintain its functioning -- gets information from his creation.

If the creator of our universe is intelligent, then it has something corresponding to a brain. (If you want to grant God intelligence without something like a brain, you're going to have to explain how that's possible.)

Whatever the godbrain is, it's got to interact in some way with whatever it "knows".

(So even God can't know things when they happen. God will always be a little behind.)

OK, now we're talking about something like a hyperdimensional brain that is responsible for our world existing and in some way knows what's going on here.

That last bit's the toughie, because even if you imagine the hyperbrain, or hyperbeing if you like, studying this thing it created and observing it in some level of detail, it would still remain fundamentally separate and removed from its creation -- in whatever its equivalent of spacetime is -- in a way that gods aren't.

Not to mention, it doesn't appear to manipulate its creation in any way.

God as hyperscientist ain't very goddy.

So tell me... when you say "if it's there"... how would you know it if you encountered it, or evidence of it?

 

[Piggy]

I don't think that god is considered 'too big' to be hidden in the room. I think god is usually considered to be immaterial. Not of this world. Would you ever be able to find the number pi in your living room? Is it too big to hide there? Or is it just another silly question that is only asked by small children too young to understand and pedantic anonymous people on the internet?

I don't mean to be pedantic, although I can be arrogant, I admit. But I take this stuff 100% seriously. For me it's not a philosophical discussion, it's about what's real or not.

So I consider it all pretty closely.

The comparison with pi here, for example. I don't think it works, because neither of us is saying God is a ratio. So why would you expect God to have the qualities of a ratio?

No, let's look at God instead and ask ourselves what we'd expect to see if folks had been right about God all along....

Do we see prayer working better than chance? No.

Do we see any scripture being accurate about the supernatural bits (as opposed to the mundane stuff, such as the existence of cities, historic persons, and geographic features)? No.

Do miracles turn out to be real? No.

Has it turned out that the weather, and the climate, and the celestial motions, and such are attributable to gods? No.

Do we have souls? No.

Look, the whole worldview on which god was based, and into which god fit, has vanished, debunked.

It makes just as much sense to believe in, say, the God of the Bible as it does to believe in Noah's Ark.

And if you run through the list of gods and you see that none of them make sense anymore, and all for the same reasons, it's not a valid excuse to demand that you be allowed to invent entirely new definitions no one has ever accepted before, or opt for none at all.

I mean, it's like when phlogiston was disproven. It was a hypothetical fuel for combustion, but once oxygen was demonstrated, phlogiston became impossible to reconcile with observation, and eventually all its proponents changed their minds or died.

But nobody used arguments like these:

"What if phlogiston is something we actually can't conceive of?"

"What if phlogiston exists somewhere else in the universe?"

"What if phlogiston exists outside the universe?"

"What if phlogiston exists on another plane of reality?"

"What if someone someday discovers something that does exist which is also called 'phlogiston'?"

"What if phlogiston wasn't what we thought it was, and it has precisely the same qualities as oxygen?"

"What if we can't trust our senses?"


Nobody made those arguments, because they're ridiculous.

Yet they're made about God all the time.

And I don't say all this to bust your chops. I say it because I think it's extremely important to really think about what's going on in this world, and what's not going on.

God ain't going on.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Given the nature of God -- that is, a supernatural being which does things like create the world, answer prayers, cause miracles, generate the weather, send prophets with magical powers, implant souls in bodies, judge us in the afterlife, and so forth -- it's also something which, if it existed, we would have in some way detected by now.

But we don't.

I'm not sure I understand. How could we have detected this supernatural being if it caused the rare miracle and answered the odd prayer?

 

[Piggy]

Suppose some folks have it wrong? What if god(s) were something we would not expect to have any normal experience of at all? Or that we haven't yet found how to interpret correctly?

Can't be the former, because it's not what folks believe in, and we wouldn't be talking about gods if it were so.

The latter wouldn't matter, because no matter what else we find out, we've got enough to go on to know that the gods weren't there.

 

[Piggy]

So, your argument is that we have no evidence of god(s) and that god(s) are impossible?

I'm not concerned with categorical impossibility. "Is" and "ain't" are enough.

If you get to "ain't" by dint of evidence, then categorical impossibility is a philosophical question.

Am I in jail right now? No. Is it impossible for me to be in jail? No, it's possible, but it also happens not to be true.

Do any dogs naturally have neon pink fur? No. Is it impossible for dogs to evolve with neon pink fur? Maybe, but not that I know of. Maybe they can, but nevertheless, they happen not to.

I'm saying God doesn't exist. The philosophical questions beyond that don't particularly interest me.

 

[Piggy]

I have suggested a god beyond human perception for piggy to deny the existence of.

No one needs to deny the existence of any such thing, since that's obviously not what people believe in.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

I'm not concerned with categorical impossibility. "Is" and "ain't" are enough.

If you get to "ain't" by dint of evidence, then categorical impossibility is a philosophical question.

Am I in jail right now? No. Is it impossible for me to be in jail? No, it's possible, but it also happens not to be true.

Do any dogs naturally have neon pink fur? No. Is it impossible for dogs to evolve with neon pink fur? Maybe, but not that I know of. Maybe they can, but nevertheless, they happen not to.

I'm saying God doesn't exist. The philosophical questions beyond that don't particularly interest me.

OK, what I hear you saying is that you are making an almost airtight inductive argument. I agree with you, there; just as I agree with Belz.

Why does everyone keep framing this as a deductive argument, then?

 

[Beth]

I don't mean to be pedantic, although I can be arrogant, I admit.

I didn't mean you, I meant me. It was supposed to be self-deprecating. After I posted, I realized you might take it differently. Sorry about that.

But I take this stuff 100% seriously. For me it's not a philosophical discussion, it's about what's real or not.

Yes. I agree. It's about what's real and what's not.

The comparison with pi here, for example. I don't think it works, because neither of us is saying God is a ratio. So why would you expect God to have the qualities of a ratio?

It seems to me they have a lot of qualities in common. Like having an eternal yet non-material existence. But sure, if you're going to insist on certain particular qualities of god, you can absolutely establish that such a god doesn't exist.

No, let's look at God instead and ask ourselves what we'd expect to see if folks had been right about God all along....

Do we see prayer working better than chance? No.

If you expect god to answer prayers such that the expected probability distributions are altered , then you are right, those experiments establish that such a god is very unlikely.

Do we see any scripture being accurate about the supernatural bits (as opposed to the mundane stuff, such as the existence of cities, historic persons, and geographic features)? No.

How can we tell if scripture is accurate about the supernatural bits? It seems to me you are simply dismissing the idea that such events occur. That's fine, it is your perogative to do so. But it's not persuasive.

Do miracles turn out to be real? No.

Depends on how you define miracles. I consider every human baby born a miracle of life. That happens every day. A one-in-a-billion chance occurring? They happen?

Has it turned out that the weather, and the climate, and the celestial motions, and such are attributable to gods? No.

Not according to your definition of gods. I don't think we have much disagreement other than what is a reasonable definition of 'god'.

Do we have souls? No.

Depends on how you define souls. By the definition I was taught, the soul is an immaterial thing, like god.

Look, the whole worldview on which god was based, and into which god fit, has vanished, debunked.

No, sadly you are mistaken when you say that. I know you believe it, but that doesn't make it true. It may have been debunked to your satisfaction, but that doesn't mean that everyone else concludes what you do from the above evidence and arguments.

It makes just as much sense to believe in, say, the God of the Bible as it does to believe in Noah's Ark.

Yes.

And if you run through the list of gods and you see that none of them make sense anymore, and all for the same reasons, it's not a valid excuse to demand that you be allowed to invent entirely new definitions no one has ever accepted before, or opt for none at all.

I disagree with this point. It's perfectly all right to consider how other cultures and times have interpreted the idea of 'creator gods' and it's perfectly all right to consider what the concept means individually. I agree that your concept of god is not a coherent consistent concept and is very unlikely to exist.

I mean, it's like when phlogiston was disproven.

I don't find phlogiston a particularly helpful comparison. Similar to how you took the comparison with pi I think.

"What if we can't trust our senses?"

Then what will we trust? Other people's senses are basically the only thing we can rely on other than our own.

And I don't say all this to bust your chops. I say it because I think it's extremely important to really think about what's going on in this world, and what's not going on.

God ain't going on.

Certainly, given how you define 'god' and 'real', I think that is true.

 

[Belz...]

Belz,

I think you've constructed a very strong inductive argument. It simply isn't a deductive argument, or at least not a valid one.

I think you should state it as an inductive argument with the proper conclusion -- that it is highly unlikely that god(s) exist.

For all intents and purposes, it is actually impossible. I'll be waiting for some sort of evidence that I'm wrong. And I know heat death will happen before anyone sees that evidence. I'm not much of a "100% sure" kind of guy.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

For all intents and purposes, it is actually impossible. I'll be waiting for some sort of evidence that I'm wrong. And I know heat death will happen before anyone sees that evidence. I'm not much of a "100% sure" kind of guy.

Fine with me. FattyCatty is arguing against you as though you are making a deductive argument. She should at least realize that isn't what you are doing.

 

[Complexity]

Fine with me. FattyCatty is arguing against you as though you are making a deductive argument. She should at least realize that isn't what you are doing.

I see that as her responsibility, not his.

 

[FattyCatty]

Yes, since we aren't going to change each other's mind.

That's not a very productive way of approaching a debate, Catty.

Well, I had the impression that I am the only one expected to change their mind, which means it isn't a debate. If you can say honestly that you might change your mind, then we can have a debate.

I think the definitions of opinion in my previous post show that my use is legit. And all those opinions in your examples have the same weight. If the expert is pronouncing as an expert on the subject at hand, it's not an opinion, it's a statement of positive knowledge. If it's an opinion on a subject outside his field, the expert's opinion has the same worth as the ignoramus's and the lay-person's opinions.

Ok I'm done playing word games with you.

I'm sorry you think I'm playing word games. I'm not; I'm just trying to use words accurately. And I have to apologize for the incorrect link in my quoted post. Here are the definitions I meant to show:

Definition of OPINION1 a : a view, judgment, or appraisal formed in the mind about a particular matter
1 b : approval, esteem

2 a : belief stronger than impression and less strong than positive knowledge
2 b : a generally held view

3 a : a formal expression of judgment or advice by an expert

3 b : the formal expression (as by a judge, court, or referee) of the legal reasons and principles upon which a legal decision is based

As you can see, I am using definitions 1a and, more frequently, 2a. So I don't know why you say I am playing word games.

To me, opinions are beliefs without evidence or reason

Which would mean the word has no use. There are other words which convey this.

I disagree. See the definitions of opinion in my previous post. Also, what "other words that convey this" did you mean?

You omitted this part of my post, including the question I asked. Please indicate when you snip part of my posts, for reasons of clarity and courtesy. Also, please answer the highlighted question when you get a chance.

I disagree. Those are opinions, unsubstantiated, subjective beliefs.

Your preference for blue is a belief ? That's just plain weird.

That blue is nicer than orange is my opinion; it is, therefore, also a subjective, unsubstantiated belief. See the definition for opinion above. Why is that weird? If I said that I believed or that it was my opinion that Democrats are better for the U.S. than Republicans, would you consider my preference for Democrats weird?

One theory replaced the other because new evidence indicated that it was more valid or probable. That doesn't mean that the old theory was just opinion. It was knowledge based on the methods of gathering evidence available at the time and on the evidence so gathered. So, no, I'm not "just playing semantics."

Actually, so yes, you're playing semantics.

I disagree with you. The past knowledge was based on an understanding of observations, as is current knowledge. That our ability to make observations has changed and given us new, different evidence as to how things work does not change the fact that those beliefs were the knowledge of their time; they are just outdated knowledge. Just as the knowledge of our time will be outdated knowledge when our ability to make observations changes and gives us new, different evidence as to how things work.

So I think your argument is:
Premise 1: There is no evidence for the existence of god.
Premise 2: Therefore, provisionally, there is no god pending further evidence
Premise 3: There is evidence against the existence of god
Conclusion: There is no god.

Have I understood you correctly? If so, Premise 2 is invalid. You're saying that there is no evidence for p, therefore not-p. This is an argument from ignorance, and is a fallacy. A more correct premise would be:

Premise 2: Therefore, we don't know whether or not there is a god pending further evidence.

Only if we like ideological nonsense. Absence of evidence is evidence of absence where evidence of presence would be expected, which is the case here. It's therefore not a fallacy and I'm not surprised you don't know the difference.

It's certainly true that I am new to philosophy and logic and am still learning and making mistakes. I did have some reason for my assumptions, however. I knew tsig's argument had a fallacy, but couldn't remember which one, so I Googled. Based on what I read then, I disagree with you here. There was a fallacy (argument from ignorance) in your argument and this is not an exception.

What I found includes this, from the Philosophical Society:

argumentum ad ignorantiam ("arguing from ignorance") -- A fallacy that occurs when someone argues that because we don't know something is true, it must be false, or because we lack proof that a statement is false, it must be true. Ignorance or lack of evidence doesn't necessarily mean a position or claim is true or false. Common Examples: "No one has ever proven that UFOs exist. Therefore, they don't exist." (Something can exist despite the absence of confirmation. Lack of proof is justification for caution or even scepticism, but not dogmatic assertions.) "There is simply no proof that God exists. Therefore, God doesn't exist." (God might exist even though there is no way empirically to prove it.)

I also found this on Wikipedia:

Arguments from ignorance can easily find their way into debates over the Existence of God. It is a fallacy to draw conclusions based precisely on ignorance, since this does not satisfactorily address issues of philosophic burden of proof. In other words, agnosticism is an appropriate response to lack of evidence either way.

And this from Lee C. Archie, Lander University:

I. Argumentum ad Ignorantiam: (appeal to ignorance) the fallacy that a proposition is true simply on the basis that it has not been proved false or that it is false simply because it has not been proved true. This error in reasoning is often expressed with influential rhetoric.

A. The informal structure has two basic patterns:

Statement p is unproved. || Statement not-p is unproved.
Not-p is true.||p is true.

B. If one argues that God or telepathy, ghosts, or UFO's do not exist because their existence has not been proven beyond a shadow of doubt, then this fallacy occurs.​

C. On the other hand, if one argues that God, telepathy, and so on do exist because their non-existence has not been proved, then one argues fallaciously as well.​

And also this from File of Fallacies, The Appeal to Ignorance, or Argumentum Ad Ignorantiam, DOUGLAS WALTON, pp. 368-369:

What is characteristic of this kind of case is that it is very difficult to know what would count as good evidence for or against the claim made - for example, the existence of ghosts, or the reality of alien abductions. In such cases, there is characteristically a verifiability problem, because any kind of observational evidence, or evidence which would be reproducible enough to meet scientific standards of evidence, does not seem to be available. Or, if it is available, it tends to be very controversial and a lot of questions are raised about whether it really is evidence. At any rate, it is characteristic of many of the fallacious arguments from ignorance cited in the logic textbooks that they tend to be about UFO's, the existence of God, ghosts, the paranormal, and so forth - all subjects in which there is a verifiability problem in the sense that it would be hard to know what counts exactly as evidence either for or against the claim. The use of such examples imports many related, but complicated issues about verifiability and reproducibility of scientific evidence. In these cases, there are multiple logical faults involved, but the analysis given by Adler cites the main fault with them as arguments from ignorance. These are arguments that present no real evidence, but then use the claim of absence of counter-evidence to invite a hasty leap that has not been supported by the kind of evidence that should be required to secure acceptance. However they are analyzed, such arguments about ghosts and alien abductions are easy to classify as fallacious appeals to ignorance. But there are many other cases that are not so easy dismiss as fallacious.

Your own premise 2 is precisely the same as mine. It's just worded to fit your own point of view, which is not very pragmatic.

Well, I have to disagree with you again. Your Premise 2 doesn't allow for the possibility that there is a god; mine does. Your Premise to leads to an argument from ignorance; mine doesn't.

With the change in Premise 2, I think it becomes a logically valid argument.

Then you have no idea what "logically valid" means.

I thought in logic a valid argument was one where if you assume the premise(s) is true, the conclusion cannot be false. Is this incorrect?

I see in a post from Ichneumonwasp that I am incorrect in considering the argument valid because of Premise 3. I am correct in what a valid argument is, but incorrect in thinking the conclusion must follow from Premise 3.

If you want me to accept the conclusion, however, I would need to see and accept the evidence you mention in Premise 3.

Which god, specifically, would you want me to disprove ?

Here's two: the Christian God of the Anglican/Episcopalian Church and the God who created the universe such that it developed into something that produced among other things, a natural universe, physics, mathematics, and humans who could question and learn about those things and who could believe in God.

 

[Complexity]

Another wall of stuff not worth reading.

 

[Beth]

Another wall of stuff not worth reading.

What is the purpose of posting this comment? Why did you feel it was not worth your time to read it, but it was worth your time to denigrate and demean it?

 

[Piggy]

I'm not sure I understand. How could we have detected this supernatural being if it caused the rare miracle and answered the odd prayer?

You mean if it were indistinguishable from randomness?

If that's its only feature, then we don't need to.

 

[FattyCatty]

So I think your argument is:
Premise 1: There is no evidence for the existence of god.
Premise 2: Therefore, provisionally, there is no god pending further evidence
Premise 3: There is evidence against the existence of god
Conclusion: There is no god.

Have I understood you correctly? If so, Premise 2 is invalid. You're saying that there is no evidence for p, therefore not-p. This is an argument from ignorance, and is a fallacy. A more correct premise would be:

Premise 2: Therefore, we don't know whether or not there is a god pending further evidence.

With the change in Premise 2, I think it becomes a logically valid argument. If you want me to accept the conclusion, however, I would need to see and accept the evidence you mention in Premise 3.



[clip]


Your argument seems to be:

Premise 1: There is no evidence of live elephants in this room.
Premise 2: A live elephant is too big to be hidden in this room.
Conclusion: There are no live elephants in this room.

This, I think, would be a valid argument based on Premise 2. Premise 1 is unnecessary; on it's own it would make the argument invalid as an argument from ignorance.

This is a terminology point.

Deductive arguments are valid if the conclusion necessarily follows from the premises (if the truth of the premises insures the truth of the conclusion; this does not mean that the premises must be true only that if they are true, then the conclusion is true). A deductive argument is invalid if the conclusion does not necessarily follow from the premises. Arguments are sound if the premises are true and the argument structure is valid. We don't generally speak of premises as valid or invalid. Premises are either true or not true.

Thank you for pointing out my errors in terminology. I'm still learning about arguments and their validity and soundness. I'm only part way through the Critical Reasoning podcasts from Oxford Continuing Education, and I'm still trying to figure out how the logic works. So any helpful advice or corrections I get are appreciated.

The first instance you quote above is not a logically valid argument. It is possible for there to be no evidence of god(s) and for there to be evidence against the existence of god(s) and for god(s) to exist. The conclusion does not follow from the premises.

This is where I am confused. If there is evidence against the existence of god(s), why is it still possible for gods to exist? Is it because you can't have evidence of non-existence? Because it seems to say "there is no evidence of p; there is evidence of not-p, therefore not-p."

Premise two is not invalid. The argument is invalid. Premise 2 is, however, incorrectly stated as you point out; we do not speak of provisional existence but of provisional knowledge. Existence is an either/or issue. Changing premise 2 to a knowledge statement, however, does not make the argument valid.
The second instance (elephants) you interpret correctly as far as I can see. Premise 1 is not necessary for the structure of the argument. The argument is valid because the conclusion follows from premise 2. The argument is also sound because premise 2 is true (assuming a certain size of room).

Thank you for the clarification.

ETA: Here an interesting one I just thought of where the argument is valid but both premises are false and the conclusion is true:

1. All worms are fantasies.
2. Santa Claus is a worm.
3. Therefore, Santa Claus is a fantasy.

Perfectly valid argument. The conclusion is true. But both premises are false.

That's a fun one. The more mundane example in the Critical Reasoning podcasts is:
Premise 1: It is Friday
Premise 2: Marianne always wears jeans on Friday
Conclusion: Marianne is wearing jeans.
The conclusion was true even though both premises were false (Marianne is the instructor).

 

[Leumas]

At this point, I am interested in his arguments for the existence of God, not his Christian sentiments.

Fair enough....I am currently reading the""Warranted Christian Belief" despite my reservations....just to see.

But…as the title indicates…trying to justify Christianity is not just about God….but about a particular god who is part of a TRINITY and who wants to forgive people for a sin they did not commit due to him being an unimpressive moron. And he cannot find a better means to accomplish that except by raping a 13 years old married girl in the middle of a country where they stone girls for that according to his own orders. So he commits adultery and incest and rape and pedophilia so as to impregnate Mary with himself so as to incarnate himself so as to crucify himself to himself so as to redeem the sin…..and 2000 years later the sin is yet unredeemed and he has to take a mulligan.

So I am quite intrigued at how all the above is “warranted”???? That is why I am reading the book….to see what new Warping and Writhing and what new CASUISTRY he might come up with that I have not come across before.

Have you read it? If not then have you read similar stuff? But I think you REALLY NEED to read the Bible….just read the Bible….did I mention you need to read the Bible?

Your first two paragraphs are diminished by the first sentence of your third paragraph.

Do you mean that the fact that I have not read them makes my opinion less valid?

Well I was not making my opinion about them.... I was making it about other casuists who I suspect are quite similar and whose works I have read.

BUT...BUT.... I am going to tell you a joke…. I hope you get it

Two guys were walking down a road when suddenly John stops Tony and tells him to halt.

Tony: Why…what is wrong?
John: Look down…you were about to step in turd
Tony: (looks down) Na… I don’t think it is turd
John: What do you mean…look at it….it is definitely turd
Tony: (Stoops down and scoops a bit of it on his finger and sniffs it) well it smells like turd….but does not feel like it
John: What does it matter what it feels like….it looks like turd and smells like turd….best to assume it is turd
Tony: (licks a little on the tip of his tongue) It also tastes like turd….thanks for stopping me…good thing I didn’t step in it.​

This didn't seem to have much content beyond an acrimonious statement of bias, so I ignored it.

The TRUTH hurts sometimes.....in what way would stating FACTS be BIAS??? And despite the facts hurting...how is stating them Acrimonious???

 

[FattyCatty]

I'm not sure I don't agree with you. The argument that tsig presented is an argument from ignorance and a fallacy. Whether we expect to have "any normal experience" of God doesn't change the invalidity of his argument.

Your argument seems to be:

Premise 1: There is no evidence of live elephants in this room.
Premise 2: A live elephant is too big to be hidden in this room.
Conclusion: There are no live elephants in this room.

This, I think, would be a valid argument based on Premise 2. Premise 1 is unnecessary; on it's own it would make the argument invalid as an argument from ignorance.

However, I don't see how your argument relates to tsig's argument about god. Premise 2 doesn't apply to arguments about god; and with just Premise 1, you have the fallacy of an argument from ignorance. Is there something here I am not seeing?

You need both, in my example, because there's also this scenario:

* I see a live elephant standing in the middle of this room.
* A live elephant is too big to be hidden in this room.
* There is a live elephant in this room.

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

This is circular reasoning with Premise 1. Which would make an invalid argument because the conclusion can't be based on Premise 2. At the same time, isn't this a fallacy of contradictory premises? Wouldn't that make this argument unsound if it were valid? At this point, I'm not sure this is even an argument. Maybe this is just some sentences.

I'm also not sure why these sentences would mean that you need Premise 1 in your first quoted argument nor why they would affect the fallaciousness of tsig's argument. Please clarify for me when you have time.

And that's what you left out of your analysis of tsig's argument.

What did I leave out? I said what he said.

The fact that we haven't discovered any planets with life on them does not mean that there are no such planets, because we've looked at so few planets.

Similarly, if I don't see any Salmonella in this room, that doesn't mean there isn't any here, because it's too small for me to see in the first place.

But I know there aren't any elephants in this room, because if there were, given the nature of elephants and the size and decor of the room, I would be able to see them.

Given the nature of God -- that is, a supernatural being which does things like create the world, answer prayers, cause miracles, generate the weather, send prophets with magical powers, implant souls in bodies, judge us in the afterlife, and so forth -- it's also something which, if it existed, we would have in some way detected by now.

But we don't.

So you equate God to the elephant, while I equate God to all the planets (too vast to examine) and to the Salmonella (don't have the tools to see). I don't claim that God did any of those things you mention. He may have, I don't know. I don't know if we would have detected these things or not; some people claim to have seen or experienced some of them (I have my doubts). I do believe God created the universe that led to the world, the weather, natural laws, etc. I don't see how that could be "detected." Also, I don't see how you could know whether or not there were souls or an afterlife. You seem to turn a lot of can't knows into I'm sures.

So the only answer for people who want to hold on to God, without simply making statements that contradict fact, has been to push God completely outside of everything we know (contrary to the beliefs of the faithful, and annulling the "exists" part of the claim "God exists") and/or to refuse to attach any sort of features or behaviors to the term "God" (making any and all claims about "God" meaningless or absurd).

The only answer to what question? It must be pretty obvious that I disagree with what you say here, for several reasons.

1. I disagree with the idea that people "want to hold on to God." I don't think I am holding on to God when I didn't have him before; I think I am finding him. And neither of us knows the motivations of everyone who believes in a god.
   
   
2. I disagree with the use of your phrase "without simply making statements that contradict fact"; it seems to be based on assumption (of what statements people make) and assertion (that any statements made contradict fact). I don't see anything convincing me that this is valid. Now that may be because you have rehashed this many times before and assume everyone knows your reasons and evidence. I don't and there may be others who read this who don't.
   
   
3. I disagree that the only answer for belief is to "push God completely outside...meaningless or absurd)." That's too much of a blanket statement. Many people manage to believe in their God in many different ways, only some of which are "outside of everything we know" or are "annulling the 'exists' part of the claim 'God exists')."

In short, tsig is right because God is a kind of thing we should have evidence for at this point if it existed, and we don't.

I disagree with this as well. Why should we have evidence when, as in your analogy above, we haven't looked everywhere and we don't have the tools to see everything. Besides, the statement tsig made, to which I responded, was a fallacy, as I pointed out (and gave links that also pointed it out).

It's the lack of facts and evidence for god that informs my judgment that there is no god.
There is also the fact that there are as many definitions of god as there are believers that lead me to the conclusion that they are deluding themselves.