IPU's vs. Hong Kong

[Beleth]

Here's a potential counterargument to the "God vs. Invisible Pink Unicorn" argument:

I have never been to Hong Kong. I have seen pictures of what people say is Hong Kong. There have been reams of information written about Hong Kong. I have even met people who claim that they have been to Hong Kong. Yet I have never experienced Hong Kong myself.

It is therefore just as irrational/rational for me to believe in the existence of Hong Kong as it is for me to believe in God. After all, there are pictures of what people say is God, and reams of information written about God, and people that say they have met God.

How can you believe in a place you have never been to any more than you can believe in God?

The obvious reply is "well, you can visit Hong Kong in person", but that doesn't wash - why would I spend time and money attempting to visit a place I do not believe exists?

Are there any arguments for the existence of Hong Kong that can't be morphed into arguments for the existence of God?

 

[rustypouch]

Are there any arguments for the existence of Hong Kong that can't be morphed into arguments for the existence of God?

I think so. Off the top of my head, a few spring to mind. I have seen pictures of Hong Kong, taken by people I know, and these people are in some of the pictures. The content of these pictures, i.e. background, buildings, landscapes, etc., are consistent with pictures others have taken of Hong Kong. These pictures are evidence, not stories.

Also, these people have brought back products from Hong Kong which are not available where I live. These products match ones that I have advertised on the internet, and I have seen receipts from the stores in Hong Kong where these items were purchased.

From the massive amount of evidence there is on Hong Kong, I can think of two conclusions: either hong Kong does exist, or it is a massive hoax with no clear purpose.

 

[Fade]

Are there any arguments for the existence of Hong Kong that can't be morphed into arguments for the existence of God?

All of them.

 

[Beleth]

Re: Re: IPU's vs. Hong Kong

I think so. Off the top of my head, a few spring to mind. I have seen pictures of Hong Kong, taken by people I know, and these people are in some of the pictures. The content of these pictures, i.e. background, buildings, landscapes, etc., are consistent with pictures others have taken of Hong Kong. These pictures are evidence, not stories.

But how much can you trust a photograph in the days of Photoshop? And even before the days of Photoshop, there were ways of tricking photographs. And even if they're not tricked, they could be pictures of Canton, or Shanghai, or Manila, or a host of other Asian cities that may or may not actually exist too.

Also, these people have brought back products from Hong Kong which are not available where I live. These products match ones that I have advertised on the internet, and I have seen receipts from the stores in Hong Kong where these items were purchased.

I could probably go up to Chinatown in San Francisco and get similar items. If they aren't readily available, I could probably find someone who would make or otherwise procure them for me for a price. And just because a receipt has the name of a store in Hong Kong on it doesn't mean that it was actually printed in Hong Kong.

From the massive amount of evidence there is on Hong Kong, I can think of two conclusions: either hong Kong does exist, or it is a massive hoax with no clear purpose.

Just like God!

Originally posted by Fade
All of them.

Then it should be trivial for you to come up with one. I invite you to do so.

 

[Loki]

I'd say there are (at a minimum) at least two clear criteria for separating the concepts of "god" and "Hong Kong" - attributes, and relevence.

1. Attributes : God has (in most believer's versions) attributes that are incompatible with any other known object - omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent for starters. This makes god unique in almost every way. Therefore, you need to build a case for existence that cannot rely upon 'similarity'. I can build a list of Hong Kong's attributes, and verify most of these by visiting similar cities near me. Since it walks, talks and looks like a duck, I can provisionally conclude that it's probably a duck. We can apply this principle to Hong Kong, we can't apply it to god.

2. Relevence. For most believers, god is a central concept in their worldview. At the very least, god is usually seen as the 'source' of morality. This makes god's existence far more 'relevant' than Hong Kong's existence to most believers. Given the (far) greater relevence, it seems to me that the evidence must be far greater. For me, finding out tomorrow that Hong Kong is a hoax would be amazing, but ultimately nothing more than an interesting fact about this world. For a believer, finding out tommorow that god is a fake would be a massive blow to their entire outlook on life. Far greater relevence = far greater evidence required.

 

[Fade]

Then it should be trivial for you to come up with one. I invite you to do so.

You're trolling for responses.

You got them.

Be satisfied you stirred a few remarks up and rub your hands gleefully.

Then, go away.

 

[Sindai]

I'm with Fade. No one could possibly be stupid enough to display this staggering level of ignorance and uncommon nonsense and still punctuate correctly.

 

[Beleth]

I can build a list of Hong Kong's attributes, and verify most of these by visiting similar cities near me. Since it walks, talks and looks like a duck, I can provisionally conclude that it's probably a duck. We can apply this principle to Hong Kong, we can't apply it to god.

Good point. But could we apply it to IPU's? IPU's have similar traits that other (existant) objects have.

I know it sounds like I'm changing the subject here, but I'm not. My whole point is to show that comparing God to an IPU is like comparing that God/IPU to a place you have never personally experienced yourself - that it's a specious argument, not that it's a valid one.

There's no doubt in my mind that Hong Kong exists, of course.
There's likewise no doubt in my mind that IPU's don't exist, although I personally have no hard evidence either way for either of them. I have "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" but I don't have "proof beyond the shadow of a doubt", in other words.
Likewise, I have no hard evidence for the existence or nonexistence of God. (In fact, as I have posted elsewhere, I don't belive that there can be human-observable evidence of the existence or nonexistence of God.) I just happen to fall on the "believe" side of that fence.

2. Relevence. For most believers, god is a central concept in their worldview. At the very least, god is usually seen as the 'source' of morality. This makes god's existence far more 'relevant' than Hong Kong's existence to most believers. Given the (far) greater relevence, it seems to me that the evidence must be far greater. For me, finding out tomorrow that Hong Kong is a hoax would be amazing, but ultimately nothing more than an interesting fact about this world. For a believer, finding out tommorow that god is a fake would be a massive blow to their entire outlook on life. Far greater relevence = far greater evidence required.

But isn't relevence a type of evidence? If so many people believe in God and let the attributes attributed to Him guide their everyday lives, doesn't that make Him "exist" in some nebulous way that doesn't likewise make IPU's exist? Yes, it's a circular Man-creates-God sort of argument, but that doesn't make God not exist.



Fade, Sindai:
I know it's in vogue to ask questions one already knows the answer to, and your responses to me lead me to believe that you think I'm doing that. If that's true - if you think that I have some sort of agenda here - you are wrong. I only ask questions I don't know the answers to. The whole God vs. IPU thread really got me thinking. It is a very persuasive argument, but deep down I'm sure there's something wrong with it. I'm just trying to look at it from the opposite side - to compare God to something that we all agree does exist in the same way that the IPU argument compares God to something that doesn't exist - and see if this counterargument shows as much validity as the original IPU argument.

I'm exploring with reason. I am picking the brains of my fellow JREFers. If you don't want to join me on this exploration, you don't have to.

 

[Fade]

It is a very persuasive argument, but deep down I'm sure there's something wrong with it.

Fine. I'll assume for a moment you aren't a troll and are playing some sort of devils advocate to promote critical thinking.

However, the argument is perfect in it's simplicity.

I'm just trying to look at it from the opposite side - to compare God to something that we all agree does exist in the same way that the IPU argument compares God to something that doesn't exist - and see if this counterargument shows as much validity as the original IPU argument.

You hit on the answer in your own phrasing. "We all know"

I have never visited Hong Kong personally, but here are the reasons I know for a fact it exists:

Numerous photographs.
Extensive histories.
Nearly every country on earth having mentioned it in literally millions of documents, all in the same way, without any agenda at all.
Numerous journalists documenting it's policies, it's peoples, local drama, whatever.
The reliability of all previously noted evidence.


When it comes to the mundane, I am more likely to believe a given account. Why? Because when it comes to the mundane, there is no reason to lie, or to make something up. "I went to the 7/11 and bought a soda" is not someting provable by any means, really. However, whether I went to 7/11 and bought a soda or not is irrelevant to my personal life. My having gone there doesn't benefit me, nor would having not gone there be to my detriment. It's an everyday occurence. (well not really, now that I have a slushie machine)

The problem with god "evidence" is that is lacks in both quality AND quantity. Any given person will give you a dramatically different account as to what constitutes god. These ideas will undoubtedly change several times throughout the persons life. Nobody can give me something tangible, or something mathematical, or even a picture.

Also, a person professing a belief in god must support that belief. I know it sounds like a truism, but it's a very important part of the critical thinking process. One must examine even more harshly a statement of belief when it happens to support an already existing paradigm that a given person holds. To a christian, for instance, the physical existence of Jesus as Christ is paramount to their entire world view. If this single fact were untrue, their entire belief system would collapse in upon itself. They are, literally, wound up inextricably from their belief system.

One example often given to illustrate this point is this:

If tomorrow God were proven not to exist, priests would no longer be priests. However, if tomorrow the laws of physics were turned upside down and falsified, physicists would still be physicists. Our rational minds are able to adapt the world as we examine and uncover more and more evidence. Over time, our worldview becomes more correct, as we can test our theories time and time again.


To get back to the IPU argument, it works on every level.

1. It doesn't give either party a way to directly examine it.
2. It presents a different idea in the mind of every person who may express belief in the IPU.
3. It leaves no empirical, mathematical, or observation evidence.
4. It has no properties outside being invisible and pink.

This is exactly what god is. That is why the argument works.

 

[Loki]

Beleth,

IPU's have similar traits that other (existant) objects have.

Well, not quite. An IPU is given 3 key properties - Invisible, pink, and unicorn (or 'horse with large horn in forehead'). The entire reason for choosing all 3 of these attributes is that they are *clearly* not attributes that horses (the nearest verifiable equivalent) have. (well, okay, perhaps the 'pink' can be argued in some way, depending upon your definitions of colours).

Again, to back up what Fade says, the 'IPU versus God' argument is valid because both have "impossible to verify" attributes. The 'Hong Kong versus God' argument fails because Hong Kong has verifiable attributes.

 

[evildave]

For one, if you're so highly "skeptical" of Hong Kong's existence, get on a plane and fly there, spend a week or so wandering around to verify it's all there, then come back and tell us what it's like. It sounds like you need a vacation, anyway.

Of course, you can't really prove to someone that Hong Kong isn't some other city dressed up to LOOK like Hong Kong, just to trick you into believing.

Maybe they just dragged a lot of Chinese people into Toronto when they heard you were flying there to Hong Kong, made some fake signs, dressed the place up, printed some fake tourist guides, and then they flew around in circles for hours and hourse, then dropped you off there. They even went so far as to bugger the GPS so it's report you were near China, instead of in Toronto. They will all be laughing at you as soon as you leave, to be sure.

Of course, maybe some of the people there are locals, wearing disguises. I recommend pulling on moustaches and beards and and yelling "Canada SUCKS!" as loudly as you can, when you go there. Just to double-check.

 

[Beleth]

Fade, Loki -

You have given me a lot of food for thought, and I appreciate it. But most of the arguments given for the existence of Hong Kong (extensive history, mentioned by almost every nation) can still apply to the existence of God. And even though horses themselves don't have all the properties of an IPU, there are things that do (air is invisible, powder puffs are pink, and other animals have horns).

The one that I can't easily devil's-advocate around is Fade's modifier "without any agenda at all."

I will attempt to give a more coherent response later today. Perhaps at lunch time. Goodness knows that I haven't been at all persuasive in this one.

 

[Nyarlathotep]

I would say that the best argument for the existance of Hong Kong that would not apply to the existance of either God or IPU's is this.

You know that other cities exist. The existance of a city doesn't require anything beyond what you know about the laws of the universe to be true in order for it to exist. Since you know other cities exist it doesn't require any major leap of logic to conclude from photos, acounts of other travellers etc, that Hong Kong exists.

A God (or an IPU) on the other hand does require certain exceptions to be made in the known laws of the universe in order to exist. This means the logical leap to accept the existance is much larger, unnacceptably large in my opinion.

 

[synaesthesia]

The theory concillience of Hong Kong unequivocally and vastly outstripps that of God.

People who know what they're talking about, and the evidential considerations involved attest to hong Kong. People who don't know what they're talking about take god on faith.

Geographical locations are well known. Cosmological designers are not.

 

[Fade]

But most of the arguments given for the existence of Hong Kong (extensive history, mentioned by almost every nation) can still apply to the existence of God.

No, they can't. No god has been mentioned by every nation. Each nation mentions thousands of different gods in different ways with different principles. Even the christians obviously believe in vastly, vastly different gods. Also, the nature of those histories is vastly different.

Let's pretend for a moment that everyone in history that has been a monotheist has the same core beliefs, so one could argue they believe in the same god. If you were to take all the writing attributed to testimony for god, it would amount to exactly nothing as far as empirical evidence goes.

Science demands evidence be reproducable. I can go to Hong Kong if I so desire, then the evidence is first hand. The only way I can "see god" is to accept that god exists in the first place. That is self-fulfilling.

The problem here, is that you don't quite understand what constitutes valid v invalid evidence. The justice system has lead people to believe that eye witnesses are reliable. They aren't.

 

[RichardR]

Hong Kong is just another city on planet Earth. Consequently, the existence of HK is not an extraordinary claim, and so evidence for HK does not have to be extraordinary.

God is a supernatural being who created the universe. That is an extraordinary claim. Do you see the difference?

 

[Yahzi]

The obvious reply is "well, you can visit Hong Kong in person", but that doesn't wash - why would I spend time and money attempting to visit a place I do not believe exists?

Yes it does wash - it is the entire point.

You could, in principle, visit Hong Kong. You cannot, in principle, visit God. This reduces the testimony for God to the level of hearsay. Not only do you have to have faith that people are reporting their experiences correctly (which is no big deal), you have to have faith that they are interpreting their experiences correctly (which is a huge deal). With HK, you can interpret the experience directly: with God, you cannot. With HK, you can check up on other people's assertions; with God, you cannot.

This marks all the difference between reason and faith, between reality and imagination.

 

[Beleth]

All right. Here goes.

There are a lot of common threads running through the replies here, and I'll try to address them first.

HK is an ordinary city, and thus needs no special proof: Okay, but there have been a lot of ficticious ordinary cities that would pass this test too. For some reason I find myself thinking of River City, the town in "The Music Man". Nothing extraordinary or supernatual about there; it's not like it's Atlantis or El Dorado or anything. Yet it doesn't exist.

Valid vs. invalid evidence: A reasonable person would collect all the evidence first before making the subjective decision about which pieces of evidence to believe and which to discount. Certainly reproducibility is a key criterion to base this decision on. But in a lot of real-life instances where one must judge evidence (a murder trial, say), reproducibility just isn't an option. Neither is it an option when one is talking about universe creation.

Different descriptions of God vs. one description of HK:There are a lot of different descriptions of HK, too. You can buy numerous different travel guides that tell you where the good restaurants are, where the good hotels are, where you can take kids to, etc. One restaurant guide may rate a restaurant differently than another restaurant guide. That doesn't cast doubt on whether the restaurant actually exists, though. Just because two people's perceptions of something differ is not evidence that the thing doesn't exist.


I don't know. Maybe Fade is right; maybe I do have a problem differentiating valid and invalid evidence. Or maybe there's a third way out.

Deism is looking better and better all the time.

 

[Nyarlathotep]

All right. Here goes.

There are a lot of common threads running through the replies here, and I'll try to address them first.

HK is an ordinary city, and thus needs no special proof: Okay, but there have been a lot of ficticious ordinary cities that would pass this test too. For some reason I find myself thinking of River City, the town in "The Music Man". Nothing extraordinary or supernatual about there; it's not like it's Atlantis or El Dorado or anything. Yet it doesn't exist.

However, if one had no knowledge that River City was fiction and all of the evidence taht River City was an actual place was presented to you as fact, you would be perfectly justified in believing it existed. If one is given incorrect facts, even perfect logic will lead to an erroneous conclusion. Garbage in, garbage out, as the saying goes.

 

[arcticpenguin]

All right. Here goes.

HK is an ordinary city, and thus needs no special proof: Okay, but there have been a lot of ficticious ordinary cities that would pass this test too. For some reason I find myself thinking of River City, the town in "The Music Man". Nothing extraordinary or supernatual about there; it's not like it's Atlantis or El Dorado or anything. Yet it doesn't exist.

Of course it exists. Every fan-boy knows that River City is the fictional name for the very real city of Mason City, Iowa, USA.