Except that that first step is largely given through context, and when it isn’t, it’s generally not that difficult to get an answer to. The second step really is the stumbling block.
I dunno, I perceive fundis pushing the stuff in paragraph one and mainline Xtians pushing paragraph 2. While I trust there’s some overlap, I perceive that those two lines of argumentation more often run on separate tracks.
Well my 12yo son summed it up the other week, if you say that 1+1 = 3 prove it, can’t prove it then it’s probably not true. I don’t need to know the answer or prove it is 2, it is you who are making the claim.
But accepting that the first step is being given through context is where you are likely to be taken for a chump: you will waste a lot of time playing before you discover that the goalposts which you thought your opponent was defending are not where you thought they were, and/or they move when you get close to scoring.
And defining a god is nowhere near as easy as you think. Most theists, in my experience, can’t do it well, and tend towards a vague set of behaviours that don’t serve to distinguish their god from a lot of other possibilities.
Not only that, but as Cheesesteak says, you will often find that the attributes theists give to their god when worshipping it or saying why its alleged views should control our lives are very often entirely different to the very minimal set of attributes theists assign to their god when participating in theological debate.
Which leads me to:
There is no doubt a continuum with fundies tending more towards a god who does or did things literally as described in the bible, through to the minimalist god of theological argument, who is barely there at all.
However, I disagree with you about where mainline Xtians fit on this spectrum: even the minimum possible specification one can (IMHO) meet while still being a Xtian has to involve believing that there is a god who has some form of active interest in humans.
The minimalist god of so much theological argument is very often nothing more than some form of self aware universe creating being, with no requirement of interest in the day to day lives of humans whatsoever.
It really isn’t. Princhester is right. The definition is always missing, inconsistent, incomplete, self-contradictory or deficient in some other way. It is very difficult, if not impossible to get a good answer.
Put it this way. I believe in the Spritmanuf of Ping. Do we now go straight to step 2? or is there something more you need from me before we can have that discussion?
The worst possible deficiency is when a theist defines their god in such a way that it, or they are unfalsifiable.
As soon as that happens there is no point carrying on the discussion. We are not then discussing existence in any meaningful sense and should treat the claim with indifference. The theist is free to claim that they still believe. That is up to them but it is hard to see why their individual perception should be of any relevance for anyone else.
I doubt very much if your 12 yo son could prove that 1+1 = 2 either. I know that I couldn’t without resorting to circular reasoning. Yet people say that all the time.
The same is true of a almost anything that people say. People say that Angele Merckel is Chancellor of Germany, yet I doubt that any of them can prove it. They say that my computer monitor contains millions of LEDs, yet I doubt if any of them can prove it. And so on and so forth for virtually anything that any of us says. Very few of us can prove anything that we say, and those of us who can can only prove tiny bits.
Which neatly disproves the idea that if someone “can’t prove it then it’s probably not true”. Since almost nobody can prove almost anything that they say, the only way that statement could be true is if almost everything anybody says is a lie.
What we actually do is repeat what other people we trust (eg newsreaders) have told us, and they are in turn repeating what other people (eg journalists) told them and they are trusting what somebody else (eg a marketing rep for Dell Computers) told them and so forth. At some point somebody presumably did see some actual proof for these claims, but they are so far removed from you or I that we can’t seriously claim to be able to prove what we say.
The simple fact is that we don’t have the resources or knowledge to even attempt to prove 99% of what we believe. How would you even attempt to prove that your computer monitor is made of LEDs or that Angele Merckel is Chancellor of Germany? I’m not talking about proving that people you trust believe it. I mean actually proving it for yourself even if the whole world is lying to you?
And we don’t have the time to disprove 99% of the remainder.
What we actually do is trust people who trust people who trust people who claim to have seen proof. Science adds another layer to this by asking people to show their proof to other people who, notionally, try to discredit it. But for 99.9999% of what anybody believes, it comes down to faith in the edifice that provides us with the truth (science, journalism etc) and faith in the people who are authorised to disseminate that truth (journalists, journal editors etc).
Which is no different in essence to religion.
That’s a scary thought, but it’s true.
The reason why some of us are more inclined to trust science, or history or journalism has nothing to do with our ability to prove the things they say. It’s based on the track record that science has of actually working.
But to pretend that our belief is grounded in what we have been able to prove to be true is a delusion. We believe because we have faith is those institutions and the people who are spokespeople for those institutions.
Maybe we believe in those institutions because we have seen proof of some tiny proportion of what they say. But mostly we have faith in them because we know that they work in the real world. If I act as though my computer has an LED monitor or I act as though Barack Obama is President of the USA, I get good results. If I act as though those things are not true, bad things happen. A million iterations of this every year have taught me to have faith in those sources of information.
But lets not kid ourselves that we believe because we have seen these things proven. We believe because we have faith in the institutions. Nothing more.
:eek:
Really?
You think that the only meaningful standard for existence is that something be falsifiable, and anything that is not falsifiable has no meaningful existence?
I don’t think any philosopher in the history of the world would agree with that, nor would most rational lay people, it is so patently untrue.
To give you an easy example, the poem inside my head. Does it exist? It has no objective existence and can’t be falsified, so clearly it does not exist by your standards. Yet I can write it down on paper. Are you claiming that the poem did not exist until i wrote it down. No court or philosopher in the world would agree with you. And if so, then when I burn the paper then it must ceases to exist, since it ceases to exist objectively. But how can it then be reproduced on paper by two separate people?
It is trivially easy to prove that things that can’t be falsified still exist.
This is a common mistake amongst sciencists and very rare amongst scientists: a confidence that science can be applied to all of existence, and that all of existence must be amenable to scientific application.
Science is a very handy tool for studying reality, but it’s not the only one and it’s not applicable to the whole world.
No, you’ve misunderstood and you need to read my post again.
We can’t talk about existence until you define what you are talking about. A poem is a suitable definition but even then if you never speak it, or write it down or broadcast it in any way then I reserve the right to carry on with my life as if it doesn’t exist.
You have the right to carry on as though it doesn’t exist regardless of whether I speak it, or write it down or broadcast it in any way.
But that isn’t what you said. You said that if i I don’t speak it, or write it down or broadcast it in any way then it doesn’t *exist *in any meaningful way.
The first statement is one that any philosopher or court in the land would agree with.
The second is a statement that no philosopher or court in the land would *ever *agree with.
Your statement that if a God can’t be falsified then he can’t exist in any meaningful way is a total non sequitur.
not sure what your point is here.
That isn’t what I said and my posts are there for everyone to check.
I said “as if it didn’t exist” Run that back through your head and clarify what it means.
In exactly the same way that I carry on my life as if gods don’t exist and yet I state here clearly that I do not make the definitive claim that they don’t exist.
Not sure why I would be concerned with what a philosopher may or may not agree with and I don’t see the relevance of a court of law.
I’ll state again what I said and what I mean rather than have your lack of reading comprehension twist it.
If you don’t sufficiently define what you are talking about then we cannot discuss its existence in any meaningful way.
Simple enough for you? You seem desperate to assume that I’m making a sweeping statement when I’m being very careful to avoid doing so.
What you said is there in black and white. You said that if a God is unfalsifiable, its existence can not be discussed in any meaningful sense. You then said that it should be treated with indifference. Not as though it didn’t exist.
That is utter bollocks and something no philosopher or logician (ie the experts in the field) would ever agree with.
But you are taking the usual sciencist stance: make an erroneous, absolutist, authoritative sounding statement. Then once it is shown to be a load of dingo’s kidneys, claim that you never made the statement .
Since you have no intention of discussing this matter honestly I will leave it here, content that everyone can see your dishonesty and ignorance for themselves.
It makes a difference whether it exists or not. In that sense, it’s falsifiable. If we did whatever it turns out to take to be able to read off words from a person’s brain*, we’d find there is a poem in your head, or we’d find there is no poem in your head.
The poem’s existence isn’t very meaningful, since it doesn’t make much of a difference. But it makes some difference, so its existence is a least a little meaningful.
Meanwhile, if someone were to claim an entity exists which makes no difference, then that entity’s existence would be of a meaningless kind.
*To be clear, I doubt this will ever be possible in practice. But since you do actually either have that poem there in your head or you don’t, it’s got to be possible in theory to extract the thing, whether by the application of advanced technology or by cruder methods…
I said that if people cannot define a god (or a smippet, or a flumpfhammer for that matter) then no meaningful discussion can be had about their existence. There are many ways in which a definition can be lacking. Falsifiability is just one. I think it is the worst criteria but by no means the only one. But then you’ll know that having carefully read my posts.
I therefore treat them (God, gods, whatever) with indifference, I carry on as if they don’t exist. I don’t try to discuss existence *at all.*There is no point as no progress can be made
Again, the appeal to philosophers. What have they got to do with what I’ve written? And logicians have a hell of a time, leave them out of this.
I have no idea what a "sciencist"is. It is a new concept to me. I’ve never heard it before. Since you accuse me of being one (and it appears to be a pejorative) I’d be perfectly happy to debate whether I am or not. However I can’t do that until and unless you define it properly for me. I may be one, I may not be one, they may not exist at all but I’ll continue my life in total indifference to it until such time as you define it.
Now do you understand the point that I’m making? (and that I’ve been making all along)
The problem for you is that I was very clear and precise in what I wrote. My posts remain there for you read and read again. Anyone can do the same and if they agree with you I’m sure they’ll say so.
Bold claim. I’ve repeated and clarified my points for you three times now. It is a really simple point as well. If you haven’t got it now then you are right to stomp off because I suspect a fourth time would be wasted on you.
Again with “prove”!
Proof is a property of self-contained formal systems. It is not a term that we can meaningfully use when discussing our knowledge of the real world. And doing so inevitably leads to errors.
Such as this.
“Truth” is itself a problematic concept when applied to the relationship between mental concepts and the real world. Again, it’s more properly used to describe states in formal systems.
Instead of talking about truth, I find it more useful to talk about “models with predictive value”. Does this way of understanding the universe make accurate predictions about the unfolding of my situation within it? This sets aside all ontological notions of knowing “what the universe really is” and puts the focus squarely on how to live ones life.
Could you please describe this “God” you keep referring to?
At 3+ pages so far, is this the most successful “one-and-done” drive-by debut post in the history of the board?
That depends on your opinion of the mathematics of wonton burrito meals, and on how it intersects with philosophizing in general.
But how do you define predictive value without defining truth? Predictive of what?
At this point in the thread we are all metaphorically lounging on the sofa, idly strumming simple chord progressions on our mental guitars. It is passing the time and now and again we hear something pleasing to the ear.
I just started a new thread about describing God.