Is someone’s belief in vampires absolutely warranted?
Is someone’s belief in Voltron absolutely warranted?
Is my belief that you murdered my father and replaced him with a golem absolutely warranted?
Is the belief that you shouldn’t have the right to use a computer because you cause spontaneous abortions of nearby fetuses when you do, absolutely warranted?
Is the belief that Obama is a Kenyan sorcerer absolutely warranted?
Is a belief that redheads don’t have souls absolutely warranted?
Is the belief that sharks can attack you from your toilet absolutely warranted?
Is the belief that demons will rape you in your sleep unless you keep an onion near your bed absolutely warranted?
The real problem here is you obviously like some theists in your everyday life and don’t want to admit they’re full of shit.
And the perfect God must be omniscient, and the perfect God must be omnipotent. However omniscience and omnipotence cannot logically co-exist in the same entity. Thus, there are no perfect entities, and thus no God, in other words God necessarily does not exist. Step 7 is incorrect, and the entire “proof” fails.
If perfection implies omnibenevolence, it gets even worse.
Still, theists seem unable to point out why an existent perfect God would show his face around here, and why it would look anything like the God they believe in - whichever variety that is. They say that “God” is the name of the entity supposedly proven above, and that “God” is also the name of the entity described in the Bible, and therefore they must be identical. They tend to not answer me when I point this out, and I’ve been trying to get an answer for decades.
Ditto for the cosmological argument.
I will try to address both your posts in this one of mine, since you both make similar non-arguments. First, let’s get this one point out of the way:
[QUOTE=HtB]
Dawkins is not missing the point, but the theist posting under your account name is.
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[QUOTE=FMI]
Unless you’re a cockthumping asshammer with butterscotch for brains…
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These are just asinine. You both make the pig-ignorant assumption that someone who is pointing out the flaws in an argument is arguing for the other side. You realize, I hope, that it’s possible to agree with a conclusion but find the method that conclusion was reached to be weak and objectionable? One can’t expect to convince the other side if one is a stupid ass about one’s position.
I’m an ex-RCC, raised as one. I came to reject it by finding that the rules seemed silly, as Dawkins points out. Unlike Dawkins, however, I went and studied what the church’s theologians had to say about the reasoning behind the rules. The rules themselves are not silly when you understand the reasoning. Dawkins constructs a straw-man to knock down. The rules are properly rejectable when you realize that they are based on an axiomatic premise that “God wants and rewards self-sacrifice”. The RCC offers no actual evidence that this is the case. Rules based on a flawed premise are silly, if there is no actual basis for them, but not because they seem to be contradictory and an attempt to fool God. They aren’t. They’re silly because there’s no actual reason to believe God gives a shit one way or the other. Dawkins utterly misses this point, which might actually be convincing to a believer, because he’s focused on the silliness of the apparent “turning beef into fish” and “fooling God” that a casual examination of the rules suggests, but no believer actually claims, or believes.
Dawkins apparently is of the opinion that it’s not necessary to address what the theists actually believe, but that it’s enough merely to point out surface silliness to refute the whole thing. This does not work as anything except “preaching to the choir” for the simple reason that anyone who is aware of the reasoning behind their beliefs sees it for what it is: ignorant mocking. Ignorant mocking of someone’s beliefs has never succeeded in changing those beliefs.
I haven’t read much of Dawkins writing, because what I have read of it displays the same attitude repeatedly. To use a squirrel hunting analogy, he repeatedly fails to shoot holes in the squirrel because he’s too busy shooting at the log, failing to recognize that it’s the squirrel on top of the log that is the real target, and the log is just an irrelevant coincident detail. Dawkins writes the atheist equivalent of the inspirational books believers frequently read. In other words, he’s just a waste of time. He is only convincing to the already convinced, because he refuses to find out what the believers actually believe. He’s content with a superficial view of it, and arguing against that, which will never convince people who don’t actually believe that superficial view. Which was the point the OP of this thread was making, and the point I was agreeing with.
You seem to be suggesting that Dawkins fails because he didn’t read up on actual theology, which you’re pretty sure of even though you really haven’t read Dawkins.
That’s like rain on your wedding day, doncha think?
I’ve read a bit of his stuff, and noticed quite a bit of ignorance of actual theology on his part. A number of people who have read his works extensively make the same observation. One example was even quoted in this thread. I believe I’m justified in not wasting any more of my time reading the rest of his works on that basis. Can you suggest any reason why I should?
Where did I say it was wisdom? In fact, I specifically said it was silly. I merely disagreed with Dawkins on where that silliness lies, and pointed out that his choice of “silliness point” is absolutely worthless if his goal is convincing them of that silliness. Are you, also, so thick-headed that you think disagreeing with an argument’s validity must necessarily mean disagreement with it’s conclusion?
checks user name I stand corrected. Yes, you are that thick.
Fine. Go worship your St. Dawkins. I find him tedious and a waste of time to read. His arguments are of the “not even wrong” variety. But you are free to read all you want of it.
No. But you aren’t right about the argument’s validity. You’re lending the actions which are rules-lawyery cock-knobery more elegance than they deserve. Dawkins is on point here.
I’m certainly not suggesting you should “not say anything”. You are perfectly entitled to assert your preferred epistemology of rational materialism and explain why you find it more meaningful for interpreting reality and a superior basis for decision-making (as do I).
I’m just pointing out that ultimately, one’s epistemology is a choice and not a philosophical necessity. If somebody else prefers an epistemology that allows for non-rational, “intuited” “knowledge” of some kind about an assumed supernatural entity, we can certainly rationally criticize it but we cannot honestly be able to claim to prove it false—except by assuming the premises of the rational-materialist epistemology that the other person is explicitly rejecting.
Again, who’s suggesting you shouldn’t say anything? You can say “I think you’re wrong, and this is why” until you’re blue in the face if you like.
What you can’t say, at least not intellectually honestly, is “I can objectively prove that you’re wrong.”
I totally concur that within the rational-materialist perspective, theistic views are completely unsupported and intrinsically suspect. But it’s dirty pool to try to unilaterally foist that perspective on people who don’t accept it and then argue that they are logically constrained to agree with you.
And that’s what I object to in Dawkins’ assertion that “God’s existence or non-existence is a scientific fact about the universe, discoverable in principle if not in practice”. Such a statement is a Trojan horse that attempts to smuggle into the debate the assumption of universal acceptance of rational-materialist principles.
I get all the stuff you’re saying about rational-materialist principles making the task of interpreting reality more meaningful and productive and interesting to the rational mind, and I don’t disagree with any of it. Where I put my foot down is if you (or Dawkins) attempts illegitimately to imply that being more meaningful and productive and interesting, etc., to the rational mind is necessarily equivalent to being true.
If you are a juror in a criminal trial, and a witness for the defense testified that he saw the defendant elsewhere at the time as the witness was flying overhead like Superman, would you count this as evidence? But that’s the level of evidence we have for God.
I suppose some atheists lack belief because of incredulity, but I haven’t seen any evidence of it in this thread. In any case lack of belief in absurd things is perfectly reasonable absent strong evidence in favor. Plus, plenty of theists believe because a godless universe just disturbs them, or because they get comfort in a belief if they are sick or poor. Not only do religions accept this kind of belief, they foster it.
You should read up on the null hypothesis some time. Exactly which god should we accept before proving it to be non-existent? Jehovah? (which variety). Allah? Zeus?
Wotan? Krishna? Nero? It is clear that the only logical position is to not accept any of them until there is strong evidence to contrary. That is how we treat all propositions - except that God is supposed to be special. One of the major arguments that Dawkins makes is that believers work by special pleading. Existence propositions in science, like that of black holes or new planets, require evidence. God does not. Imagine how foolish someone claiming the existence of a counter-Earth, on the other side of the sun, would be if he demanded we prove it did not exist - and lack of the gravitational effect would not be good enough. That is how you look.
Again, which God? The Bible is so full of historical inaccuracies, fairy tales, contradictions, and incorrect predictions that any God dependent on it being inspired is on pretty shaky ground.
We can build a model of a world without god, and compare it to a model of a world with a loving god. That world would have god speaking to all of mankind, not just a tiny bunch of middle Easterners. That god would have constructed a world where tens of thousands would not die in floods and earthquakes. If that god cared at all if we believed in him he’d provide clear evidence. (If you think God is constrained from providing such evidence, I suggest you reread Exodus.) The world matches what we’d expect the world to be with no god pretty well. If you dispute this, please provide some evidence without begging the question or special pleading.
Your rank ignorance of what Dawkins actually has written, and regarding logic more generally is completely independent of the degree of esteem I do or do not hold Dawkins in.
You seem to be saying that Dawkins argument hinges on the lamb/well thing. It does not.
You yourself said that such rules are silly because there’s no reason to believe god gives a shit about them, which is much closer to Dawkins point anyway. Why you would argue from ignorance and prefer to remain there as regards someone you appear to agree with is a bit beyond me.
Again, though, the existence of something is either true or not. It’s not a “Trojan horse” – it’s that the answer doesn’t apply to us in any meaningful way if it doesn’t fit within that framework in some form. God may very well be true, but if there’s no way for us to tell, then God could be false, too. That’s why atheists are typically agnostic atheists in practice. We don’t believe in something for which there’s no evidence, although we don’t rule the possibility out because that’d be bad science.
If you disagree that meaning/logic is required to assess something’s veracity, answer me this:
Is “dsfkonsgf4543bgdfgdfd gdfkl flsd flsd flsdknf” true or false?
The only thing I ever had to say about Dawkins in this thread was to agree with the OP that he attempts to refute religion, while assuming that he has no need to actually understand in detail what the people he’s refuting actually assert. As a result, what he comes out with is mostly just “inspiration for the atheists” type arguments. Convincing only for the already convinced. It’s useless for convincing believers that they are wrong, and it’s a waste of time for me to read further examples of, or recommend to others. Dawkins steps outside of his field of expertise, refuses to gain expertise in the field he pontificates on, and thus turns out writing that’s largely a waste of paper. He makes many arguments, I don’t doubt that. The lamb/well thing was just the only one brought up in detail in this thread, so it’s the example I used to make my point. I agreed with the OP.
Again, though, that statement assumes the rational-materialist binary logic that you’re claiming to be independent of.
I completely agree that you need such logic to interpret reality in a way that’s rationally meaningful to us. If a theist asserts “There is a God”, in my perspective, that statement has to be either factually/empirically true or factually/empirically false, or else it’s meaningless.
But that constraint is limited to “in my perspective”. Just because that’s how I interpret “truth” as a meaningful concept does not necessarily imply that that is the only possible way to interpret it.
The real problem is that you are allowed to express yourself at all.
Let’s just take the first question about vampires.
Something must motivate a belief. Something about the world has to be explained. If you think otherwise, then we’re done. Maybe this something is a question about events or an explanation of something you do see whose cause is not obvious.
Suppose a bunch of people turned up dead and completely exsanguinated. There are no witnesses. There is no forensic evidence. Nothing. But for whatever reason, you are curious about the world and maybe you care about other people and think this needs to be explained.
Perhaps you start from the belief that murders are random and unconnected. Then it takes evidence to prove otherwise. That’s fine. But the prior belief that phenomena are random and unconnected is something you choose, not something nature gives you. It’s an epistemological choice.
Perhaps you have a prior belief that allows that it is more likely that murders be connected. The fact that the bodies are drained of blood is enough to convince you that in this case, the deaths are all connected. Your prior belief is a choice. You interpret the same evidence and get a different conclusion as someone with a different prior.
So you want to posit a mechanism that killed the people and drained their blood. Vampires might be a nice place to start. A vampire would also explain why the bodies are drained of blood. It would also explain why the people were all murdered at night. Perhaps it would even explain the little puncture marks on the victims’ throats. So far, this is a pretty attractive explanation. A person with a prior belief that the events were not connected would never believe this story because he already denies that the murders had anything to do with each other.
So now we check the vampire story for problems. There are problems. You find no convincing accounts of anyone ever seeing a vampire. For some people this is not a problem, because they have a prior belief that something can exist without having to see it directly. Sometimes they are very wrong about this but sometimes they are very right. It is a gamble. But perhaps this isn’t the worst problem. Perhaps the idea of someone being undead directly contradicts our best explanations for other phenomena which have not yet been proven false. Even the most epistemologically easy-going among us would have to abandon the vampire story, as attractive as it may be.
All the same, whether or not what we observe confirms or denies our beliefs is a function of the beliefs we had before we made the observation. This is what makes the god story so appealing. God can explain all sorts of things about the universe, from moral behavior to the problem of evil to where we go when we die. For some people, answers to these questions are important. There is nothing currently known about the rules of the universe that rule out the possibility of god. This is partly because theists make it so and have revised god-ness over the centuries, but still. Physics has not yet proven that there can be no god. So if you start from the belief that there are things in the world that must be explained and that your epistemology admits to the existence of things you cannot see or test easily, then the very same evidence that hard-core materialists may think is stupid will confirm a theist’s beliefs. Obviously this makes communication hard.
What you believe is a trade-off between sensitivity and specificity. You want your test for cancer to catch as many people as possible who really have the disease without giving too many false positives. If the test is too rigorous, it will have few false positives but will not accurately identify everyone who has the disease. What trade-off you are willing to live with is an epistemological choice. Prior beliefs about some things are silly because where they directly contradict things that we actually do know. But where we don’t know, it’s more or less fair game. The important thing here may not be having a rigorous epistemology all the time but being right about the most material questions.
How do we know God rewards self-sacrifice? How do we know what kinds of self-sacrifice God wants, and what kinds he doesn’t? What if I sacrifice by not playing video games, is it ok for me to eat whatever I want then? Is God cool with that? Is my religious community going to be hunky-dory with me coming up with my own rules to satisfy this apparent meta-purpose of self-sacrifice?
The problem with theology is that it has little of use to say about evaluating the truths of a given religion against those of other religions, or against non-religious truth.