Sure there is. Like I said, these characters didn’t stop with their restrictive versions of G-d – the problem was that their more expansive elaborations were less persuasive. See Rev Berkeley and Descartes. Now I concede that the arguments are confusing – but that’s an aspect of philosophy that’s not peculiar to religious studies. There is no con when a con has neither occurred nor been attempted.
Face it: atheism has been soundly refuted except as a matter of faith. You can deny the Big Bang and the 6 forces, but you can’t deny the world has some cause. You can say you are uninterested in worship, but there will still remain an entity or set that is most worthy of worship in a relative sense. Put another way, you can’t deny a definition, you can only evaluate its usefulness or applicability. And arguably there are theists who believe a close relation of these minimalistic forms: consider the Universal Pantheist Society or their predecessor Spinoza. Furthermore I understand that Hindus are comfortable in endowing rocks, etc. with spirits, so the baloney sandwich example doesn’t amount to much. What you can say is that one cosmology or another matches observed fact or reason inadequately or retards the human endeavor. But that’s a different argument.
So what’s the excuse of everyone else who realised that the elaborations were less persuasive (and I’m being polite: by less persuasive I mean “horseshit”) and in particular, what’s Cecil’s excuse? Why go on describing the only tiny part of Aquinas’ (etc) argument that make any kind of sense as being proof of a “god” when it isn’t proof of any such thing (as that term is usually used)? And the more so when Aquinas’ (etc) larger arguments for an actual god (as that term is usually used) are unpersuasive?
The answer to my rhetorical question is “to mislead”.
My lack of belief in a god (which I describe as atheism) is a lack of belief in any god as that word is usually defined.
If you wish to use the word “god” to mean something else and then say that atheism has been soundly refuted based on your own peculiar definition of “god” then have at it. I hope you find it amusing. Why not define god as meaning “desks” and then have a good hearty laugh at my lunacy in not believing in god? It would make as much sense, and be about as relevant.
Science only thoroughly investigates things that they know are going to get results. I play Spider Solitaire at http://www.teawamutu.co.nz/fun/games/solitaire/spider.html and tend to study the layout of the game before starting. I know that I can have a greater success rate if I only play games That I identify as winnable. Science does the same thing consistantly and it has become part of their structure. Why would scientists try to prove something like god that would create huge costs with little results? There is a competition in this world to acquire funding for the sciences. You have to have a good sales pitch showing financial gain or gained pride to acquire funding. Noone wants to dump a bunch of money into proving what god is because it is well known that most people have different beliefs and most wouldn’t accept the truth if it conflicts with those beliefs. It is important also to state that in excess of eighty percent of scientists believe in a supreme entity. When you are an expert and see that there are things happening that cannot be explained by our limited knowledge of things and the laws of physics you will begin to understand there is more. A true smart man will not try to disprove something that most people in the world believe in also. Even though peoples perception of god varies, they usually believe there is one main god. I personally believe there is some cosmic entity controling this reality but don’t know what it is. I know there are many who try to profit from beliefs so I try to identify motive for actions of individuals. I wasn’t born yesterday.
That’s bullshit. Atheism is soundly refuted only if you accept definition as a refutation. You have defined “God” to be “the beginning of the universe”, then proven there’s a beginning of the universe. Well, I don’t dispute there’s a beginning of the universe, but I reject your definition that “the beginning of the universe = God”.
“God” is a string of a bunch of different traits and conditions. One of those might be that he is the “First Cause”. So you prove there’s a First Cause. Great, but that hasn’t proven God, it’s just proven there is a First Cause. You have not justified that “First Cause” is a trait of “God”, you have merely declared it so by fiat. And you have not proven any of the other traits and conditions of God, or linked the proofs together.
Atheism isn’t dead, because atheism isn’t the declaration that there is no First Cause, or a beginning of the universe, or whatever. Atheism is the position of “I don’t believe in a deity”. That can be “because I think there’s proof it can’t exist” or “because I find the evidence and arguments insufficient”. Both are “without a belief in a deity”.
Worthy of worship in what way? What makes a First Cause worthy of worship? What does is mean to be worthy of worship?
I can reject it on the grounds that it isn’t adding anything useful, and is creating confusion. If you define “God” as being the First Cause, well great, but you can’t then turn around and say “God is also the supreme deity who guides my life and looks over the world and is the source of all good.” Not without some further justification to connect the two. It’s the “John Problem”.
“John is a banker.” “John is a shoe salesman.” “John is a janitor.” All of those may be true, but they’re not true about the same John.
“I have proof leprechauns exist. By definition, leprechauns keep their gold at the end of the rainbow. Look, there’s a rainbow. Ergo, leprechauns exist.” Rainbows don’t have ends. “But I’ve defined that they do. So I win.”
No, it’s not appeal to authority. **fredricwilliams **is not saying the idea is true because the Greek said it; note that the full argument is reproduced in the post so you can decide for yourself without reference to who first said it. In fact, fredricwilliams is just providing proper credit for the idea; generally considered a positive thing.
I’m not sure there’s an appeal to tradition in there. I read it not as saying that God exists because lots of people believe in it; but rather saying that arguing about God is a bad idea because lots of people believe in it. I’ll grant that perhaps my reading of the summary doesn’t coincide with the original argument, but the actual language here has a plausible reading that doesn’t involve an appeal to authority.
This is not ad hominem. He’s not saying Dawkins is wrong because Dawkins is a bad person; he’s merely saying Dawkin’s book is bad. Now, fredricwilliams is blindly asserting the poor quality of the book without any evidence, which might fit one of the traditional fallacies, but is not ad hominem.
[QUOTE=Quercus]
No, it’s not appeal to authority. fredricwilliams is not saying the idea is true because the Greek said it; note that the full argument is reproduced in the post so you can decide for yourself without reference to who first said it. In fact, fredricwilliams is just providing proper credit for the idea; generally considered a positive thing.
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Not really, otherwise he would have cited a source that others could check.
[QUOTE=Quercus]
I’m not sure there’s an appeal to tradition in there. I read it not as saying that God exists because lots of people believe in it; but rather saying that arguing about God is a bad idea because lots of people believe in it. I’ll grant that perhaps my reading of the summary doesn’t coincide with the original argument, but the actual language here has a plausible reading that doesn’t involve an appeal to authority.
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You reading the same post as I am?
[QUOTE=fredricwilliams]
He said that since most of the world’s people believe in God… we should believe that there is a God who is both benevolent and eternal,
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You’re parsing the argument as to make it more rational than it originally was. It’d still be fallacious to say that certain things cannot be logically argued because it might offend people, but it wouldn’t be such a blatant attack on reason as saying “most people believe it, it must be true”. That said, I was prevaricating as to whether it was more of an appeal to popularity or an appeal to tradition.
[QUOTE=Quercus]
This is not ad hominem. He’s not saying Dawkins is wrong because Dawkins is a bad person; he’s merely saying Dawkin’s book is bad. Now, fredricwilliams is blindly asserting the poor quality of the book without any evidence, which might fit one of the traditional fallacies, but is not ad hominem.
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Is it really controversial to say that arguing against character rather than against arguments constitutes an ad hominem fallacy?
Did you read what I wrote? I don’t accept as a matter of course that leprechauns don’t exist. Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. I’ve never been given any reason why I should particularly care whether they exist or not.
Well, it’d be better than our current one, at least, since “They’re magically delicious” would at least be constitutional.
(“John is a banker.” “John is a shoe salesman.” “John is a janitor.” All of those may be true, but they’re not true about the same John.) I was a contractor who built and remodeled houses and in the meantime started a business called the lamppost which sold lightfixtures. I also did janitorial work if needed and sold real estate… All at the same time…I worked alongside many of my employees So why can’t John be all three of those things? John the banker could sometimes sell shoes in his shoestore and also does janitorial work. You are saying something is impossible that isn’t.
You love for someone to simply show you the evidence for God’s existence.If you wish to use the word “god” to mean something else and then say that atheism.God is that traditional beliefs usually ascribe to God various supernatural powers.
Nobody’s saying that it’s impossible that John is all three of those, just that proving one of those statements true doesn’t prove that the others are true. Likewise, even if one can be satisfied in the proof that an Ultimate Cause exists, that does not by itself imply that the Manifestation of Love, say, exists, or that even if the Manifestation of Love exists, that it’s the same entity as the Ultimate Cause. Maybe it is, maybe not.
In other words, if you were to ask me who John is, I might tell you that he’s the banker and the shoe-salesman and the janitor in this town. If you then asked me to prove that John exists, I might prove that the banker exists, but that doesn’t prove that the shoe-salesman exists. And even if I also go on to prove that the shoe-salesman exists and that the janitor exists, that wouldn’t necessarily prove that the banker, shoe-salesman and janitor are all the same guy.
Sticking to the OP, I have two problems with the column. First, a Dope-worthy treatment IMHO would have been something along the lines of “God’s existence isn’t something which can be proved scientifically one or the other, so those believing are relying on faith and those doubting are relying on the null hypothesis.” This is a proposition both sides could accept and developed in a 600 word column might even have been a useful contribution to the ongoing debate. Second, the column relies heavily on contingency without explaining what it means. In philosophy, contingent (as opposed to necessary) simply means didn’t have to be, i.e., could have been otherwise. For example, it was contingent, not necessary, that Obama became president. Similarly, it was contingent, not necessary, that evolution would turn out the way it did. Understood this way, contingency isn’t all that significant, unless one assumes to the contrary. Hence Russell’s comment quoted in Post #51.
The cosmological argument has seen quite a lot of refuting over the years, to the extent where most philosophers are now atheist, and only 14% are theists, and presumably only a smaller fraction of them think the argument holds any weight at all.
The most unwarranted hidden assumption (in my mind) is that we have evidence to work with of things coming into existence. On the contrary, you’ve never seen anything come into existence, ever. A shop opening up, a baby being born, or a computer being programmed, are all examples of rearrangements of pre-existing things.
At most, we can say that “whenever something changes, it probably has a cause” but this is miles from the assumption of the cosmological argument “whenever something starts to exist, it definitely has a cause.”
In fact, the closest we get to something starting to exist is quantum particles which every now and again do seem to come into existence out of nothing, and what is more they appear to do so without any cause at all.
So far from the alleged common-sense statement that “whenever something starts to exist, it definitely has a cause” in fact it seems that all our evidence suggests when things start to exist, they never have a cause.
My question is still:If God is a being he would need a place to exist first, so place had to come before a being ,if God was nowhere or not in existence then he wouldn’t exist. Or God would not be a being. Even the universe is is in Existence.
My only concern Chronos is that comparisons used as evidence is allowable evidence. If Irishman would have stated the chances are not probable that the Johns were the same, I would have no issue. I know I nitpick sometimes with use of evidence but I find so many flaws in interpretations of evidence in our societies. Many times the interpretations are intentionally used to decieve people but sometimes people don’t even realize that they are decieving people because they don’t think about or have knowledge of where or why the interpretation originated.
But he’s not saying 'this fact is true because X said it", which is an appeal to authority. He’s saying “By the way, I first heard this argument from X”. Whether or not he did first hear it from X or whether X even ever made the argument has no bearing on whether the argument is a good one, of course, but since the poster then laid out the argument, we can evaluate the argument itself. Attributing the insight to someone is not a logical fallacy because it’s not in fact part of the argument.
Well, I admitted it’s possible to parse the argument differently than I did, but it seems to me one should give another person the benefit of the doubt before accusing them of logical errors. But I did not interpret the it as saying things cannot be logically argued because it might offend people (which would be obviously a logical fallacy), but rather that on a personal level it’s unprofitable to argue certain things because they might offend people for little gain. Which I see nothing wrong with, logically or ethically.
But the poster did NOT argue against character. He said nothing at all about Dawkin’s character (maybe you can point to exactly where he did?). The poster simply said that Dawkin’s book is bad. Which is an unsupported assertion (a bad thing in argument) but is certainly not ad hominem.
He specifically said “we should believe that there is a God who is both benevolent and eternal”. That isn’t just “we shouldn’t bring the topic up because it will start arguments and cause unnecessary conflicts”, that is actually telling us to believe a specific thing. So it’s all fine and dandy to give someone the benefit of the doubt about what they’re saying, but there’s no doubt in what he is saying here. He is saying we must believe in a deity. And that’s bullshit.
Actually, he’s not even saying that Dawkin’s book is bad, he’s just saying that it doesn’t originate new ideas to philosophy, so it won’t be remembered. It’s just a lay interpretation to reach the current masses. But I agree it’s not an ad hominem.
Since you’re nitpicking my example, let me use one that is more clear. “John is a 45 year old black neurosurgeon.” “John is a white 5 year old boy.” “John is the chosen name of a 22 year old transgender woman who is becoming a man.” Each of those may be true about a specific John, but they are not true about the same John. But suppose that there is a person who knows John1, a person who knows John2, and a person who knows John3, and they are having a conversation, but do not refer to last names or descriptors. Have you never had a conversation with someone where at some point you suspected you might be confused on which person they mean?
Specific example: at work I have 3 Michael’s on my project and another 2 that I deal with regularly. Referring to “Mike” has led to all sorts of confusion.
What I am saying is happening is that everyone discusses “God” and assumes they all mean the same thing, when in fact their specific concepts of “God” are fundamentally different.
Of course, Chronos’ point is also correct. Proving that John is a banker does nothing to prove that John is also a shoe salesman. Proving that there is a banker named John and a shoesalesman named John does nothing to prove that they are the same John.
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