Absence of evidence is not identical to evidence of absence. Lack of belief is not identical to active disbelief.
How can so many people be so stupid as to not get the distinctions?
I’m well aware of what it means to deny the antecendent, thank you very much. I’m also well aware that I did not commit that particular fallacy in my argument.
If A, then B. Not A, therefore, not B. This is fallacious reasoning, as can be shown by the following example: “If it’s raining outside, the sidewalk is wet. It’s not raining, therefore the sidewalk is not wet.” This is fallacious, since the sidewalk could be wet for other reasons apart from raining – the initial premise only provides one possible reason for the sidewalk being wet, and does not state that this is the only reason the sidewalk could be wet.
Your criticism of my logic would only be valid if I stated that God’s miracles prove his existence, and therefore the lack of proof of those miracles constitutes proof of God’s nonexistence. I agree that would be a fallacious statement, but it is not the one I made (the term “straw man argument” comes to mind, but I digress…)
In fact, what I stated was that God has historically been defined as a God of miracles. “What is God?” one might ask, and the answer would be “God is a great and powerful being who created the Earth, placed man upon it, and has done many great and miraculous things to reward his followers, punish unbelievers, etc., etc., etc.” My argument is actually as follows:
If God exists, he has performed certain specified acts
The specified acts have not been peformed
Therefore, God does not exist
This follows the standard format of If A, then B. Therefore, if not B, then not A.
Now you are, of course, free to challenge the validity of my opening premise, i.e., that God is a god of miracles who has performed certain acts. And that is your right. But by doing so you are admitting that you are talking about a different God entirely, and that “God” in the classical sense does not, in fact, exist.
Whatever concept you may have of an intangible, invisible being who, while omnipotent, is either incapable or unwilling to interact on the material plane, and who requires belief in him in order to obtain eternal life but does not require any overt acts, well, it is no more “God” than my 10-ton mosquito. It is simply a logical construct that some people have invented to help them sleep better at night in spite of the fact that it contradicts a few thousand years of recorded history.
Think about it – if you have to reduce God to a being with no discernable properties whatsoever just to avoid having to deal with the possibility that his existence could be disproved, and you have to at the same time grant that the vast majority of the Earth’s population throughout time got it wrong when they talked about a God who did interact with the material world, what’s the point? If you can’t accept God as he is, what gives you the right to redefine him?
Barry
I would agree with that statement in principal, although perhaps not in practice. As I stated earlier, I don’t have any absolute beliefs. There are many things that I think are likely true, perhaps even extremely likely, and I live my life accordingly. At the same time, I understand that anything I believe to be be probably true may, in fact, later be proven false (or incomplete).
Well, I think there are plenty of plenty of reasons to absolutely not believe in the God described in the Old Testament (not to mention the gods described by the ancient Greeks, Romans, etc.) And I doubt any of the so-called skeptics who claim to believe in “God” actually believe in that sort of God, either. The difference between them and me, however, is that I lack the hubris to come up with my own definition of God that completely conflicts with how billions upon billions of people have defined God in the past, and then claim that my belief in this watered down “God” will somehow entitle me to the eternal rewards that were sought by all those others.
I consider myself an atheist rather than an agnostic because (a) the historical concept of God has been sufficiently disproven to my satisfaction, and (b) I see neither the need nor the right to come up with a new concept of God that cannot be so disproven. So yes, I concede that the modern definition of God espoused by the so-called skeptics herein could conceivably exist, but at the same time I would vehemently deny that this is actually “God” in any meaningful sense of the word whatsoever.
Regards,
Barry
Hmmmm…
I finally got around to checking out that link you provided. While I still maintain that I was not guilty of committing the sin of denying the antecedent, I must now confess I may very well have been guilty of a logical fallacy of whose existence I was previously unaware. To wit, the so-called Argumentum ad ignorantiam:
So, technically, I can not state that absence of any evidence as to God’s existence proves with certainty his non-existence. I can, however, validly infer that he does not exist, and that is close enough as to make no odds as far as I am concerned.
And I still maintain, by the way, that this does not somehow give me the right to invent a new concept of God whose very nature conveniently precludes the need for, or possibility of, proof.
Regards,
Barry
No, that’s just wrong.
If A, then B.
Not B.
Therefore, Not A.
That’s a valid construction. Denying the antecedent is the other way around.
If God exists, then He has certain properties.
Nothing can have those certain properties.
Therefore, God does not exist.