Possibly this is IMHOish, but it involves religion.
Here are the rules: You take a fallacious argument for or against theology, and explain why it is wrong. I hope to be able to skim out some of the weaker arguments and leave future religious debates richer and meatier.
Ex: Pascal’s wager: If you believe, and God exists. If you don’t believe, and God exists, you’re buggered. If god exists, it doesn’t matter either way. So, why not believe?
Rebuttal: From the perspective of atheists, the threat of divine buggery is no scarier than being impaled by unicorns. Besides, there are many, many gods, many of which are exclusive. This means that you all will be just as buggered as we if you’ve chosen the wrong god.
First cause/divine cause: Everything had to come from somewhere. Where did the big bang come from?
Rebuttal: Did God have a cause? If so, what caused God’s cause? Repeat ad infinitum.
If God didn’t come from anything (was always around), then things can exist eternally, and the universe needs no cause.
“If God had intended for men to fly, he’d have given them wings.”
This is fallacious because it takes as its basic assumption the fact that God intended other things to fly, so therefore He gave them wings, whereas Evolution teaches us that things that have wings have them not because God issued them at the moment of Creation, but because…
If Lib stops by, he’ll say that being eternal is a property of only god, that not just anything can possess that property. Really, that response leads to some sort of pantheism where the universe is god, but it’s a response. Personally, I think the only rational response is that each event does have a cause outside itself (since that holds with our observations about causality), it’s all just a big circle, Big Bang, Big Crunch, ad nauseum. No need for anything at all to be eternal, except the system as a whole. Events/entities would all still follow traditional conceptions of causality.
Rex, that’s why i hate thinking about metaphysics, since any “original” thought I have has been thought by someone else. I , too, have thought about Lib’s arguments and also concluded that his assumptions could be satisfied by pantheism as well as omnipotent theism.
I dont really have a strawman to post, so back to your regularly scheduled in[s]anity…
Assertion: Being gay is wrong because God exists and he says so.
Conclusive Refutation: I don’t care how conclusive your evidence for either God’s existence or God’s opinions on homosexuality are: in the end you still have to make your own decision about what is right. You’ve made it, and now I’ll make mine: you’re a big dick.
It’s so tragic: Lib is really a Taoist (although a really bad one) but doesn’t know it.
[Argument]: “Religion X has been followed by millions of people over thousands of years, so it MUST be right!”
[Rebuttal]: If each generation carefully examined the beliefs and were convinced that they were correct, then the number of believers and endurance of the beliefs is suggestive, but not indicative. If everyone after the first people accepted the beliefs because those who came before them did, then the ‘value’ of the tradition is equal to the meaning and significance of the analytical methods used by the first generation.
I like your screen name, Vorlon (don’t know to what it refers, but I like it), but I think you ought to consider shortening it. As I’ve seen Lib point out, it royally screws up a page when you’re listed as both a thread starter and the last person to post to a thread.
Not a big deal, and of course it’s your call, but that’s just my suggestion.
Assertion: with God, all things are possible. The Bible says that if you ask, it shall be given to you. Therefore, you may pray that your name be changed.
Rebuttal: no matter how hard you pray to your Magical Sky Pixie, your screen name will remain the same. If you want it changed, you should just email one of the administrators and they’ll do so for you. Not only can they produce tangible results, but they also have coffee mugs.
Assertion: If God is good, and the creator of all, then he would not allow the existence of evil. Since evil exists, God can not exist.
Rebuttal a (the easy one): God, by definition, is infinite and his motives can not be completely grasped by finite beings such as ourselves.
Rebuttal b: Evil may be necesary to lead to a greater, larger good. The infliction of pain may be considered “evil”, but if the pain is caused by surgery to save a life it may also be considered “good”.
Assertion: God can not exist without a basic knowledge of what ‘God’ means. Otherwise we’re talking about a word. The word “God” has no refferent, thus any talk using that word is meaningless, thus there is no concept of God to prove or disprove. There is nothing.
Rebuttal: One’s basic knowledge of an entity does not dictate that entities existence or non-existence. A blind man cannot see light, yet may still be sunburned by it. There are fish in the deep sea unkonwn to us. Their existence does not require our knowledge of them.
— One’s basic knowledge of an entity does not dictate that entities existence or non-existence. A blind man cannot see light, yet may still be sunburned by it. There are fish in the deep sea unkonwn to us. Their existence does not require our knowledge of them.—
I think you missed the boat on that one. The question is not whether or not there is some unknown entity out there (which, as it quite true, our knowledge has no bearing on), but whether we can discuss the existence of something in the abscence of any information about what it is (or how we could distinguish its existence from its non-existence). We can’t.
The proper rebuttal is simply to define God in some operationally useful manner, which can most certainly be done for many sorts of Gods.
