Rebuttal:
http://www.mrlizard.com/catgod.html
Mr. Lizard takes an AK with dum-dum rounds to this argument.
Exactly, and I would say that a corollary to that is that you cannot logically argue AGAINST his existence either.
This whole thread is an exercise in futility. Trying to debate for or against the existence of God using logic is like trying to get to the moon with swim fins. What does it matter if you can “prove” some argument is wrong?
Despite its stated purpose I can see no other point to this thread than as some form of ambush where everyone waits for someone to assert that they believe in God and use one of the favorite “straw men” so the rest of you can jump all over him or her and feel smug about your superior intelligence.
Bravo.:rolleyes:
Radiation can interact with you, yet you can’t see, smell, feel, or hear it as our senses are limited. My rebuttal was that lack of observation of interaction does not mean lack of interaction. It is possible you are being interacted with but do not know it because you are unable to observe it.
Isn’t that the point here? All these are strawmen, it’s even in the title. As far as who uses that argument, check out The Vorlon’s Ambasador’s Aid
Then he needs to check the barrel on that Kalishnikov because he missed, and missed badly. The flaw is obvious; I’m suprised you didn’t see it. Maybe God doesn’t want to communicate with us directly. If this is true, Herr Herpetology’s analogy collapses and his argument washes away like a poorly
constructed sand castle. He’s saying that he knows what the God he doesn’t believe in wanted to do, and since God didn’t do that, He can’t exist. Doesn’t that seem a bit ridiculous to you?
Additionally, the atheist’s desire to disprove the existance of God is pointless, as the scientific method itself says that this can’t be done. You can not prove a negative. Even if something doesn’t exist it is impossible to prove it so. I’m pretty sure the Yeti doesn’t exist, but I can’t prove it.
Oh, and I would like to clarify that I am not logically arguing for God’s existence, but doing what the OP requested and pointing out some atheist arguments I consider flawed. I am willing to give the participants the benefit of the doubt and sincerely hope that this is not an self-congratulatory ambush, as racekarl fears. If I find that I was wrong to grant the benefit of the doubt, I will not trouble with your childish game any longer.
Cute. Except you have yet to prove that b follows from a.
**
We can directly detect some kinds of radiation through our senses, but we can detect other types indirectly through its effects on things we can perceive (we develop radiation sickness, DNA is damaged, Geiger counters, etc).
If you can’t prove a negative, then we can’t prove that we can’t prove a negative. Proving a negative is proof positive of a logical error: nothing is ever proven about the world around us, only the worlds we create.
agreed.
i never did argue against god’s existence. i recognize that it’s as futile as arguing for his existence.
i CAN, however, justify my lack of belief in his existence, or lack of need for such a belief. i don’t see how that is futile. i accept as an axiom that logic is infallible. can’t discuss much of anything without it…
i think this discussion is healthy. there is a lot of animosity on both sides for the other side. it tends to be a very touchy subject. by clarifying the points we agree and disagree on, and showing the logical errors in both sides of the argument, we can learn to accept the other side’s belief.
provided they can justify it.
i didn’t say it did. that’s why it’s an axiom.
it does seem reasonable, though, and i suppose it might be justifiable.
my major problem with the argument is that it seems ludicrous to claim that an omnipotent being has any desires. or even can exist, noncontradictorily.
you can prove negatives logically. observe:
p - > q
q -> ~p
therefore p -> ~p
therefore ~p.
looking for a lack of something does prove somewhat tough though.
but the desire (on my part, anyway) isn’t to prove the lack of something’s existence, but to show the logical flaws in some of the proofs of its existence. given some of the sets of premises, it is certainly possible.
To paraphrase Lizard’s argument, why doesn’t he want to communicate with us? There would be less FUD in the world if God explained Himself. He doesn’t. Therefore, God doesn’t care about the FUD count, and isn’t good by any stretch of the word. (Or, from my perspective, isn’t by any stretch of the word.)
God has a reason for not explaining Himself? Why doesn’t he explain not explaining himself? Repeat till bored.
And, the reason I started this thread was to weed out bad logical arguments both for and against belief in God.
Robert, all you did is restate Lizard’s argument. It still has the same flaws. Use your logic. Just because He doesn’t explain does not mean He does not care. You are making the same mistake Lizard did. “I don’t understand His reasons, therefore He doesn’t exist” isn’t an argument. God can not be anthropormophisized. No one knows what He wants, so you have a logical gap when you say “therefore, God doesn’t care about …” You don’t KNOW what He cares about. You can’t. He’s God. It’s in His job description.
You say you want logic; use it.
If you’re going to argue that God is beyond all logic, then you can’t assert that He has any properties other than that: He’s utterly beyond your comprehension.
Additionally, if God cannot be anthropomorphized, you can’t talk about what He WANTS or THINKS or VALUES: those are all organism things. God is beyond it.
If you don’t know what God cares about, you don’t know that He cares about you.
We are using logic. It remains to be seen whether you can.
racekarl was right. As soon as one man, me, took the theist side the thread has gelled to one side and one side, only. The criticisims of atheist strawmen aren’t even being considered, even though flaws are obvious. No logic is being used here, only prejudgement. Worse than arguing with the fundies. I refuse to play the “Is Not!” / “Is Too!” game. Good Bye. Enjoy yourselves.
one last thing before you go…
cite?
robert:
False dilemma. God does not have to choose between either eliminating strife or not caring at all about strife. There could be a reason for not communicating with us that is more important than eliminating strife. Given this, you have no basis for concluding that God is not good.
Huh? The first sentence answers the second sentence, so there is no need to repeat anything.
Also, just because God has not explained himself yet, does not mean that he never will. Maybe after you die you get a nice long explanation.
Vorlon:
God is not beyond all logic. Nobody here has stated that God can do the logically impossible, such as creating a square circle. The reason why the arguments against God’s existence fail is that they are not logical.
Also, your argument here is illogical as well. It may well be that we cannot be sure that our comprehension of God is correct using logic. But that does not make it impossible that our comprehension of him is correct. If we come up with an idea of God through reading and prayer, we might be right. It is not “utterly” impossible.
We cannot prove logically that God cares about us. But we can conclude that he cares about us based on our experiences. We can’t logically know that we are right. But we could be right.
**
I would agree that God is not beyond logic, but as far as I can ascertain, neither you nor I have any logical reason for thinking this. Is logic part of God’s nature? I don’t know. If it is, then we can reason about the attributes and nature of God; if not, all we can say is that God is beyond logic and stop there.
The arguments merely show that certain kinds of Gods can’t exist (we’re drawing conclusions about God’s nature). They’re not attempting to disprove all “possible” Gods (although since we haven’t really defined what we mean by “God”, you could argue that this whole discussion is pointless.
It’s not whether we’re right or wrong, it’s whether we can know that we’re right or wrong, and justify our position accordingly. If I want to know what the ten-thousandth digit of pi is, I could pick a number randomly from zero to nine. It’s not impossible that I could pick correctly – the chance is one in ten – but until I calculate pi to ten thousand digits, I have no way of knowing whether I was correct.
If we can’t justify claims about God, we can’t truly say that we know anything about Him.
Illogical. Our experiences show us that God does not care about us in any humanly-comprehensible way (His actions are not consistent with the generally-accepted definitions of concern and love), but that doesn’t mean that God doesn’t “care”, for some definition of that word.
Exactly. If we can’t know logically, we can’t know: there are many ways of asserting, and countless ways of believing, but there’s no other way of knowing.
Why doesn’t God tell us that reason, then?
And saying that there might be a reason for him not telling us why He’s stopped talking to us is the logical equivalent of “It’s turtles all the way down.”
This is not a theological argument. Perhaps you need to find out what theology is.
On what basis you make this assertion? Why do an omnipotent being cannot create perfect specimens in the first place?
Their existence indeed do not require our knowledge but talking about their existence without any such knowledge is nonsense.
Are you agreeing that your god is illogical?
If you know it is a fallacy (strawman is one of the fallacies), why do you use it?