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12 Feb 2012, 12:13 pm

^^ I don't think there was "nothing" before the Big Bang either [I don't know for certain, obviously]. But even if a deity were responsible for causing it, what gave rise to the deity, and the universe it dwells in? That is one reason I find the concept of intelligent design unsatisfying, personally.

b9 wrote:

i know i have not addressed all the very smart things that have been said in this thread, but that is because i do not ...................

I think you made some very interesting and insightful contributions to it

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12 Feb 2012, 12:52 pm

Vigilans wrote:

^^ I don't think there was "nothing" before the Big Bang either [I don't know for certain, obviously].

but you should know for certain. it is the most obvious thing that one can understand.
"nothing" does not exist. "nothing" is not a thing, and it is not existent. it is "no thing".

if there was a time when there was nothing that existed, then nothing would ever have happened in the entirety of time, because nothing can not cause anything to exist.

if there was a "time" when nothing existed, then that time would not have existed either, so it is inevitable and inescapable that existence has been existing forever.

i maybe simplistic but that is my reasoning.

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12 Feb 2012, 1:08 pm

techstepgenr8tion wrote:

I don't even know if you need to explain the logical fallacy - its glaring. For anyone who's too deep into philosophy to see the trick employed here its nothing more than a badly drawn verbal circle with the answer planted in the premise.

The best refutation I've heard is the perfect circle. No such thing exists anywhere.

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12 Feb 2012, 1:14 pm

@Vigilans I find it interesting that you call it 'intelligent design' since this is the pseudo scientific term dubbed by those that wish to get creationism into the science classroom.

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b9
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12 Feb 2012, 1:25 pm

Thom_Fuleri wrote:

techstepgenr8tion wrote:

The best refutation I've heard is the perfect circle. No such thing exists anywhere.

so what do you propose?

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12 Feb 2012, 1:26 pm

TeaEarlGreyHot wrote:

@Vigilans I find it interesting that you call it 'intelligent design' since this is the pseudo scientific term dubbed by those that wish to get creationism into the science classroom.

Intelligent design = creationism. If they can use both terms to describe the same thing, so can I

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12 Feb 2012, 1:30 pm

http://www.google.com.lb/search?sourcei ... Everything

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12 Feb 2012, 1:32 pm

Vigilans wrote:

TeaEarlGreyHot wrote:

@Vigilans I find it interesting that you call it 'intelligent design' since this is the pseudo scientific term dubbed by those that wish to get creationism into the science classroom.

Intelligent design = creationism. If they can use both terms to describe the same thing, so can I

the truth remains elsewhere however.

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12 Feb 2012, 1:42 pm

Vigilans wrote:

TeaEarlGreyHot wrote:

@Vigilans I find it interesting that you call it 'intelligent design' since this is the pseudo scientific term dubbed by those that wish to get creationism into the science classroom.

Intelligent design = creationism. If they can use both terms to describe the same thing, so can I

Fair enough. :lol:

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12 Feb 2012, 1:43 pm

Thom_Fuleri wrote:

techstepgenr8tion wrote:

The best refutation I've heard is the perfect circle. No such thing exists anywhere.

Worse than that - its linguistic psychobabble with an utterly imaginary contingency, ie. that something with a given set of attributes fails at having those attributes. That's complete and utter nonsense in the sense that you're just adding another attribute - not existing (why? because we're talking verbal constructs - to attach attributes and rules is something people can make up as they go). It means that I can think up lime green unicorns that live in the arctic - technically they exist in the sense of a neurological artifact in my head, data in the form of a jest on an internet forum, and as neural artifacts in the minds of anyone reading this who assembled those words into English. Other than that though - there are no lime green unicorns in the arctic that we've found. Yes, there's some obliquely infinitesimal chance that there are and we just haven't found them, but for practical purposes we call that relativistic zero and simply say they aren't there.

That argument is made up of the same stuff as questions like "Can God create a square circle?". Its what you could call an exploitable glitch in language, and in the case of the ontological argument you mentioned it takes a glitch in language, places it on an arbitrary fulcrum or structure that has no inherent or necessary causal match to it whatsoever, and from there pure magic ensues.

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12 Feb 2012, 5:07 pm

NarcissusSavage wrote:

The statement "god probably does not exist" does not entail the burden of proof. Much the same as the statement "god probably exists" does not entail the burden of proof. Those are both true statements in an environment where there is no proof.

Arguments that argue from probability simply use different evidences, it changes nothing about the argument except how one argues for or against a proposition.

NarcissusSavage wrote:

BUT... if these two, disputing the existence of Churchill, were debating this to a non informed, completely ignorant party, then the burden of proof would indeed be on the individual claiming the affirmative position.

Not really. Negative propositions still entail a burden of proof. This is due to the fact that in philosophy all negative propositions can easily be turned into positive claims, the difference is just rhetoric. Take the claim 'God does not exist in any universe' it is a negative proposition, but it can just as easily be stated as 'there exists no universe where God exists', this is essentially the same proposition just worded in a different way. In fact most formal atheist arguments are worded as positive assertions.

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/New ... le&id=5817

@techstep

The present formulation of the ontological argument does not fall victim to that criticism, existence is no longer a predicate. Plantigna refined the arguement, while I am unsure if it works or not, it is certainly not that easy to refute.

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Last edited by 91 on 12 Feb 2012, 5:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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12 Feb 2012, 5:13 pm

91 wrote:

@techstep

The present formulation of the ontological argument does not fall victim to that criticism, existence is no longer a predicate. Plantigna refined the arguement, while I am unsure if it works or not, it is certainly not that easy to refute.

Good to hear. I've had times where I've ridden atheists on similar proofs where they sort of tucked away the desired answer on of the first few givens of the proof, even assumed it was hypothetically untrue, and the concluded that it was untrue on two cheats. *Anyone* making proofs like that does great violence to the field of philosophy IMO.

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12 Feb 2012, 6:42 pm

91 wrote:

No. "God does not exist in any universe" is a positive statement, not a negative one. It is making a definite claim. Having a negative in the definition doesn't make it a negative claim.

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12 Feb 2012, 7:33 pm

Thom_Fuleri wrote:

91 wrote:

No. "God does not exist in any universe" is a positive statement, not a negative one. It is making a definite claim. Having a negative in the definition doesn't make it a negative claim.

To say God does not exist in any universe is to say God is not possible. And that is a negative assertion.

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Last edited by ruveyn on 13 Feb 2012, 11:15 am, edited 1 time in total.

91
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12 Feb 2012, 8:41 pm

Thom_Fuleri wrote:

91 wrote:

No. "God does not exist in any universe" is a positive statement, not a negative one. It is making a definite claim. Having a negative in the definition doesn't make it a negative claim.

Yes, however just about every negative position can be read as positive claim, with the only difference being rhetorical. As such it is fair to say that a difference that is not a difference, is not a difference at all. The objection you are making here is therefor not particularly profound with regards to the claim we are discussing.

Further, the whole idea of Russell's teapot is absurd. If you accept that you cannot prove atheism through argument, then why use Russell's argument at all. It is after all, meant to be an argument against theism. The problem here is that your position is simply parroting the popular level work. At the level of accepted argumen, the assumption that you cannot prove a negative is simply not used, it is in fact also wrong. You can disprove something and abscence of evidence can be taken to be evidence of abscence and in proper philosophy there is no good reason to grant the assumptions being made on the negative side.

Here is a peer-reviewed source for what I am saying
http://www.arsdisputandi.org/publish/ar ... rticle.pdf

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12 Feb 2012, 11:05 pm

91 wrote:

Further, the whole idea of Russell's teapot is absurd. If you accept that you cannot prove atheism through argument, then why use Russell's argument at all. It is after all, meant to be an argument against theism. The problem here is that your position is simply parroting the popular level work. At the level of accepted argumen, the assumption that you cannot prove a negative is simply not used, it is in fact also wrong. You can disprove something and abscence of evidence can be taken to be evidence of abscence and in proper philosophy there is no good reason to grant the assumptions being made on the negative side.

Here is a peer-reviewed source for what I am saying
http://www.arsdisputandi.org/publish/ar ... rticle.pdf

My god, the guy writes tons of text and fails to make any argument at all.

The paper seems to claim that teapot and god are not analogous. But he bases the entire conclusion on his stupid belief that there is evidence for god. When there isn't. It goes on and on to miss the point about the "atheist teapot". No, idiot, you are not supposed to fight against the specific assertion of the teapot orbitting the sun. The point of the teapot is merely to tell you that if you decide to believe in god (without evidence, because we have no evidence, sorry), you may as well believe in fairies, or elves, or whatever. The teapot orbiting the sun is a metaphor for (whatever sounds nonsensical to you). Thus the whole point of the analogy is that the teapot theory is obviously crazy.

But perhaps the reason you get so stuck at it is because the teapot is too different from your idea of god. Well, here is it:

* There is no evidence for God.
* There is no evidence for Quetzalcoatl.
* There is no evidence for Leprechauns.

Provide a compelling argument to believe in God that does not work for Quetzalcoatl or Leprechauns.

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