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no but I get sick of seeing how pointless arugeing, even if it is not the yelling kind, humans can do.
I just set my openion as the "respect others openions" and move on. I find this all stupid, both sides have facts that can stand eachother up, but the truth is no one can go back in time to see as the world was created. there for, as far as we know, both sides could be wrong.

no but I get sick of seeing how pointless arugeing, even if it is not the yelling kind, humans can do.
I just set my openion as the "respect others openions" and move on. I find this all stupid, both sides have facts that can stand eachother up, but the truth is no one can go back in time to see as the world was created. there for, as far as we know, both sides could be wrong.[/quot

Exactly. And that is why it is worthwhile to gain acceptance that there are things not discernible. That gives a level playing field for discussion..

The problem is that evolution is a sub-optimal means of creating man, which is still an issue of teleological creation. Even if you say the constants in physics are finely tuned, that doesn't mean that any of the equations are necessary. It doesn't mean that other universes cannot exist. It doesn't really mean anything, especially given that fine-tuning of the actual literal sort, is even compatible with non-God supernatural entities. Now, I don't believe in those entities but given our background knowledge, they are more probable than God. I believe I've stated this at least in another thread.

Even further, within scripture itself, we have reason to think that suboptimality exists even in seeking the "relationship with God for salvation", for instance, we see the serpent in the Garden. God knew what the serpent was going to do. That serpent could have easily not been in that garden. If that serpent were never in the garden, a higher percent of the population and possibly even more people would have been saved. The Garden of Eden is strongly presented as God's desired plan, the problem is that it is easily logically possible for God to bring this plan into existence.


No, I can't make a universal logical disproof. I don't consider that necessary. Is it necessary to have a universal disproof of the existence of unicorns to say "well, it is obvious that there are no unicorns"? No. Instead, it is necessary to appeal to one's background knowledge, compare what is expected with what is actual, and say that the two don't cohere with one another.

Well, it is kind of simple. If the universe were more economical, then the argument from scale could never get off the ground. The anthropocentric nature of the universe would be clear. The current universe, however, is set up in a manner that does not appear anthropocentric. Man is a very small part of that universe.

You did not state the question like that at all. You didn't really even state the question. You asked me to compare God to a "romantic artist", a proposition that entails that God be equally sensible given ANY universe. Which kind of suggests that we can't really show why God would ever choose to create any particular universe. It ends up being an ad hoc justification of nearly any sort of creation. The problem with this being that if we wish to use God as an explanation, we have to be able to construct a model for a rational actor. The issue being that rational actors, in order to be used, must be assumed to use rational means to achieve their ends, y'know, optimality. If we have an action that seems irrational given our actor, then we do not have good grounds to attribute such an act to that actor, especially if that actor's existence is in question. The criterion of optimality is not something I invented, if you want to take on the issue, why not go address philosopher Gregory Dawes himself.


Imperfect in relationship to goals, as the "fallen nature" of this world is not a necessary quality. (Once again, I will point out to you, that the issue of free will is quite empirical, and the evidence stands against it. Most philosophers don't accept the libertarian free will necessary for the fall to make any sense. Compatibilist free will, obviously being enough under God's control. Heck, in groups more related to human psychology, the non-existence of free will makes more sense. Even further, I argue that the non-existence of free will is actually factually correct, and this is not an argument that I am the only person to hold to, nor is it the only time a person has tried to argue against free will in search of the destruction of another point. John Humbach is a legal scholar who uses arguments against free will to attack retributive notions of justice for instance. The instance of this is not ridiculous, as the case made is made based upon the empirical findings we have about the human brain.

As for the "demonstration of better", the point is clear. We see flaws that are not logically necessary. If they are not logically necessary, then better is logically possible. If better is logically possible, then God has made an imperfect world. Now, if you want to say that the world is the best logically possible, then fine, but the burden of proof is on you, because it is obvious that the flaws of the world are not logically necessary, and there are no obvious trade-offs. 91, here is a hand, here is another, two objects within the external universe exist, therefore an external universe exists. Your skepticism is easily rebutted in a G. E. Moore kind of manner, as I don't carry a burden of proof for an obvious point, something already found in combat with more extreme version of skepticism. Your skepticism is just as valid as those earlier varieties and has the same problems.


Oooh, wow, I am so impressed. Don't believe "anything I say or believe". Analyze my points. If I were making arguments from authority, then your rebuttal would mean something, but your rebuttal means nothing if I am appealing to an authority we have started the argument accepting. (that authority being logic and empirical evidence)

Could these same laws cause me to believe any number of impossible things regardless of truth or fact? Yes, this is an empirical fact. We have seen people in the lab, who have their mental constitution as such where they cannot evaluate the truth of claims. http://psych.utoronto.ca/users/peterson ... 201996.pdf Schizophrenics are also this kind of people as well, the mental laws governing them prevent them from arriving at truth.

The problem is that this argument fails: (a problem with many arguments)
1) Computers, as we all know, are deterministic. That does not entail that they cannot come to the right results. Saying that I am not coming to the right results is sort of why argumentation exists though.
2) Even if free will exists, it does not mean that we still couldn't have psychological laws that prevent us from arriving at the truth. That issue is immaterial for the matter of free will.
3) The fact that our reasoning is driven by hidden variables is also an empirical fact. http://onthehuman.org/2009/04/john-dori ... 9re-doing/
4) We are already in the epistemic position where we cannot prove whether we are right or wrong on a matter. We can't disprove skepticism as a possibility, it just seems less valuable as a means of inquiry, and less of our world makes sense given such a supposition.

I mean, as it stands, my claim is a pretty brute empirical claim. We don't need long and complicated chains of reasoning. Even further, our ability to reach at truth is compatible with hard determinism, and we have solid evidence of both claims being relatively true.


The problem is that it can prove a maximally great pizza. I already pointed out that the argument takes this form:

1. It is proposed that a being X exists in all possible worlds.
2. X is possibly exemplified. That is, it is possible that there be a being that exists in all possible worlds. (Premise)
3. Therefore, possibly it is necessarily true that X exists.
4. Therefore, it is necessarily true that X exists. (By S5)
5. Therefore, X exists.

Given that pizza could be formatted to fit into that form, it also is proved through an ontological argument. If you fail to understand this fact, then you fail to understand the ontological argument, however, it is obvious that "maximal excellence" in Plantinga's argument is only a placeholder though. We could have ANYTHING in its place, and his ontological argument would prove it just the same.

Even further, my own argument is really not much different than Inwagen's "no-know", that is a being that knows there are no necessary beings. If such a being is possible, then necessary beings are impossible. I just went around it differently by recognizing that if the ontological argument entails that a necessary being exists in every possible world, then if atheism is possible, then necessary beings do not exist. This kind of flaw is recognized by Plantinga, and I certainly don't see why I need to prove that a necessary being is impossible, if I simply just start off thinking that a world without a necessary being is possible. I mean, why does thinking that a world without a necessary being as possible entail a burden of proof? It seems that the burden of proof is in the other direction. I simply just took your argument, and went the opposite direction. If you don't recognize that this is a valid move, then you don't understand your argument.

To say "certainty is needed" says nothing. Possible worlds are worlds of anything logically possible. If it is logically possible that a God does not exist, (and that is conceivable), then it is actually the case in some world that God does not exist. If it is actually the case in some world that God does not exist, and if God's existence requires that God exists in all possible worlds, then God does not exist in any world. This position is equally valid to your own. I only inverted the argument, and there is no reason for me to privilege the idea that God possibly exists over the idea that God possibly does not exist. If you fail to recognize that, then you fail to understand the ontological argument.

In fact, this move is recognized by Alvin Plantinga himself: "In short, Plantinga allows that while a reasonable person could accept his ontological argument, another reasonable person could accept instead the following rival argument:

1. No-maximality is possibly exemplified.

2. If no-maximality is possibly exemplified, then maximal greatness is impossible.

3. So maximal greatness is impossible." - Edward Feser

Edward Feser thinks these rebuttals are overstated, but he f*****g recognizes that they exist in the goddamn literature on the matter by professional philosophers. I disagree with his positions on these issues, as I do think that the counter-arguments succeed, but that's beside the point. I simply use the standard rebuttals, many people think they succeed. However, for you to insist that I "don't understand the ontological argument", when I seem to clearly do so is just dishonest behavior on your part.

Especially given that I recognized that the inverted Plantinga argument doesn't actually require no-maximality being exemplified, but rather that maximality is not exemplified, which really makes the point in my favor a lot simpler, as Plantinga's ontological conception of God requires being exemplified.


The problem is that there is actual ongoing controversy. You are comparing a research paradigm that has existed for over a hundred years to a paper that was published 5 years ago. That's not a rational comparison. Even further, I posted a source, a professor of physics no less, that poked holes in the paper you promoted, in pointing out that it is based upon suppositions without empirical foundation and theories that we already have reason to believe to be wrong/incomplete.

91, you have more than proven yourself intellectually dishonest in your behaviors. This is abundantly clear. Your behavior is either deeply self-deceived or outright lying. Either way... your behavior is disgusting, it actually furthers one of my earlier arguments, the one that pointed out how full of crap Christian theists are, a problem given that Christianity entails moral improvement.

No, evolution is basically adaptation to an environment by the elimination of population members who are not fit to survive in that environment. Often enough, functional components lose their functionality or are otherwise lost by such environmental culling. The genes necessary to allow for former functionality may easily be lost. What is required for evolution to build anything is for nascent genes to be developed - not lost through natural selection.

Interestingly enough, that is a very good question. The only possible appeal I can see is to the ontological argument. The problem with the ontological argument is that it takes "goodness" as a granted quality of nature. However, if we don't start off with maximal goodness in our proving (how could we, if we need a moral argument to establish this) then whatever maximally great being we arrive at can have a lot of different characteristics about behavior.

Even further, a point that many have pointed out, is that if we cannot show if the world cannot be better, then shouldn't these arguments also show that we cannot show that the world couldn't be worse? After all, any effort to describe a world worse than this world will entail lots and lots of knowledge, knowledge beyond what human beings possess, and this undermines our ability to know the moral nature of God.

And "goodness" is somehow here accepted as a universal which is a basic misperception of the word. Goodness only makes sense as relative to something. A good chair is a lousy ladder and an even worse teacup. Goodness for some of humanity is most frequently a disaster for the rest of us. Goodness is not a universal.

I have to admit, in your whole time posting here that's probably the most awesome thing you've ever said - at least as far as what I've read of your posts.

It is more like those organisms that are more successful at reproducing will tend to pass on the characteristics that make them successful reproducers. This tends to eliminate those organisms that do not survive until they can reproduce or do not reproduce as successfully. Nature only "cares" about those who reproduce offspring that themselves reproduce.

ruveyn

In life, one reaches summits of accomplishment before fading into obscurity.

Well, yes, I know that. I mean that using evolution as a process does not make sense given that the people you create will inevitably be worse than the results of a perfect design towards any idea. It is hard to see what evolution would make people perfect at.

We still have some way to go but foolishness obviously is the goal.

According to Roman Catholic theism:

1) God is benevolent and omnipotent, with a keen interest in humanity.
2) God created to Universe so as to create human beings in his own image.

If God desired #2, why the hell create a billions year old Universe that takes billions of years of trial, trial, trial, and trial before differentially self-replicating units form on Planet Earth? Furthermore, if suh a small section of the Universe is suitable or "finely tunned" for life, then is it not more plausible that this is all algorthmic yet thoughtless?



Christian theism presupposes...

1) God created the humanity intentionally in his image.
2) He is all powerful and abhors needless suffering.
3) God is all-powerful.

Given these three premises, it is very, very implausible that an infinitely powerful being would decide to design a world with Tsunamis which kill infants. Either change your premise - admit your God is limited or perhaps even downgrade his concern for sentient life - or admit you face a consistency issue.



Deciding whether "God" exists isn't purely a project in abstraction and deduction and I see it as perfectly approperiate to bring whatever intellectual tools one can use to the matter. You're beloved William Lane Craig uses quite a few abductive inferences, so I don't see what your problem is with brining them into "meta" issuses.



Once again, ABDUCTIVE INFERENCES AREN'T THE SAME AS DEDUCTIVE ARGUMENTS. Hence, not all the deductive fallacies apply to abductive arguments.

I really don't see what's too hard to get here.

P1) There is a sociological-cultural-psychological explanation for the concept of a superbeing known as "God".
P2) No intersubjectively verifiable contact with God has ever been documented.
C: Therefore, the best explanation for God is a sociological-cultural-psychological one devoid of real contact, as this explanation contains one less problematic entity.

As for your plausibility of Jesus case, I really doubt it. Independent sources discussing Jesus occur centuries after his death and the Gospels really aren't that reliable (indeed, they are sometimes outright contradictory).



Like I said before, physical cosmology is still a speculative field and I would hold off on presuming eternalism has been definitvely "disproved" until more data comes in. A 2006 paper in such a rapidly changing field isn't the end all be all of the Block Universe.

From your sub-debate with AG:



I dispute the "wanting" to believe in God exists independently from a cultural construct of "God". It's more likely, as Boyer Pascal has described, that "God" or "religion" or even "spirituality" are complex phenomena that break down into a series of smaller phenomena that act as a sort of supernormal stimulus for various emotional centres in our brains.

AG
Well so far you have not really been able to demonstrate exactly why God should be economical in any serious way. Stating the words ‘waste’ and ‘suboptimal’ repeatedly does not make an effective argument for your case, nor does resorting to personal attacks. Why would the universe have to be centric in relation to human life in scale rather than law, when the argument is made from design, the points you have made become quite unconvincing. Also when you state the words ‘rational actor’ you seem to be once again falling into the trap of asserting a sort of understanding that one has no reason to think you have.

When you discuss free will your mention of computers and getting the right outcome kind of proves my point, would a computer know if it got the wrong answer? Under strict determinism there really is no reason to think that the human mind can or does produce objectively true outcomes. I suggest you take a look at the evolutionary argument against naturalism, it is quite applicable here.

In your own ontological argument, you are still committing the same mistakes, I have already indicated these: one cannot magnify possibility to certainty in a negative sense, the argument is defeated by the negative feedback. Please read something by Plantinga rather than simply using google to throw up random responses.

As to the understanding of the eternal universe. Firstly it has been fundamentally destroyed in cosmology, secondly it is logically impossible and thirdly it falls under Schopenhauer’s taxicab fallacy. I have explained the first and third previously, as to the second, please look into Hilbert’s hotel and understand that an eternal universe entails having an actual infinite number of events, which is mathematically impossible, while having a caused universe has only a potential infinite number of future events, where time continues towards infinity but never reaches it in reality.

MP

As to your first statement relating to time, I once again ask, what values does an infinite being place on being efficient? As to the problem of evil you have raised. I think taken in full context of the contingency argument, the Kalam, teleological, ontological and moral arguments for the existence of God, combined with the Christian doctrine of the nature of God, the implausibility you mentions is pretty much made into an almost certainty. As to the resurrection argument I suggest you actually dispute one of the facts I have established rather than denigrate the most attested book in ancient history as being insufficient to provide evidence, this is just silly. I have seen some bad arguments against the resurrection, John Crossen for instance, but this takes the cake.

As to the WP strident atheists, before you accuse me of being aggressive please look back and find me an instance of a Christian Theist making a case for God that you guys did not attack. Also, I made my case for the existence of God in a thread posted by one of you, who is really doing the attacking? Then that individual followed that discussion over here, when I was perfectly happy to leave it as it was. I also gave that person an opportunity to leave the issue as it was (on page one of that thread) and he pretty much scoffed. How many times have you guys decided to simply attack the theists and what now you’re surprised and indignant that one would respond.

My basic point was based upon notions of the rationality of action. In order to recognize rational action, we have to show how an action serves a goal, and be able to recognize that this action is the best way to attain this goal. Given that God is perfectly rational, and without any trait such as laziness, we kind of have to show optimality in order to think that God is the actor in any case.

Umm.... because your position is that the universe has the central goal of human life. If we suppose this, then we have a lot of things to expect.

As for "rational actor", the whole point of "rational actor" is to show that we would need to expect rational behavior. Creating a universe of this scale is not rational behavior given our background knowledge of what is necessary for our existence, our salvation, or any other objective. The scale suggests human beings are not that important, because look how much time we have on the air here. I don't think that this is really the "absurdly bad point" that you continue to assert, but rather the point is made by Nicholas Everrit who thinks that the scale, being unexpected given this notion of God, is thus an argument against it. Certainly you can't say that earlier theists even BELIEVED that this scale existed, it would have made no sense to them or their worldview. Their worldview being a lot more like the worldview that God's existence would tend to attach us to.


Would a human being know if it got the wrong answer? Often not. You seem to fail. You don't seem to know that you fail.

Under strict determinism there is no reason not to think that the human mind can produce objectively true outcomes. Plantinga's argument is the mere suggestion that human minds may not produce objectively true outcomes. However, given that a large number of truth claims are not in isolation to each other, the truth is thus more economical, especially since things like Plantinga's tiger wanting man would require relatively complex structures where if any belief went haywire, would result in death, and Plantinga's frog-prince would require frog's have structures grossly different than our own, however, Plantinga's point isn't entirely lost. Another fact of the matter is that as many psychologists point out, we have many many logical biases, biases that we have no reason to expect if God exists and created us, but rather constitute examples of "evolutionary flaws", even that present examples of entire categories invented that have no necessary connection to any reality. This includes free will, essentialism, and even often our notions of self-hood(which often defy clear-cut analysis) So, really I am going to have to say that Plantinga's argument seems too ambitious, but his point that we expect minds with bizarre flaws under naturalism is correct, and that's what we observe in reality. Even further, I don't think Plantinga's argument is sufficient to overcome empirical evidence, even if we can argue that the position is absurd, a logical argument does not overcome another logical argument or an empirical argument, unless it directly addresses the issue.


I didn't use google to throw up random responses. Ed Feser is a philosopher of religion, and I stole that from an article I had already read on the matter. I would trust an actual philosopher to have an actual genuine quote. I stole the other arguments from another philosopher of religion. I am also not making many or even perhaps any real mistakes. Plantinga himself recognizes that "no-optimality" worked as a counter-argument. As for "negative feedback", I don't really think that what you are saying makes much sense as a rebuttal, especially given that "negative feedback" tends to suggest that you think that my argument reaches absurd conclusions, I am not beholden to trust ontological arguments as having a working structure though, and this is seen with the parody arguments.

Given that Feser referenced Plantinga, I would say I did read something by Plantinga. Plantinga apparently doesn't agree with your approach to this matter.


Umm.... I had articles that suggested that the article you cited is not as powerful as you proclaim. So "fundamentally destroyed", doesn't really seem to work.

As for "taxicab", you mean an objection, not a fallacy. Now, the point that I am using this to take me where I want to go.... well.... honestly, I don't actually have faith in cosmological speculations. Which kind of means to me that I really don't find the entire approach from that plausible. I am not committed to the universe having to be eternal, instead I am deeply skeptical that divine beings make sense given the data we perceive. We don't see a world that seems anthropocentric, despite how man really is the center of reality, but rather large stretches of time and space have no relation to us, and many of them never ever will, this is to be expected under naturalism but confusing under theism. We see a world with a lot of suffering, a lot of it seeming pointless. We see a world lacking free will, which you seem to regard as central to God, but it, and especially not the kind of free will that emphasizes human choice, is not something neurology seems to indicate. If there is free will, it is most like Dennett's notion of an ability to avoid, not anything that helps a theistic case that much.

Thirdly, Hilbert's hotel is just absurd, not mathematically impossible. It points out the problems with infinities. Even further, given that I believe all time to currently exist based upon the relativity of simultaneity, the continuous future under theism would also constitute an infinite period of time as well. Another issue is that if one believes in the infinitesimal and zeno's continuous division, one is already committed to infinities to begin with, because there are an infinite number of infinitesimals between any two points in time, or within any length, etc, and it seems very implausible to hold that there is something logically indivisible, that is a smallest unit of space, because, why can't there be half of that? It would still be numerically possible.


Y'know, I've already pointed out that Kalam and teleological arguments both fail, even if a supernatural being was necessary, given that "supernatural being" does not equal "God". So, I don't think that those two refutations work. The moral argument has its own problems: 1) the burden of proof you accept, which is to prove that all non-God theories of morality fail, is way way way too big. You tried to side-skirt this with quotes of random people earlier, but you really are taking on that burden when making that argument. 2) Even further, this is a big issue given that simplicity has a number of absurdities, but the Euthyphro still exists. Finally, 3) morality NOT existing could also be argued which kind of undermines the argument, and a driven theist would go down that route. (I've gone down that route before, because while I accept the validity of moral language, I have deep and abiding questions about morality) Finally, the ontological argument really isn't as strong as you think. Plantinga even knew this, as I pointed out. Most of the rebuttals I've put forward are relatively common, and given how flexible the structure of the argument is, it is prone to many of the parodies. Now, you might be so devoted to that argument above your own sense, but the basic nature of that argument is that it is prone to parody. The points about "a possible being has qualities X, Y, and Z", is only the first premise, and those details of that premise are never ever made fundamental to the argument, which means that they are placeholders, where A, B, and C, could take their place if the argument was just rephrased. The argument is a terrible argument. If you do not understand that, then you need to develop your thinking skills, as those criticisms are common, and your rebuttal "oh, you don't *UNDERSTAND*" is just ridiculous. Any knave can understand that the argument has failings, and that these failings are ones I have identified. If you are less than a knave, please let me know.

The denigration is an argument against the resurrection. If a source is unreliable for historical fact, then it certainly has no basis for our trust for a supernatural claim. All M_P's argument is basically holding that all of the facts are open to dispute. The source is unreliable. Most of the "facts" are really just overblown theories, that apologists have decided to call "facts".


Honestly, the real issue is that we consider you deeply intellectually dishonest. I don't think that having a person defending religion is really the biggest issue, compared to that belief. We think that your arguments fail, and the degree to which you trumpet "Oh, but you don't understand" and "You atheists are intellectually dishonest" really kind of.... pisses us off, especially since we see ourselves as making adequate arguments many times in the past here, and you try to rebut with what seems to be implausible garbage. I mean, heck, you probably are just a person who does nothing more than read William Lane Craig and steal his arguments to repaste them, but many of the arguments have had flaws exposed to them in debate, and have philosophers doing good work in opposing the structure of these arguments.

"we consider you deeply intellectually dishonest."

I will stand back for the suggestion that we are - I am - deluded. Even my brother's suggestion that I am infected with a dangerous piece of malware.

But - like the Desert Father who could not and would not stand still when called a heretic - when you accuse me and certain others including AT the least J R R Tolkien and Pope Benedict and Pascal and Zwingli [I could go on but you get the point] of intellectual dishonesty, I will call you out.

I do NOT deny that intellectual dishonesty happens. You do not need decades of academia to see that, one conference is quite enough. Nor do I deny that it happens among theists.

But do NOT point that finger thisaway.

Unless you believe that two blind men cannot pat the same elephant and "see" different things without one or more of them being intellectually dishonest, you cannot bandy that about. You and I simply by being you and I even as identical twins darner different data - my two eyes see different pictures, for heaven's sake. We pull in different data which however similar the cerebral hardware platform we process with necessarily different software in the contdext of different experience bases.

One - or both - may be a fool. Neither is all wise. One - or both - may be blind. Neither is all seeing.

I claim - without, thank you, intellectual dishonesty - to have seen things you have not seen any more than I had 20-some years ago. You claim I have distorted vision, that you see more clearly and the UFO on the negative is just a smudged fingerprint.

Time will inevitably tell which of us sees more clearly. Right now, though, stick to "blind fool, deluded wretch" and put away the "intellectually dishonest". Save that for those who - unlike you, which believe me I appreciate - rant for the fun of ranting without substance.

Darner different data is rather nice - I never was a typist.