Argue against your own position!

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I am working on the post against the social safety net right now. And by "working on" I mean "intending to write it", which will, after quite a long procrastinative interval, probably result in a hastily written post in a week.

Well if any sort of morality exists, then I would normally hold that it must be grounded in God. If something is grounded in God it cannot be so, in some imperfect way. Another way of looking at this, is the fact that you are arguing for the existence of the Christian God, therefor it follows, that since the Christian God claims to be morally perfect, that your own conception must be argued as such.



Well I am not sure if the standard of evidence you have set for yourself would be convincing to the unconvinced. For example, one could simply attribute any factor you have mentioned there, especially the sensus divinitatis to more believable things; such as neurological function or evolutionary eccentricities, both of which have more evidence for their own existence. If you cannot make a definitive statement all you are doing is attributing the unknown to the divine. The skeptic is far more likely to believe and be convinced that the that unknown is composed things that are more directly testable.



Well it is simply more probable that the unexplained is totally composed of naturalistic things, just like all of the known.



True



We also start off with the basic instinct that parents can be trusted and that other people are nice. No one can base an entire world-view on these things and expect it to actually work in the long term, much less expect it to be convincing to an outsider.

I should try to argue against public health insurance.

Only if his Christian sect believes the written bible is infallible.(as opposed to possible written imperfectly by man through divine inspiration/communication.

Nah, for this to be really fun you need to deny climate change...

I'm actually not the most passionate person when it comes to environmentalism. I just get highly annoyed at people who paint the climate science community as fraudulent conspirators or data forgers. That's just outright libelous. Michael Mann and the writers of the IPCC are at worst guilty of overstating their confidence in the proxy-derived pre-industrial temperature record.

I might take up your challenge though.

Last edited by marshall on 03 Jan 2011, 12:34 am, edited 1 time in total.

I challenge dent to argue that true marxist socialism is only possible in a religious environment.

I'm not making a point about ontology and meta-ethics so much as epistemological requirement. As such, your language and approach is not useful. We could say that morality exists outside of God, we can say it exists from God's nature. That's not the point. The point is that we couldn't know this unless there was intervention. As such, the comment is not relevant.

As for "morally perfect", all this requires is that God uphold the standards of morality perfectly. No meta-ethics is required. I argued this in a manner to specifically be different than the kind of argument you make, and to nullify one of the major lines of argumentation against your approach.



Actually, I am not denying that these things COULD be attributed to neurological function. Neurological function is not relevant though, as frankly I am not taking an anti-neurology position.

Even further, while it is possible that we can label these things as "evolutionary eccentricities", the problem is that this thinking leads us too far and ends up violating too many intuitions in the long-run to maintain as plausible. While there may be some people who keep on running with this, most of the issues that are being denied are *so basic* to the human experience that denying them some degree of existence is absurd. I mean, technically any information we get could be an "evolutionary absurdity', but, the issue is that we still rely on so much information, so why specifically distrust this particular issue? Because it points to a metaphysical conclusion that is not desired?


Well, if some of the known isn't really very explainable in terms of naturalistic things, then this argument does not work. We know that free will exists. We know that morality exists. We know that math and reasoning exist. Because of this knowledge, all of which making no sense without a supernatural agent, we need to consider the idea of a supernatural agent seriously.



Well, ok, but we change our beliefs in response to evidence. We can't just dismiss a belief based upon a possibility of it being wrong. Even further, this is not consistently applied to all basic beliefs. There has to be reason to distrust the ones given first before they are dismissed. This reasoning is not given.

My boyfriend does this on political message boards, or in political arguments anywhere. He takes a side opposite of his position just to hone his real argument, and it works incredibly well to make the best arguments against what people will say in opposition to your stance. It was more important when he worked with politicians, because they actually do need a lot of help with public statements and debates etc.

It seems to be a really good way to come up with an argument that can't be logically conquered very easily and have it at your ready.

Perhaps after Marshall takes on other political issues like denying the Germ Theory of Disease, the heliocentric model of the solar system, or turns to supporting the hollow model of the Earth?

This should actually be a category for a whole sub-forum.

ooh that would be sweet.

It's (mostly) a joke; Marshall is in school studying weather and climate science, so this being a thread where you argue against your own strongest beliefs...

The OP also asked that you keep a more or less intellectually honest argument, so an argument that requires outright lies is going to be more questionable in this thread.

Interesting approach. However if God possess moral perfection he could not chose to create something that is outside of his own nature.



One can take all manner of factors or issues and place them all together, apply Occams Razor and declare God is the cause of all of them and that everything else is a less perfect solution. Who needs laws for gravity, or an explanation for the universe when God can just as easily explain them all.



Just because we do not have an answer, does not mean we cannot have an answer nor does it follow that the answer is supernatural. By assuming that some things have no naturalistic explanation you are begging the question, it is presupposing an answer to the point made in my previous question.

Why? If he can do it, what reason do you have to justify him making something completely dependent on him as opposed to independent? Also I don't see even use the word could not when discussing god. It most certainly is limited to would.