This post is to move a discussion from Sandbox(4) at Entropy’s request.
Over on the Sandbox(4) thread, fifthmonarchyman made two statements that I disagree with:
“I’ve argued repeatedly that humans are hardwired to believe in God.”
“Everyone knows that God exists….”
As my handle indicates, I prefer to lurk. The novelty of being told that I don’t exist overcame my good sense, so I joined the conversation.
For the record, I am what is called a weak atheist or negative atheist. The Wikipedia page describes my position reasonably well:
“Negative atheism, also called weak atheism and soft atheism, is any type of atheism where a person does not believe in the existence of any deities but does not explicitly assert that there are none. Positive atheism, also called strong atheism and hard atheism, is the form of atheism that additionally asserts that no deities exist.”
I do exist, so fifthmonarchyman’s claims are disproved. For some reason he doesn’t agree, hence this thread.
Added In Edit by Alan Fox 16.48 CET 11th January, 2018
This thread is designated as an extension of Noyau. This means only basic rules apply. The “good faith” rule, the “accusations of dishonesty” rule do not apply in this thread.
By extension “true theists” don’t exist because nobody can be sure for certain that God does exist.
Whether someone can RATIONALLY be certain that (no) gods exist, is different from whether someone IS (as in feels, or has the experience of being) certain that (no) gods exist.
I could experience being absolutely and completely certain that no gods exist, but the issue then would be one of whether that is a rational state of conviction. As in, is that level of conviction a rational one in light of the evidence and arguments?
We know there are people who are absolutely convinced that X is true/false (whether that be the existence/non-existence of god(s), extraterrestrial flying saucers, the continent of australia etc. etc.). We also know that many of these people do not have good rational justification for the level of conviction they have. Nevertheless, it IS the case that they are that convinced.
So it is simply not true to say that “nobody can be sure for certain that God doesn’t exist”.
Should they be as convinced as they are? Probably not.
Good grief, FFM. 😕
The problem here is that this means, in effect, “I believe that X is mistaken about his being an atheist because he really does believe what I believe, only he fails to realize that he believes what I believe.”
And that shows a rather profound inability to distinguish between your own beliefs and those of another person.
When you use these words.
Does he really think that is what the statement means???
Do we need the concept of theist?
There’s no evidence, that the wrath of god is on him.
The wrath of god is on those, “who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.”
But isn’t allowing “slim” being agnostic to the extent of not being able to rule out, say, Russell’s teapot?
That’s not what you said. You made the explicit claim that “Everyone believes in God.” Not “My religion teaches that everyone believes in God.” or “I believe everyone believes in God.” but simply “Everyone believes in God.” That’s not true.
Well sure, that’s why most are agnostic atheists.
Russell, who called himself agnostic, did bring up the teapot precisely because it seems a bit of a strain to be “agnostic” about a teapot orbiting Mars, even though it’s logically possible. Yes, technically we should be agnostic on some extremely low level, but we’re not about to undertake any endeavor to find said teapot, based on such an extremely low reason to suppose it exists.
Glen Davidson
I have repeatedly asked you to clarify exactly what you mean when you say “Everyone believes God exists.” You have done nothing but dance around the question and refuse to answer clearly. I have no choice but to use the common dictionary definitions. If you mean something different, I suggest you write to communicate rather than obfuscate.
Provide few pieces of evidence that convinced you the most that God doesn’t exist…
Also, many believes think that life could’ve only been created by God, so provide few pieces of evidence that convinced you the most that life created itself…
Wrong. Read the linked Wikipedia entry above. I have no belief in any gods. I am an atheist. Whether you like that or not is none of my concern.
No, I mean what I said. I have no belief in any god. None. Not something I believe in.
Now please abide by the site rules and accept that I am making that comment honestly and in good faith.
It would be nice if those people provided evidence of how life was created if they demand evidence to the contrary.
FFM
Please abide by the site rules. You have to assume (not believe, just assume) others are posting in good faith.
GlenDavidson,
Indeed.
They only fail to produce evidence that any God exists, and fail to provide evidence that God could create life even if he did exist, let alone giving us any evidence that life could only have been created by a made-up “cause” like God.
As Einstein wrote in a letter to a student:
The easy default to God clearly doesn’t tell us anything at all. It just distorts any appropriate judgment.
Glen Davidson
fifthmonarchyman,
I see your previous comment says that you think Alurker is mistaken in his beliefs. Do you have any hypothesis why he became an Atheist despite his hard wiring that the paper claims to exist?
Hardwired to believe in God? Nonsense. What about the Norse, or the Egyptians, or any one of numerous belief systems that don’t believe in a single god, or a god at all? If you were to say that we are hard wired to believe in myths, you might be closer to reality. We want to know how things work. When we can’t figure it out, we often ascribe it to things with no supporting evidence.
We probably do, unfortunately.
It would help if “assume that others are posting in good faith” entailed “assume that others are not deeply and radically self-deceived about their own beliefs”.
While we’re changing site rules, how about enforcing “park your priors by the door”? From what little I’ve learned about presuppositionalists over the past couple of days, that might make them “vanish in a puff of logic”, to steal from one of the best.
Thanks
It’s not possible to have a rational discussion with presuppositionalists, because their entire position is that it’s not possible to have a rational discussion with them without implicitly agreeing with them to begin with. All the rest is just trying to show you that your very commitment to rational discourse is only possible if you yourself believe in God. That’s the view.
If there was such an evidence, would we need faith?
There wouldn’t be any agnostics… There could be some denialers though but that’s nothing new in human history…
The reasons mentioned by me earlier provide evidence that life had to have been designed due to the indispensability of all life systems to be present and coordinated at the same time for even the simplest of cells to form and became alive…
Rebellion against God is my prediction.
Totally agree, told Fifth the exact thing.
Depends on the evidence, some claim there is enough now.
Unless you know the composition of said first life and the primordial conditions that seems more a statement of faith than evidence.
I appreciate your comments. I’m still trying to wrap my head around this (not the concept, the idea that some people apparently take it seriously). Do they have a logical defense of that last bit, that rational discourse is only possible if you believe in a god? Or is that not a question they feel deserves an answer?
ALurker,
Revelation.
newton,
The simplest life observed is a bacteria. The yeast is next which is more complex and there is no identified path from one to the other. Both require Genetic information. All evidence of base x information other then life is designed. Why don’t you think the design inference is reasonable as an inference and not just a statement of faith?
There actually are arguments for this claim, if one takes a look at the presuppositionalist literature. I once took a day to read an article comparing Cornelius Van Til and Alvin Plantinga. That was enough to convince me that there’s no there there. But yeah, there are arguments, which is more than you’ll ever get from FMM.
ALurker,
I think your best argument here is that presupposition without support is circular reasoning. If there is not any support then the opponent is committing a logical fallacy. Ask FMM to support his claims.
Thank you for this flurry of basic logical fallacies.
I didn’t stop believing that a god exists because I found conclusive evidence for god’s non-existence. I stopped believing in god because I realized all the reasons I had ever been given for belief in god, collapsed under close scrutiny. I realized that I believed entirely for the reason that I was raised to as a child, and that the reasons given for belief by my surroundings are essentially some combination of ad-hoc rationalization (maybe there’s a “plan” despite all this evil), appeals to emotional revulsion/intolerable consequences (but if there’s no final judgement, some times really bad people “get away with it”), arguments from ignorance (where did X(life, consciousness, the universe) come from?), and special pleading (everything has a cause… except god).
If I have no good reason to believe in something, then I should stop believing it. That’s why I stopped believing in god. All the reasons I had for belief were fallacious ad-hoc rationalizations. The god-belief has nothing rationally valid to stand on. It is upheld by tradition and the human psychological bias towards rationalizing to retain beliefs we are taught in early childhood. Without this recurrent phenomenon of raising children at a very young age to believe like their parents do, religions would die out to the point of fringe crackpot views in probably less than five generations.
I respectfully disagree…
The purpose of these kind of discussions should be the pursuit of truth, which is also, or should be, the pursuit of science and not the pursuit to support preconceived ideas…
BTW: I have changed my mind about my views more than once…
I was raised Catholic but abandoned it.
I didn’t believe in change (evolution) within kinds.
I also suspect some kind of God’s intervention within kinds after the Noah’s flood but have no proof…
I also have my doubts about afterlife; the existence of the immortal soul but I’m willing to concede the existence of quantum soul that requires processing medium to be conscious…
I have been wrong many times but I adjust my views as the evidence becomes available…
That’s what I call the pursuit of truth…
What’s wrong with that?
I find it very hard to extract that “evidence” from any of the atheists/agnostics…
Do you have it?
You still didn’t answer my questions… Your excuse seems to be that everything has to have a cause but God…That’s not what I asked…
Give me one reason why you didn’t answer my questions directly…
Fallacies?
J-Mac,
I was talking about presuppositionalism as a school of apologetics, with which FMM claims to identify. I wasn’t talking about you or anyone else here other than FMM. He’s in a class by himself.
This is another fallacy…we have an abundance of life on earth…10 billions species according to Joe F…If the primordial conditions on earth were different than today, why would life continue in such an abundance?
Scientists can’t even reassembly a living cell that thrives in the lab test tube liquid full of nutrients until it is poked through and its content leaks out…
You are telling me that the right primordial environment can do a better job than say Szostak who spent his entire life trying to do it?
Sorry…It wasn’t clear enough for me…
KN, to J-Mac:
Can you get short buses with only one passenger seat?
I believe the issue between you and I, in our current discussion, is that you are unable to read.
Please read my post again. Thank you.
colewd advises:
As if we hadn’t been doing so since the day he presented his first sorry “peace” at TSZ.
Rumraket, to J-Mac:
If J-Mac is unable to read, why are you asking him to read your post again? He couldn’t have read it in the first place, and he won’t be able to do so now.
You atheists are so irrational.
Rumraket,
The above are circular arguments until they are supported. A word like crackpot is a labeling word and is the basis for trying to get others to buy into a circular argument. Trump is good at this.
-Crooked Hillary
-Lying Ted Cruz
I watched a documentary last night about Dawkins and Krauss. They were constantly using labeling words to support their argument. An example is calling religions fairytales without support.
This is the same Dawkins that tried to support the claim of cumulative selection with a program that contained a sequence target. He admitted this was not a real test so for that I have to give him credit but 30 years later we still don’t have a real test.
They claim that science is strictly on the side of logic and reason. If this is true why do they have to invoke logical fallacies (circular reasoning) to make their case?
Rumraket:
Lots of atheists, including me, could tell a similar story. It’s a process of waking up and learning to question one’s own beliefs honestly. When you do that, the irrational ones tend to collapse under their own weight.
The process can go in the opposite direction, though this seems to be less common.
I recently ran across a quote from Gillian Anderson, giving an odd explanation of why she gave up atheism:
Thank you for so succinctly demonstrating you don’t know what a circular argument is.
All categorizations are through “labeling words”. The message I was intending to convey is that it would only take a few generations for religious beliefs that are mainstream today, to drop to so low a frequency of the population it would be held in similar numbers as people who believe the Earth is flat, or that reptilian extraterrestrial shapeshifters are controlling the world through the United Nations.
Trump is a big, big user of derogatory labels yes. He’s not good at it though. He’s a child and barely literate.
I’m sure that’s how it feels when you sit on the receiving end of it. I don’t believe they do it without support. I happen to agree most mainstream religious beliefs are fairytales. Especially the ones who postulate there’s a 2nd and eternal life after we don’t-really-die, orchestrated for us by am omnipotent mind that loves us and wants us to live with it forever in happiness and bliss. And that all the bad people get just punishments. And that all the good people get just rewards. And the rest of us lives happily ever after.
If that’s not a fairytale then nothing is.
He succeeded.
No, he didn’t. He simply said the WEASEL program’s only flaw was it’s modeling of the selection process as one working towards a specific target. But that evolution isn’t actually like that.
Here’s his words: “Although the monkey/Shakespeare model is useful for explaining the distinction between single-step selection and cumulative selection, it is misleading in important ways. One of these is that, in each generation of selective ‘breeding’, the mutant ‘progeny’ phrases were judged according to the criterion of resemblance to a distant ideal target, the phrase METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL. Life isn’t like that. Evolution has no long-term goal. There is no long-distance target, no final perfection to serve as a criterion for selection, although human vanity cherishes the absurd notion that our species is the final goal of evolution. In real life, the criterion for selection is always short-term, either simple survival or, more generally, reproductive success. If, after the aeons, what looks like progress towards some distant goal seems, with hindsight, to have been achieved, this is always an incidental consequence of many generations of short-term selection. The ‘watchmaker’ that is cumulative natural selection is blind to the future and has no long-term goal. We can change our computer model to take account of this point. We can also make it more realistic in other respects. Letters and words are peculiarly human manifestations, so let’s make the computer draw pictures instead. Maybe we shall even see animal-like shapes evolving in the computer, by cumulative selection of mutant forms. We shan’t prejudge the issue by building-in specific animal pictures to start with. We want them to emerge solely as a result of cumulative selection of random mutations.” – Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker.
Of what? The power of cumulative selection? The WEASEL is a test of that.
Because the truth of the first statement is not contingent on the absence if the latter. It could simultaneously be true that science is strictly on the side of logic and reason, but that Krauss and Dawkins make logical fallacies to make their case. How? Because Krauss and Dawkins aren’t science. They’re two individuals.
That’s hilarious. “It was the consensus that religion was a crutch, so I went out and got one”. LOL.
KN said:
I guess every debate could begin with a negotiation about what “rational” means and how to use it, and whether or not he principles of logic are binding for everyone. After that, perhaps a debate on what “truth” means in context of debates, and facts, etc. – you know, so we don’t rely on presuppositions to frame the nature of discussion and its potential value.
I will say that I disagree with the assertion that “everyone believes in god” and frame it like this: “Ultimately, everyone except sociopaths and psychopaths act as if God exists, even if they believe and insist it does not.”
There’s research evidence that shows whether or not one professes to believe in god, they act as if God exists – even down to involuntary body mechanisms, like sweating more when daring god to do awful things.
Link