How about the statement "I have looked for evidence for God, and I have found none, so therefore I do not believe in God." Technically of course, that's not true. Even anecdotal evidence is evidence.
That statement is significantly better, when you define evidence as "testable and falsifiable." But it's false to the point of ludicrousness when you broaden evidence to include, like you said, anecdotal evidence, deductive logical argument, appeals to moral law, and, my favorite, beauty-as-evidence, or what might be better stated as correspondence to the truths that Plato and Descartes say are self-evident and available to reason (or more accurately, "rational intuition" to use Plato's--or his translator's--language).
I must focus on technicalities again. There can be no evidence for atheism, as atheism is a position, rather than a theory. It is the position of an absence of belief in God and/or theism. It makes no testable, unfalsifiable claims. However, the commonly misunderstood definition of atheism does, as it is a claim that God does not exist.
"There is no evidence for Darwinism" is of course false, but "there is no evidence for pantheism", is true. It's just the same as any other theistic position practically when concerning the evidence. Unless of course you redefine God, in which case it would be true by definition.
And there
is logical evidence for Pantheism, but now that I'm aware of how you use the word evidence, I would probably agree that Pantheism makes untestible and unfalsifiable claims.
Oooh, that's good. Atheism defined as "an absence of belief" rather than a claim "God does not exist." I suppose it would put the burden of proof on the theist, at least until the atheist makes any negative claim against Christianity, which would necessarily be support for the claim "God does not exist". Of course, the two statements have no pragmatic difference whatsoever, but logic and semantics are like twin brothers (thanks, Aristotle), so I don't have any choice but to deal with it.
So then, the refusal to affirm is a position, whereas an affirmation or a negation is a theory. That's something interesting to think on.
Well, dismissing it out of hand is bad. If I'm doing that I trust you'll point that out to me, then later I can agree or disagree with it. However, not knowing it exists is quite a different problem, one I suspect would be mainly the problem of believers not properly educating people. At least in my case, you can't say I'm not looking, hence me participating in this debate!
No, no, no not at all. I haven't been able to catch you in what I thought to be such a simple error. If I
have to be specific, those comments were directed towards individuals such as withoutaface and lazyhappy who genuinely believe, not that there is no convincing evidence, but that there is no evidence whatsoever, for Christianity. Of course, now that I've talked with you more, I realize that their position might have been that there's no testable and falsifiable evidence, which would be less lamentable, but still, the statement, just on its face, really really bothers me. And I don't think that it's just the fault of believers (although it's definately partially our fault) but also people who refuse to accept the existence of God yet also refuse to look for evidence that God does exist. It's just the responsible intellectual thing to do, which is why we're having this conversation, not only to convince but also to learn. But I'm much more willing to budge on this point that others; it could very well be that believers are the only one's whose responsibility it is to present this evidence. I suppose that's not one of those deeply-held, unshakeable ENFP values (although I do get into those further down...).
Concrete proof to me, would be to take a theory. One that makes testable, falsifiable claims, and to conduct experiments testing these claims. If the results then were as such that they could not be easily dismissed because of random chance or placebo or whatever, then that would constitute concrete proof. For example, if one were to conduct an experiment testing the percentage of prayers fulfilled, and it was significantly greater than that of random chance.
Darn it; that bit about looking up stuff officially applies to you as well. I remember that Alvin Plantinga has an awesome refutation of falsifiability and verifiability, but I'd have to go read it before I could present it coherently. But... I do remember a little bit of someone (Kant, I think?) who completely dismissed inductive evidence (science always yields inductive, probable conclusions) being "concrete" because deductive arguments provide necessary conclusions, while inductive arguments provide only probably conclusions, and I would rather have logical necessity than likelihood. Just a thought. I think this is another one of those fundamental points of difference (just like the one you pointed out below), which is your definition of evidence. I'll probably argue about that next, but like I said, I have to look it up in order to do anything even semi-effective.
Ah, I tend to work in one giant burst.
I wonder if that has anything at all to do with type differences. It seems like the kind of thing that would just be a preference.
There's a reason inductive reasoning(
wiki article ahoy!) is viewed with wariness. Though, I think in this case, it's as reasonable an assumption as you can get.
Anyway, your making me look up stuff, instead of just pointing out logical fallacies, congratulations, you have gotten much further than many theists.
Big Bang theory does not prove or disprove whether the universe began to exist. It does provide evidence for how it got to it's current state, but everything before the Big Bang is unknown. So whether or not the universe began to exist or not, is not proven one way or another by the Big Bang theory.
Source
Yay problem of induction! I just learned problem of induction last semester, and I know Augustine has some stuff about that, so it's lookup time again. But yes, good point. I made a similar one above (not the same argument, but you know, similar conclusions) using Kant.
Okay, I've studied up some, and here's some arguments for the finitude of the universe. I haven't gotten to the ones that are Big Bang = finitude, but maybe I'll find those later. For the moment:
1) Philosophical absurdity of an actual infinite. Say that there existed a library containing an infinite number of books. Say again that half of the books were red and half of the books were black. If there was indeed an actual infinite number of books, then all of the red books + all of the black books would = all of the red books, because infinity/2 = infinity. So each "half" of the books is also all of the books. Inductively unlikely and it violates the law of noncontradition: how can "half" be "all"? It's a philosophical absurdity, and more significantly, it undermines the very laws of logic whereby we came to conclude that the universe is infinite. Logic (hypothetically) tells us that the universe is infinite, but the universe is infinite implies that logic doesn't work.
2) Furthermore, imagine that every book in the library had a number on its spine. Since there are an infinite number of books, every number that exists is represented on the spine of one of the books. Say then that we added one more book to the number of books. There would be no number that we could add to this number of books; it would be logically impossible to count. Yet inductively, we are familiar with the principle that everything that exists in reality can be counted. Furthermore, say we just assigned the book the number infinity + 1, and we have infinity + 1 books. But infinity + 1 = infinity, so then we would have added a book and not added a book, because the number of books did not increase (it is the same number).
The idea is that the same thing that applies to the number of books applies to the number of days, hours, seconds, minutes, half-lives of uranium, or whatever measure of time one chooses, so that an actual infinite number of time demarcations is impossible. By the way, both of these arguments are shamelessly plagiarized from "Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology," which is a book co-written by William Lane Craig which would appear to address the issue from a fairly balanced perspective (it was also co-written by an atheist arguing against Craig). It looks to be good reading (and quite a few pages are apparently readable on Google Books for free.
So then, if one could prove that the Big Bang actually implies the finitude of the universe (or if the finitude of the universe could be established in some other way), then you might have a rational reason to at least seriously consider deism...?
We may have to agree to disagree here. MLK is not inherently better than Hitler. MLK is seen as superior though, because the majority of humanity agrees with him. However, racists would disagree. Perfection, superiority, right or wrong, are all subjective values assigned by the observer. Depending on the perspective on takes, Hitler was clearly better. He nearly led Germany to dominance, he subdued or killed many of Germany's competitors, and MLK led to interracial mixing, ruining the purity of each race. This view is just as objectively equally valid as the common view.
Course, I don't mean to imply that I hold that view. The contrary. Taken from a broader perspective of the survival and peace of all humanity, then it seems clear that MLK was vastly superior (although one can never truly know). But it all depends on how you define your goals.
If Hitler's perspective is just as objectively valid as MLKs (and I'm not ready to grant that, but defending objective morality requires God, IMO, or as I might say, God is part of the "necessary structure" of support for objectivity of morality, no matter what Plato and Aristotle say), then this would be a good enough reason for me to reject a purely rational and objective point of view. This would disqualify me from rationality, I know, but I would sooner concede the insufficiency of logic than subjectivity of morals.
You have a really complex take on this issue; it appears to me to be more complex than simple relativism. Before I attack it, let me attempt to understand it better. The Olympics analogy was very effective earlier (which is odd, because generally I detest sports metaphors). So, a given thing is only "better" or "worse" relative to a given situation or set of goals. So "good" and "bad" are really "effective" and "ineffective," no?
But then, how do you condemn a murderer? Heck, how do you justify punishing criminals at all? Good thieves are very, very effective. Serial killers are effective. Should, then, they be praised, rather than censured? Is this a Nietzschean system, wherein, since the most effective is the most good, a super-effective individual (ubermensch-like) arises and "defines" morality for a given people group?
The trouble with this argument is that many theists make the claim that God is necessary for objective morality, so I may or may not be arguing against myself. Certainly God is necessary for divine command ethics (which is sort of obvious from the title) but whether or not He is necessary for Platonic/Aristotelian "virtue" ethics, or whether or not virtue ethics can be defended by anything other than the "self-evident" claim, remains to be seen. However, you have effectively pointed out to me that the ontological argument (at least as stated by Descartes) requires the existence of objective morality, and so is just as susceptible to the simple claim that objective morality does not exist as the moral or anthropological argument (which I won't bother to produce).
Knowledge is better than ignorance. But what about the saying, "ignorance is bliss"? Order is better than chaos, but wouldn't that depend highly on the kind of order? Certainly a totalitarian society (think 1984) has the highest amount of order, but is that really better? Well, you could say that justice is better than injustice, and a totalitarian society is unjust. But that is two contradictory goals, then. Truth is better than non-truth, but the truth can hurt. Is no pain better than pain? Yes? But what about "what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger?"
Ah, this is covered under the idea of hierarchy of values. Certainly, at certain times the good of knowledge (as opposed to ignorance) is superceded by the good of mental stability. Certainly, at certain times, the good of order is superceded by the good of freedom. To make it even clearer, the Christian would say that the
good of sexual relations (because pleasure
is a good, although many Christian denominations would refute that opinon) is superceded by the good of having one sexual partnership throughout one's life. The Christian would say that the good of a woman choosing what to do with her own body is superceded by the good of protecting the life of a fetus, in the case of abortion. And yet, although one good is superceded by another, in all of these cases, each one of those things were a good and never ceased to be a good. Because one good is not the
best, it does not follow that that said good ceases to be an objective good; it is merely not
best in that situation.
So yes, pain is better than non-pain, and if we lived in an ideal world, pain would not be necessary to gain knowledge, because all possible goods would be actual in every situation. But since we live in a flawed world, not all possible goods are attainable, and one good must be sacrificed for another. It's like moral economics.
Basically, the reason society is able to function, is that they agree to common subjective definitions of these things. But, they are still subjective.
Again, your position is tough. It's sophisticated, I think. So you'd even agree that all cultures can make a differentiation between murder and non-muder killing, without there being any
objective differentiation?
Hmm. But I don't think this solve the free-will versus omniscience contradiction. God knows everything, so he knows what we are going to do, but supposedly we can choose to do whatever we want. But if God knows what we're going to do before we even do it, are we really making a choice?
Well, upon further thought, I suppose it does solve this dilemma. God isn't actually omniscient. He doesn't know what we are going to do. But then, does he really know anything in the future? Due to the butterfly effect, our actions would resonate around the universe, and make the future unknowable. But I suppose he could know everything else, including the past, and non time-related data.
Okay, I was trying to re-figure out the Molinist position well enough to state it coherently here. Let me know if I've done a decent job. I think that some Christians that hold to Molinism would argue that God IS actually omniscient, but uses a process more like eternally completed deduction to arrive at His knowledge: He has "foreknowledge" which roughly corresponds to your "non time-related data". This would include (but not be at all limited to) perfect knowledge of how people (who He created) work, sort of like a super-Shakespeare, as well as the inherent characteristics (insofar as inherent characteristics exist, which I suppose is not at all if you're an existence-precedes-essence person) of all of the people who would ever live. In consequence, God would have "middle knowledge" of counterfactuals, that is, he would not so much foreknow as predict with 100% accuracy what person x would do in situation y. This would allow Him to know (or perhaps more accurately, imagine) every possible universe He could create; that is, every possible chain of events depending upon which actions He Himself took. Then He actualized (created) one particular possible universe, which is the actual universe in which we live. Consequently, at the creation of this particular universe, He did know exactly what would and will happen throughout time on the basis of His actions and His perfect prediction of how humans would/will behave. I think it's like your system, except that the omniscience of God allows Him to "figure out" what will happen despite the butterfly effect, and furthermore, He did this "figuring out" before He created the universe. Of course, this falls apart if there's something about the butterfly effect that makes knowledge of the future logically impossible rather than too difficult for anyone to do (rather like the difference between infinity and uncountability)
It's not much for Ockham's Razor, but it's a pretty good theory.
Well, it wouldn't be logical, but if this works for you, more power to you. As I stated previously in this thread, I have no problem with irrationality (and to do so would itself be irrational), as long as people don't try and push it upon others unwillingly.
Hmmm. I probably agree with that, although it might have implications which I find distasteful. (Which is more of my feeling-ness. I say, "can this be true" and then decide why it is true or false. This is not to say, of course, that I could never be convinced that something I decided "couldn't" be true isn't true, but merely that it would take a lot longer, and probably some-ick-"soul-searching" (I hate outworn terminology)). I really think some good study of Augustine would be productive to me in this discussion (which is really somewhat of a concession; I've just about run out of my own resources, so I should probably capitulate, right?)
Okay, my post is now less disastrously incomplete (and better spelled).
