Atheism/Existence of God Debates (Please Read OP)

Morbert

ISAW wrote: »

As an argument from ignorance it is a logical fallacy

"proving a negative" is a different fallacy to "argument from ignorance"

"You cannot prove that God does not exist, so He does" is a burden of proof fallacy

If they believed "You cannot prove that God does not exist, so He does" they would be committing a fallacy -the burden of proof fallacy.

If they believed "You cannot prove that God/Thor/Zeus does not exist, so He does" they would be committing a fallacy -the burden of proof fallacy.

Ok but I don't see what this has to do with what I said, unless it is some kind of corollary to my post.

ISAW

Morbert wrote: »

Ok but I don't see what this has to do with what I said, unless it is some kind of corollary to my post.

what you stated:
I do not know of any Christian who believes in God because "There is no evidence that God does not exist.".

what i replied If they believed "You cannot prove that God does not exist, so He does" they would be committing a fallacy -the burden of proof fallacy.

If you knew of any christian who believes in God because "There is no evidence that God does not exist.". they believe in God because you can not prove god does not exist.

If you dont see the idea of "can not prove" and "no evidence for" dont blame me.

Can you give me some examples maybe of things for which there is no evidence which you CAN prove?

I dont think you will.


Quote you :
A Christian, if they wished, could always fall back on the "reassurance" that there is no evidence for "no God", just as there is no evidence for "no Thor" or "no Zeus", but it is not compelling to anyone, Christians included.

Falling back on "no evidence for no God " is falling back on

"You cannot prove no God exists... so He does" they would be committing a fallacy -the burden of proof fallacy.

Assuming by reassurance and falling back on you actually mean they believe based on this argument? which is a fallacious belief.

Plowman

This post has been deleted.

Morbert

ISAW wrote: »

what you stated:
I do not know of any Christian who believes in God because "There is no evidence that God does not exist.".

what i replied If they believed "You cannot prove that God does not exist, so He does" they would be committing a fallacy -the burden of proof fallacy.

If you knew of any christian who believes in God because "There is no evidence that God does not exist.". they believe in God because you can not prove god does not exist.

If you dont see the idea of "can not prove" and "no evidence for" dont blame me.

Can you give me some examples maybe of things for which there is no evidence which you CAN prove?

I dont think you will.

Quote you :
A Christian, if they wished, could always fall back on the "reassurance" that there is no evidence for "no God", just as there is no evidence for "no Thor" or "no Zeus", but it is not compelling to anyone, Christians included.

Falling back on "no evidence for no God " is falling back on

"You cannot prove no God exists... so He does" they would be committing a fallacy -the burden of proof fallacy.

Assuming by reassurance and falling back on you actually mean they believe based on this argument? which is a fallacious belief.

Again, are you disagreeing with something I said? I said that, since burden of proof is not a logical rule, Christians are not logically compelled to provide any evidence. However, since (most) Christians believe there is evidence for God, atheists are happy to critique such evidence presented. I am not saying anyone is committing a logical fallacy.

RichieC

Morbert wrote: »

Again, are you disagreeing with something I said? I said that, since burden of proof is not a logical rule, Christians are not logically compelled to provide any evidence. However, since (most) Christians believe there is evidence for God, atheists are happy to critique such evidence presented. I am not saying anyone is committing a logical fallacy.

This is a Christian forum so the normal rules of logic aren't applicable. In here saying God doesn't exist is the crazy claim.

La Petite Fleur

tommy2bad wrote: »

Back to Russell's teapot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot[/QUOTE]

Your claim was that it is impossible to prove a negative.

Bullsheeeeet.

"I believe there is milk in your fridge"
"There is no milk in the fridge"
"Prove it"
"You cannot prove a negative, the burden of proof lies with you"
"Yes you can, open the fridge door"

Regarding Russells very leaky teapot, a simple example is the planet vulcan was claimed to exist in our solar system by reputable scientists in the 19th century, some disagreed, and went on to prove Vulcan did not exist. Yet another negative was proven.

iBeast

Tino Rodrigez from IRT deadliest roads believes in God. Thats evidence enough for everyone

ISAW

Morbert wrote: »

Again, are you disagreeing with something I said? I said that, since burden of proof is not a logical rule, Christians are not logically compelled to provide any evidence. However, since (most) Christians believe there is evidence for God, atheists are happy to critique such evidence presented. I am not saying anyone is committing a logical fallacy.

You are not saying christians arent! you have stated they always have one to fall back on.

1. Im not disagreeing with "christians dont make the argument P Q or R" because ther is no significance in arguing about arguments christians are NOT making or not fgalling back on (even if they could). that is one of my points.

2. Burden of proof IS a logical fallacy

3. what sort of "evidence" of God do you claim christians believe?

4. If christians fall back on a fallacy they are committing a fallacy! They arent really interested in discussing the logic of what they are NOT arguing.

Have you considered that even though it does not logically follow the reason you are not witnessing christians committing logical fallacies is because they qrent making them and not just because they are making them and you just didnt happen to notice.

Have you ever heard of Type 1 and type 2 errors or "false negatives" and "false positives"

ISAW

La Petite Fleur wrote: »

tommy2bad wrote: »

Back to Russell's teapot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot[/QUOTE]

Your claim was that it is impossible to prove a negative.

Bullsheeeeet.

"I believe there is milk in your fridge"
"There is no milk in the fridge"
"Prove it"
"You cannot prove a negative, the burden of proof lies with you"
"Yes you can, open the fridge door"

aha but what if you opened the door and there was a big box in the way behind which there might be milk you can,t see?
Or if i have invisible milk?


Logically formally universally prove a negative proposition.

for example take all the fridges in the world.
Even if you could take all the milk out of all the fridges yo would still have to observe them.
which is measuring them and creating a premise and not arriving at a conclusion based on what came before.

Opening the fridge door is actually establishing a premise that "milk in fridge"=false
you have not logically arrived at that conclusion you have begun with it.
you had to go and measure the system!

similarly you could prove "no unicorns" if you could look everywhere in the universe with a unicorn detector. you would have established no unicorns .

One can not logically prove "no unicorns" however.

Regarding Russells very leaky teapot, a simple example is the planet vulcan was claimed to exist in our solar system by reputable scientists in the 19th century, some disagreed, and went on to prove Vulcan did not exist. Yet another negative was proven.

Because they MEASURED the place where it should be!

Looking isnt logically proving!

It means "derive from deduction". One cant deduce no milk or no vulcan. Which I suppose demonstrates the limits of mathematics and logic.

ISAW

RichieC wrote: »

This is a Christian forum so the normal rules of logic aren't applicable. In here saying God doesn't exist is the crazy claim.

You are ignorant of history.
christianity is rooted in logic and reason. It has the same Greek roots as mathematics and science.

Andrewf20

La Petite Fleur wrote: »

Indeed I would. Now what evidence has atheism got to offer ? I've never seen it offer any to date and I'm most keen to see it presented if you have it.

I adore science, maths, biology, evolution, etc. but I've never seen any of these disiplines ever present a single convincing argument for atheism (never mind evidence), so I'm most intrested in seeing one if you have it, because if you do, I have no issue in becoming an atheist.

The impression I get from these dicussions it that it seems to come to down to a persons frame of mind. If you are a Christian you may see the Bible one way (divinely inspired, making complete sense to them etc) while and Athiest may see it another way (contradictory, vague, unclear etc). The fact that intelligent people form opposing opinions (believing vs not believing) comes down to the fact that the method of spreading the word of God could certainly have improved. Confusion reigns where it perhaps could have been avoided.

I understand why an athiestic standpoint could be respected. I think alot of atheists believe the Bible to be man made due to inconsistencies, vagueness and contradictions on a variety to topics that may even go against their moral compass.

Some athiests will say that we are all athiests in regards to most Gods but that they go one step further in believing in no God, for the same reasons alot of us reject the idea of Apollo and Zeus for example - that theres no credible evidence to believe in them.

Barr125

ISAW wrote: »

You are ignorant of history.
christianity is rooted in logic and reason. It has the same Greek roots as mathematics and science.

I'm sorry but no. Just no. Christianity has no root in logic or reason. Religion, in any form, is rooted in faith. Faith directly opposes logic and reason by its very definition:

Faith: Strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.

Penn

ISAW wrote: »

You are ignorant of history.
christianity is rooted in logic and reason. It has the same Greek roots as mathematics and science.

How so?

Morbert

ISAW wrote: »

You are not saying christians arent! you have stated they always have one to fall back on.

1. Im not disagreeing with "christians dont make the argument P Q or R" because ther is no significance in arguing about arguments christians are NOT making or not fgalling back on (even if they could). that is one of my points.

2. Burden of proof IS a logical fallacy

3. what sort of "evidence" of God do you claim christians believe?

4. If christians fall back on a fallacy they are committing a fallacy! They arent really interested in discussing the logic of what they are NOT arguing.

Have you considered that even though it does not logically follow the reason you are not witnessing christians committing logical fallacies is because they qrent making them and not just because they are making them and you just didnt happen to notice.

Have you ever heard of Type 1 and type 2 errors or "false negatives" and "false positives"

I think I'll call that the "fallacy" fallacy. I was directly responding to philologos's statement:

philologos wrote:

The more and more I go on the less and less satisfied I am in the new-atheist cop out (and it is fairly recent - within the last decade) that the burden is not on them. However, if they want to convince me to become an atheist and reject Christianity, to a certain degree the burden is on you to convince me that God is a fable.

I was saying that, while this is logically consistent, it is not compelling, as Christians (philologos included) do believe there is evidence for God. I.e. Christians and atheists agree that the burden of proof is not on atheists, and that is is perfectly reasonable to not believe in God if there is no evidence for God.

What I didn't bring up at all was any fallacy that a lack of evidence for God implies God exists.

tommy2bad

Originally Posted byMorbert ;
What I didn't bring up at all was any fallacy that a lack of evidence for God implies God exists.

Thats why you cant prove a negative. Lack of evidence isn't proof. However it dose raise the question of which is more likely ?

Zombrex

philologos wrote: »

It seems a little bit disproportionate. The more and more I go on the less and less satisfied I am in the new-atheist cop out (and it is fairly recent - within the last decade) that the burden is not on them. However, if they want to convince me to become an atheist and reject Christianity, to a certain degree the burden is on you to convince me that God is a fable. Much of the new-atheist argument is simply repeating what they claim ad-infinitum without any positive contribution to the argument. E.G God doesn't exist, God's a fable, God's a delusion, God's like Santa for grown ups. The big question is Why is He any of these things? Answers are forthcoming on those really.

Well it is impossible to speak for the entire new atheism movement, but there has certainly be a heck of a lot of stuff about the psychological reasons for why humans would both invent something like a god and why such an idea would propagate through human culture, and why it would seem so sensible and appealing to the human mind.

To me these present a much more plausible explanation for the existence of human religion at a far greater level of detail than any religion explanation does.

Now in my experience these ideas tend to be rejected off hand when presented on this website to theists, including yourself.

So I think the term you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink comes to mind.

philologos

Zombrex: The difference is beyond mere pseudo-psychology there are an abundance of reasons for God's existence. I'm not satisfied with the "there's no evidence" nonsense any more, because in the past atheists did present positive arguments for their position. Look up William Rowe for example or J.L Mackie.

Again, even if you did for arguments sake show Christianity to be a lie, there's still no good reason why I would be an atheist over anything else.

Morbert

philologos wrote: »

Zombrex: The difference is beyond mere pseudo-psychology there are an abundance of reasons for God's existence.

Is there?

Again, even if you did for arguments sake show Christianity to be a lie, there's still no good reason why I would be an atheist over anything else.

Do you believe Russell's teapot exists? Why not?

Zombrex

philologos wrote: »

Zombrex: The difference is beyond mere pseudo-psychology there are an abundance of reasons for God's existence. I'm not satisfied with the "there's no evidence" nonsense any more, because in the past atheists did present positive arguments for their position. Look up William Rowe for example or J.L Mackie.

Again, even if you did for arguments sake show Christianity to be a lie, there's still no good reason why I would be an atheist over anything else.

If there were evidence that humans have a natural tendency to imagine/invent supernatural agents in nature, and that our brains used the models of these agents to help them process the world around them in a way that was easier for them to comprehend and process (in the context of human like interactions), do you not think that this would be a strong case against the claims of religions, since religions are basically claim that these supernatural agents are actually real not merely invented by the human mind and shared through culture? All religions, not just Christianity?

And by the way this isn't pseudo-psychology, there is on going serious scientific research into this area and they are all pointing to the same conclusions. That sort of dismissive terminology is what I meant earlier about dismissing this off hand without proper examination.

philologos

Morbert: I think Russell's understanding was lacking as a lot of philosophy can be.

Zombrex: Not at all, because there's still the fundamental question of how all this came to be. It seems pretty clear on a number of grounds that there must have been an ultimate cause to this universe. I've presented a number of arguments for God's existence, which have been flat out ignored time and time again in what seems a mere matter of personal preference. Ultimately, I believe it's down to you if you want to earnestly consider God's word, and ultimately I believe that He is the only one who will make that change. No argument how good, how lofty, how intellectual will break down the barrier that you have created. I'm convinced of that.

It is pseudo-psychology, it's atheists trying to explain away what is a genuine philosophical issue. The new-atheists simply fuse opinion with fact without consideration. Sam Harris has done it and Richard Dawkins certainly has done it.

Zombrex

philologos wrote: »

Zombrex: Not at all, because there's still the fundamental question of how all this came to be.

That question doesn't go away (look at all the research currently being done into things like M-theory). But that isn't really the question though is it. The question is why would anyone think that the ideas humans came up with a few thousand years ago are the actual right answer.

If we can explain both the existence of these ideas, why they take the particular form they do (ie why gods instead of mute mice with magic wands), why they are appealing to humans etc, would that not be a good reason to reject these ideas as simply human creations, irrespective of whether or not we have another answer to any of these big questions.

philologos wrote: »

It seems pretty clear on a number of grounds that there must have been an ultimate cause to this universe. I've presented a number of arguments for God's existence, which have been flat out ignored time and time again in what seems a mere matter of personal preference.

Sorry Phil but that is a little hard to believe. In my experience no argument for the existence of God is ever ignored on the A&A forum, by myself or any of the other mad rabid atheists who are just waiting to tear to pieces an argument for the existence of God. Any discussions we have had with you over your reasons for your belief in God have been discussed to the point that you gave up and left, with the remaining A&A posters complaining that you had left and were no longer responding to their rebuttals.

philologos wrote: »

Ultimately, I believe it's down to you if you want to earnestly consider God's word, and ultimately I believe that He is the only one who will make that change. No argument how good, how lofty, how intellectual will break down the barrier that you have created. I'm convinced of that.

Ok. That doesn't really have anything to do with what we are discussing here though.

philologos wrote: »

It is pseudo-psychology, it's atheists trying to explain away what is a genuine philosophical issue.

No actually it is not. It is scientists attempting to understand how the human brain works in relation to these sort of beliefs and behaviors.

The question really is how genuinely interested are you in looking into this area, given that it may actually convince you that your beliefs are a delusion, a trick of the mind. I don't blame anyone for not being overly keen to do that, but at the same time if you are not prepared to do that you can't really say that you are open to alternatives and counters to you beliefs.

King Mob

philologos wrote: »

Morbert: I think Russell's understanding was lacking as a lot of philosophy can be.

I believe that Morbert was attempting to get you detail out the exact reasons why you don't believe that there is a teapot floating around in space.
And these reasons would have illustrated the point as there is no way to reject Russell's teapot without falling back to a lack of evidence.

If you have another way of explaining how you know that the teapot doesn't exist, please explain.

philologos wrote: »

Zombrex: Not at all, because there's still the fundamental question of how all this came to be. It seems pretty clear on a number of grounds that there must have been an ultimate cause to this universe. I've presented a number of arguments for God's existence, which have been flat out ignored time and time again in what seems a mere matter of personal preference.

Cept it has been pointed out to you many many times that 1) this might not be the case and 2) if it was that there are still many other, much more supported and sensible explanations that do not require god.
However when presented with these alternatives you flat out ignored them and stated that they were not adequate despite having also stated that you did not know anything about them and refused to explain how they were inadequate other than your personal preference. And now here you are, pretending that these have never been explained to you.

Why do you think people believe in religions and gods that you believe are false? What about religions that are clearly based on lies and scams, why do people follow those religions? Why do people believe in fake (or more exactly all) psychics? Why do people believe in massive shadowy global conspiracies?
(Now do be clear, I'm asking you to specifically outline the exact reasons why, as they are relevant to the point I wish to make, so please answer the question directly.)

La Petite Fleur

tommy2bad wrote: »

Thats why you cant prove a negative.

Er, you're mixing up the arguments of atheism with facts again.

You can prove a negative, that is a fact.
To say you cannot is factually incorrect, look it up.

Because you cannot prove some negatives YET, that does not mean you cannot prove any negatives.

joseph brand

philologos wrote: »

Again, even if you did for arguments sake show Christianity to be a lie, there's still no good reason why I would be an atheist over anything else.

How honest of you. I say this sincerely.

In light of overwhelming evidence that everything you hold true, and believe to have actually happened (in the bible), turns out to be just a story, like any fairytale, you would still believe.

Well then, THAT is why you are religious. You WANT it so bad. You probably just need a big hug. (Atheists are capable of hugs btw)

Zombrex

One point I will quickly make about evidence, since the topic seems to be moving towards the evidence for God (which tends to be things like lovely sunsets).

By definition a all powerful supernatural being can explain anything. That doesn't mean the existence of anything is evidence for that all powerful supernatural being.

This is a point that is often spectacularly missed by some theists who think they merely have to point to the existence of the universe to demonstrate that their god exists because they only consider their god as capable of producing something. Something exists, must have been our god sure what else could it have been. Well anything really, what evidence is it that it was your god specifically and not something else.

So to any theists brave enough to put forward evidence for their god can you try, to save time, to think a bit over whether it is actually evidence for your god or is it simply evidence for something, anything, that produced the universe.

La Petite Fleur

joseph brand wrote: »

In light of overwhelming evidence that everything you hold true, and believe to have actually happened (in the bible), turns out to be just a story, like any fairytale, you would still believe.

Well then, THAT is why you are religious. You WANT it so bad. You probably just need a big hug. (Atheists are capable of hugs btw)

Nope, if athiesm ever presents a single convincing argument, never mind evidence, never mind proof, I'd have no problems in being an Athiest.

So please post one up if you have it.

philologos

joseph brand wrote: »

How honest of you. I say this sincerely.

In light of overwhelming evidence that everything you hold true, and believe to have actually happened (in the bible), turns out to be just a story, like any fairytale, you would still believe.

Well then, THAT is why you are religious. You WANT it so bad. You probably just need a big hug. (Atheists are capable of hugs btw)

joseph brand: No, my point is that atheism is one viewpoint on this topic over others. As a result, I would suggest that if people were encouraging atheism that they would present a positive argument for it, if they were interested in people becoming atheists that is. My argument is real simple. Even if Christianity is wrong, why is atheism any more true than any other system of thought?

In your case, you are an atheist simply because you weren't bothered to look into anything else from what I can tell of your posts. You've not even considered Christianity, which is why I think that your criticism of Christianity is destined to be poor.

While that is still valid, you don't get to criticise me for confirmation bias.

King Mob

La Petite Fleur wrote: »

Er, you're mixing up the arguments of atheism with facts again.

You can prove a negative, that is a fact.
To say you cannot is factually incorrect, look it up.

Because you cannot prove some negatives YET, that does not mean you cannot prove any negatives.

I think it would be more accurate to say that you can't prove a negative but you can falsify a prediction.

To use an example that someone mentioned take the proposed planet Vulcan which was thought to have an orbit inside Mercury's.
You could state the positive claim that "Vulcan exists" or you could make the negative claim that "Vulcan does not exist."
Now for the first statement you could provide supporting evidence such as direct observations of the planet which detail it's orbit. But what evidence could you supply for the second one? "Vulcan has not been observed" is not solid evidence, though it does point out a lack in the positive argument.

However in this case, since Vulcan was not observed (it being proposed as a way to explain the odd orbit of Mercury) we need other evidence to separate it from total fantasy.
And to do this, we must try to build a theoretical model and make some verifiable predictions about it.
So using the observed oddities of Mercury's orbit we try to work out what size, mass and orbit Vulcan would have to explain the oddities then use that to figure out what we would expect to find. For example we work out how long it's orbit would be and where we might find the planet (which is how we found Neptune.)
However for Vulcan, none of the predictions worked. Vulcan was never observed where it was supposed to be and the math never quite worked out. So the predictions were falsified.
But the final nail in the idea's coffin was when a new theory came along to explain to oddness of Mercury's orbit. Relativity made several predictions regarding how gravity would work in greater detail than Newton's gravity and these predictions were spot on.

So the was never any positive evidence supplied for the claim that "Vulcan does not exist", but rather that the positive claim that " Vulcan exists" was never supported by evidence, had all it's predictions be falsified and was supplanted by a theory that explained the facts better, more simply and had it's predictions verified.
So the correct stance would be that: "There is nothing to suggest that the planet Vulcan exists."

Zombrex

La Petite Fleur wrote: »

Nope, if athiesm ever presents a single convincing argument, never mind evidence, never mind proof, I'd have no problems in being an Athiest.

So please post one up if you have it.

Human's have a natural instinctive tendency to imagine supernatural agents operating in the natural world, both structuring and effecting the natural world. This allows humans to process the natural world around them using the same mental systems they have evolved to process human to human interaction, cutting down on the amount of mental activity the brain has to perform to produce a coherent understandable mental model of the world around them. In actuality these supernatural agents are not really there, but humans find it easier to imagine they are than have to process the world as it really is, a series of massively parallel systems with millions of interdependent variables. Far easier to believe X happened because supernatural agent Y wanted it to happen.

All of this is supported by research on human behavior, including research on how humans behave when stressed or attempting to process larges amounts of information about the world around them (they revert to this sort of thinking), and on children who will imagine these agents with little to no promoting, often assigning elaborate stories to them.

Convinced?

La Petite Fleur

Zombrex wrote: »

. . .Far easier to believe X happened because supernatural agent Y wanted it to happen. . . .

. . . Convinced?

Sorry nope, but thanks for trying.

I'm a lover of the sciences, and I don't look to religion to explain the fine details of the physical, thats where science comes in, and true religion does not clash with science.

Pop up another one there.