Is God real?
Could God be a man-made concept? There is no definitive proof that god exists and different cultures portray gods differently, yet most people believe in some form of higher power. Could this be an idea created by people to give them a sense of purpose or is there really a higher power that we have just yet to fully discover?
Comments (178)
What other real thing do you need to ask that question about?
Justice, Britain, Manhood, Oddness, etc. etc. etc.
It certainly could be. There are already a number of threads on this, some of them on the front page. It would help if you gave some perspective to your question.
It's man-made. Study anthropology, history, psychology and sociology and it will show a very common pattern of human behavior. Until proven, we can't even be sure there is something outside of our reality that is a God but who don't interact or knows about us, which puts us in the John Wisdom gardener analogy. The commonalities among those who believe and rationalize that belief is that they don't have enough knowledge of how our brain process reality around us and therefore do not pay attention to when they fall victim of such behaviors and thoughts that would be considered delusional in any study of them and their psychology.
Any rational standpoint would at least start at this conclusion and work from there. Any other position results in a fallacy or bias-based line of arguments since any other conclusion relies on assumptions and belief itself.
Those aren't real...
Perhaps they aren't. But clearly some people ask it of them.
19 Jesus said, “There was a certain rich man who was splendidly clothed in purple and fine linen and who lived each day in luxury. 20 At his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus who was covered with sores. 21 As Lazarus lay there longing for scraps from the rich man’s table, the dogs would come and lick his open sores.
22 “Finally, the poor man died and was carried by the angels to sit beside Abraham at the heavenly banquet. The rich man also died and was buried, 23 and he went to the place of the dead There, in torment, he saw Abraham in the far distance with Lazarus at his side.
24 “The rich man shouted, ‘Father Abraham, have some pity! Send Lazarus over here to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue. I am in anguish in these flames.’
25 “But Abraham said to him, ‘Son, remember that during your lifetime you had everything you wanted, and Lazarus had nothing. So now he is here being comforted, and you are in anguish.26 And besides, there is a great chasm separating us. No one can cross over to you from here, and no one can cross over to us from there.’
27 “Then the rich man said, ‘Please, Father Abraham, at least send him to my father’s home.28 For I have five brothers, and I want him to warn them so they don’t end up in this place of torment.’
29 “But Abraham said, ‘Moses and the prophets have warned them. Your brothers can read what they wrote.’
30 “The rich man replied, ‘No, Father Abraham! But if someone is sent to them from the dead, then they will repent of their sins and turn to God.’
31 “But Abraham said, ‘If they won’t listen to Moses and the prophets, they won’t be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead.’”
And will I believe the bible is not evidence, it is till good for uncovering God's nature.
I do say that while still keeping in mind the fact that the math doesnt add up. The chance that us as a species are on this planet with water and land and the perfect difference from the sun is for me, just to much to be considered a coincidence. Therefore I do believe a supreme or divine power must have interfered with our creation. Yet if this thing is "God" that can debated for a lifetime.
That's not how probability works though. You cannot arrive at conclusions about probabilities if all information you have about an event is that it occurred once. The necessary information simply isn't there, and no mathematics will reveal it.
"numbers.."
Are you saying numbers are real?
We need to frame a broader question to arrive at a reasonable answer.
Is God
1. Invented (your question)
2. Discovered
3. Both
4. None of the above
Some people would have us believe it's option 1 which amounts to saying God isn't real.
Others think it's option 2 i.e. God is real and we found out.
We could say it's option 3 which means God exists but we've assigned human-created attributes to it.
I don't know what option 4 even looks like.
You are mixing two people's responses. I asked if you think numbers are real. Numbers are ideas just like God.
Quoting Mr Phil O'Sophy
Neither did I. I asked. So,I'm not sure what point you think you've made. Would you mind clarifying.
So, my first response to the question:
Quoting Bloginton Blakley
The point here is that no one questions the reality of a fist in the face.
We often do question ideas.
God exists only in the realm of ideas. There is no fist in the face from the idea of god, just a lot of arguments and belief.
Imagine this:
I get to use only ideas. All I can do is stand there and think...you get to use your fists.
Wanna trade sides?
Should the human allow it.
Your honest response makes my point quite nicely. No idealism, just a silly idea pie in the face... and you did not respond with idealism but as if you were being made light of.
No one argues the reality of a fist in the face, not even idealists.
Nope, I'm simply not just assuming god exists anywhere other than where I know god exists. Just because I can dream up farting Popsicles, does that mean that everyone should assume they exist in reality?
Just because people have dreamed up a god, why should I think that idea exists any differently than any other idea?
So are gods.
If you meant fictitious, and not the very ironic factitious...
:)
Of course that is the narrative how is a priest gonna have any credibility if he tells everyone that he made up god to give himself authority?
Does not neither. ;) You are just expecting me to treat the idea of god differently than the idea of unicorns and fairies... Why should I... until God shows up?
While no one can state as a matter of pure fact, that either unicorns or God does or does not exist, the philosophical arguments for or against their respective existence is quite different.
i would argue it is reasonable to believe that unicorns ( flying horses with a horn in its forehead) do not exists on earth, because we know something about what horses look like, we know something about what it means to fly, and we know something about horns and foreheads. We can say with some amount of reasonable certainty that if we saw a unicorn, we would recognize it as such. Next we have looked in a lot of places, for a real long time, and we have not seen one. There for, I will conclude it is reasonable to believe there is no such things as unicorns.
Now for God, i would say that both the CA and some of the design arguments are reasonable. Specifically since big bang science the CA has strengthened, eliminating the " who created the creator argument" So while neither argument speak directly to the characteristics of such a being - the idea of a necessary, non - contingent being or an intelligent designer is reasonable.
now are the counter arguments that God does not exist that so powerful as to outweigh these arguments that make them moot? I would say not. The only arguments i know of are the argument from evil, which has a reasonable counter argument of skeptical theism, and various no- seeum arguments that are weak.
So I would conclude that it is without any reasonable basis to lump the possibility of unicorns as being equal to the possibility of such a thing as God.
the problem with "no-seeum" argument is an incredibly long line of times they were wrong.
Until we find such a thing as a virus there is no reason to believe one exists -
Until we find such a thing as an atom there is no reason to believe one exists -
Until we find such a thing as a quark there is no reason to believe one exists
you get the point there are thousands of things that did not exist in until they did. All our not being aware of something proves, is we are unaware of it.
This is why you don't find the Loch Ness monster or Bigfoot in the scientific record.
I think before we discuss this, we should know what God is? 'What is God'?
As humans view, God is a being/entity which is immortal, omnipotent, can create and destroy, has ability of telepathy, Psychokinesis and a lot more. In short God is all powerful who is beyond our realm .
With our limited thinking, we can't grasp the exact concept of the whole word 'God' as we can only understand/learn about what we see/feel. We haven't even understood perfectly how a human body works. Even though we know about a lot of things yet none has completely perfected in anything. Hence we are incapable of understanding what God is, as of now.
When it comes to science, I see God as a higher intelligence who have exceeded us in millions of light years in terms of technology, intelligence, capable of understanding how the universe works and surpassed all physical and mental capabilities. Higher intelligence as I said can be a being from another planet who has been around, way before our species was born on this planet.
However, I do know something very sure, there was something that triggered our whole existence because everything we see around us are well organized and placed in order. Flower petals in Fibonacci series is one such example.
So what is God to you? If we understand what God is, it is easier to know whether God exists or not or else the whole debate is useless.
Except no one believed any of them until they were conceived as viable hypotheses and when observed and tested, confirmed as true. You also Texas Sharpshot-picked things that were proven, while there's an even longer list of things that we today laugh at that people believed.
You cannot hypothesis God since no argument for any kind of God leads to a notion of specifically God as the end of that hypothesis. All of those had a clear hypothesis, but everything about God arguments is wild assumptions and individual concepts.
Burden of proof applies always. An argument that uses the "if you cannot disprove it, it's real" is a flawed argument and it's why Russel had such an impact on science to force it to stick to truths and not fantasies or pseudoscience.
Your post reads like a conspiracy theory rant, specifically because it's the argument they use. The conclusion of what you say; would mean we can just give up any kind of attempt at discussing the world and universe since everyone can neatly stick to their own world-view and beliefs. I see no room for such nonsense in philosophy.
There is quite a lot of evidence for God:
1) Non-causal cosmological argument, see:
- https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/5077/time-has-a-start/p1
- https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/5059/an-argument-for-gods-existence/p1
2) Causal cosmological argument (Prime mover etc...)
3) Fine tuning of the universe
4) The Big Bang
5) Why is there something rather than nothing?
There is no evidence against God that I'm aware of. Starting at 50% for an unknown boolean proposition 'Is there a God?', I've assigned a probability that each of the above means the existence of God and then combined the probabilities:
1) 50% + 50% x 50% = 75%
2) 75% + 25% x 25% = 87.5%
3) 87.5% + 12.5% x 75%= 96.9%
4) 96.9% + 3.1% x 50% = 98.5%
5) 98.5% + 1.5% x 25% = 98.9% probability of God
And the Laws of Nature. Do they exist? And if so, where? Show me one!
Right, you can’t show me one. All you can say is, ‘if x is the case, then according to {such and such law}, then y is the predicted outcome’. And furthermore, in many cases you’d be right! But, in what sense does that law exist? How can we know what it is, aside from the predictions it makes? What is the ‘ontological status’ of ‘natural laws’?
Here’s the thing: there might be an answer to that question, but that answer is not known to, and possibly forever outside the scope of, science itself.
No evidence of any of these concludes that there is a God. That's an assumption made before the conclusion.Begging the question, Burden of proof, false cause, Texas sharpshooter, ambiguity, anecdotal, post-rationalize special pleading, composition/division - are all fallacies that needs to be avoided throughout all arguments. You can't ignore them. While confirmation bias, dunning-kruger, belief bias, the backfire effect, fundamental attribution error, anchoring are all biases to avoid.
Quoting Devans99
Burden of proof applies to the one making the claim. Read Russel and stop ignoring counter-arguments.
Quoting Devans99
You cannot combine probabilities like that and how do you even calculate these probabilities, you are just pulling numbers out of the air to support your conclusion. I don't know how many fallacies this includes, but at least the Gambler's fallacy.
I think you are trying too hard to prove your conclusion without actually doing proper arguments for them.
None of that is really my point.
My point is that I have no reason to treat the god idea any differently than I do FSM idea.
They conclude that there is a creator and that is my basic definition of God. If you can point out any specific example of a fallacy in my argument, I'd be happy to discuss it.
Quoting Christoffer
I have estimated the probability that each piece of evidence on its own points to a creator of the universe:
1) Non-causal cosmological argument 50%
2) Causal cosmological argument (Prime mover etc...) 25%
3) Fine tuning of the universe 75%
4) The Big Bang 50%
5) Why is there something rather than nothing? 25%
These are just estimates; obviously feel free to plug in your own numbers. The method however is sound:
You start at 50% probability for the question 'is there a creator/god? - IE because no evidence for/against has been considered yet. The first step of the calculation then is:
1) (start at 50% percent) + (probability of Non-causal cosmological argument 50%) x (50% remaining)
1) 50% + 50% x 50% = 75%
So the logic is, you start at 50% sure there is a God, then in the 50% 'remaining' where you think there is no God. Then you allow for the first piece of evidence, giving 50% + 50% x 50% = 75% sure there is a God. This is repeated for each separate piece of evidence to give approximately 99% sure there is a God.
None of them conclude there to be a creator. They could just as well point to an interdimensional stone that hit another interdimensional stone and the blast resulted in our four-dimensional spacetime through Big Bang. It's been stated over and over throughout many threads of discussion why it's flawed to assume the truth of the conclusion when doing the premises, that's begging the question. And all the post-rationalization when burden of proof is asked for falls under any of the others I mentioned.
The truth is, you cannot conclude there to be a creator/God out of any such arguments since that is about attaching an assumption to that conclusion that has no relation to the actual premises. No flawed logic or ambiguity fallacy can save arguments from that fact.
If you want to prove the existence of God you can only use those argument's conclusions as part of the premises for a new argument. The problem with this is that there are no new arguments that hold up to the current knowledge in science and/or logical calculations so there is no way to present an argument with premises that makes logic and rational sense to the conclusion that there is a creator/God. They all fall flat which is stated over and over when they pop up on this forum. You cannot state that the existence of God is true, at closest you can state probability, but even there your numbers are way off.
Quoting Devans99
You're just making these numbers up. You estimate without any real logic applied.
Quoting Devans99
How can you even calculate this probability? Based on what? Is there a 50% probability that there is a teapot flying in space, just because it's unable to be confirmed? This is not how you calculate probability in any logical or reasonable way. Your other numbers are also pulled out of thin air based on your own belief, not any rational calculation.
And you can't stack up probability like that either, it's flawed math, Gambler's fallacy. Especially when some of the points don't even point to any probability of a creator/God, like Big Bang. How is that a 50% probability of the existence of a creator/God?
Apply a little more reason to all of this, it makes no sense whatsoever. Look into the fallacies and biases, look over your math. You're just spamming posts with the same calculation without really listening to the counter-arguments.
Then where did the stone come from? What created it? My argument (https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/5077/time-has-a-start/p1) concludes that the cause of any such stone must be non-natural. Its a very simple argument: if creation was natural and time was infinite then there would be infinite creations; there is only one creation. That rules out stones. That means a creator.
Quoting Christoffer
Even if you use real low numbers; there is still a high chance that there is a creator.
Quoting Christoffer
No because we have evidence that teapots do not fly and you are allowing for that in your probability estimate the full calculation is:
1. What is the probability of an object flying?
2. Start at 50% for an unknown boolean proposition for which we have admitted no evidence
3. First piece of evidence: object is a teapot
4. Revised probability calculation: 50% x 0% = 0%
So whenever you start with no evidence, you start at a 50% estimate. The question 'is there a creator' we start at 50% because we have not taken any evidence for/against and it's a boolean sample space that underlies the question.
Quoting Christoffer
Was the big bang natural or non-natural event? Without taking any further evidence, you would start at 50% yes, 50% no. Then we look at the very unnatural way that space is expanding; this is no ordinary explosion; there is something unnnatural about it. Then we further consider then universe had very close to zero entropy at the Big Bang... highly unnatural. So actually the chances the Big Bang were unnatural, IE a creator, are probably much higher than 50%
Quoting Christoffer
I'm listening to your counterarguments its just they are not convincing...
You are missing the point, I'm saying that there might be something outside of spacetime that isn't a sentient creator. A starting point or a point that always was; that is dead as a stone and just as irrational as calling a real stone, creator or God. The essential thing is that you assume causality to work before Big Bang, but we have nothing that proves or disproves if there even was causality before. This assumption makes any causality/first-cause-argument flawed. It's ignorant of scientific theories and ignorant of rationality and logic.
Quoting Devans99
The stone was a metaphorical idea of an interdimensional stone that does not apply to our universe physical laws. Have you ever conceptualized a tesseract? Now imagine beyond that level of complexity with unknown properties of something that we might not even define as matter, but still not sentient.
The "time has a start" argument assumes causality to be exactly the same after Big Bang as before it. It's an assumption not proved by the argument. That's it. You need to provide real scientific data on what was before Big Bang in order to support a conclusion that demands causality and laws of nature functioning as spacetime before Big Bang. If not, it could just as well be circular; space reaches a stretching point and inflate/collapse into a small point and then explodes again into Big Bang, infinite iterations without a starting point, circular. The point being, you cannot assume things when making a conclusion, therefore you are only doing assumptions and guesses, i.e fallacies.
Quoting Devans99
No, you don't, please read Russel's analogy and understand it before posting. It's frustrating when you don't understand the fallacies your making or haven't read why the fallacies are fallacies and why they render your arguments wrong.
Quoting Devans99
How is that even a logical calculation? You're just making these calculations up. Stop the pseudoscience nonsense.
Quoting Devans99
No, you have no probability of either since you have no idea how to define the framing of the question since you don't know what was before. Probability needs data and you have none.
Quoting Devans99
What? You cannot define it as unnatural based on not understanding physics or know anything about the questions unanswered. You are doing assumptions all over the place to fit your narrative.
Quoting Devans99
How so? You need to know what came before and what's beyond our current dimensions, you need to solve the unification theory, you need to know how entropy behaves at heat death, you need to know what enabled zero entropy. You cannot brand it as unnatural in the way you do just because you believe it to be.
Quoting Devans99
No, it doesn't. You don't even care to apply yourself, you are making fallacies all over the place.
Quoting Devans99
And you are not even making sense. There's no logic to your calculations, there's no rational understanding of how to verify or falsify your argument and you are writing fallacy after fallacy.
Do you truly understand burden of proof? Do you truly understand begging the question? Do you truly understand false cause? I can go on.
You are not even trying to take these fallacies into consideration, you are just spamming the same thing over and over. Apply verification/falsification, actual logic and apply more effort into understanding the counter-arguments before writing. And stop the tu quoque fallacy and apply yourself.
No, you are missing the point; any natural starting point for the Big Bang (with infinite time) implies infinite Big Bangs. So the Big Bang was not natural.
How on earth could a non-sentient creator create something like spacetime? It clearly requires intelligence. Plus all the signs of fine-tuning for life in the universe (which I don't want to really go through again) are not accounted for without intelligence (likewise I don't want to have to refute the WAP and SAP again).
I do not assume causality to work before Big Bang. If causality does not apply before the Big Bang, that falls under the 'Can get something from nothing' axiom. IE it would happen infinite time with infinite time if it were a natural event. So my argument is free from 'cause and effect' as an axiom.
Quoting Christoffer
I think my argument is still sufficiently general to cover this; can you be more specific?
Quoting Christoffer
'Nobody can prove that there is not between the Earth and Mars a china teapot revolving in an elliptical orbit, but nobody thinks this sufficiently likely to be taken into account in practice. I think the Christian God just as unlikely'
I understand the analogy and agree with it; the Christian God is very unlikely because we have evidence that (for example) omnipotence is very unlikely. I am not arguing for a Christian God.
Quoting Christoffer
Your math sucks. I have a 1st class in math.
Quoting Christoffer
Yes but my point is; in the absence of evidence/data you assume a normal distribution. Your statistics sucks as well.
Quoting Christoffer
I'm using logic and maths. You are using waffle.
Well they exist in the natural habitat of laws, books. And now also on the internet. :wink:
Quoting Wayfarer
Sure, but I think it's also obvious that, e.g. laws aren't real in the same sense as God is, or could be.Quoting Devans99
How do you know there is only one creation? You know there is one creation. It doesn't follow that there is only one.
Quoting Christoffer
I have a nitpick here: burden of proof is a legal concept. The scientific equivalent would be a null hypothesis, or more generally parsimony. In general philosophy there is only the soundness of arguments.
Quoting Devans99
This clearly is not clear at all.
Quoting Devans99
It seems relevant to point out that thought experiments are not evidence. That we can imagine various probabilities doesn't mean those probabilities are real.
Quoting Devans99
No, in the absence of evidence you assume nothing at all. You only assume a normal distribution for cases where you have evidence that there is a distribution, but you don't know the details.
See the "doomsday argument" for an illustration how assuming a normal distribution leads to an absurd result.
If creation was natural, its has a non-zero probability of occurring. If time was infinite, there would therefore be infinite instances of creation and we would have reached infinite density by now.
Quoting Echarmion
So given a toss of a coin, which would you assume:
- It comes up tails 100%
- It comes up heads 100%
- It comes up heads/tails 50%/50%
It has to be the third surely???
- 100% certain no creator
- 100% certain there is a creator
- 50% / 50%
If we have no evidence either way?
Unless energy is conserved. In that case, creation just infinitely repeats itself, and we would never notice.
Quoting Devans99
Sure, but that's not a "no evidence" situation. I know what a coin is. I know what "tossing a coin" means. I know there is a finite number of results for a coin toss, and a finite number of coin tosses, and I can therefore apply a normal distribution. These constraints aren't given when we talk about general cosmology.
Quoting Devans99
We shouldn't assume anything unless we have a reason to make assumptions. God is not a coin we're tossing. How do you figure there is a probability distribution in the first place?
What is the chance you are in the first 30% of all humans who will ever have lived? According to you, it's 30%, and there is therefore a 70% chance that humanity will die out within a few generations.
This would mean matter/energy has existed ‘forever’ which is impossible; the matter/energy would have no coming into being so could not exist; it is logically incomplete without a temporal start. For example, one can't exist without being born or the universe could not exist without the moment of the Big Bang.
Imagine a clock that has always existed. It can’t read infinity as it’s impossible to count to infinity and it can’t read any lessor number as that would be incompatible with ‘always existed’. So such a clock cannot ‘always exist’. If a clock can’t ‘always exist’, nothing else can either.
If something always existed, it has no start. If it has no start (call that time t), so time t+1 is not defined, nor is t+2 (because t+1) is missing. All the way to the end of time, it’s all undefined.
We can also argue against this model by arguing against an infinite regress of (say) particle collisions (arranged by time). With infinite time, the number of collisions must be greater than any number, which is a contradiction (can’t be a number AND greater than any number).
Quoting Echarmion
The reason I need to make an assumption is I want to calculate the probability there is a creator.
Quoting Echarmion
All unknown questions have answers. So there is a boolean probability distribution for unknown questions. If you were given a list of 1000 unknown boolean questions, would you approximate:
- The answer is 'no' for all 1000
- The answer is 'yes' for all 1000
- The answer is 'yes' for 500
So I have to start somewhere with the question of 'is there a creator?'. If I start at 100% no; I'm showing bias against there being a creator. If I start at 100% yes; I'm showing bias for there being a creator. So I start at 50%/50%.
What other?
Please present a logical argument as to why things need to "come into being" in order to exist. I don't know that I was born, for example, from my perspective, I have always existed. But let's not get distracted by metaphors: what is your actual argument?
Quoting Devans99
Why would a clock that has always existed read infinity? Actual clocks don't actually start at the beginning of time and count up. And even if they did, that I cannot perceive or understand such a clock doesn't mean it cannot exist.
Quoting Devans99
Infinity is not itself a contradiction. We can clearly calculate using infinities, even infinities of infinities. That we cannot assign a number to infinity doesn't make the concept incoherent.
Quoting Devans99
No, that's the reason you want to make an assumption. You're not faced with an uncertain future event, you're faced with metaphysical uncertainty.
Quoting Devans99
Ha! I look forward to seeing you prove that.
Quoting Devans99
Note that you are presupposing a finite number of boolean questions that have one and only one answer, and the answer can be known. Where do you take these assumptions from?
Quoting Devans99
Or you start at "I don't know".
I have presented 4. Please present a logical argument that things can exist without coming into being.
Quoting Echarmion
It's a thought experiment. The point is such a clock is logically impossible. But being a clock is possible. So it must be that 'existing forever' is impossible.
Quoting Echarmion
Its not a number and it is a contradiction:
?+1=?
implies
1=0
Quoting Echarmion
Exactly, you start with I don't know; ie not 100% yes, not 100% no, but equidistant between the opposites: 50%/50%.
You are still concluding it to be unnatural without being able to apply data on what is natural or not about it. I.e begging the question.
Quoting Devans99
How can you draw that conclusion? You answer a question about something you have no idea about, where's the logic here? You make assumptions based on your belief here.
Begging the question
Quoting Devans99
A flawed argument cannot support another flawed argument to enforce an assumed conclusion. It's like fallacy inception.
Quoting Devans99
No, because'Can get something from nothing' still implies that you can define exactly what was before. Can you disprove that the Big Bang wasn't a quantum probability within infinite time, therefore 100% probable to occur instantly? You can't disprove or disprove anything without data on what was before Big Bang. "Nothing" cannot be applied to the reasoning either since you need to define what "nothing" is based on nothing more than assumptions of how to define what was before Big Bang.
Quoting Devans99
No, because you don't know the properties of pre-Big Bag so you cannot define anything at all.
Quoting Devans99
No, it isn't. The specifics and my point is that every kind of definition of what was before Big Bang is pure speculation and even the properties of pre-Big Bang cannot be quantified into any kind of logic if you don't have knowledge and data of pre-Big Bang.
Your argument is equivalent of a scientist saying that he is certain of what was pre-Big Bang, no serious scientist would ever make such a claim before we have proper data and math to cover it, so why would you be certain of anything and how could you use that uncertainty as a premise in your argument? It's seriously flawed.
Quoting Devans99
Then move on to John Wisdom's gardener analogy.
Then answer this:
If you have such an undefined definition of what God is that it could be considered "whatever", then the metaphorical interdimensional stone could be the God you are arguing for, then why call it God at all if not to apply you own belief to an object of no sentience?
Then:
If you have God as undefined, but sentient, you have defined it with at least one property, that of sentience, which has no support in the argument you are making. Therefore, you assume it to have sentience out of your belief and will that this is true, not out of any evidence for it.
There is no evidence at all if the evidence is an assumption based on flawed reasoning.
Quoting Devans99
Are you using yourself as the authority in an appeal to authority fallacy?
Nice narcissism there. You apply your own invented probability number and use it based on how you want it to work in the equation.
Quoting Devans99
You are drawing a true conclusion out of a probability value based on your own invented values of each points probability. With some points being "Big Bang 50%"; of what? God? It's flawed. Probability needs data on the outcome so that it can be quantified. Since we don't know anything about pre-Big Bang, you have no data to put into your calculation. Therefore you cannot calculate any type of probability for God.
No, you are using your belief as groundwork for your conclusion. Logic and math cannot prove anything before Big Bang, you need physics to do that and no physicist would ever say they are certain or have a probability of any kind of truth about what is before Big Bang since they have insufficient data to calculate this.
Therefore math and logic cannot prove anything related to a sentient god. It can only provide probabilities based on the laws of physics since scientific theories are proven true and can be applied within the calculated probabilities.
Therefore nothing can be proved about what came before Big Bang and anything concluded about
pre-Big Bang is only speculation and assumptions only.
There's your waffle.
You appear to hint that something had to think that out, but that is less likely than nature adapting certain traits because it's the traits that over time survived.
One such trait could be to grow like the fibonacci series.
They have to grow in some kind of series, they can't just grow completely random, well some things grow quite randomly, but if something is to survive it can't only be randomly.
Whatever way nature would grow in would form some kind of series. So it's doesn't show you anything other than that life often repeats some patterns.
There are millions of things that doesn't grow in the fibonacci series.
Contributing everything to a creator has never throughout history given us an answer to anything. Nothing.
Everything that at one point was attributed to God has been as our knowledge expanded proven to be caused by something else.
You become sick, it's not god's will, someone sneezed on you and you caught a virus.
It's a storm. The god or gods must be angry.
No it's reactions in nature.
If a god existed these thing would had turned out to really be gods will.
That unicorn could exist is infinitely more likely than that a single God does and if such a God does, cares what we do
I will give you a thought experiment.
Lets say God created this as a simulation. The purpose is to see how good people behave, and let the God people come to his Kingdom.
Now imagine you created a simulation similar to the Sims but much more advanced for AI personas to test what ai personas you could trust if you took their AI and put it into real physical bodies.
If some of these AI personas started to convince themselves that God existed and they had you on their side and started wars with other AI would you want them? No. Because if they believe that a higher being justified their action but actually you didn't, than once you 'manufactured' them as a real robot or physical lifeform they would do the same in this world.
You might even put in a faked religion, a myth for them, something impossible to prove, just to see what they do. And those who believe without evidence you would consider gullible and wouldn't want to put into real powerful robot bodies, since you wouldn't want anyone to trick them.
Lets say some AIs in your simulation play hockey. One of the teams believes in a God, and they pray that God will be with them.
What does that mean that they want a God on their side?
Do they want you or this God they believe in to intervene and help the puck get into the goal when it's a 50% chance that it would miss otherwise? If so, aren't they actually asking for this being to cheat?
They might because, they want help and they want you to help them but not the other side. Thus they want an special advantage that the others should not have simply for believing in something that they really cannot prove.
Getting treated better than the other team outside of their own performance would be cheating.
Not all but some prayers would be considered as a try to cheat. To get advantages without actually doing anything.
Thus they are more selfish than the other team that doesn't ask to get special treatment.
And thus they are not the AI versions you would turn into physical beings in this world.
So with that I would like to prove that if a god exist you are probably more likely to go to heaven if you don't believe in that God, because otherwise what is it that says that you wouldn't continue that behaviour in the heaven and believe that a even higher being created that heaven?
If God appears to you as a normal person in that heaven.
Just as you would appear a normal person to the AI if you took it out of the simulation and into a physical body?
Nothing.
Burden of proof applies to deduction, no? If the conclusion is to be considered true it needs full support without fallacies or biases. An induction argument requires probability. But if the argument is a true conclusion that there is a probability of a specific number, it's a deductive argument about the probability. If the proof of this deduction is premises which themselves are speculation, undefined or based on incomplete/faulty arguments, the deduction cannot be valid.
But Null hypothesis also works for the claim of a sentient God. It's a null hypothesis, but you cannot calculate a probability of that null hypothesis based on flawed data and you need to adress your claim as a null hypothesis.
I know a coin, I know each side, I know what happens when I flip it and gravity pulls it to the ground. Therefore I can define the probability of a coin toss as 50/50.
God exist or God does not exist is not 50/50 since we don't have a coin, we don't have sides, we don't have the gravity or the flip.
Quoting Devans99
You cannot create a fantasy and apply a probability to it. I cannot say "I think there might be a unicorn" and based solely on that idea conclude there to be a 50/50 chance of it existing. That's total nonsense.
Isn't that better described as validity?
Quoting Christoffer
It does, I agree. I just wanted to point out that "burden of proof" is not general for every debate. It has a specific function: to resolve a non-liquet situation. Because in a legal case, you need an answer. Just like within the scientific method, you need to predict a result.
But for philosophy in general, there is no such need. "I don't know" is a valid answer.
Isn't that dependent on the type of claim and argument? A deduction must be true, an induction must be a probability, but both need valid premises. Otherwise, it's just ranting from a chaotic mind and everything comes down to "this is my opinion", "this is that person's opinion".
Philosophy should be about dialectics, pointing out flaws in others arguments and reading objections to your own in order to fine-tune the argument towards a valid deductive or inductive conclusion.
Maybe I'm just leaning towards analytical philosophy more than continental? Continental is interesting and thought-provoking and I like it, but when doing a dialectic it rarely holds up if not supported by actual evidence and science.
No I am using maths. Time is infinite. I define a natural event as one that has a non-zero probability of occurring. Infinity times any non-zero number is infinity. Hence an infinite number of Big Bangs and infinite matter density. So the Big Bang was not a natural event or time is finite.
Quoting Christoffer
Because I've established that the cause of the universe was non-naturally occurring or time is finite. Both of which imply a creator.
Quoting Christoffer
There are no flaws in the fine-tuning argument.
Quoting Christoffer
But my argument addresses what happens in the case of both:
- Can get something from nothing
- Can't get something from nothing
IE 100% of cases. Did you read the OP?
If quantum fluctuations cause a matter increase on average then we get infinite density with infinite time so it can't be quantum fluctuations that caused the Big Bang.
Quoting Christoffer
But what properties do we need to know? My argument makes no assumptions at all about the properties of the universe pre Big Bang. Maybe you did not read the OP. The point is if you make no assumptions about the state of the universe pre-big bang, you can still reason about it.
Quoting Christoffer
A natural creation implies multiple creations, so the creator must be unnatural; IE a zero percent probability of naturally occurring, IE God. Plus fine tuning for life of the universe/multiverse is impossible without an intelligent creator.
Quoting Christoffer
I made conservative estimates on the percentages. It is a systematic and mathematically correct way to carry out a probability meta-analysis. At least I'm making an effect instead of throwing my hands up. 'I don't know' is not an informative answer.
Quoting Christoffer
Point to exactly where I am using 'belief' in my argument please. I believe in logic and maths and nothing else. 1+1=2 applies before and after the big bang so yes, maths and logic can make statements about what happened before the Big Bang (as long as no axioms about the pre-Big Bang period are used).
Quoting Christoffer
But the question 'Is there a creator?' does exist within logic and is fair game.
Quoting Christoffer
I have defined these terms; again:
- Natural events have a non-zero probability of occurring naturally given sufficient time
- Unnatural events have a zero probability of occurring naturally however much time
So we can use these definitions to reason about the pre-Big Bang universe.
Quoting Christoffer
Fine tuning is not a fallacy; there are about 20 physical constants that if changed would result in no life in the universe.
I have not in my argument made any assumptions about the pre-Big Bang period. I have not even assumed gravity, the standard model, cause and effect. So as there are no assumptions about the pre-Big Bang period it is OK to reason about it.
Quoting Christoffer
Where then would you suggest I start with a probability analysis if it is not 50%/50% ?
You're ignoring half my posts. I wonder why.
Quoting Devans99
You have repeated your claim 4 times. Anyways here is an argument:
It is possible that things can exist without coming into being if it's possible to conceive of existence without also conceiving the existing coming into being.
If coming into being is a necessary part of existence, then it is necessary to conceive as something not existing in order to conceive of it as existing (since coming into being is changing from one to the other).
I can conceive of myself as existing, but not as not existing. Therefore, things can exist without coming into being.
Quoting Devans99
It's begging the question. Your premise already includes the conclusion.
Quoting Devans99
No, it does not imply that, because infinity is not a number.
Quoting Devans99
You can not assign probabilities to everything.
Quoting Christoffer
Sure.
Quoting Christoffer
Yes.
Quoting Christoffer
This is one form of philosophy, the systematic kind. There are disputes on whether or not this approach is the "one true" philosophy. I personally much prefer the systematic approach, but I don't know that it's the only valid one.
Nice try but its impossible. Being able to conceive of something does not make it possible; it has to be 'logically conceive' of something and existing forever is not logical. Also I can conceive of you not existing - there was a time when you were not born.
Quoting Echarmion
Right, so that means my original proof that an infinite regress is impossible holds:
'We can also argue against this model by arguing against an infinite regress of (say) particle collisions (arranged by time). With infinite time, the number of collisions must be greater than any number, which is a contradiction (can’t be a number AND greater than any number).'
That's the problem right there.
Quoting Devans99
Not if you began with "I define".
Assumptions assumptions assumptions.
Quoting Devans99
You might read the counter-arguments by Mark Colyvan, Jay Garfield, Graham Priest, William H. Jefferys, Elliott Sober, Robert L. Park, Victor Stenger.
Prove their points wrong, I've already given mine. Just saying it has no flaws is uneducated and wrong about the argument. Those people found plenty of flaws, but you are right because... you say so?
Quoting Devans99
You still don't know the properties of things or the properties themselves before Big Bang. So you cannot conclude anything since you are talking about something probably (based on science) outside of spacetime itself. If you cannot define the dimensions, things or properties themselves, you cannot conclude anything, this is fact. You don't know more than the scientific consensus and the scientific theories around, so why argue that you do?
Quoting Devans99
You make an assumption about how it happened, i.e there was a sentient creator, God, that's a pretty big assumption about pre-Big Bang, right? The reasoning you do assumes a sentient God as a property of something you cannot possibly know about at this time and you use that as a value to calculate. Why can't you see this flaw in your reasoning?
Quoting Devans99
You still haven't defined natural and unnatural post your own assumption i.e...
Quoting Devans99
...and even if you validate it as unnatural, it doesn't mean it's God, that is an assumption.
And the fine-tuning argument is still not as valid as you accept it to be. Can you please do some falsification on it? Instead of just Texas Sharp-Shooting everything in your reasoning?
Here's a quote from physicist Robert L. Park:
Then you can go through more falsifying by looking into the names I mentioned above on the matter. Problem is that you accept the fine-tuning argument, therefore you have the assumption of God in your head while making your own argument. That's why it's flawed.
Quoting Devans99
Your calculations do not have anything to do with a sentient God, period. Stop doing a causation/correlation fallacy and make assumptions out of that to conclude nothing that has support in the premises. You are actually not listening to any of the counter-arguments you get, you just decide which assumptions and arguments are correct, then do your calculation based on what you think is correct and conclude that it has a probability without any connection to anything other than your assumptions.
I can not calculate the probability of a unicorn standing in my backyard, but I can calculate the probability of a horse. How is this not crystal clear?
Quoting Devans99
God, a sentient God, it is not a math number or quantifiable, it is your belief it is your unicorn. You are trying to calculate the probability of the existence of a unicorn by applying valid math on made up probability values about a unicorn that you assumed to exist before the calculation of probability. It's pure nonsense. It's not 1+1=2, it's 1+1=[UNICORN]
Quoting Devans99
"Is there a creator?" is a vague question that through logic conclude it to be a sentient God, without nothing more than math.
Quoting Devans99
Even with this reasoning, how can you conclude Big Bang to be unnatural if you don't know the things, properties or properties themselves of what was before Big Bang? How can you define if Big Bang was natural or unnatural when you don't have any data since science has no data on the event themselves?
Quoting Devans99
No, we can't, because you cannot define whether or not it was natural or unnatural at the same time as your definition of natural and unnatural is your own. So you cannot connect it to anything pre-Big Bang.
Quoting Devans99
What does that prove? How can you not just turn that around and say that because the universe evolved these 20 physical constants it enabled life to evolve? There's no connection between any intention of fine-tuning and the natural evolution from these constants to life. You apply the assumption that there can only be these constants if someone intended for life, which is only an assumption and therefore a fallacy. How can you possibly connect the constants to the intention of life? False cause fallacy if I ever saw one. Also, there are 22 known constants, not 20.
Quoting Devans99
A sentient God as a creator is your assumption. Valid conclusions end just after Big Bang, since that's where we are at in science, beyond that is speculation and if you are trying to conclude anything with "sentient God the creator" you are making assumptions about what was before Big Bang. This is crystal clear.
Quoting Devans99
You cannot, because you cannot measure the probability of something that is made up, like a unicorn. If we can prove that there are signs of a unicorn, we can calculate probabilities of them existing. But we cannot use probability to calculate nothing. Since we don't have any idea what came before Big Bang, and since there are no arguments that show signs of any sentience responsible for the universe, we have no properties to calculate. It is essentially like creating a probability calculation for the probability of a unicorn or a teapot in space by saying there's a 50/50 chance there is a teapot in space and a unicorn in my backyard just because I believe there to be one there and one in space. Then demand people to accept my logical calculation out of 50/50 without even explaining how it relates to either teapots or unicorns in any logical and verified way.
At least it demands true arguments without fallacies and biases, everything else is just speculation, regardless of validity as in it's the same as a shepherd seeing a dog that looks like a sheep on a hill far away. He concludes there is a sheep in front of him, when out of his sight, behind the hill the dog stands on there is a real sheep, making his conclusion true, but not correct as an argument.
Systematic and analytical philosophy demands valid premises, that's why I regard continental as thought-provoking, but invalid to make true conclusions from if they cannot be validated through proper arguments.
Definitions are not assumptions.
Quoting Christoffer
My argument does not rely on dimensions. It uses the loosest possible definition of time (I don't assume eternalism or presentism). All it relies on is the presence of 'stuff' (matter/energy).
Quoting Christoffer
I argue that the Big Bang was not natural or time is finite. Both of those are strongly suggestive of a sentient God. Pretty conclusively so when fine-tuning and other evidence is also taken into account.
Its a shockingly efficient design if you ask me; the stars provide the energy, the planets provide the living surfaces. Gravity has to be strong to enable nuclear fusion and hence energy for live. And we have to have radiation else energy would not reach the places life lives. It's inevitable that not all parts of the universe would support life whatever universe design you use.
And the fact that even the atom holds together is a miracle of fine-tuning - how likely is that in an arbitrary (non-fine tuned) universe? I think 99.999% of universes would just have particles endlessly bouncing off each other (no adhesion); nothing close to the amazing complexity of matter we have in our universe (see the periodic table and the compounds... all that diversity from just elections and quarks... and that diversity in matter is required to support life).
Quoting Christoffer
You can calculate the probability of a 'unicorn standing in your back garden' as virtually zero. How has that got anything to do with the probability of 'is there a creator'? Unicorns are magical creatures and magic does not exist. Creators are not magical creatures.
Quoting Christoffer
If I choose to define my creator as my God that is my prerogative.
Quoting Christoffer
Natural things come in a multiplicity, unnatural things are singular.
Quoting Christoffer
The laws of physics do not 'evolve' - there is no selection mechanism. So these constants had to be set a precise values initially in order for life to occur.
I do not assume that 'there can only be these constants if someone intended for life' - I assigned it a 75% probability that fine-tuning implies a creator. A very conservative estimate, some people put in much higher than that.
So you keep saying, but you have yet to make an actual argument.
Quoting Devans99
What is the difference between conceiving and logically conceiving? Why is existing forever not logical?
By the way, doesn't God exist forever according to you?
Quoting Devans99
Sure, you can, but I cannot, since I cannot leave my own perspective.
I can also argue thusly:
1) if it were impossible for things to exist without being first coming into being, everything that exists must have come into being.
2) it follows from 1) that there must have been a state prior to anything coming into being, i.e. an absence of any existence.
3) Coming into being requires changing from one state to another.
4) change requires that something either changes by itself (intrinsic) or is changed by interaction with something else (extrinsic).
5) Since 2) and 4) contradict each other, 1) must be false.
Quoting Devans99
No, because infinity is not a number, and hence your final sentence doesn't hold.
Quoting Devans99
How do you know the constants could have been any different from what they are?
We can conceive of infinity; but we can't logically conceive of infinity (or not for very long before we hit one of the numerous contradictions of infinity).
Existing forever throws up paradoxes. How can you do something if you don't start doing it? Its paradoxical from the get go. If you can solve the clock paradox I gave above, then you can have 'existing forever'... but that paradox is unsolvable. An equivalent paradox:
- Say you meet a being who has existed forever
- You notice he is counting
- You ask and he says ‘I’ve always been counting’
- What number is he on?
Unsolvable.
Quoting Echarmion
Are you suggesting 'the number of collisions' is not a number?
Quoting Echarmion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-tuned_Universe
So for example, something like the atom is a fine balance between the strong nuclear force and the electromagnetic force; if either were slightly different (or if quarks or elections had a different nature) then atoms would not form or would be too unstable.
Nothing which you can by any confirmation, apply to before Big Bang. You don't even know which dimensions if at all or if by more, existed before Big Bang. Period.
Quoting Devans99
Causation ? Correlation. You cannot apply God to that and you cannot decide if Big Bang was natural or not. Your fantasy correlations do not apply.
Fine-tuning is not evidence, you need to reply to all those who pointed out flaws before concluding anything like that. I listed names, stop just spamming the same thing over and over, you are not doing philosophy now, you are preaching nonsense. Stop ignoring things.
Quoting Devans99
You are not a physicist, that much is clear. Because you don't seem to understand what he is talking about and you don't seem to understand the scale of the universe. You need to study physics.
Quoting Devans99
You do know that humans naturally seek patterns in almost anything? You are doing it right now, this is the biggest flaw with the fine-tuning argument. It relies on the psychological effect of just finding a pattern where you see it and you cannot support the fine-tuning argument with that bias. You need to actually prove it and without so, you cannot use it as evidence.
Fantasy rants about how perfect you think things are in nature do not apply as validity to the argument. It's the "finding Jesus in a sandwich"-kind of idea for philosophy, but with a lack of knowledge in physics instead of a lack of knowledge about toasters.
Quoting Devans99
Are you seriously not understanding the analogy? This is religious apologetic nonsense you are pulling. God is as real as a unicorn and your argument is as valid as calculating the probability of a unicorn. Leave your beliefs behind when you are trying to prove God, they don't apply here.
Quoting Devans99
It doesn't matter what you believe, no one cares, you cannot apply it to your conclusion.
Quoting Devans99
Based on what? Your beliefs?
Quoting Devans99
The laws of physics most likely (by scientific findings) came to be during Big Bang. You cannot conclude that these constants existed before Big Bang and you cannot conclude that they were set intentionally.
Stop making assumptions every time you write, you don't know anything about this. You have a serious cognitive bias and you see patterns and think they prove the things you believe. It's nonsense.
Quoting Devans99
You cannot calculate the probability at all as have been stated numerous times with numerous counter-arguments. You're just acting out biases and fallacies constantly and you do not actually counter any of the counter-arguments you get. You pick and choose then you say the same thing over and over.
You need to apply yourself to the dialectic, this is actually getting ridiculous.
I've assumed that time exists in some form before the Big Bang. But if that assumption is false; time has a start anyway and my argument still holds.
Quoting Christoffer
But we are doing statistics and probability here so correlation maybe causation depending on how much correlation there is and there is a lot.
Quoting Christoffer
I'm a deist and that means I believe in science only; God has to be logically possible; not some magic invention of conventional religion. So God is not some mythical creature with the omnipotence, omnipresence etc... he is a real, viable being. So God is not in any way akin to a unicorn when it comes to calculation of probabilities.
Quoting Christoffer
Based on logic; if it happens naturally it will happen infinite times (given infinite time).
Quoting Christoffer
But if the constants were set during the big bang, they must of been set by something intelligent and that intelligent entity would require a fine tuned environment. That must of been fine tuned by someone else and so on it regresses until we find God.
No, it doesn't hold because you assume a creator, God, which is pre-Big Bang. Your argument for such a creator falls flat if you start time at Big Bang since your conclusion refers to something before it.
Quoting Devans99
I was talking about you slapping a sentient creator God on top of your numbers and Big bang, which has no correlation or causation at all. You cannot just end each sentence with "...and therefore God". It's as invalid as philosophical arguments come.
Quoting Devans99
God does not have to be logically possible, because a sentient God is as magical as anything else you describe. It does not correlate with your argument at all. You basically just decide that God has to be logically possible, it's not, it's speculation, assumption, and fantasy, just as unicorns. You are also describing God as a "he" which means you are acting out pure belief here, you are far from someone who only believes in science. Your way of arguing and your claim to believe in science only is a big oxymoron.
Quoting Devans99
You defined the unnatural. How can you define the unnatural when first you don't have a strong case for what and what isn't natural? Second, how can you define unnatural as only happening in singular?
You have nothing to back any of this up, it's basically gone into Deepak Chopra territory now.
It's not based on logic, you apply logic on top of a false premise and claim truth.
Quoting Devans99
No, they don't have to be set by something intelligent. You cannot apply such assumption onto your argument.
You are just spamming the same thing over and over. Your arguments have been countered already. Go read the arguments from the list of names I provided, apply some effort to your argument because you are running in circles right now, you don't give any thought to the counter-arguments you get and you are speaking nonsense. Do some research, try and do some falsifications and read up on cognitive biases.
Your argument has been countered and is invalid, not just by me. Try again (for real instead)
Existing is not "doing something".
Quoting Devans99
I did address it, you just keep ignoring parts of my posts.Quoting Devans99
Existing is not the same as existing and counting to infinity. The paradox doesn't apply.
Quoting Devans99
Yes, I am saying that. That it sounds odd in the English language is not an argument.
Quoting Devans99
And again how do you know these forces could have been set at different values?
I'm not sure he will understand further. The argument is stuck for him and he doesn't falsify it with our counter-arguments. So instead spamming the same thing over and over ignoring certain parts. It's almost troll-level reasoning right now.
But existing forever and counting is impossible. Counting is possible. So existing forever is not.
Quoting Echarmion
What you are suggesting sounds impossible. How can numerical properties take on non-numerical values?
Quoting Echarmion
Imagine for example if the strong nuclear force were weaker, then atomic nuclei would not hold together. You'd still have a viable universe; it's just there would be no life in that universe. Or if gravity were a bit weaker, stars would not form. Again still a viable universe; but no life.
I know. I am essentially just doing an exercise in rhetoric.
Quoting Devans99
This is not proper logic. If A and B is impossible, but B is possible, it does not follow that a is impossible. It might be that the combination is impossible.
You are also incorrectly applying your own logic, as it should say "counting to infinity" not just counting. And counting to infinity is impossible.
Quoting Devans99
There is not any numerical property to begin with. With infinite time, the number of collisions is also infinite.
Quoting Devans99
How do you know you'd have a "viable universe"? Maybe all the values are connected and can only occur in this specific combination.
How exactly does counting make existing forever impossible?
Quoting Echarmion
Counting to infinity is impossible because infinity does not exist. Counting is possible so my argument holds.
Quoting Echarmion
There is a derived, whole integer, property of the system - the number of collisions - which must take on an infinite value; which is impossible (infinity is not an integer).
If you are counting to infinity it does.
Quoting Devans99
Counting to infinity is impossible because you can never reach infinity. And no, replacing one argument with another does not mean your argument holds.
Quoting Devans99
If the system has an infinite time value, then the number of collisions over is not an integer value either. You need to be consistent - either your example presupposes that these values are infinite or not.
Yeah, I've seen it. I wonder what the level of tolerance is for this? Discussions need a lot of room so that people dare to keep doing it, but how far?
Is a definition of what's not welcome on the forum, not sure if it applies and I don't want to be pushing in that direction, but some overview might be needed?
Do counting to infinity simply not mean that you never stop counting?
As soon as you stop, you have a number that is less than infinite.
Or if you claim you have a number that is infinitely big, it means you do not have to count anymore as your number can not grow anymore and includes all possible numbers.
But you can not have counted to your infinite number as that would have required an infinite time.
Thus infinity can exist, but it is not something we can count to.
To our instincts, there is indeed a higher power. In survival terms, we default to cooperation and to our genes, that means making friends and recognizing the greater power of the tribe.
That itch or penchant in us has been used against us by the religious fraudsters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IqYHiejTVM
Regards
DL
Every species on Earth is largely blind to what's going on over it's head. Millions of species over a billion years, each and every one blind to what's going on over it's head.
Thus, while any particular definition of a God is surely questionable, the idea that something is going on over our heads seems pretty credible.
Not so much over our heads as in our heads.
Look up Freud and Jung's Father Complex and you will see that they have found where we keep our instincts and moral outline as a part of our selfish gene.
Regards
DL
Ok, this is one answer to the question. And like all other answers that have been offered, it's little more than wild speculation.
Anyone claiming to know what is happening over our heads is arguing with the evidence provided by every other species ever to walk the face of the Earth.
That would be counting indefinitely. Counting to infinity implies that you actually arrive at infinity.
Not wild at all when you know where to look.
Have a look at the Vatican's creation painting and see what background God id sitting in. A replica of our right hemisphere of our brains. The same applied to the Egyptian eye.
Regards
DL
This is interesting to a naturalist like me.
Nature leads us to a truth about who we think out God should be.
The ideal example or God for an ant, is an ant.
The ideal example or God for a lion, is a lion.
The ideal example or God for a human, is a human.
Regards
DL
Surprisingly almost none of this is true. Each of those things that did not exist, until they existed began as a thought, an idea, a concept. And without doubt all of those ideas where scoffed, and dismissed. The real start of the scientific method is the idea of something new that becomes the hypothesis.
Why can't one believe God is? Is there some fact I should know that says there is no God, and my belief is outside fact? Is there some overwhelming reasoning that says God is not a reasonable concept? And my belief is in conflict with reason? Why do you feel such a need to challenge ideas of others not in conflict with fact or reason? It smacks of fundamentalism.
There was no rant in my post at all. It was pure reason. It is just pointing out the reality that there are literally millions of obvious contradictions to all no seeum arguments. Yet remains as almost a dogmatic atheist argument. The only scientific claim any no seeum argument can make, is whatever it is is not seen. There is no scientific claim that a no seeum makes about the existence or non- existence of anything.
Russel's teapot is tactic, not argument. Russel desperately wanted a definitive argument that ended with, Therefore there is no God, he couldn't find one. He also wanted to deny the claim of others and make a positive claim that God is not. And he came up with the oldest and least valid argument of all time, and the basis of all ignorance, something doesn't exist until you prove it to me. Despite the thousands upon thousands of things that did not exist until they existed.
A virus, atom and quark didn't exist until we named them? Really? So people didn't get sick with viruses before they were discovered and named? The atoms and quarks didn't exist before they were discovered, yet chemical reactions throughout history during warfare technology and similar worked, even though they didn't know it was atoms and quarks responsible for those reactions?
You are applying a causation ? correlation on the idea that consequences act like things not proven yet and therefore God. Then compare it to specific things that had very observable and specific existences before discovered and named. You don't see how backward this is and a jump to conclusions?
Quoting Rank Amateur
There's nothing to conclude consequences in the universe and world is related at all to any concept of a God. The whole idea is a big fat causation ? correlation fallacy and bias towards the belief in God. People didn't believe in viruses or didn't know about them. They got sick, there were many guesses, many of them, supernatural beliefs about why people got sick. But no one thought "there are these things called viruses and just because no one believes in them doesn't mean they don't exist" and later they proved they exist. They didn't know about them at all. Your argument even gets a bit meta, since people back then thought it was God that punished them through sickness.
Which leads to a great analogy to why your argument is so very flawed:
They believed it was a lack of faith or other nonsense ideas and then when they later proved it to be viruses, it proved the religious beliefs wrong. You used an example of when faith blinded people to the reasons why people got sick, later to be proven by science discovering something they hadn't seen before, which overturned and erased all religious explanations for why we get sick with viruses. So it's kind of what you are doing with God right now; seeing causality or whatever you choose as a sign of God and therefore he can be proved, when it's more likely the whole thing is exactly like the virus analogy, that we simply don't have enough data right now to explain everything and when we do, people will abandon a religious explanation since the evidence is indisputable.
The rational idea is that we are the sick with viruses right now, not knowing about viruses and it makes people, like you, to argue wild speculations of faith only because we don't have enough data to prove or observe something yet. This is why I am so strict about scientific methods and why I wrote my argument about irrational belief being unethical because it not only holds back epistemic progress, it can be harmful to people when putting a veil over the eyes looking for answers. Just like how people acted on the belief that sickness was caused by those people's lack of faith.
Quoting Rank Amateur
Russel's teapot analogy lead up to the use of falsification in science, one of the most powerful tools we have to reach actual scientific truth in theories. It's been such a foundational concept in scientific methods since then that our world would probably have been a lot different if we didn't have it. So, no, it's not a tactic, it's a tool to reach actual truth or actual rational reasoning. It was also an actual argument, it's called an argument from analogy and it was powerful since it spawned the concept of falsification.
Just like with the viruses, there has to be something observed that we cannot explain, then we need data to identify no link or causality with known properties or things we know about in order to search for data in support of a hypothesis related to the observed specifically. A hypothesis that we then can push through verification and falsification in order to call it a scientific theory and fact.
What you are doing is having no observed actual data in support of a hypothesis with properties that have no real relation to the conclusion and therefore is pure speculation and not even a hypothesis. It's pure faith, a belief. A hypothesis needs some observation or support for it and a causation ? correlation fallacy cannot exist within a valid hypothesis. And a hypothesis cannot be used as truth either, which is the biggest problem with any argument for God. They all jump to conclusion and then tries to create a truth around it by proving after the fact. Post hoc.
It just feels desperate, like desperation to prove that the belief is true or valid because of the existentialism of the 20th century which put a lot of hard questions on the rationality of belief. And I'm with existentialism on this, just as they questioned the driving force of believing irrational eugenics beliefs during Nazi Germany I see a clear connection between the dangers of clinging onto beliefs that don't have true support. It's the most fundamental reason we have bad things happening between people in the world. To justify belief without support is unethical and I see no reason to justify it with broken arguments.
NO, NO, NO - my whole point is they always existed. But they were not known to exist until they were.
which is my whole argument against no seeum arguments -
you are missing the point ot the entire argument - read again please -
And you should read my whole post before directly answering.
The math is right, the premise is wrong.
Roll a dice. What are your chances or rolling a 6? 1 in 6. Right?
Roll it again. What are your chances of rolling a 6? 1 in 6. Right?
Roll it again. What are your chances? 1 in 6. Right?
Regards
DL
It doesn't matter if your point was misinterpreted since you still talk about existing things not yet proven but do not see the difference with observable properties as basis for a hypothesis that can be tested, verified, falsified and concluded - and a causation ? correlation fallacy jumping to conclusions.
You are trying to argue that there are observable consequences in the universe that makes for a foundation to a hypothesis of a God and use the idea that viruses existed before observed and proven. However, as I pointed out, a virus exists with direct observable consequences that can be studied. To apply a hypothesis of God to whatever you like is like having a hypothesis about sickness being caused by saying "Hello" whenever someone walks by with a cow. There's no direct and rational correlation between "God" and something you observe, which leads to jumping to conclusion and a causation ? correlation fallacy, which is almost always present in any argument around God.
The analogy is simply like this. People back when viruses were unknown, attached to the idea of God's punishment through sickness. Much like the consequences, causality and unknowns of the universe are attached to God in those God-arguments. But scientists who make an actual hypothesis about what they observe do not jump to conclusions, they do not invent a correlation where they see fit, which is what Russel pointed out to with his critique against such ideas in science, calling them pseudoscience. Scientists and the scientific method, in order to actually explain something observed in nature and the universe, is about looking for actual causation. The ones who discovered viruses looked at how sickness spread and found that there are correlations between interactions between people, how water supplies were handled etc. by carefully going through these actual causations, they could draw actual correlations which informed that there's something invisible to the naked eye that caused these sicknesses. That's when they started observing things people interacted with and found microbes, viruses etc. Because of this observation, this data, they concluded a scientific theory about viruses and bacteria.
But to invent false hypotheses around flawed correlation ideas is what the people before the scientists did with their ideas about God punishing people with sickness. They jumped to conclusions and saw all kinds of correlations which they used to prove after the fact that God was responsible. Like he punished only the poor because they committed more crimes than others. It all cumulated into a long list in support of a conclusion that sickness related to God, not anything else. It's because of this flawed reasoning that the argument for God by looking at certain causations or complexities in nature always ends up fallacious. It's out of both a lack of knowledge into the actual science that exists and a failure of methods to correctly analyze what can be observed.
In order to make a valid hypothesis, you need to collect data that is in actual support of something, not in support of something vague that you can slap "God" onto in order to conclude it to be God. This is why no one has ever been able to prove the existence of God through reasoning because the reasoning is inherently flawed and ignores all methods needed to actually reach a truth as a scientific theory. And even if just a probability is proposed, that probability is as vague as the probability that a cat will pop into existence from non-existence, right before my eyes. The correlation isn't there, i.e causation ? correlation and jumping to conclusions. Using personal belief to change the actual conclusion of an argument.
Why do you even bother doing philosophy if that's your response to a counter-argument? I recommend that you look at your reasoning with the last thing I wrote in mind.
Quoting Christoffer
So i make a point, you get the point 180 degrees wrong, I point it out to you, and you say it doesn't matter you got it wrong - and then ask me why I don't want to engage.
if you want to take a deep breath actually show that you understand my point on no seeum arguments and make some comment that actually has something to do with the point - happy to engage. Or not - suit yourself
p1. - people make no-seeum arguments
p2. - these arguments basically say " we know what we are looking for, we have looked in lots of places, and we don't see it, therefore it does not exist.
p3. - there are almost countless examples of things that people where unaware of, did not believe existed, but actually did exist.
p4. - all a no seeum argument shows is that there is something you can't see it
conclusion - all no seeum arguments fail as proof of either existence or non existence of anything.
If you want to directly answer this - happy to engage.
I don't think you're really looking for a logical argument, because a simple logical argument can always just take the form of a modus ponens:
If it's not logically impossible for things (including time, matter, energy) to have always existed (that is, without coming into being), then it's logically possible for things to have always existed.
It's not logically impossible for things to have always existed.
Therefore, it's logically possible for things to have always existed.
That's a logical argument for this. But that's not going to satisfy you, is it? It shouldn't. What you're really arguing is that it's not metaphysically or scientifically possible for things to have always existed. The problem is that that claim needs support, and not just logical support (because you could likewise just construct a simple modus ponens).
would you say a premise such as " best current scientific theory believes the universe is finite" is valid?
just wondering
No, because that's not the sort of thing that a scientific theory can determine, really. All science can do is make observations of what is and attempt to formulate theories that result in unique predictions (relative to other possible theories, so that we can select one over another) for other observables. "Something always existed" versus "nothing existed then suddenly something did" doesn't result in any particular observables.
As it is, the consensus view is that all we can do is speculate re what, if anything, might have caused the big bang, partially because the party line is that "physics breaks down" during the early stages of the big bang--which is just another way of saying that the conditions postulated by currently accepted theory result in suppositions that don't really make sense per the same theory.
Aside from that, any consensus scientific view wouldn't have anything to do with the notion of what's logically or metaphysically possible, unless we construct an additional argument that supports that what's actually the case scientifically is not a contingent matter, but a logically and/or metaphysically necessary matter. In other words, what turned out to be the case isn't what necessarily had to be the case. We'd need a meta argument (because science wouldn't be able to bootstrap this itself--it would have to be a logical or metaphysical argument or something else) that what's the case is necessarily the case/it couldn't have been otherwise.
And you stop reading, don't understand the core conclusion of my counter-argument and use the missed point as your reason to ignore the counter-argument. That's called a fallacy fallacy.
Quoting Rank Amateur
p2 is not really true. The criticism is not that it doesn't exist, it's that there's no reason to say that it exists if it cannot have observed correlation. This is the foundation of the Russel analogy. If you can make up whatever you want to exist and then "prove it" by saying that because no one can see it it must exist, you essentially just invent anything you want as existing, without any epistemic responsibility of any kind. You don't seem to understand the actual conclusion of Russel's analogy and instead, strawman it into a black and white "does not exist", which isn't the actual conclusion of the criticism through Russel's analogy.
p3 is a true premise but does not really support the conclusion, since things like viruses have a direct correlation that can be observed. I've countered this in the virus analogy I made, which essentially points to how religion continuously changed their view of the world and universe to fit the results of scientific theories. The only thing that your p3 points to is that there are things we don't know the reason for in the universe, but when we do they will be proven facts and in the meanwhile, people will slap "God" onto the reasons why without any real correlation between them.
What happens if I say that a teapot is responsible for those unexplained things? You cannot say that a teapot isn't responsible because throughout history there have been things that people didn't know about and therefore, before we know for sure, a teapot can be responsible for everything. This is the logic of your argument. Just replace the teapot with God.
Quoting Rank Amateur
And how is what we don't know in any correlation with God and not a teapot?
I am aware of the reasoning behind the "fine tuning" argument. But math is not magic. It cannot generate information out of thin air. We have no idea how the basic constants that seem to form the basis of our physical laws came to be. Assigning probabilities to these constants is nonsense.
that's called ignoring the rest, if my original point is ignored, misunderstood and dismissed
Tu quoque
this has nothing to do with P2 - put aside Russel for now - we can get to him. lets do no-seeum arguments first. The no seeum argumnet is " we looked we didn't see anything - it does not exist"
nothing to do at all with Russels tea pot. You are continuing to ignore the argument I am making and argue the one you want. Promise I will get to Russel - one point at a time
the point of the virus has nothing at all to do with the point you are making above, all it is saying is, that until we are aware of such things - our unawareness of them says nothing at all about there existence, or lack there of. Your point here just begs the question.
Why do you conclude it with "it does not exist" and not "there's no reason to believe it to exist"?
Can you spot the difference between those two? One is a statement that requires knowing the truth, the other is a statement requiring a burden of proof from those making the original claim. If people were to follow epistemic responsibility, they lack responsibility if they either go for "it does not exist", but also if they go for "it exist", which is what theists do with their fallacious arguments. "there's no reason to believe it to exist" take epistemic responsibility as it does not conclude anything at all until a correlation between two things has been established. Without it, you can invent any reason something does not or does exist. The core value of this is to never believe anything that doesn't have support, but the theist approach is to believe what you want to believe because of the lack of support of that it isn't.
I did not conclude any such thing - i proposed that is what the no-seeum argument concludes - that i am arguing against !!!! that is twice now that you have misunderstood a simple statement by 180 deg. Slow down -
My point is that to say "it exist" or "it does not exist" is irrelevant since a belief in either doesn't follow epistemic responsibility. Any claim of God's existence is irresponsible to how we treat knowledge and act with the knowledge that we have. Just like blaming the poor for Gods wrath through sickness instead of actually looking into what sickness is. This is why we have modern methods to arrive at facts and not beliefs.
Quoting Rank Amateur
I'm asking if that conclusion is the actual conclusion you are arguing against or if your conclusion is changed to a definitive in order to make your arguments point? You proposed it to be the conclusion, could the conclusion just as much be "there's no reason to believe it to exist"?
not sure i could be any clearer - I am saying the no-seeum argument - SAYS NOTHING AT ALL about existence or non existence.
here was my conclusion to the argument:
"conclusion - all no seeum arguments fail as proof of either existence or non existence of anything."
but this
"I'm asking if that conclusion is the actual conclusion you are arguing against or if your conclusion is changed to a definitive in order to make your arguments point? "
may well be the most convoluted sentence i have ever read.
You proposed a conclusion to the argument you are criticizing. I asked if that is the actual conclusion or if the actual conclusion is "there's no reason to believe it to exist".
Without the conclusion being exactly as you proposed, your conclusion of the counter-argument ends up misunderstanding the original argument.
In any case, unless God is separated from the bible he remains a figure with little information known other than bible versus about God. When you redefine God, you're helping religion profit, why not help science progress instead? I said prior, higher forces, metaphorically 'angels' exist, because contrary to God they exist in numbers, and it take more than one force to truly take in the universe. What I'm trying to say is that God which you believe in, is like a species of many rather than one, and to us it would be considered forces that exist in a realm where creation is an element.
Who actually experiences God? (doesn't make sense).
the actual conclusion is the actual conclusion I actually typed to actually conclude that argument I was trying to write a conclusion of - and for the third time now the actual conclusion is:
"conclusion - all no seeum arguments fail as proof of either existence or non existence of anything."
your point?
I asked about p1, your conclusion of the no-seeum argument.
If the conclusion you mention in p1 is instead "there's no reason to believe it to exist", then the conclusion to your counter-argument does not hold up since the conclusion you criticize isn't about either existence or non-existence. As I described earlier what "there's no reason to believe it to exist" is really about.
What I mean is that you propose a conclusion in p1 that I don't really see is the actual conclusion of the argument you are criticizing.
This is p1
p1. - people make no-seeum arguments
what in the world are you talking about ??
Sorry, meant p2
Quoting Rank Amateur
this is my proposition on a definition of what a "no-seemum" argument is. I am making no conclusion in the proposition at all.
What I am saying is - people, maybe you, make statements like " there is no proof of God, or fill in the blank, therefore they, maybe you, because of lack of proof, chose to believe there is no God or fill in the blank. That is not a conclusion - that is a statement I am making that I propose is true. It says NOT ONE THING at all about if God does or does not exist. All is says is a definition of an argument some people make about if God does or does not exists. IT IS NOT ABOUT GOD, IT IS ABOUT THE ARGUMENT.
This is exactly the point I've been discussing throughout. You propose a conclusion that is definitive, meaning, you see it as black and white, either the argument concludes in "therefore there is a [blank]" or it's "therefore there's not a [blank]".
But if the conclusion is "there's no reason to believe it to exist", it is neither "it exist" or "it doesn't exist", it's not even agnostic, it's a denial of any conclusion at all since you can't make one without facts, observations and correct correlations. You propose the conclusion to be a definitive answer to either existence or no existence by saying that the no-seeum argument concludes with a definitive answer. But to use the lack of evidence, burden of proof etc. as a reason not to arrive at a conclusion at all with "there's no reason to believe it to exist", is what the argument is about.
So you dismiss the argument based on your own proposition of the conclusion but won't accept there to be another conclusion that is neither "it exist" or "it doesn't exist".
i understand your point now, but that is again trying to get the argument you want, not the one I am making, I promise to get back to Russell
My premise, the definition of the "no seeum" argument, is not false, because it is not worded the way you like. It is worded the way it is often argued. I stand by the definition - and the conclusion that follows.
If you want to acknowledge that no-seeum arguments, as i defined them say nothing at all about existence, we can get on to the argument you want - Russell
But in order for your point to be an argument, even inductively, you need true premises and if there's a chance one of them isn't you need to modify it to be true in order to make the argument valid.
Quoting Rank Amateur
That would mean instead that the argument you make is about how people use that argument, not the argument itself. You are essentially criticizing that people use that argument to prove that [blank] doesn't exist and if it's the use of the argument that is the problem, I agree with you, but then your argument needs to reflect and support that conclusion, not specifically a conclusion about the no-seeum argument.
Quoting Rank Amateur
What I meant with Russel is that his teapot analogy reflects the actual conclusion to be drawn from the argument. If some atheists or whatever use this argument as definite proof of no existence, that is just as wrong as the opposite, but that itself is the personal use of the argument, in my opinion in the wrong way.
I agree with Russel, that the person making the claim has the burden of proof. With a few caveats. The first is the intent of the claim has to be evangelical - you are trying to change the mind of the person you are arguing with to your position. The second one is, who holds the definition of what "proof" is.
So if I make a claim that such a thing as love exists, and i want you to believe as I do that love exists, it is my burden to make an argument that convinces you. If however, you establish a burden of proof that is, by definition, outside any possibility, do to the nature of the claim. Than that person has established an impossible burden. If in the case above, you tell me you will believe in love, it I can bring you a box with a pound of love in it. Without that proof - you tell me i have not made my argument, and you have no reason to believe such a thing as love exists. All your position turns into is I don't believe you, because I don't believe you.
Now on to point one, Russel was aware, that the teapot can orbit in both directions. If one wants to make a claim that God does not exist, and wants to change the theist mind to agree with that, than he is holding the teapot, and has the burden of proof. Russel was very aware of this, and if he did have a definitive argument that God does not exist, he would have been happy to make it. He did not however, so he needed a method to deny God is, yet not hold the teapot. And being a very very smart man came up with the "You have not convinced me, i have no reason to believe" argument. With this tactic he feels he is free to be completely atheistic - and free of defending the non belief.
And I am fine with all of that, except that the atheist does not want it to end there. As on this board and almost everywhere else the atheist wants to challenge the belief that God is, with the implicit claim God is not, with a semantic excuse they don't have to prove it. I find this disingenuous, and pure tactic.
Finally all of this is dependent on one party trying to change the mind of the other - the argument has to be evangelical. Personally i find such arguments useless. I have no interest in changing anyone's mind from atheism to theism. My only objective in all or these arguments is to claim theism is reasonable. And if I make such a claim as reasonableness, it is outside Mr. Russel's argument.
Except that in the case of love I actually don't "believe in love", I rationalize that it is a concept that we use in language to describe our attachments through chemical reactions and psychological factors based on social constructs around those emotions. I could probably make this case for almost anything and for that which I cannot explain I can do educated guesses, hypotheses, as long as I try to stay within what I previously know and not apply personal belief to that hypothesis. In the case of love, I could, through the sciences of psychology, sociology, biology and anthropology, argue that love is simply a concept, it does not exist as it's own thing and I could probably prove this point through all the different aspects of the above sciences and the only counter-claim would be a belief that it's something more anyway for which I would demand counter-proof that holds against the science.
But that wasn't the actual point, I get that. However, I would argue that there are very few things we couldn't categorize within more responsible handling of epist?m?.
And with this, I'm going back into my own argument about irrational belief being unethical, a thread you've been posting in. Through that, I argue that irrational belief is always wrong and that we can only hold a belief that has some support as long as we treat it as a non-value in our actions, until proven. Meaning, any time acting on a belief that doesn't have any support, we break epistemic responsibility and it creates a risk of distorting knowledge and how people act upon that knowledge.
So if you actually came to me with the love question, I would not say I believe in love, I would say that the most rational explanation for love is through the evidence of why we humans act according to the concept of love. If you hold a belief that love exists outside of the concepts we can measure, I would ask for a burden of proof, just as with any other belief and because you cannot bring a box of love as proof, I would not say that I don't believe you, or that I believe you, I would say that I have no reason to even accept the idea of such a belief as it's a concept with no attachment in reality outside of fantasy (for which I can also probably explain why people have fantasies about love as magical concepts).
This is why I could probably call myself the most atheist member of all on this board since I don't even hold "belief" as a valid concept outside of educated guesses/hypotheses. Irrational beliefs are just fantasies we've made up to explain the unexplainable, we believe a lot as children and less and less the older we get, but because of human psychology, we are prone to always lean towards believing something before actually explaining something. This is the point of my belief-argument, that we need to stop accepting things as truths just because it's comfortable and feels nice and instead take that personal belief that we take for granted as truths, and exile it completely from our minds and emotions.
Quoting Rank Amateur
I can say the same about theists. There's a lot of religious nutjobs joining and writing total nonsense and sending private messages about how to "save me from my devilish atheism". I rarely see true atheists acting in the same way, probably since more atheists than theists don't let their emotions guide their reasoning (of course some do, but I would call them uneducated and just as irrationally emotional as any of those religious people). But if you look at a broader picture of the world's population, I would argue, statistically that more religious people behave irrationally and dangerous than atheists. Which is a statistic in support of my belief-argument.
And my belief-argument thread is a good example of this. The actual argument is about irrational belief, both religious and non-religious, but most of the posts are about God's existence or not, and vague semantical counter-arguments with emotional outbursts rather than dialectics; just because those theists have a problem with my argument challenging their core property of "belief". To criticize belief when that belief does not correlate with anything but fantasy, makes theists grab their pitchforks since they need belief they cannot prove, in order to hold onto the truths they live by. There's no wonder one of them got banned and another got most of his posts deleted after spamming nonsense.
Is it evangelistic to make an argument that irrational belief without support can be a dangerous moral road to take? And that belief that has support, a belief that is only considered belief and acted upon with caution because of it, to be acceptable? Or is it simply that theists lash out emotionally when their personal core values are threatened by an argument like that? You cannot threaten atheists core values in the same way since there are no core values other than searching for truth and rationality.
I don't challenge religious belief because I'm an atheist, I challenge it because it's irrational, it's without support, with its arguments filled with fallacies and biases and often become painfully flawed to a point it's not even obvious to the one making it. Theists often demand atheists to just accept their argument without explaining further and why, while atheists demand theists to have solid arguments when they don't. I haven't seen atheistic argument fail in the same way as theists arguments when looking at their validity as arguments. And if they do, those atheists making those arguments seem more willing to go through dialectics and changing the argument to actually make sense while theists just say "you don't' get it" and then posts another, equally flawed argument. I'm of course not saying that atheists are always right in their arguments, I'm just tired of hearing the same fallacies and biases by theists while they blame atheists for challenging their personal beliefs. Especially since philosophical dialectic is all about challenging anyone's argument if it seems flawed.
It's irrational by theists to demand more than they can bring to the table themselves. Theists and atheists should make their case with equal demand for rational reasoning, no one has more validity over the other and everything else is just emotionally driven opinions.
I can form an argument as to why irrational unsupported belief is unreasonable, as I did in my belief-argument thread. It's still evolving though, per the dialectic. Although it hit a roadblock when religious evangelists came in and got banned, spammed posts that got erased etc. Gonna look over it some more, but essentially it's the argument.
The question then becomes; can that be combined with theism? Or is it essentially that because unsupported belief is an essential property of theism, it falls under the bus of that argument's conclusion? How can you support theism without such belief as a core attribute?
But in a shorter and simpler version of the longer argument in the other thread:
[i]p1 An unsupported belief leads to uninformed acts.
p2 A supported belief leads to informed acts.
p3 An unsupported belief has a high risk of distorting knowledge
p4 A supported belief has a low risk of distorting knowledge
Therefore, unsupported belief is less reasonable than supported belief.[/i]
Then
[i]p1 High reasonable belief leads to reasonable acts
p2 Low reasonable belief leads to unreasonable acts
p3 High reasonable acts are considered ethical
p4 Low reasonable acts are considered unethical
Therefore, a low reasonable belief is unethical.[/i]
The other argument goes more into detail about what unsupported and supported beliefs are etc.
Quoting Rank Amateur
as I think you know -
your argument does not work unless theism is shown unsupported /unreasonable - becomes circular.
I had a line of premises concluding on theism, but didn't want to see pitchforks but, anyway, here's the third part of that argument:
[i]p1 Unsupported belief is unethical
p2 Supported belief is ethical
p3 Theism relies on an unsupported belief
Therefore, theism is unethical.[/i]
How can you hold onto theism without unsupported belief?
i would counter P3 is false, both the cosmological argument, and some design arguments are valid. Valid meaning the premises are true, and the conclusions follow. That does not mean, there are not counter arguments against, but none of them overwhelm the arguments.
Right over my head.
What are you replying to? Quote it please. I took a quick backwards loo and did not see anything.
Regards
DL
They are valid in that they point to a first cause but...
[i]p1 Cosmological and design arguments point to an original point of origin for the universe.
p2 Cosmological and design arguments does not incorporate attributes and properties outside of the known laws of physics.
p3 Cosmological and design arguments require known laws of physics to exist before Big Bang.
p4 There is no data to support known laws of physics to exist before Big Bang.
Therefore cosmological and design arguments only works within known laws of physics and therefore dismiss any other explanation about pre-Big Bang that does not function by our known laws of physics.[/i]
This is why the cosmological and design argument is failing since it needs to have in their premises exactly what was before Big Bang and that everything there followed the known laws of physics. This is not known yet and scientists don't know what happened before Big Bang, so how can those with the cosmological and design arguments make claims that need truths about pre-Big Bang but still have a valid argument?
Then, on top of that:
[i]p1 Cosmological argument does not point directly to a God.
p2 Design arguments does not prove a link between universe complexity and intentional design without assuming there to be one before the conclusion.
p3 Design arguments does not point directly to a God.
p4 Theism requires God
Therefore, cosmological and design arguments do not support an existence of God.[/i]
Not only do the cosmological and design arguments not really hold up as arguments, but even if we ignore the fact that those arguments ignore the lack of data about pre-Big Bang, they don't directly point to God and Theism require God.
Therefore I cannot see how my p3 is false as these arguments don't really give support to theism having supported belief. To use those arguments to conclude that theism has supported belief requires them to be bullet proof in evidence, which they aren't because of the mentioned flaws AND that they without flaws point directly to a God, which they don't. There's a lot of assumptions made before those can conclude theism being backed by supported belief.
P3 is patently false, the entire point of the CA is the creation of the universe is outside physics, that it is supernatural. so then p4 is redundantly false
Quoting Christoffer
Wow, so the argument that concludes the beginning was supernatural needs a scientific explanation of what it is trying to argue. You realize absolutely none of that paragraph makes any sense at all.
And hate to do this, but the rest of the post is worse. That well could be the single worst argument against the CA I have ever seen.
How can it prove something outside known physics without assuming the properties of what is outside known physics? That is assuming a lot that hasn't even been proven through theoretical physics and drawing a conclusion on that, is false.
P4 is true, we don't have any data about what was or what the properties or physics were before Big Bang, this is a fact. How can you say this premise is false? Do you have the data but no other in the entire world?
Quoting Rank Amateur
How can it conclude it to be supernatural when it doesn't know if our laws of physics existed before Big Bang? How can it conclude it to be supernatural at all without knowing anything about pre-Big Bang? That's jumping to conclusions in the argument. Answer me how the arguments can prove anything at all? Any properties of pre-Big Bang, prove that it was or wasn't supernatural? If you can't answer that, how can you conclude those arguments to be valid?
Quoting Rank Amateur
Yeah, I keep hearing it, but I never get any rational counter-argument to the criticism of the those arguments. They assume a lot without even including modern physics or a rational falsification of their own premises.
The cosmological argument requires a lot of knowledge about pre-Big Bang. Without it, it's just assumptions and guesses about it and if you conclude it to be supernatural, you need support to why it is supernatural, which need actual facts and evidence in science to prove such a conclusion.
There's a reason these arguments haven't proven anything related to their conclusions and the world's population haven't accepted them as true, because they are flawed and might not even comply with today's understanding of physics. Like, you need to at least disprove or counter the Wheeler–DeWitt equation before concluding that causality can occur before Big bang.
So please address the issues and tone down the arrogant tone.
Also, in what way does CA in any way make p3 Theism relies on an unsupported belief false?
How many assumptions must be needed before a belief in God can be concluded unsupported belief?
It's like if a soccer football came rolling down the road from a couple of houses and you can't see its source. You conclude that something set it in motion, there are a force and a speed to it. You listen and hear nothing. Drawing a conclusion on what set that soccer ball in motion has nothing else than the ball itself and its motion as proof, but the conclusion drawn is that a soccer player must have kicked it.
Without knowing if it was rather a dog, a random kid, the wind that pushed it from a high place so that it rolled down the road. Without any further data, you still draw the conclusion of the soccer player kicking it. But that is pure speculation, not a valid conclusion. Then saying that such a conclusion is giving support to a personal belief that the couple of houses up the road are homes for professional soccer players is pushing the assumptions and speculations even further. Causation ? correlation. Therefore theism relies on an unsupported belief.
proving what happened before the Big Bang is outside physics is the entire darn point of the argument. You are making no sense at all with this line of logic
That is not what I said, is it? "proving what happened before the Big Bang is outside physics" is not the same as "How can it prove something outside known physics without assuming the properties of what is outside known physics?
Is it?
And even so, how does that in any way relate to God? Theism is about God, if God is whatever there is before Big Bang, it's still belief without support. Since you can conclude the argument with "there is something in the beginning". But by attaching "God" to that makes it speculation, it becomes belief and does not in any way or form have support.
Therefore, theism is relying on unsupported belief.
As all others when pointing out these flaws. The problem with the arguments is that they were made long before any of the modern understanding and knowledge about physics, spacetime, quantum physics and the Big Bang. There are plenty of issues with the arguments and whenever they are brought up, the response is that "they are old arguments and because they are still around, they are valid". I can easily counter that with; "they are old, so why are they still not considered as scientific theories if they are supposed to support the idea of God with solid validity?". That's because they rely on faith and belief in order to work, in order to connect "God" with their conclusions. Just because they are old, doesn't mean they are valid. Or should we bring back old Ancient Greek theories that everything is made of water, just because that is old as well?
Quoting Rank Amateur
So theism is relying on a reasonable possibility, no real support? How is that changing it from unsupported belief to supported belief? Believing the Wheeler–DeWitt equation has support in its math, that is supported belief. And how do you measure that reasonable possibility? Do you need belief in order to measure the number? So if you believe in God the reasonable possibility is 90%? If not its 10%? Agnostic 50%? How is "reasonable possibility" changing theism into supported belief when the conclusion to CA could be anything? There's a reasonable possibility that its an out-of-spacetime-dog that kickstarted the universe since we don't know, how can that not be a possibility as well?
It all boils down to a belief that doesn't have true support in conclusions, only speculations based on a possibility that sounds more like wishful thinking than actual logic to the reasoning of the arguments.
Quoting Rank Amateur
I have shown that it has nothing to do with God. Theism requires God. Theism is not about an out-of-spacetime-dog, it is about God. The validity of CA can be discussed and there are plenty of more counter-arguments that I can bring up, but the point is still that you cannot attach God to its conclusions since that requires a belief without the support of an actual connection, i.e my premise still holds that theism is unsupported belief.
Just saying I'm wrong does not work if we take this as a dialectic. And criticizing that my arguments don't hold with making a point that the arguments lasted 700 years is just a fallacy. I can list plenty of arguments that won't hold the test of time.
What's the difference however, as a matter of elemental constitution, between belief in God and God?
None as far as I can tell.
Are you making a general statement about belief in things and things in and of themselves or do you want to say that the idea or concept of God, specifically, is set up so that there is no difference between belief in God and God?
I think there is an interesting case to be made about the latter. Traditional attributes of God (perfection, goodness, omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience) are mental constructions that seem incoherent as attributes of an object of some kind.
you have done a lot of work here, and you deserve a proper, reasonable response, so here goes:
[i]p1 An unsupported belief leads to uninformed acts.
p2 A supported belief leads to informed acts.
p3 An unsupported belief has a high risk of distorting knowledge
p4 A supported belief has a low risk of distorting knowledge[/i]
In all of the above, you need to define all the terms, they are not standard and are
subject to lots of interpretation. So please define:
Unsupported and supported belief
Informed and uniformed acts
And distorted knowledge.
Secondly, independent of your definitions, there is no causality in your premises.
You would have to add, something like :
An unsupported belief, always or usually, etc leads to uninformed acts.
Without such a link, there is no direct cause one to the other. All your premises turn into - people who like vanilla ice cream leads to uniformed acts.
Lastly, what are the origins of “ supported beliefs” do such beliefs spring into our collective consciences fully supported?? I would opine, most if not all “supported beliefs” begin their existence as a thought, and idea, an “unsupported belief” that someone works on to validate and if successful turns into a “supported belief”
Therefore, unsupported belief is less reasonable than supported belief.
Pending you definitions of the above, I have no real issue at all with this statement
And no clue why you need the premises above to arrive at this.
Then
[i]p1 High reasonable belief leads to reasonable acts
p2 Low reasonable belief leads to unreasonable acts
p3 High reasonable acts are considered ethical
p4 Low reasonable acts are considered unethical
Therefore, a low reasonable belief is unethical.[/i]
On to these:
As above you need to define
Reasonable and unreasonable acts
And your definition of
Ethical/unethical
Also as above, there is no causality in the premises . A does not directly cause B
Cant address any more of this until it is defined and causality is established
[i]p1 Unsupported belief is unethical
p2 Supported belief is ethical
p3 Theism relies on an unsupported belief
Therefore, theism is unethical.[/i]
And finally
Define – theism
And as above
You need to establish casualty
When you do all this - I am happy to continue
The latter.
Thank you, you prove to be a step higher than many others when it comes to a proper dialectic, I appreciate that. :up:
Quoting Rank Amateur
Supported belief is a belief that has some evidence for it, but cannot be deduced as pure truth yet. Essentially an "inductive belief" compared to a scientific theory which is more of a deductive conclusion, if we were to use those terms. Supported belief, in this case, can be said to be a hypothesis, it needs facts and observations in order to lead to a qualified guess but cannot be pulled from nothing. This belief needs to be supported by something that isn't a belief itself.
Unsupported belief is a belief which has no facts, evidence or logic behind it. Essentially it's pulled from thin air, emotion, prejudice, flawed logic and the list goes on. Its reasoning filled with biases and fallacies, jumpings to conclusion etc. It's a belief that breaks down as soon as the reasons get a dissection and questioned. An example outside of theism is anti-vaxxers, who tries to argue through facts but jump to conclusions and cannot see that their facts don't hold up or connect to their conclusion, essentially they have a belief that vaccines are bad and dangerous, yet have nothing to actually prove it, not even inductively as their facts break apart as soon as the real data of vaccines link to diseases show that there's zero link. In spiritualism, it's a belief in ghosts, yet there's no evidence for any ghosts ever to be filed as proper evidence and no conclusive data of any event that can lead to such conclusion. In social tensions, it's the white guy who won't buy anything from a certain store because the clerk is black. List goes on, essentially as it's named, unsupported belief.
Distorted knowledge is common, general and collective information, considered as truth, but since derived from unsupported belief (above), they aren't true but are considered facts anyway. Like during Nazi Germany, people accepted the ideas of eugenics, not as a belief but as facts. Unsupported belief lead to unsupported facts, i.e distorted knowledge. Same goes for the previous analogy about viruses, where the general public accepted the church's ideas of the poor being responsible for bringing down God's wrath through sickness. Unsupported belief leads to a higher risk of distorting knowledge and create common "truths" based on false grounds.
Quoting Rank Amateur
Sure, it's a bit semantical though.
p1 An unsupported belief always leads to uninformed acts.
p2 A supported belief always leads to informed acts.
p3 An unsupported belief always has a high risk of distorting knowledge
p4 A supported belief always has a low risk of distorting knowledge
Reason for using the definitive "always" is that even if the unsupported belief is accidentally correct, the act upon it is still uninformed. While acting by supported belief always include having information for that act, so it's always informed. However you turn it, that's a true however the outcome.
Same goes for the knowledge premises, it's always a higher risk that unsupported belief distorts knowledge. It's statistically true of the probable outcome of each belief types.
Quoting Rank Amateur
That is true, but the argument is more about the ethical nature of how we live by our beliefs. Let's say you are a white man and media has been pushing a segregating narrative that fuels racist dislikes of black people in the neighborhood. You walk down the street and in front of you there's a black man, nothing strange about him, doesn't look dangerous or anything but you still cross the street to avoid the man. This is acting upon an unsupported belief. But if you instead let that unsupported belief be the "open question" and you directly weight in the facts, how media spins news, how there have not been any problems last week and question why you should fear the man now as you wouldn't have done it last week, you choose to keep walking and not act upon the unsupported belief.
You essentially turned the open question of unsupported belief into supported belief. The problem is if you hold onto the unsupported belief. This is rather about the long term and not short term. Say you have a day when some very unsupported beliefs pops into your head and you set out to verify/falsify them. As long as you don't act and live by those unsupported beliefs and accept them as mere thoughts to be proved or disproved, they aren't really beliefs yet. They are current thoughts. But if you give up looking into those unsupported beliefs and you just keep going, after a week you still believe them and you still act upon them, you are walking the dangerous path ethically.
Quoting Rank Amateur
But I don't define beliefs as collective, I define them as personal. I define collective belief as distorted knowledge, as that's when they start becoming common truths, which is the most dangerous consequence of unsupported belief.
Quoting Rank Amateur
To make it definitive in order to continue the argument in its parts. Need to define definitively that unsupported belief is unreasonable. Think of when someone has an unsupported belief that is accidentally true, it can look like a reasonable act, but by showing the connection to being informed or uninformed and the probability of risk, it shows that even if you are accidentally correct in a belief, you still increase the risk of negative outcomes if that's how you live by beliefs.
Quoting Rank Amateur
Reasonable acts are acts based on rational probability from the reasonable belief (as defined by the first argument). I.e they are acts in direct causal line from the ideas in the reasonable belief.
Unreasonable acts are the opposite of that.
Ethical/unethical is where my other moral argument comes in (which I haven't finished yet), but heard it's close to Sam Harris landscape of morality (which I've yet to read). In essence, it's based on harm/well-being induction bridging many of the common moral theories together. Basically, your actions should be inductively reasoned to a probability of the most well-being for yourself and others combined (simplified).
In this case, it's more ethical that you act upon what is reasonable than what is not, but I'm not sure we really have to go into detail of my own argument for this. I think that even if you apply it to most moral systems, the reasonable act will always be connected to positive morals than negative ones. I.e more ethical.
Quoting Rank Amateur
p1 High reasonable belief always leads to reasonable acts
p2 Low reasonable belief always leads to unreasonable acts
p3 High reasonable acts are always considered ethical
p4 Low reasonable acts are always considered unethical
I don't think there's any doubt that high reasonable belief (as per the previous argument) always lead to reasonable acts. If the act is unreasonable, it's in direct violation against the reasonable belief. It's also important not to view an act as common truth, the act is linked to the intention of the moral agent and a reasonable act is intended to be out of reasonable belief. If the outcome is not intended, it's not the fault of the moral agent if the act is based on reasonable belief. But if the act is unreasonable, based on low reasonable belief it has a corrupted intention and therefore has a high probability of a faulty outcome and the moral agent is responsible for that outcome as the intention was corrupted by the low reasonable belief. It also brings back the definition of ethical and unethical by pointing to carelessness in predicting moral outcomes through unreasonable acts and belief. It's careless not to figure out the consequences of your acts essentially.
Quoting Rank Amateur
I define theism by a belief in God. It's also more broadly defined as "the belief in the existence of the Supreme Being or deities" as opposed to deism, even though deism is also still an unsupported belief type.
p1 Unsupported belief is always unethical
p2 Supported belief is always ethical
p3 Theism always relies on an unsupported belief
Definition of why theism always relies on unsupported belief is because if it's proven and we can measure it, it's deism. But even in deism, if we measure it and find God, it's not deism anymore but scientific fact. If "belief" is gone from both theism and deism, it's no longer definable as either theism or deism are defined. They are in opposition to scientific fact through this definition, and since none of them rely on hypotheses based on supported belief, like for instance the M-Theory which has a lot of math supporting it, but cannot be finished before predicted observations are shown and it becomes a scientific theory, theism is based on unsupported belief.
You agree that " supported" beliefs start as unsupported beliefs. This simple acknowledgement of fact is by definition in conflict with your premise
An unsupported belief always leads to uninformed acts.
No they often lead to "supported beliefs" after proper evaluation - you can not have one without the other.
and so on and so on.
I am not sure you can bridge this logic flaw in the argument. No idea starts as a supported idea, the support follows. My suggestion is you would need to eliminate the idea of "unsupported" and insert , false or disproved. Which is where I think you are intellectually, IMO you equate "unproven" with false, which they are not.
I think you misunderstand what I meant there. Your comment was that every belief is unsupported in the beginning and this is true; whenever we have an idea, it does not come into our minds with a support attached to it. However, if you hold on to this belief, this unsupported belief, without going further, you are acting upon that belief and act out uninformed acts.
Quoting Rank Amateur
Do you think that if the premise is changed to: "Holding on to unsupported belief always leads to uninformed acts" is more clear then?
Quoting Rank Amateur
But the explanation is clear about it, if you hold on to unsupported belief you will act out on it, but if you challenge the unsupported belief you either rule it false or find support. I think you are trying to shoehorn in that it's a logical flaw when it really isn't, seems more like it's a misunderstanding because of how the premise is phrased without clarity of what it refers to. But the above change covers it.
What do all those different kinds of belief have in common that make them beliefs?
That's not true.
Some conclusions are novel new ideas that can definitely follow from well supported premisses.
In my belief-argument (another thread) I mention three types (A, B and C). A, being an unsupported belief, irrational, based on nothing more than the personal fantasy surrounding it. B, being supported belief which is essentially a posteriori, an induction based on facts you know, carefully measured to the best of the ability you have within a normal day to day life; a way of thinking that minimize subjective distortion of the idea you have. C, a scientific hypothesis, supported more by facts and observations than type B, but not enough to yet be called a proven scientific theory.
As per the last part of the dialectic between me and Rank, it's clear that it's important to mention that everyone has a belief that is unsupported in the beginning, or rather, everyone has a thought that needs verification. The key is that unsupported belief, as I'm referring to, isn't about the thought process to reach supported belief, but the end in itself. If you hold on to unsupported belief and never push it towards supported belief by verification and falsification, you act and live by that unsupported belief.
In essence, it's like this.
Type A is looking at a door to a room and thinking there's something in there, you are even convinced it's a brightly lit room with a white armchair, maybe even a person in it. You have nothing to support the idea but you are pretty sure that's what's in the room.
Type B is opening the door to see that there's a dark wooden table with a blue vase and a red rose in it. You conclude that this is the case, but you also noticed the room was pretty darkly lit and you might have gotten the colors wrong. You are careful to conclude every fact as true, but you are pretty sure the basic truth is at least a somewhat darkly wooden table with a vase, maybe blue and a red rose in it, probably red because you have knowledge about common roses and it's a greater probability it's red you saw. You draw an inductive conclusion based on all of it.
Type C is getting 50 people, everyone goes into the room one by one and examines the table, vase and rose. When each comes out, they write down all the observations they have about the content in the room, without interaction with any of the other 50. You also enter and you use your own observation and the 50 people's gathered data/observations to conclude that there is, in fact, a dark wooden table, a greenish cyan-colored vase with a red rose with a few dark spots on its green leaves. The light in the room was dark, but in tungsten kelvin, which would affect the color perception of the objects based on the difference with light outside the room, you write this observation down as well and look for other observations from the 50 people which supports this and from those that prove against it. Your conclusion is a scientific hypothesis until you can photograph the content of the room to make a definitive scientific truth about what's in there.
Now, if the different types were to interact with the world about what was in the room, Type A would spread downright fantasies about it, even distort their own fantasy further, changing colors on the white chair and that the person was blond or dark-haired, but always unsupported by any observation. Type B would point out exactly what was in the room but would note at the same time that it was unclear exactly what color the vase had, maybe blue. Type C would have a detailed report which would need confirmation by measurement to reach a scientific theory, but is as close as possible to the truth you can be without a priori data.
That didn't answer my question.
What do all beliefs have in common such that that is what makes them belief?
Something else...
Unsupported belief can be true, so I'm not sure what you're trying to say with the last statement.
Have you read previous posts in this dialectic? Maybe you find answers there. I've written in detail about this numerous times in this thread.
In essence belief (outside of unsupported belief which is just emotional ideas conceptualized out of chaotic memory) is a posteriori out of facts.
You might need to explain your question better if you want another answer.
better, but just extending the time doesn't help much. holding on - after proved false or unreasonable is still better. The point being that unsupported does not mean true or not true, fact or not fact, reasonable or unreasonable - it just means unsupported. And some unsupported ideas will lead to good things an some to bad and some to neutral.
I don't see the link you are trying to make - sorry.
That's a dismissive simplification of everything.
Quoting Rank Amateur
No, your belief is still unsupported before any kind of support backs it up. If you prove it false, it's not unsupported, it's purely delusional.
Quoting Rank Amateur
And my premises support that there's a higher risk of distorting knowledge and of unreasonable acts because of it. That is just a fact of probability on how unsupported belief works, agreed? In what way would supported belief have a higher probability of doing the same things?
Quoting Rank Amateur
Not if the unsupported belief is turned into believed truths, which is often the case when people believe something long enough. Distorted knowledge is always bad since it's in the way of truth. Compare unsupported belief to supported, which has the highest probability of reaching good things more than the other. There's no question that unsupported belief is worse than supported. I don't really need to make the argument for that probability to be true, right? With how history has been shaped by unsupported belief, the suffering and terror because of it, I don't think anyone can really argue for the value of unsupported belief. What I'm arguing for is that it's morally wrong to even have this as a personal belief, since it eventually leads to projecting that personal belief into the world and distorting knowledge.
Quoting Rank Amateur
I think you think you found a big hole and because of it, you dismiss everything. I think that there's a clear definition of what "holding on to unsupported belief" really is and I've made examples of this in my argument. Now you are sort of straw-manning things and stretching it to say that "unsupported belief" doesn't have a timeframe and therefore false. It clearly has a timeframe, as I described in numerous examples.
I've answered the previous concerns you had and now it just feels like you are trying a little too hard with this point, even though its pretty defined. But I can actually redefine this more clearly:
Belief is something you have for a longer period of time. An idea is something you have in an instance. Unsupported belief is therefore not a precursor to supported belief, it is its own thing. Supported belief and unsupported belief starts with an idea, but unsupported belief is settling on that idea without any support for it, while supported belief is doing a rational induction on it to come to a conclusion that is at least reasonable and probable.
That would at least make it much more defined if that's what you felt was lacking.
Quoting Christoffer
The parenthetical content above highlights a flaw.
That is, you've given two kinds of belief. You've explained which kind qualifies as which. Unsupported belief... and all belief that is not unsupported.
Two kinds of belief.
I am asking what makes them all belief. What do all belief have in common that make them what they are, such that whenever anything has this commonality... it too... is a kind of belief. You've enumerated and explained a plethora of ways that they are different beliefs. You've yet to have delivered a clear cut easy to understand criterion for what counts as being a belief.
Better?
First, please edit your posts instead of spamming them, just a tip. Gets a bit fragmented otherwise.
Quoting creativesoul
I get your point, but I think you are fragmenting belief into the concept's smallest parts. Some of them can be categorized as unsupported, some as supported. If you look at their definitions you'll know where they belong. How I define it is based on a scale of support in which your examples can be fitted. My argument doesn't change if you have a specific belief, since by defining it specifically you know where its at.
Type A-C is the scale that the argument is built upon. Type A being unsupported, i.e all types of belief which have nothing but what you subjectively think about something or information that has as less support as your own thoughts. Meaning if someone communicated their unsupported belief to you and you just take it for granted without backing it up, you adapt that unsupported belief. You can fit whatever type of belief you define as being unsupported by external data, into Type A. This type also handles belief like truth.
Type B is everything that has some external support. You have data, at least some data that makes your belief probable, but you know that it is belief and are careful to not treat it as truth. You can act on it with caution, because you know there's a probability you are wrong. You know it is a belief.
Type C is a scientific belief, i.e hypothesis. Meaning it has enough support in facts to have a high probability of being true in some sense but is just a hypothesis to be tested. Going beyond this you have truth and not a belief anymore.
I'm not sure how this isn't clear cut?
Type A = backed up by nothing, considered true.
Type B = backed up some data/facts, considered belief, not truth.
Type C = backed up by a lot of data and facts, considered a hypothesis, probably true, but not yet proven. (requires a lot of research).
Quoting creativesoul
Not sure what you are referring to here, but if you are talking about having no language and a belief before learning a language, you are talking about a moral landscape that doesn't exist in society or as a society. Essentially you try to counter my moral theory of belief with an example of a society that does not exist. Without language, you have no society, without language, you cannot advance knowledge, meaning, if we are to define it by the belief-types, such a belief is definitely Type A and it will stay there until a language is formed, society is formed and knowledge is gathered and increased. But such a society does not exist and it's irrelevant to the moral theory since ethics are closely linked to society and culture. You cannot have morality if you don't have language since you have nothing to define actions with. Without society, culture and communication you don't have ethics.
Quoting creativesoul
Type B, supported belief, if this is a belief that's backed up with some evidence. Might even be Type C depending on the level of evidence. But still within the realm of supported belief and not Type A.
Quoting creativesoul
Are you referring to justified true belief? That's debunked through Gettier problems. A true belief that is accidentally true is Type A. Doesn't matter if it's true if there's no link to actual knowledge. Accepting that some beliefs might be true, without anything to support it, is groundwork for disaster and that's why I pointed out the probability of such belief to have negative outcomes. What's even worse is that "true belief" is used as some kind of defense for those who try to argue for their unsupported beliefs, by fallaciously argue that their belief might be true and therefore be true belief. So, definitely Type A.
Quoting creativesoul
I think you aren't really looking into what I actually present in my argument. Why is the Type-scale not working for you? What is unclear about its definition?
My God is always right.
Regards
DL
What do all belief have in common that makes them belief?
I've explained the issue clearly. You have no criterion for what counts as belief. You are talking about the ground for belief, not the belief itself.
The question above needs answered.
The question doesn't make sense really. Belief is the ideas in your head about the world around you. They are either supported by something or they are fantasies and delusions.
You are not asking a question, you want your own answer and your question does in no way affect my argument.
Quoting creativesoul
If that is your problem with the argument, then you simply don't understand the definitions I've given. There's no problem with having them split like that, why would that be a problem?
The question makes perfect sense if one has an adequate criterion for belief. Here you've basically said that belief is the ideas in your head about the world around you(us).
So, all belief consists of ideas in the head about the world around us.
Is that acceptable to you? It's not to me.
Statements of belief are not in the head. They are belief. Therefore, not all belief is in the head.
Some belief is about ourselves. They are belief. Therefore, not all belief is about the world around us.
Surely, you see the point here? Your notion of belief is unacceptable when viewed under this kind of scrutiny.
Quoting Christoffer
Belief is not a concept. Concepts are existentially dependent upon language. Belief is not. Our talk of "belief", our ideas about "belief", our notions of "belief"...
These are concepts.
Belief is prior to language. That which is prior to language cannot be existentially dependent upon it. Belief is not a concept. My charge here is that your conception of "belief" is inherently inadequate for taking proper account of belief.
You demand a simple answer and I gave it. Belief does not exist without human thinking about something and starting to believe something, out of that comes to different types of belief. You cannot detach the belief from humans, even if a belief was written down and people forgot the one expressing the belief, it is still an expressed belief from that forgotten person. You are taking different concepts of belief and counter-argue the basic definition with that there's "too many versions of belief and therefore you can't define it".
Quoting creativesoul
They start in the head, expressed, they still come from the mind. A belief can exist, written down outside of the mind, but the belief is still from an initial mind. Belief is that which defines the type of statement it is, i.e something from the mind that is acted upon like it was fact. I defined a spectrum of truth we apply to belief, which ranges from acted upon like pure truth, to an understanding that it is a belief that is acted upon.
Quoting creativesoul
This is what I mean with you breaking down everything into their smallest parts. You demand a simple definition of belief and then you dissect it to conclude that it isn't complex enough to incorporate everything.
However, all human use of belief as it exists for us humans relates to the argument I have made. If you stretch the definition of belief to not work with my argument, you essentially just invent another interpretation of belief, which isn't in use by people.
Belief is lingering thoughts about the world around us, ourselves, the universe, everything we can imagine and every thought we conjured into constant and variable memories. Belief starts with an idea, that through time turns into a concept of truth which may or may not be considered real truth. Belief can be expressed, influence other people's ideas that form into their own belief and it shapes how they, we and all humans act, behave and form the world-view and concept of all people's selves...
...I can go on and write an entire essay on belief without really breaking the argument I made.
Quoting creativesoul
How do you define belief yourself? Would you say that "belief" as it is used in language, and because of that, how it is used in my argument, does not work with my argument? Or is a semantic deconstruction of the term "belief" just a linguistical pragmatic failure to understand the argument through an ambiguity fallacy, intentional or unintentional?
Quoting Christoffer
There's been a misunderstanding.
I demanded a proper definition of "belief". It happens to be a simple answer. Not all simple answers suffice.
Not all belief is well-considered... human belief notwithstanding.
I agree with the sentiment. The account though... it could use some help.
All belief is existentially dependent upon the believing creature. That is, all belief emerges onto the world stage by virtue of a creature capable of drawing correlations between different things.
To quite the contrary. I'm demanding that it be properly defined. If our notions of thought and belief are mistaken, then we've gotten something or other wrong within every report about and/or account of anything ever thought, believed, spoken, written, and/or otherwise uttered.
So no... I'm not saying that we cannot properly define our notions of "belief". I'm demanding that we make sure that we do.
When we look carefully at notions of belief, we find that some of them are inherently incapable of taking account of pre-linguistic thought/belief.
This is what it amounts to...
So, we have two kinds of belief. This kind and that kind. We know what it takes to deserve being called 'this' or 'that' kind of belief. That's the nutshell version. You're presenting what seems to me to be a carefully considered position on a particular subject matter.
What you've presented is much more about what you personally find to be satisfactory justification/reason/warrant for holding a belief, particularly after one self-reflects; after it's careful consideration.
What we need is an answer to the following question...
What makes them both belief?
What is the bare minimum criterion, which when satisfied, results in having a clear cut case of thought/belief?
What do they all possess and/or include that is both necessary and sufficient for forming, remembering, considering, questioning, and/or otherwise 'having/using' belief?
What we do have is basic rudimentary level survival mechanisms. Physiological sensory perception being one. We need not turn it on.
What sorts of things?
Well, what's actually available of course.
'Objects' of physiological sensory perception and/or the creature's own state of emotion, and/or mindstate. Think Pavlov's dog. The bell:The hunger:The experience of being fed after hearing the bell: The expectation that resulted from drawing these correlations/connections/associations between the hunger, the bell, and the satisfaction of hunger pangs time and time again. The evidence supporting my claiming the dog's expectation is the involuntary salivation itself.
The dog believed it was about eat.
No. It's not simple. At least...
Understanding human belief is not a simple task. That is particularly the case when so many for so long have been working from clearly inadequate terminological frameworks.
I would approach The Gettier Problem from an angle I doubt you've considered. I do not argue for the 19th or 20th century versions of JTB. Rather, I would argue how the conventional notion of JTB works from an inadequate notion of belief. By doing so I grant Gettier showed an otherwise neglected issue with that particular academic convention. At the same time, the new understanding shows that Gettier did not accurately represent Smith's belief in either Case I or Case II.
Gettier's cases show that i.)not all well-argued for true propositions are knowledge, ii.)not all 'logical' rules preserve the truth of their premises when followed, and are thus complete and utter misnomers(the rules of 'logical' entailment), and last but not least, iii.)the terms Gettier used as a means to take an account of Smith's belief in Case II were utterly inadequate for properly representing a belief that a disjunction is true.
Gettier cases were considered well argued because they followed conventional understanding at the time. Convention can take a while to catch up.
That's another matter altogether.
Simple, basic, rudimentary level thought/belief is prior to our account thereof. That which is prior to our account is not existentially dependent - in any way, shape, or form - upon it's being taken into account. Simple, basic, rudimentary level thought/belief is one such thing.
What does it consist of?
What is it existentially dependent upon such that all thought/belief consists of the same basic necessary elemental constituents? The same basic core, so to speak. Where ought we look to find answers to such difficult questions? Statements of thought/belief, of course... where else?
Let's look...
Whenever dealing with a sincere speaker...
All statements express, by common means, the speaker's own thought/belief. Statements represent one's thought/belief. All statements of belief presuppose truth. All statements of belief are meaningful. All statements of belief are predication. All statements of belief are existentially dependent upon language.
But...
Rudimentary thought/belief is prior to language. That which is prior to language cannot consist of language. That which is prior to language cannot consist of any ingredient that is itself existentially dependent upon language. This presents a problem...
Some of these elemental constituents for statements of belief are existentially dependent upon language. That which is existentially dependent upon language cannot exist prior to language. Rudimentary thought/belief cannot consist of statements, or propositions, or anything else that is existentially dependent upon language. One may wonder what exactly is left of a statement of belief if all that is existentially dependent upon language is removed. It seems nothing at first blush...
All belief is meaningful to the thinking/believing creature. All belief presupposes it's own truth. All belief is existentially dependent upon a creature capable of drawing correlations between different things. The drawing of the correlation is the attribution of meaning:It is rudimentary thought/belief formation itself. Meaning initially emerges within such basic, rudimentary thought/belief formation. All correlation presupposes the existence of it's own content(regardless of subsequent further qualification/quantification). The presupposition of truth(correspondence to fact) emerges within basic rudimentary thought/belief formation.
Think Pavlov's dog.
It thinks/believes it is about to eat. It has no ability to doubt the veracity of it's own thought/belief. It has no ability to doubt that it heard the bell, smells the food, or feels hungry. It has no ability to sit back and consider it's own thought/belief. It has no ability to suspend it's own judgment. To carefully consider whether or not it's own expectation is well grounded or not; mistaken or not. It has no ability to think about it's own thought/belief.
Nonetheless, it's belief can become true, or become false. That would coincide with it's expectations being met or not. The dog wouldn't - cannot possibly - know any of that. We can and do.
Like that...
I argue in favor of direct physiological sensory perception. I argue in favor of thought/belief beginning in it's simplest form and growing in complexity according to the capabilities and/or dumb luck of the creature. I argue that the complexity of any particular thought/belief is determined by it's content(the content of the correlations).
I argue strongly against any and all conventional notions of "perception" which are informed by language, but do not draw and maintain the distinction between thought/belief and thinking about thought/belief. Such notions of "perception" are inherently inadequate for taking account of thought/belief which exists in it's entirety prior to language acquisition.
I argue strongly against the notion that all belief has propositional content.
If we are to call the mental ongoings(mind if you must) of a non linguistic and/or prelinguistic creature "thought/belief" while also calling statements of thought/belief by the same name, they must consist of the same basic necessary elemental constituents mentioned heretofore. Otherwise, the entire project falls prey to Witt's argument against essentialism... what do all "games" have in common? The namesake alone.
I agree with the need to distinguish between well grounded belief and not so well grounded belief. It's just that I find that your explanations seem lacking in clarity and/or explanatory/justificatory power/strength. And there are several claims that are quite simply false... on their face. More than anything however, it seems that it could be a good start... something to further hone.
Is God real?
I find no difference between God and a belief in God, no matter which supernatural entity is under consideration. That which is real has an effect/affect. Thought/belief has efficacy. Therefore, God(or belief therein) is most certainly real.
The effects are quantifiable.
Rather, the need for humans to recognize, attribute, and misattribute causality is at the very foundation of thought/belief. The God of the gaps is a powerfully verifiable argument. It was the best explanation of the time, given their knowledge...
That seems pretty well grounded to me. Not true. But, truth isn't necessary for being well grounded. Gettier shows that much as well. His arguments contain falsehood that follows convention, and is thus well grounded(if following convention counts), despite the fact that his claims about Smith's belief are false.
My position is that if there is some supernatural entity or entities which are responsible for the creation of the universe, the intentional creation of the universe, then it/they must exist outside of spacetime. All knowledge is about that which appears within spacetime, or is otherwise inferred from such.
So, if there is some such entity, it is and will forever be unknown unless and until it/they show itself or themselves in some undeniable way.
It is not an outright denial of the possibility. Such is unwarranted, on my view. However, there's little to find appealing about historical/conventional religious 'debates'. I deny the God of Abraham on the grounds that if everything in the Bible that is attributed to Him is true, He would be one sick malicious son of a bitch, and render the notion of love virtually meaningless.
Studying the history of human development in various countries does give us insight into the evolution of traditions and practices, and yes a lot of so-called mythologies arise out of folklore from these traditions. However, I caution anyone to assume that traditions spiritual in nature are just merely an idea of the mind and are subsequently false, and that the safe bet would be to stand neutral. Regardless of your stance, if you were to look at these traditions all the way to the beginning "something" had to occur in order to give rise to these practices in the human mind.