Imagine the following conversation between a believer and an agnostic/non-believer:
Believer: “God exists.”
Non-believer: “There’s no evidence that a god exists.”
Believer: “The evidence is all around us. The universe is the evidence.”
Now, it looks like the believer is heading in a Paley’s watch direction, but I want to focus on the last statement, which strikes me as being like the opposite of an ad lapidem fallacy (“I prove it thus” rather than “I refute it thus”). Hence my first instinct is to label it proof by assertion. But I hesitate to do so because…
Non-believer: “That’s proof by assertion.”
Believer: “Proof by assertion is where you assert something without proof. But I’ve given proof: the universe.”
Of course, this seems to stretch the definition of evidence. So is there a separate category of evidential fallacy (claiming x proves y when it doesn’t specifically/doesn’t adequately/doesn’t at all) or does one have to stick to calling this proof by assertion? Or to put it another way, is the evidential deficit implicit in calling something out as proof by assertion?
Leaving all of this technical philosophical jargon behind, let’s assume that for whatever reason, it can be proven that a God, the God, your God does in fact exist.
Then, given this…
“…an endless procession of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and tornadoes and hurricanes and great floods and great droughts and great fires and deadly viral and bacterial plagues and miscarriages and hundreds and hundreds of medical and mental afflictions and extinction events…making life on Earth a living hell for countless millions of men, women and children down through the ages”…
…how could this God not be construed as anything other than a sadistic monster?
Define strong: Not whining and feigning nonexistence when held accountable. While at the same time blathering on about the importance of power and calling people who actually act on their compassion weak and impotent, while always talking about preparing to act.
Suffering builds character (Romans 5:3-5, John 12:24). If you get everything you want all the time you don’t grow. You go the way of Nietzsche.
From where do we draw evidence? If we can’t draw it from the universe, how can we draw evidence of anything? And if we can draw it from the universe, isn’t the universe itself fair game?
So maybe if you think of it as “evidence of what?” you will get at the appropriate (if any) fallacy. For example, if you’re arguing for the existence of some particular thing/event that is going (or went) on in the universe, pointing at the whole thing doesn’t make your case.
It seems that pointing at the whole universe is evidence of the universe… but… then we’re back to Descartes’ reduction. And if we stayed there, we would be stuck at not being able to draw evidence from the universe… for anything.
If we didn’t go Descartes’ direction, we’d have to treat the phenomenal as real (or grounded in the real) & go from there.
We can reason to God from ANY of those starting points.
But just waving your hand & saying look around… prolly not the best “foot” to start on. You could keep going from there, though.
Sorry, I don’t do exchanges of “general description intellectual contraptions” that revolve around dueling definitions and deductions. Not in a world bursting at seams with human pain and suffering. A lot of it brought on by those who insist that others must believe what they do. Or they are “evil”
My feeling is that “the universe” could be evidence for anything at all.
God is a vague and undefined concept.
The non believer’s move is the wrong one. Maybe it should be an insistence that the believer says what he means by “God”. If he defines god as the creator of the universe then the believer at least scores a logical victory
However the non believer could as easily define the universe as “everything” thus also scoring a logical victory since everything excludes “god”.
They could agree that god is everything, but that would mean the universe was self generating.
In neither case are any specific qualities for the universe or god are established, since basically they are both just letting off hot air.
In effect “God exists” is meaningless. It’s an empty claim since nothing here indicates what is meant by the terms god, and I think we can all agree that there is no consensus about what the terms means.
GIven that there is no consensus it is perfectly reasonable for the non believer to follow with his understanding of “god” and declare his disbelief.
If god is all powerful then he could make us stringer without punishing us.
And you might want to spare a thought for the ones god killed.
THose little babies crushed under the wreckage of the Lisbon earthquake were so happy to die in pain so that others could be strong.
No, there is no growth without something to struggle against. Name one instance of growth that does not involve struggle.
Btw, I was visiting my oldest son over spring break …he said that if the people who use that argument^ (Sculptor/Biggy’s) try to convince you that they’ve made a virtual reality we’re co-creatively part of …ask them why they haven’t co-creatively fixed it.
Numbers, dear.
Popularity.
Intersubjectivity means a collective fabricates a reality, and then collectively maintain it.
The larger the group the better…so nihilists, like you, are most often collectivists.
Their ideals require believers.
Not realists.
Whether they believe in reality or not, doesn’t matter.
Reality is independent form all subjective interpretations.
Collectives create bubble realities - artificial realities.
And, like I’ve said, they must always contradict their own convictions to maintain this collective within a reality that just will not change to harmonize with theirs, and just will not go away and leave them alone.
So, pagan gods do not need pagan worshipers…whereas Abraham’s one-god does.
Virtual reality…artificial alternate reality…always collective.
An external agency working on codes the collective agree on - binaries - is what creates artificiality.
The participants also agree to pretend it is more real than reality - suspending skepticism indefinitely, and supporting the others delusion, within the parameters of the shared pretence, if the support is reciprocated.
Like Abrahamism.
Like Transexuals are demanding. they want to be given the same ‘right’ to live in their private virtual reality, just like most Americans.
Transsexuality is a logical end of Americanism individualism and tis ‘liberty’ fetish.
Lefties are rioting and holding the American system responsible for failing to live up to its own dogma.
If it had, it would have collapsed a long time ago - that it is forced to now is why it is collapsing.
For example:
The delusion - the shared lie - that race is a ‘social construct’, using "affirmative action’ to correct the social "injustices that produce racial disparity, leads to failure, because race is not a social construct.
The result is riots accusing the system of failing to successfully apply affirmative action.
The error is incorrectly found in the application - as it was after every communist failure to produce their utopia - and not in the shared delusional conviction.
The error cannot be corrected because it is based on compounding errors.
Equity imposes injustice to ‘correct’ what are perceived as systemic injustices…when the culprit is nature, the world itself - a world of injustices and inequalities.
The systemic problem cannot be resolved, because race is not a social construct so it cannot be ‘corrected’ systemically.
A shared lie, creating a shared virtual reality within which race and gender are indeed social constructs, cannot exist in reality for long unless it contradicts itself, or there’s an agency dealing with the real world, so as to allow the participants in virtual reality to continue playing a shared game.
