Which world is better: the world with no God or the world where the gospel is true?

[public hermit]

Ah, so we had a misunderstanding.

Well, in spite of our misunderstanding I appreciate your willingness to sort of try.

 

[Clizby WampusCat]

Then with whom would you be conversing?
If you have taken your epistemic factory settings and set them so high as to reject the existence of a real world, other minds, the reality of the past, it hardly seems coherent to then "Argue" a point with a non-existent person, about a non-existent real world, on whether or not the person of God exists?

So every response you could make to any post betrays the fact that you actually believe in a real world, with other minds, and rationality and some semblance of your faculties giving you similar data to other minds' faculties.

There is a so much foundational work to do here before we ever get to the discussion the knowledge claims God doesn't exist, or God does exist.

I am not claiming god does not exist. I lack a belief a god exists.

I ignore solipsism because as of yet nobody has a solution to it. Practically I ignore it to live my life. This is the reason I don't believe we can know anything with 100% certainty, that does not mean we cannot know things with high enough confidence levels to warrant belief.

 

[dlamberth]

I personally regard experience of love as a very effective source of wisdom, but it is not accessible to anyone who believes that love is no more than a bit of brain activity. My post was addressed to a person who has already demonstrated that diminishing love to "a bit of brain activity" is all the respect for love they possess.

If I seem to have misunderstood your point, please feel free to say so.

There seemed to me, perhaps incorrectly, an emphases on logic (math) and faith for truth. I was hoping to bring into the picture "inner experience" as yet another trajectory. Towards that end I used Love as an example. When exploring spiritual things like the Heart of Christ for instance, I know of no better way than the route of inner experience to capture what that's like.

 

[dlamberth]

How do you know there was a nothing at one time that everything came from?

It's postulated the even the Big Bang came from something. The universe it is thought emerged from a singularity which is a point of infinite density and gravity.

 

[Clizby WampusCat]

It's postulated the even the Big Bang came from something. The universe it is thought emerged from a singularity which is a point of infinite density and gravity.

It is actually been shown to come from an extremely dense and high temperature beginning by overwhelming evidence. It is extraordinary that scientists know so much about the near origins of the universe. It is the power of science and human ambition and intellect. They are now building machines that will attempt to measure the gravitational waves from just before the beginning of the universe. We will see what they find. We should celebrate that we live in a time that we can explore these grand questions.

 

[Silmarien]

I have always promoted sufficient reasons for belief. I would not conclude in any way that magic is real in your example.

Then you would accept the principle of sufficient reason. One way to conceptualize the idea of something coming from nothing is to imagine something occurring for no conceivable reason, with no possible underlying explanation whatsoever. A magician can pull a rabbit out of a hat and claim that he has created it ex nihilo, from nothing. Do you think that this is a claim that must be taken seriously, and that we ought to admit that without further evidence, we are unjustified in rejecting the possibility that the magician really did produce the rabbit out of thin air? Why or why not?

I am not denying sufficient reason. I am not convinced that the sufficient reason is a god or being in any way. How do you describe what the necessary cause is?

One thing at a time. We would need to fully unpack the principle of sufficient reason and the idea of "Necessary Existence" first, though I should probably remind you that I don't believe God is a being at all. I usually recommend the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads to get a better idea for what it means for God to not be a being, since they are better at consistently avoiding anthropomorphism.

Because the assumptions are made for different reasons. My assumption that solipsism is not a truth claim. Solipsism could be true but I cannot operate in this reality if I truly believed that. assumption that something cannot come from nothing is a claim. Can you define nothing?

Why do you think the assumptions are made for different reasons? I don't know how to function in this reality if I think I can walk down the street and have a pack of wolves suddenly pop into existence at any moment all around me.

 

[Uber Genius]

No it is not. One definition of special pleading is this:

Applying standards, principles, and/or rules to other people or circumstances, while making oneself or certain circumstances exempt from the same critical criteria, without providing adequate justification. Special pleading is often a result of strong emotional beliefs that interfere with reason.

All I am saying is that an explanation needs support by evidence to be believed. Saying it is the best available answer says nothing about the absolute quality of the evidence.

Lets say there are three explanations for why someone lives in Minnesota.

1. They were born there.
2. Aliens put them there.
3. Pixies told them to live there.

The best answer of the three known answers is that they were born there. But the answer is actually that they got a job there.

Best explanations do not show any measure of truth.

This is going to be a difficult process.

I had hoped for a cogent discussion.

Abduction is simply a way of reasoning.

"Abduction
First published Wed Mar 9, 2011; substantive revision Fri Apr 28, 2017
In the philosophical literature, the term “abduction” is used in two related but different senses. In both senses, the term refers to some form of explanatory reasoning. However, in the historically first sense, it refers to the place of explanatory reasoning in generating hypotheses, while in the sense in which it is used most frequently in the modern literature it refers to the place of explanatory reasoning in justifying hypotheses. In the latter sense, abduction is also often called “Inference to the Best Explanation.”

Abduction (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

So while I can make no sense of your response above, we see that my response about special pleading is true when you describe my appeal to God as the best explanation as, insufficient for belief.

"A best explanation is not sufficient evidence for belief"

Further, since most theistic claims in debates with atheism are offered abductively (again as inference to the best explanation of feature of our universe) it is puzzling that you are unaware of these claims.

When one says of scientific claims ( my example was Darwin's Evolution thesis) "That is science and therefore sufficient evidence for belief, but then turn around and discount abduction, you have an incoherent statement.

P1 All inferences to the best explanation are Not sufficient for belief

P2 Scientific inferences based on inferences to the best explanation are sufficient for belief.

We need no go any further. The above statements are incoherent.

But they represent a further distinction, namely that when it comes to some inferences you will change the rules and accept abduction.

This is textbook special pleading.

 

[MrsFoundit]

There seemed to me, perhaps incorrectly, an emphases on logic (math) and faith for truth. I was hoping to bring into the picture "inner experience" as yet another trajectory. Towards that end I used Love as an example. When exploring spiritual things like the Heart of Christ for instance, I know of no better way than the route of inner experience to capture what that's like.

I agree with you.

 

[Uber Genius]

Justify your belief in a god that is moral then you would be correct.

No. That is a separate issue altogether.

Your claim was that, "Most atheists have meaning in life and many die content with their belief."

God doesn't have to be moral in order for atheist existentialists to claim as they do that there is no objective meaning in a world without god.

We need no nothing about a non-existent god in to ask where would a bottom-up account of space, time, matter, energy, causality lead to but no free will, complete determinism, no objective good, no objective subject independent meaning, you are after all just a random collection of particles no more or less meaningful than any other random collection of particles like a rock or ant or solar system. Nausea is the natural response.

So no need to engage in any discussion about god or gods here.

Then how can you say that people freely choose to go to hell? Who sends people to hell?

So apparently you are not familiar with the most popular Christian teaching on the matter.

The point is that on most versions of Christian theism, all humans have free will.
They receive enough knowledge about the world to perceive moral requirements such as there exists a creator of this universe to whom you are morally responsible to engage.
They are given time to respond to that knowledge.

If they freely choose to reject God, as people like Julian Huxley, Bertrand Russell, Richard Dawkins have said, "Even if God does exist, I will never bow the knee to him," then God says you get what you want.

How is that NOT choosing to be eternally separated from God?

Perhaps you have a problem with the world that God has created?
We all do. Christians as well.
It doesn't seem reasonable to let infants die of disease, or earthquakes kill thousands, of innocent people being murdered, or 100 million people being killed by their own governments in totalitarian atheistic regimes in the 20th century.

The question for some of us is, "Is hell a feature of the real world?"

I think it is the second best argument for the atheist.

 

[Uber Genius]

Okay, again, IF the 'universe' turns out eternal, can [we] agree that to assert a creator becomes absurd? (yes or no)?

No lol, that is absurd.

So if we agree that all the scientific evidence is wrong, and the universe appears to be eternal in the past, so the best proved laws in physics (the laws of thermodynamics) are wrong, and over 40 proofs for inflationary hot big bang cosmology are wrong, and Einstein's theory of general relativity were wrong...

Oh and the very foundation of science which is out of nothing,nothing comes turns out to be wrong.

then we would eliminate one inference for God as the best explanation, namely the Kalam cosmological argument.

P1 Anything that begins to exist has a cause
P2 The universe began to exist
A therefore it had a cause that was outside of time, space, was immaterial, and all-powerful.

All you have done, besides destroying the majority of cosmogony, is falsify the 2nd premise. So the Kalam would be false, but the Liebnizian version would not be. Nor would the various teleological arguments, nor would the argument from the uncanny usefulness of math in describing our physical world, or the transcendent arguments from beauty or no atheists in fox holes.

But why engage in such destruction of things we know of the real world?

 

[Clizby WampusCat]

Then you would accept the principle of sufficient reason. One way to conceptualize the idea of something coming from nothing is to imagine something occurring for no conceivable reason, with no possible underlying explanation whatsoever. A magician can pull a rabbit out of a hat and claim that he has created it ex nihilo, from nothing. Do you think that this is a claim that must be taken seriously, and that we ought to admit that without further evidence, we are unjustified in rejecting the possibility that the magician really did produce the rabbit out of thin air? Why or why not?

I would never reject the possibility. I would not believe it to be true unless further evidence is presented that convinces me. But there is no reason to conclude that it did not come from nowhere.

One thing at a time. We would need to fully unpack the principle of sufficient reason and the idea of "Necessary Existence" first, though I should probably remind you that I don't believe God is a being at all. I usually recommend the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads to get a better idea for what it means for God to not be a being, since they are better at consistently avoiding anthropomorphism.

I am just trying to get a handle on what you believe god to be. Does god require anything from us? I will review those sources.

Why do you think the assumptions are made for different reasons? I don't know how to function in this reality if I think I can walk down the street and have a pack of wolves suddenly pop into existence at any moment all around me.

My entire life I have never seen anything just pop into existence, why would I give it much credibility until there is sufficient reason to do so?

 

[Clizby WampusCat]

This is going to be a difficult process.

I had hoped for a cogent discussion.

Abduction is simply a way of reasoning.

"Abduction
First published Wed Mar 9, 2011; substantive revision Fri Apr 28, 2017
In the philosophical literature, the term “abduction” is used in two related but different senses. In both senses, the term refers to some form of explanatory reasoning. However, in the historically first sense, it refers to the place of explanatory reasoning in generating hypotheses, while in the sense in which it is used most frequently in the modern literature it refers to the place of explanatory reasoning in justifying hypotheses. In the latter sense, abduction is also often called “Inference to the Best Explanation.”

And that is not a scientific principle or a good reasoning tool to find truth. Abduction is a logical fallacy when applied to truth claims. Abduction can be used to help form a hypothesis but in no way can it be relied upon to obtain truth to a degree of certainty that warrants belief.

Abduction (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

So while I can make no sense of your response above, we see that my response about special pleading is true when you describe my appeal to God as the best explanation as, insufficient for belief.

Yet, I never used abduction to conclude anything.

"A best explanation is not sufficient evidence for belief"

Further, since most theistic claims in debates with atheism are offered abductively (again as inference to the best explanation of feature of our universe) it is puzzling that you are unaware of these claims.

I am aware of heist claims, I don't believe most of them and won't through abduction.

When one says of scientific claims ( my example was Darwin's Evolution thesis) "That is science and therefore sufficient evidence for belief, but then turn around and discount abduction, you have an incoherent statement.

No one believes in evolution because we call it science. I believe in evolution because it has credible overwhelming evidence to believe it is true.

P1 All inferences to the best explanation are Not sufficient for belief

P2 Scientific inferences based on inferences to the best explanation are sufficient for belief.

I disagree with P2. Science does not believe things using using the best explanation only. The best explanation in science must be demonstrated by facts. An explanation alone means nothing if it has insufficient evidence to support it. I can believe anything with an explanation.

We need no go any further. The above statements are incoherent.

But they represent a further distinction, namely that when it comes to some inferences you will change the rules and accept abduction.

This is textbook special pleading.

You are wrong as I have attempted to show.

 

[MrsFoundit]

I am just trying to get a handle on what you believe god to be.

Why?

 

[Silmarien]

I would never reject the possibility. I would not believe it to be true unless further evidence is presented that convinces me. But there is no reason to conclude that it did not come from nowhere.

You don't think there is any reason to conclude that the magician did not create the rabbit out of thin air? You really think that it's equally possible that magic is real as that it isn't?

Your focus on "further evidence" isn't particularly meaningful here. Let us imagine again the situation in which one magician is performing tricks that a handful of other magicians cannot figure out. The evidence that he is performing genuine magic lies in the fact that the other experts cannot determine how else these tricks are being carried out. Would you accept this as sufficient evidence? Why or why not?

My entire life I have never seen anything just pop into existence, why would I give it much credibility until there is sufficient reason to do so?

Because you apparently seem to think that there is no reason to conclude that it wouldn't happen. Usually if we think that there's literally no reason to assume that something won't happen, we take seriously the possibility that it will.

 

[Clizby WampusCat]

No. That is a separate issue altogether.

Can you justify your belief in a god?

Your claim was that, "Most atheists have meaning in life and many die content with their belief."

God doesn't have to be moral in order for atheist existentialists to claim as they do that there is no objective meaning in a world without god.

True, and I agree there is no objective morals without god. There is also no objective morals with god.

We need no nothing about a non-existent god in to ask where would a bottom-up account of space, time, matter, energy, causality lead to but no free will, complete determinism, no objective good, no objective subject independent meaning, you are after all just a random collection of particles no more or less meaningful than any other random collection of particles like a rock or ant or solar system. Nausea is the natural response.

So. Just because you don't like the consequence of there being no god does not mean then that there is a god.

So no need to engage in any discussion about god or gods here.

Convenient.

So apparently you are not familiar with the most popular Christian teaching on the matter.

The point is that on most versions of Christian theism, all humans have free will.

Demonstrate that we actually have free will.

They receive enough knowledge about the world to perceive moral requirements such as there exists a creator of this universe to whom you are morally responsible to engage.

Demonstrate this to be true.

They are given time to respond to that knowledge.

Newborns die all the time. Abortions happen every minute. What chance did they get?

If they freely choose to reject God, as people like Julian Huxley, Bertrand Russell, Richard Dawkins have said, "Even if God does exist, I will never bow the knee to him," then God says you get what you want.

I am not saying that. I choose to not go to hell.

How is that NOT choosing to be eternally separated from God?

Does god have the power to not send me to hell if he chooses no matter what I believe? Or does he not have this power?

Perhaps you have a problem with the world that God has created?
We all do. Christians as well.
It doesn't seem reasonable to let infants die of disease, or earthquakes kill thousands, of innocent people being murdered, or 100 million people being killed by their own governments in totalitarian atheistic regimes in the 20th century.

I don't like these things about the world but show me that god created it as you claim.

The question for some of us is, "Is hell a feature of the real world?"

I think it is the second best argument for the atheist.

The best argument is that no demonstration of a gods existence has ever been sufficiently demonstrated.

 

[MrsFoundit]

The best argument is that no demonstration of a gods existence has ever been sufficiently demonstrated.

What insufficient demonstration of an existence of "a god" do you believe actually ever occurred?
Definition of DEMONSTRATION

 

[Clizby WampusCat]

You don't think there is any reason to conclude that the magician did not create the rabbit out of thin air? You really think that it's equally possible that magic is real as that it isn't?

Where did I say it is equally possible? I actually said that I would not believe it without evidence. But I cannot say that the rabbit did not come from nothing. How could I possibly know that?

Your focus on "further evidence" isn't particularly meaningful here. Let us imagine again the situation in which one magician is performing tricks that a handful of other magicians cannot figure out. The evidence that he is performing genuine magic lies in the fact that the other experts cannot determine how else these tricks are being carried out. Would you accept this as sufficient evidence? Why or why not?

No, just because someone does not know how something happened does not mean another explanation is true.

All through history people have believed gods were involved in natural phenomena. Every time we have discovered the real reason it was with science and was not a god. Just because we don't know how something happens does not mean we conclude it was something we have an unsupported explanation for.

Because you apparently seem to think that there is no reason to conclude that it wouldn't happen. Usually if we think that there's literally no reason to assume that something won't happen, we take seriously the possibility that it will.

How can you show that something cannot come from nothing? How can you show magic is not real? I don't believe these things are true because there is insufficient evidence to believe them.

 

[MrsFoundit]

Can you justify your belief in a god?

Who to?

 

[Silmarien]

No, just because someone does not know how something happened does not mean another explanation is true.

All through history people have believed gods were involved in natural phenomena. Every time we have discovered the real reason it was with science and was not a god. Just because we don't know how something happens does not mean we conclude it was something we have an unsupported explanation for.

Except that according to your own logic, if we do not have an understanding of how something works, we have to accept that it is equally possible that the underlying explanation is genuine magic.

I don't think you get to invoke the success of science in showing that events have rational explanations while simultaneously holding that there is not reason to believe that magicians do not actually create rabbits out of thin air. Your underlying argument here is that modern science does not give us sufficient reason to believe that magic does not exist.

How can you show that something cannot come from nothing? How can you show magic is not real? I don't believe these things are true because there is insufficient evidence to believe them.

Do you even know what the evidence for magic is? Do you spend all your days carefully examining the question, hunting down every paranormal report out there to see if you can find evidence for the existence of magic? Or do you just assume that the evidence doesn't exist because at the end of the day, you believe that magic is impossible?

This is my problem with the obsession of "insufficent evidence." Unless someone actually has encyclopedic knowledge of the evidence that has been presented on the paranormal, it's a smokescreen for the fact that deep down, we just don't think that certain things are possible.

I have no problem just saying that I don't believe in magic, and that I don't trust any of the "evidence" for it because I don't think it's possible. The fact that it seems to be difficult for so many atheists to admit the same thing these days strikes me as deeply problematic.

 

[Clizby WampusCat]

Except that according to your own logic, if we do not have an understanding of how something works, we have to accept that it is equally possible that the underlying explanation is genuine magic.

No, It is not equally possible. It is a remote possibility based on my experience and the fact there has never presented credible evidence that magic is real.

I don't think you get to invoke the success of science in showing that events have rational explanations while simultaneously holding that there is not reason to believe that magicians do not actually create rabbits out of thin air.

I do not believe they can pull rabbits out of thin air. That does not mean that I am saying that they can.

Your underlying argument here is that modern science does not give us sufficient reason to believe that magic does not exist.

Science does not give us sufficient reason to believe that magic does exist. But again that is not saying that it does not exist.

Do you even know what the evidence for magic is? Do you spend all your days carefully examining the question, hunting down every paranormal report out there to see if you can find evidence for the existence of magic? Or do you just assume that the evidence doesn't exist because at the end of the day, you believe that magic is impossible?

No, at the end of the day I don't believe that magic is real. But I cannot conclude that it is not real.

If someone has a bowl of skittles and they say it has an even number of skittles in the bowl. If I say I don't believe there are an even number of skittles am I saying that there are an odd number of skittles?

This is my problem with the obsession of "insufficent evidence." Unless someone actually has encyclopedic knowledge of the evidence that has been presented on the paranormal, it's a smokescreen for the fact that deep down, we just don't think that certain things are possible.

I don't think magic is possible but logically I cannot know that it is not. If I cannot rule out magic completely and then rule it out anyway, then I will never know if magic does indeed exist if it does.

I have no problem just saying that I don't believe in magic, and that I don't trust any of the "evidence" for it because I don't think it's possible. The fact that it seems to be difficult for so many atheists to admit the same thing these days strikes me as deeply problematic.

I admit I don't believe in magic. Not many atheist would have a problem saying this. They would have a problem saying that magic is not possible as I would not say.