Tricks Theists Play (Part 1)

[ExodusMe]

To argue that there is a "sensus divinitatus" one must first think there is a "divinitatus" to sense.

Your sensus divinitatus is broken then kind sir. You need to be regenerated by the Great Physician.

I object to the use of the word "know", and yes it is a proper objection to the idea that you need to accept christian doctrine before "knowledge" of the most basic fact of christian doctrine becomes possible.

haven't read WCB in awhile. I don't think AP says the knowledge is granted, but confirmed by the Holy Spirit. might be mistaken though. I think this would handle your chicken/egg problem.

 

[variant]

Your sensus divinitatus is broken then kind sir. You need to be regenerated by the Great Physician.

haven't read WCB in awhile. I don't think AP says the knowledge is granted, but confirmed by the Holy Spirit. might be mistaken though. I think this would handle your chicken/egg problem.

The chicken and egg problem is that I have a supposed "sensus divinitatus".

It's generally bad form to assume the consequence of ones argument in order to arrive at one of it's premises.

That makes this a presuppositional argument, both about God and about me. Presupposing your conclusion before the argument and asserting it without evidence sounds like a "trick" theists are fond of though.

 

[KCfromNC]

Hmm. Would all properly basic beliefs be "special pleading?"

How do you trust science knowledge if we can't demonstrate the reality of the external world, other minds, reality of the past, uniformity of nature across time and space, problem of induction (HUME), or the ability of beings to rationally understand the external world (given that evolutionary theory suggests organisms optimize around survival fitness not recognition of truth)

Because it works.

I'm not sure why you're assuming that all this philosophical mumbo jumbo is the correct basis for evaluating methods of studying the real world. Has philosophy ever been successful in establishing any particular view on the matter as correct without outside help?

 

[KCfromNC]

Your sensus divinitatus is broken then kind sir.

You can't possibly claim to know that.

 

[ExodusMe]

The chicken and egg problem is that I have a supposed "sensus divinitatus".

It's generally bad form to assume the consequence of ones argument in order to arrive at one of it's premises.

That makes this a presuppositional argument, both about God and about me. Presupposing your conclusion before the argument and asserting it without evidence sounds like a "trick" theists are fond of though.

The A/C model is a model not an argument.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Because it works.

I'm not sure why you're assuming that all this philosophical mumbo jumbo is the correct basis for evaluating methods of studying the real world. Has philosophy ever been successful in establishing any particular view on the matter as correct without outside help?

As I pointed out earlier elsewhere, making evaluative statements "about" philosophy...is an act of doing philosophy, since by definition, the act of evaluating the world around us in which we move and think makes up the central core of what it is to "do" philosophy. So, you've already placed yourself into a philosophical niche, KC, whether you realize it or not. You're now evaluating "mumbo jumbo" by use of your own "mumbo jumbo."

 

[KCfromNC]

As I pointed out earlier elsewhere, evaluative statements "about" philosophy...is an act of doing philosophy, since by definition, the act of evaluating the world around us, and in which we move and think, makes up the central core of what it is to "do" philosophy. So, you've already placed yourself into a philosophical niche, KC, whether you realize it or not. You're now evaluating "mumbo jumbo" by use of your own "mumbo jumbo."

I smell equivocation. Don't know if I'm doing philosophy or not in the process, but I can tell a bait and switch when I see one.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

I smell equivocation. Don't know if I'm doing philosophy or not in the process, but I can tell a bait and switch when I see one.

you can say that when you've done the work of studying philosophy. Kind'a seems disingenuous to criticize the use of philosophy when you don't even know what it is and when you're doing it.

 

[KCfromNC]

when you don't even know what it is and when you're doing it

You'll notice I never claimed I was or wasn't doing philosophy, just that I was objecting to a certain type of philosophical mumbo jubmo. Is there a reason you're so anxious to comment on things I never wrote? Maybe that sort of thing wins points in certain disciplines but I'm not particularly impressed by it - it isn't as if it takes any real insight to just make stuff up.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

You'll notice I never claimed I was or wasn't doing philosophy, just that I was objecting to a certain type of philosophical mumbo jubmo. Is there a reason you're so anxious to comment on things I never wrote? Maybe that sort of thing wins points in certain disciplines but I'm not particularly impressed by it - it isn't as if it takes any real insight to just make stuff up.

Rrrrrrright! You definitely didn't claim that you were doing philosophy; I did. And you don't have to be impressed by it. You just need to be corrected by it. So, do I need to spell out the nature of philosophy with a little helpful video like I did for you over in the Science forum?

 

[variant]

The A/C model is a model not an argument.

The entire book is an argument for why believing in God without evidence is "warranted".

He can at no point, get there, without first assuming God to be true.

If we do not first assume it to be true, and thus that the "perceptions" of God by believers are accurate, there are any number of reasons why it may be false, and, lacking proper evidence, we can not justify the claim that it is warranted.

 

[com7fy8]

A theistic trick, then, can be how ones make a major project of using logic and material stuff to prove historical things the Bible says, but they do not give ever more attention to how the Bible says God wants us to become like Jesus and learn how to love any and all people while we are mainly about pleasing Him.

Probably not a trick as much as immaturity.

This is very good, I think. Thank you I can be very quick to first criticize, in this case to see trickery instead of considering one's maturity of ability.

 

[KCfromNC]

Rrrrrrright! You definitely didn't claim that you were doing philosophy; I did. And you don't have to be impressed by it. You just need to be corrected by it. So, do I need to spell out the nature of philosophy with a little helpful video like I did for you over in the Science forum?

Any chance you're actually going to get around to answering the question I asked in post 23?

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Any chance you're actually going to get around to answering the question I asked in post 23?

Yes....it's called 'logic.' Logic helps establish a lot of concepts (although not everything) with accuracy in describing our world. You know what logic is don't you?

 

[Pavel Mosko]

Tricks Theists Play (Part 1)

In 2001 or 2002 I was invited by a Christian friend to see a presentation by an Aussie named Ken Ham. It was not just eye-opening, but a jaw-dropping experience.

I listened for an hour to claims about scripture which were not supported historically or from scripture. But more disturbing was the misrepresentation about scientific claims, scientific knowledge, and how one should approach these discussions with "skeptics."

Now have no intention of being drawn into debates about young-earth vs. old-earth theories, or detailed entailment so of "How God created." My primary concern is to highlight bad arguments coming from Ham and his ministry. My hope is that I can dissuade theists from using such constructions in favor of sound and compelling rational arguments.

Now Ham has changed some of his approach in the last 15 years so my notes may no longer be representative of his views.

1 - Evolution and the Big Bang Model of cosmology are just "Theories!"

Now if you have read some of my other, "Tricks," treads you will be familiar with this informal fallacy...equivocation.

The Oxford dictionary defines the word "Equivocation," as, "The use of ambiguous language to conceal the truth or to avoid committing oneself."

This equivocation is always meant to deceive. But it only deceives the uneducated and those to lazy to do the research.

"Theory" in scientific parlance means an inductive inference about the data that has withstood the test of time, hundreds or thousands of confirmatory experiments, and is accepted by all the experts as knowledge.

In common usage it is equivocal to a hypothesis. That is a inference that explains data.

The trick Ham wants you to miss is he is substituting common usage for scientific usage. Just the way new atheists often want to misrepresent atheism as lack of belief or faith as a way of knowing. If we doesn't pay attention to the fact that "atheism" and "faith" have specific meanings in the fields of philosophy and theology respectively, we can be dragged into equivocations meant to misguide and conflate, with statements like, "common usage is ..."

2 - "We're you there?"

Here we find the most damning argument against Ham and his methodology. After Ham's presentation a student asked the question, "How do you account for all the dinosaur fossils that are millions of years old." Without missing a beat Ham responded, "We're you there?"

His point was to create skepticism about scientific findings unless we had first-hand knowledge of the events.

I decided not to embarrass the fellow. But I did ask him after the talk how he demonstrated the validity of the historical info about Jesus' death and resurrection. He blurted out a bunch of one-liners, to which I responded, "We're you there?" Puzzled, he hesitated and then kept giving me evidence as if he had deleted the cognitively dissonant revelation altogether.

Point is Ham's epistemic approach destroys all scientific and historical knowledge. In fact legal knowledge is greatly injured as well as no one on a jury could every "know' something based on eye-witness testimony.

Ham is perhaps the Christian equivalent of the plethora of Internet infidels found out on places like YouTube. This is a step below the new atheists in that they are unaware of historic claims, and philosophical claims, and logic in general. Both appeal to a poorly educated audiences focusing on rhetorical flourish alone. (P.S. I have relatives that fall for this Answers in Genesis propaganda)

Please share other theistic tricks you have run into.

However, beware not to regurgitate internet infidel propaganda mindlessly. They create straw men of theistic arguments and attack those as "fallacious."

Straw arguments always make poor substitutes for real ones.

Arise I say arise! (necroing the thread since we talked about it, and it probably has some good info for folks not on the board then).

 

[cvanwey]

Tricks Theists Play (Part 1)

In 2001 or 2002 I was invited by a Christian friend to see a presentation by an Aussie named Ken Ham. It was not just eye-opening, but a jaw-dropping experience.

I listened for an hour to claims about scripture which were not supported historically or from scripture. But more disturbing was the misrepresentation about scientific claims, scientific knowledge, and how one should approach these discussions with "skeptics."

Now have no intention of being drawn into debates about young-earth vs. old-earth theories, or detailed entailment so of "How God created." My primary concern is to highlight bad arguments coming from Ham and his ministry. My hope is that I can dissuade theists from using such constructions in favor of sound and compelling rational arguments.

Now Ham has changed some of his approach in the last 15 years so my notes may no longer be representative of his views.

1 - Evolution and the Big Bang Model of cosmology are just "Theories!"

Now if you have read some of my other, "Tricks," treads you will be familiar with this informal fallacy...equivocation.

The Oxford dictionary defines the word "Equivocation," as, "The use of ambiguous language to conceal the truth or to avoid committing oneself."

This equivocation is always meant to deceive. But it only deceives the uneducated and those to lazy to do the research.

"Theory" in scientific parlance means an inductive inference about the data that has withstood the test of time, hundreds or thousands of confirmatory experiments, and is accepted by all the experts as knowledge.

In common usage it is equivocal to a hypothesis. That is a inference that explains data.

The trick Ham wants you to miss is he is substituting common usage for scientific usage. Just the way new atheists often want to misrepresent atheism as lack of belief or faith as a way of knowing. If we doesn't pay attention to the fact that "atheism" and "faith" have specific meanings in the fields of philosophy and theology respectively, we can be dragged into equivocations meant to misguide and conflate, with statements like, "common usage is ..."

2 - "We're you there?"

Here we find the most damning argument against Ham and his methodology. After Ham's presentation a student asked the question, "How do you account for all the dinosaur fossils that are millions of years old." Without missing a beat Ham responded, "We're you there?"

His point was to create skepticism about scientific findings unless we had first-hand knowledge of the events.

I decided not to embarrass the fellow. But I did ask him after the talk how he demonstrated the validity of the historical info about Jesus' death and resurrection. He blurted out a bunch of one-liners, to which I responded, "We're you there?" Puzzled, he hesitated and then kept giving me evidence as if he had deleted the cognitively dissonant revelation altogether.

Point is Ham's epistemic approach destroys all scientific and historical knowledge. In fact legal knowledge is greatly injured as well as no one on a jury could every "know' something based on eye-witness testimony.

Ham is perhaps the Christian equivalent of the plethora of Internet infidels found out on places like YouTube. This is a step below the new atheists in that they are unaware of historic claims, and philosophical claims, and logic in general. Both appeal to a poorly educated audiences focusing on rhetorical flourish alone. (P.S. I have relatives that fall for this Answers in Genesis propaganda)

Please share other theistic tricks you have run into.

However, beware not to regurgitate internet infidel propaganda mindlessly. They create straw men of theistic arguments and attack those as "fallacious."

Straw arguments always make poor substitutes for real ones.

Can I ask you an honest question or two @Uber Genius ?

I can't help but to wonder... Is, in part, or in complete, the reason for these threads to demonstrate you, as a bona fide intellectual, have evaluated both 'sides', with lack in bias, and have intelligently concluded that theism is the most appropriate conclusion?

Is the reason you post these threads, in the [apologetics forum], is to gather traction from the 'opposing' side? Because quite frankly, I doubt many/most here really give much traction or clout to Ray Comfort or Ken Ham regardless? The reason I state this, is, at least where I'm concerned, even many of the <Christian> posters already seem to frown upon 'evangelical fundamentalism'.

Why not post such threads in the Christian only arenas?

Just wondering....

If the above is even 1% directive of the above, then I can only continue by saying....

Even if us atheists, skeptics, agnostics, deists, other, were to concede each and every 'argument for God's existence', in the end, we must still eventually and ultimately look to the Bible itself for 'truth'. And quite frankly, many of us, presumably, see a giant stretch/gap between 'proof' of general deism, to then leap to the Bible.

Thank you

 

[cvanwey]

Any chance you're actually going to get around to answering the question I asked in post 23?

Correction maybe? That post/question was for another member I believe? But regardless, I would still certainly like to see an answer as well?

 

[cvanwey]

Because it works.

I'm not sure why you're assuming that all this philosophical mumbo jumbo is the correct basis for evaluating methods of studying the real world. Has philosophy ever been successful in establishing any particular view on the matter as correct without outside help?

Psst, don't worry.... He's using a particular flavor of the 'Matrix argument' here But you handled it beautifly

 

[Qwertyui0p]

Tricks Theists Play (Part 1)

In 2001 or 2002 I was invited by a Christian friend to see a presentation by an Aussie named Ken Ham. It was not just eye-opening, but a jaw-dropping experience.

I listened for an hour to claims about scripture which were not supported historically or from scripture. But more disturbing was the misrepresentation about scientific claims, scientific knowledge, and how one should approach these discussions with "skeptics."

Now have no intention of being drawn into debates about young-earth vs. old-earth theories, or detailed entailment so of "How God created." My primary concern is to highlight bad arguments coming from Ham and his ministry. My hope is that I can dissuade theists from using such constructions in favor of sound and compelling rational arguments.

Now Ham has changed some of his approach in the last 15 years so my notes may no longer be representative of his views.

1 - Evolution and the Big Bang Model of cosmology are just "Theories!"

Now if you have read some of my other, "Tricks," treads you will be familiar with this informal fallacy...equivocation.

The Oxford dictionary defines the word "Equivocation," as, "The use of ambiguous language to conceal the truth or to avoid committing oneself."

This equivocation is always meant to deceive. But it only deceives the uneducated and those to lazy to do the research.

"Theory" in scientific parlance means an inductive inference about the data that has withstood the test of time, hundreds or thousands of confirmatory experiments, and is accepted by all the experts as knowledge.

In common usage it is equivocal to a hypothesis. That is a inference that explains data.

The trick Ham wants you to miss is he is substituting common usage for scientific usage. Just the way new atheists often want to misrepresent atheism as lack of belief or faith as a way of knowing. If we doesn't pay attention to the fact that "atheism" and "faith" have specific meanings in the fields of philosophy and theology respectively, we can be dragged into equivocations meant to misguide and conflate, with statements like, "common usage is ..."

2 - "We're you there?"

Here we find the most damning argument against Ham and his methodology. After Ham's presentation a student asked the question, "How do you account for all the dinosaur fossils that are millions of years old." Without missing a beat Ham responded, "We're you there?"

His point was to create skepticism about scientific findings unless we had first-hand knowledge of the events.

I decided not to embarrass the fellow. But I did ask him after the talk how he demonstrated the validity of the historical info about Jesus' death and resurrection. He blurted out a bunch of one-liners, to which I responded, "We're you there?" Puzzled, he hesitated and then kept giving me evidence as if he had deleted the cognitively dissonant revelation altogether.

Point is Ham's epistemic approach destroys all scientific and historical knowledge. In fact legal knowledge is greatly injured as well as no one on a jury could every "know' something based on eye-witness testimony.

Ham is perhaps the Christian equivalent of the plethora of Internet infidels found out on places like YouTube. This is a step below the new atheists in that they are unaware of historic claims, and philosophical claims, and logic in general. Both appeal to a poorly educated audiences focusing on rhetorical flourish alone. (P.S. I have relatives that fall for this Answers in Genesis propaganda)

Please share other theistic tricks you have run into.

However, beware not to regurgitate internet infidel propaganda mindlessly. They create straw men of theistic arguments and attack those as "fallacious."

Straw arguments always make poor substitutes for real ones.

As for the first one, Creation Ministries International advised against using it in their article 'Arguments we think creationists should NOT use' (Arguments we think creationists should NOT use - creation.com) They wrote:
“Evolution is just a theory.” What people usually mean when they say this is “Evolution is not proven fact, so it should not be promoted dogmatically.” Therefore people should say that. The problem with using the word ‘theory’ in this case is that scientists usually use it to mean a well-substantiated explanation of data. This includes well-known ones such as Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and Newton’s Theory of Gravity, and lesser-known ones such as the Debye–Hückel Theory of electrolyte solutions and the Deryagin–Landau/Verwey–Overbeek (DLVO) theory of the stability of lyophobic sols, etc. It would be better to say that particles-to-people evolution is an unsubstantiated hypothesis or conjecture.

All the same, the critic doth protest too much. Webster’s Dictionary (1996) provides the #2 meaning as ‘a proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural, in contrast to well-established propositions that are regarded as reporting matters of actual fact,’ and this usage is hardly unknown in the scientific literature. The dictionary further provides ‘6. contemplation or speculation. 7. guess or conjecture.’ So the critic is simply wrong to say that it’s a mistake to use theory to mean ‘speculation’, ‘conjecture’ or ‘guess’; and that scientists never use theory this way in the literature. So the attack is really cheap point-scoring, but there is still no reason to give critics this diversion.


As for the second one, when he said 'Were you there?' I think he was referring to the alleged age. Nobody disputes that the dinosaurs existed because we have fossils. However, we cannot know how long ago the dinosaurs lived or anything else occurred without an eyewitness, because otherwise we must rely on assumptions. How dating methods work - creation.com

 

[Ophiolite]

So the critic is simply wrong to say that it’s a mistake to use theory to mean ‘speculation’, ‘conjecture’ or ‘guess’; and that scientists never use theory this way in the literature.

An interesting observation. I've read scores of textbooks and hundreds, perhaps thousands of research papers and I cannot recall a single instance of such usage. I readily concede that I may simply not have noticed it, since it is not something I would be looking for. Would you provide an example or two where scientists have used theory in the looser, speculative sense, in the literature. Thank you.