Not quite, I’m actually demonstrating to any casual visitor here that the atheists don’t know what they’re talking about.
Ahh yes, we must get back to ad hominem when reasoned discourse is too much of a challenge.
Feel free to disagree with any statements I make about mathematics, theoretical physics, general relativity, metaphysics, philosophy, rationalism, the history of science, computing, electrical engineering, radio, astronomy, cosmology, programming language design, the Bible, ancient history etc - you are at liberty to disagree and where I’m clearly in error I will thank you and apologize.
In fact now’s your chance, take any statement (and its context) that I’ve made across this range of topics and if you think I said something untrue just say so.
As for evidence for God I have some, but no atheist (with a single notable exception) has been man enough to just say how they would distinguish evidence from non-evidence, and none have even attempted to convince me they’d do nothing more than just say “Nah, not evidence. Nope, No, Nah, Nope not evidence, keep trying, no, nope, nah” over and over - how can we avoid that? I hope you’ll agree that such a back and forth would achieve nothing, prove nothing, settle nothing - that’s why I don’t offer you a plate with the evidence on it.
That’s not ad hominem, since it deals directly with an unevidenced appeal to authority fallacy you’re using to cite your opinion as more valid, by claiming expertise while refusing to offer one word to support the claim. Not that it matters, you could have a Nobel prize in physics, and your arguments would still be irrational and dishonest, it would be a little surprising, but arguments nonetheless must be judged on their own merits. and not on appeals to authority.
That a demonstrable lie.
Sadly it is no more than the usual mishmash of logical fallacies we see in so much religious apologetics. No objective evidence demonstrated by you at all.
Firsty you sought me out here, to peddle your snake oil, so I am under no obligation to convince you of anything, especially since atheism is not a claim of any sort. Secondly your posts demonstrate as closed a mind as I have ever encountered, the bias is manifest in almost every single post.
My claim is that you watched a youtube video, and thought you could come debate us. Many of the things you say don’t make sense like the claim that we use naturalism to prove naturalism.
This isn’t an ad hominem because I wasn’t using your ignorance in a subject to prove your points wrong, or even insult you. I want to know so I can tailor my responses and teach, of course, only if you are willing to learn.
An attack would simply be:
Bob is dumb.
An ad hominem, like any logical fallacy, can be put in a syllogism:
Major Premise: Bob says the flying spaghetti monster is real.
Minor Premise: Bob is dumb.
Conclusion: Therefore, the flying spaghetti monster doesn’t exist.
This is the opposite of an appeal to authority fallacy which tries to compliment instead of insult the target to try to prove the major premise true or false.
I ask again, what is your educational background? If you read my original post, I never said your views are wrong because of your education level.
I have a number of times in the other thread, and you didn’t respond:
I can list more if you would like. But let’s stick with this one for now. How is this not a fallacy? I would hope you would agree with the statement that you can’t use logical fallacies to know something.
We use epistemologies to know if something is evidence or not. This is another one of these statements that doesn’t make sense. What does being a “man” have to do with providing an epistemology? I “manned” up and said the scientific method is the epistemology. I asked for you to provide another one that works for god, but I don’t think you can. Lennox said faith and the scientific method. Faith is a terrible epistemology.
Do you care about truth? If you have to invent a whole new epistemology to prove one thing true, there is no way to know if that process is actually any good and not just self serving. This is also circular reasoning. How can you come up with a method to distinguish evidence if you are not sure if it is evidence considering we have no way of running tests?
Scientologist claim that these beings called thetan exists. Why don’t you man up and just tell us how you would distinguish evidence from non-evidence for thetans? Any epistemology that scientologists could come up with would only be used to prove their religion true. This is why the 4000 religions each have their own mini-epistemology. In doing so, they would commit logical fallacies and frequently practice cognitive dissonance.
By actually either providing evidence that fits within the scientific method or providing evidence with a different epistemology.
Why are you here? You’re like the my pillow guy. “I have evidence that the election was stolen, but we won’t show you.” You don’t have any evidence; you just think you do. If all of these apologists I have read and listened to don’t have the answer, why would I expect it from you?
Yes another errant claim with no supporting evidence. I’ve been debating atheists both online and offline for some forty years.
I don’t care, I’m not here to discuss me but atheism, if you want to discuss me you’ll be disappointed.
If you cannot respond to arguments without a need to know personal details of your opponent then right there we have a problem.
You ask " How is this not a fallacy but you wrote that!
On the contrary we use epistemologies to DEFINE what it means to “know” to define what constitutes knowledge.
You meant to write “is an epistemology” yes?
God can be inferred from observation. As soon as we discover that the thing we seek to explain cannot be the explanation for itself we can infer God. Since no material agency can have caused material to exist we must - if we are logical - infer something outside of naturalism else naturalism remains unexplained.
It is a totally natural line of reasoning and hardly new, these ideas were discussed in antiquity before Christ even.
Do I care about truth? Yes I’d say it has some importance.
What are you referring to here as “new” exactly? logic? inference? what could be possibly contentious here?
Who said anything about “running tests” not me. What I have said is what exactly is the atheist asking for when they ask to see evidence for God? All evidence is interpreted and we must therefore choose how to interpret evidence.
Some insist that anything material presented as being evidence for God, can always be explained as simply evidence for some as-yet unknown material process and that right there is the real circular reasoning.
“Please show me evidence for God but whatever you do show me I believe will have a natural explanation”.
Faced with that why would I bother showing such a person evidence? if they’ve already decided that whatever is shown to them cannot really ever be evidence then why ask for it at all?
Is this an admission then that you actually cannot distinguish evidence for God yourself? your asking me to do this for you?
I’m not the person asking for evidence, claiming there is none, no that is the atheist, that’s what they do, harp on and on and on about never seeing evidence yet knowing full well they’d reject whatever was shown to them anyway, I mean how can any self respecting intelligent person actually fall for this claptrap of a worldview.
There’s a rather obvious difference, we can define what evidence would support the claim the election was stolen, there are reasonable criteria like a judge finding reasonable grounds or evidence of fake ballots or video recordings of manipulation or evidence that computers were not secure and so on.
What criteria would you use to decide if X was evidence for God or not?
You’re here to argue a made up and imaginary version of atheism that you’ve got stuck in your head. No doubt got those definitions from whatever fucked up church you attend.
lol sure you do. I’d buy that for a dollar.
Boy, you are such a bore with your apologetic arguments.
But…you have none. Your god ought to be the one arguing his own existence instead of you. Instead your god is no where to be found. So…there’s no evidence that’s been laid at the table proving the existence of any deity. Just more fairy tale stories. Trust me, I wouldn’t want you as my lawyer arguing my case.
Which is exactly why I was asking your background knowledge. I know the claim could be wrong, but that seems like a good guess considering your use of rare, outdated terminology which was exactly what the guy in the video used.
Fine.
I have responded many times without this. I was just curious, I don’t have to know.
Of course I did, I was putting your argument into a syllogism. You asked if you have ever said something untrue, and this was the example I provided. Your are sidestepping the issue. To paraphrase, you claimed there are things about the universe that we can’t explain so god must have done it. I’ll re-write it using your own words:
Major Premise: It is logic and reason that leads to the view God exists
Minor Premise: there are questions about the natural world that cannot be answered
Conclusion: God Exists
@Sherlock-Holmes is this how you are setting up this argument you are trying to make? If so, it is a fallacy. Why don’t you put it into a syllogism for me if I’m not getting it right?
Partially true. Epistemology, in general, is the study of knowledge. Here, we are not as concerned with defining what knowledge is but how we acquire it. You are claiming to know something; I want to know what evidence you are using and how you are using that evidence. We use an epistemology so that we can gain knowledge, eg, how do we know truth (the method). There are some “great courses” audiobooks on philosophy that are pretty good.
As an example, is the Quran proof that everything in the Islamic religion is real? They have to kludge together their own epistemology to make that happen. The book exists, that’s a fact, but how do they go from a book existing to knowing everything in their religion is true takes some combination of methodology, logic, etc. (epistemology). I want to know how they know this from the suggested “evidence”. Islam doesn’t have a good epistemology, so I would say that the Quran is not evidence that Islamic religious claims are real. I would claim that this isn’t evidence that Islam is real. I’m not being obstinate, but this is insufficient.
This makes no sense. How are we using something to prove itself? You have yet to clarify this one.
I’m sure fallacies are as old as mankind’s ability to communicate.
This is what I’ve been trying to get to. You are essentially assuming that there are no other options and it must be god. How do you know this? Why are you making this assumption? This is fallacious thinking and not logical. Could god be the reason? Sure! It is an option, but we don’t know it’s the right one.
We don’t know what is making Bob crazy, it must be demons, there is no other explanation. (assuming the source)
I have never asked for a natural explanation, I have asked how do you know? You are making an assumption that there are no other possible explanations and that you know it is this one reason. How?
This is weak. You are using logical fallacies to backup assumptions. I could just as easily say that you don’t listen, you are unwilling to learn. Is there any way that you could lack belief in god?
Is this an admission that you cannot distinguish evidence for Thetans? Need me to do that for you? I can play this game too.
You are the person making a claim and refusing to show your work like the my pillow guy. You gave me something you consider evidence. I said it is not evidence because it is fallacious. You are not responding to this direct attack on your idea which is typical for a theist.
I was comparing you to the my pillow guy, because he kept saying that he had evidence, but didn’t.
I don’t think you understand the fact that you can’t prove unfalsifiable things false. How would you know if god didn’t exist? There is no way to ever falsify that. You are choosing to believe faith and saying it is logic when you are using fallacies. This is why people shouldn’t believe unfalsifiable things, because they are easily made up.
I don’t think you realize you are asking the wrong question here. You are assuming that we are not looking for evidence for god, so we are not finding it. I claim that this is the wrong approach. If you look for evidence for big foot, you may find some large looking foot prints and unexplained fur, but that doesn’t mean it exists. People shouldn’t assume their hypothesis is true and look for evidence it is. Scientists don’t go around trying to prove gravity true; they go around trying to break it. This is what non-stem people don’t understand about the scientific method. They spend their time trying to falsify the hypothesis as fast as possible. Religious people spend their lives trying to prove their religion true.
There are 4000 religions all of which have “evidence”. I have had theists ask me versions of this question for decades for all religions. “Why don’t you look for evidence that Islam is true?”. This approach does not help us know truth.
Well I’m going to celebrate receiving my first down payment on a recent publication of mine, yes I’ve done some technical writing again for the first time in about forty years.
Can’t identify myself of course but it is a new edition of a laminated study guide this kind of thing.
Lots of fun too, an enjoyable experience in conciseness.
A: “I can’t find it, I’ve searched everywhere high and low but nothing”.
T: “Where did you look?”
A: “Everywhere, the sky, the sea, the greatest libraries and art galleries in the world”.
T: "You sure you didn’t stumble upon it somewhere? some obscure place?
A: “Dead sure, not a sign of it anywhere”.
T: “So how do you know you didn’t find it?”
A: “Pardon?”
T: “You know, how can you be so sure, what if you overlooked some important detail?”
A: “What possible detail might there be?”
T: “You don’t know?, you mean to tell me you don’t know what you’re looking for?”
A: “If it was there I’d have found it, trust me, I’m a scientist”
Isn’t that why you’re here? Didn’t your god have you register here so you can give us admissible evidence of HIS existence? Well, out with it. You’re here now. Prove the existence of your deity friend. We’re still waiting.
Well, frankly, like @Calilasseia, I am waiting for a definition. As I iterated six months ago, the notion of expecting an explanation of what would constitute evidence for an undefined thing is rather absurd, ridiculous, and laughable.
Generally speaking, by its nature, sufficient evidence would be recognized when it’s seen.
Well if it is undefined why not define it? Those who say “I’ve never seen evidence for God” are surely the best ones to tell us what it is exactly that they haven’t seen evidence for. If one has no definition of God then how can one even claim to be an atheist, they might well hold a belief in God but don’t realize it.
All of this stuff comes up precisely because atheism is vacuous, the emperor’s new clothes, there’s no actual intellectual position at all, nothing of substance just “I don’t hold a belief in things that are undefined” and other such inanities.
That is the job of theism, although they like to play semantics, bend and twist words, ideas, concepts, all in order to put off the inevitable.
It’s actually quite a clever ploy, but it doesn’t do them any favors in the long run.
This is in actuality, the natural response to the theists that try to present evidence.
They try to use science and concepts to justify their belief or prove their god, but always fail.
From the kalam cosmological arguement, to the historical accuracy of the bible… it fails.
So its not as such, “ive never seen evidence for god” its more, “the evidence youve put forward is crap!”
Because atheism is simply the position of being unconvinced of the claim that there is a god!
As oppose to believing in a pan dimensional wizard that cannot be proven to exist?
We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you. No one asked you to register here. You showed up here like a door to door salesman offering religious theories and claims to me and the other atheists of this community. We didn’t come to you. So really, the burden of proof is on you. Funny thing is, I’ve had Christians admit to me that there is no evidence of any kind supporting that their god exists. Just blind faith. How about you join them and admit that as well?
You want us to guess what you mean by deity? Now that is truly inane.
They do each time, they cannot do this when you claim to believe a deity is extant, but can’t define it, or demonstrate why beyond bare assumptions, archaic myths, and irrational arguments.
That you think not holding a belief in an undefined thing is nonsensical is truly hilarious. How many undefined things do you believe then? Could you give us a few examples?
Of course we are if you are the one adjudging said evidence.
Oh boy, OK, let’s see where this tangent takes us…
That’s true of almost all of us I suspect.
That’s a rather bizarre interpretation, but do go on…
I accept the burden of proof for any claims I make, I do not and have not argued otherwise. But we must be honest, we must be cognizant of the fact that proof entails two minds - not one - two of us. I am the advocate for claim X and you are the skeptic of claim X.
If I say X is evidence for God you can say you agree, disagree or don’t know. Can’t you see? we each carry some responsibility not just the person making some claim. You demand evidence and I, in turn demand evidence that you are impartial, that you’d actually recognize evidence rather than interpret it some other way.
that’s why.