And you were wrong because they are not.
Yes I can see that youâre struggling here, insisting you are able to recognize evidence for God yet refusing to reveal said recognition process, why am I not surprised!
What are you eating this evening?
Oh youâre not going to address your previous error where you falsely said I had claimed they were the same then? I see, you;re trying to save face, ok moving on then. Well lets take a look for all those neutrals out there you think are being swayed by your vapid irrational superstitious claims.
Yeah, youâre wrong, and how, laughably wrong. You could flog a dead horse with the word nature possibly, but pedantry and semantics wonât save your blushes here.
I have not actually said that, oopsy, another of those pesky straw man fallacies, and itâs your inability to understand the simplest sentence that is painful. Of course I could simply say EVIDENCE, as that was your vapid criteria for your disbelief in all the same deities as me except one, oopsy again, youâll have one hell of an omelette when you get all that egg off your mug.
Magic beans, prove me wrong. 
We may have to start calling you Daniel, but unfortunately no imaginary deity will protect your vapid apologetics in this lionâs den.
Lionâs den? this is walk in the park, like shooting fish in a barrel.
Wow, this all makes total sense now after speaking with you in the other chat, and watching the video!
I havenât heard the word naturalism in over a decade, and only then in the context of science history. Now I know. You watched this video, the Dunning-Krueger effect kicked into gear, and you decided to try to prove to a bunch of atheists that you knew what you were talking about.
Overall the video was very light on substance, and very heavy on claims. Of the videos Iâve seen, heâs a good speaker, but he was one of the worst with actual content. Here is a short synopsis:
- Why is there something rather than nothing? It must be god. (Post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. There is also an asusmption that nothing was there to start with.)
- X can not come from X. Y can create X, therefore, Y must exist. (So did Z create Y? Why has god always existed not needing a creator but the universe must have one? Arguments are not evidence.)
- Fine Tuning Argument; god must exist (Post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. Even though this is a obviously the same fallacy as the first, this one falls apart quickly on the science front itself, this is, of course, if one actually understands the involved science and math, I can go into details if needed.)
- Quoted some guy that said if atheists canât know there is a god, they must be wrong about everything (poisoning the well fallacy)
- Claimed that atheists have biology at war with naturalism. (Thereâs that word⌠I have no idea what he even meant, it doesnât make any sense.)
- The next great piece of evidence: the Bible. (Lmao, I canât believe he actually said this. There is so much terrible science and morality in the bible and yet, no actual evidence for god. Every religionâs holy book makes claims and has âevidenceâ. Bob saw the flying spaghetti monster do cool things, therefore, Bobâs holy word book is evidence! You said earlier that something canât prove itself. This is exactly what Lennox is doing with the bible here.)
- Last and biggest evidence: Jesus Christ (LMAO. Circular logic. The god we canât prove exists is proof that god exists. We have no evidence Jesus actually had super powers, and very little evidence that he even existed. The bible has 4 accounts, written 40-80 years after Christ had died, in the 3rd person, in a different language [Aramaic vs Greek], much of which was copied from each other [synoptic gospels].) The roman sources were better, but still 85 years after the fact.
As I said before, there is no way to justify belief in something unfalsifiable without using logical fallacies. Lennox is not exempted from being able to use logical fallacies.
Iâm interested now, what level of education do you actually have and in what? From what I can tell from your posts, I donât think you have ever actually worked with theoretical math, or high level science. I doubt you have a STEM degree of any kind. I donât think you have ever taken a singe philosophy course. Itâs okay to be ignorant; we are all ignorant at some point in our lives. Iâm happy to help teach you something, but I donât think learning is your goal here. What you are saying doesnât make any sense most of the time. Watching a few theist youtube videos doesnât count. I get annoyed when my non-STEM, religious friends do this. Itâs also hard for me to take you seriously as an academic if you canât read a 1000 word post. My willfully ignorant Trump friends donât like reading either. Watching a youtube video that confirms your beliefs may feel good, but donât think that it substitutes for actual learning.
Just to recap, so far you have not shown us:
- Any actual evidence for god.
- The epistemology (how you know) you are using. You said there is a method that works, what is it?
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Not quite, Iâm actually demonstrating to any casual visitor here that the atheists donât know what theyâre 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 Iâm clearly in error I will thank you and apologize.
In fact nowâs your chance, take any statement (and its context) that Iâve 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 theyâd do nothing more than just say âNah, not evidence. Nope, No, Nah, Nope not evidence, keep trying, no, nope, nahâ over and over - how can we avoid that? I hope youâll agree that such a back and forth would achieve nothing, prove nothing, settle nothing - thatâs why I donât offer you a plate with the evidence on it.
Once again I find your unevidenced sweeping claim extremely dubious, and pretty funny.
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Thatâs not ad hominem, since it deals directly with an unevidenced appeal to authority fallacy youâre 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.
Yeah ok⌠
thatâs why.
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My claim is that you watched a youtube video, and thought you could come debate us. Many of the things you say donât make sense like the claim that we use naturalism to prove naturalism.
This isnât an ad hominem because I wasnât 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 doesnât 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 didnât respond:
I can list more if you would like. But letâs stick with this one for now. How is this not a fallacy? I would hope you would agree with the statement that you canât 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 doesnât make sense. What does being a âmanâ have to do with providing an epistemology? I âmannedâ up and said the scientific method is the epistemology. I asked for you to provide another one that works for god, but I donât 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 donât 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? Youâre like the my pillow guy. âI have evidence that the election was stolen, but we wonât show you.â You donât have any evidence; you just think you do. If all of these apologists I have read and listened to donât have the answer, why would I expect it from you?
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Can you offer answers that have nothing to do with religious theory? That would be a good start.
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Yes another errant claim with no supporting evidence. Iâve been debating atheists both online and offline for some forty years.
I donât care, Iâm not here to discuss me but atheism, if you want to discuss me youâll 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 âknowâ to define what constitutes knowledge.
You meant to write âis an epistemologyâ 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 Iâd say it has some importance.
What are you referring to here as ânewâ exactly? logic? inference? what could be possibly contentious here?
Who said anything about ârunning testsâ 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.
âPlease show me evidence for God but whatever you do show me I believe will have a natural explanationâ.
Faced with that why would I bother showing such a person evidence? if theyâve 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?
Iâm not the person asking for evidence, claiming there is none, no that is the atheist, thatâs what they do, harp on and on and on about never seeing evidence yet knowing full well theyâd reject whatever was shown to them anyway, I mean how can any self respecting intelligent person actually fall for this claptrap of a worldview.
Thereâs 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?
I think you need more practice.
Youâre here to argue a made up and imaginary version of atheism that youâve got stuck in your head. No doubt got those definitions from whatever fucked up church you attend.
lol sure you do. Iâd buy that for a dollar.
Boy, you are such a bore with your apologetic arguments.
ButâŚyou 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. SoâŚthereâs no evidence thatâs been laid at the table proving the existence of any deity. Just more fairy tale stories. Trust me, I wouldnât want you as my lawyer arguing my case.
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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 donât 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 canât explain so god must have done it. Iâll 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 donât you put it into a syllogism for me if Iâm 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 âgreat coursesâ 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, thatâs 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 âevidenceâ. Islam doesnât 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 isnât evidence that Islam is real. Iâm 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.
Iâm sure fallacies are as old as mankindâs ability to communicate.
This is what Iâve 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 donât know itâs the right one.
We donât 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 donât 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 didnât.
I donât think you understand the fact that you canât prove unfalsifiable things false. How would you know if god didnât 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 shouldnât believe unfalsifiable things, because they are easily made up.
I donât 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 doesnât mean it exists. People shouldnât assume their hypothesis is true and look for evidence it is. Scientists donât go around trying to prove gravity true; they go around trying to break it. This is what non-stem people donât 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 âevidenceâ. I have had theists ask me versions of this question for decades for all religions. âWhy donât you look for evidence that Islam is true?â. This approach does not help us know truth.
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No kidding. We showed it was a straw man in the other thread.
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Well Iâm going to celebrate receiving my first down payment on a recent publication of mine, yes Iâve done some technical writing again for the first time in about forty years.
Canât 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.
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A: âI canât find it, Iâve searched everywhere high and low but nothingâ.
T: âWhere did you look?â
A: âEverywhere, the sky, the sea, the greatest libraries and art galleries in the worldâ.
T: "You sure you didnât stumble upon it somewhere? some obscure place?
A: âDead sure, not a sign of it anywhereâ.
T: âSo how do you know you didnât find it?â
A: âPardon?â
T: âYou know, how can you be so sure, what if you overlooked some important detail?â
A: âWhat possible detail might there be?â
T: âYou donât know?, you mean to tell me you donât know what youâre looking for?â
A: âIf it was there Iâd have found it, trust me, Iâm a scientistâ
Isnât that why youâre here? Didnât your god have you register here so you can give us admissible evidence of HIS existence? Well, out with it. Youâre here now. Prove the existence of your deity friend. Weâre still waiting.
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He uses fallacies, and then ignores it when we call him out on it. Donât worry though, he cares about truth!
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