Atheism Destroyed in Under 50 Seconds

[CliveStaples]

Lovely bit of semantic prestidigitation there. Has anyone here claimed to subscribe to your straw man of Pragmatism?

I just love asswipe armchair philosophers.

Guilty to 'armchair philosopher'. Probably guilty to 'asswipe' as well.

But in my defense, I wasn't trying to contradict him. I was just bringing up a different take on what it means to affirm or deny a belief; pragmatists look at it more functionally, that beliefs are really just those things that you act on (to my understanding).

Now, maybe I've got Pragmatism all wrong, or maybe I've got it right but Pragmatism is dumb and not worth thinking about. But I think it's an interesting philosophy (one of the only American contributions to the field), and I thought maybe other people would be interested too.

Pretty self-explanatory. Except for willfully ignorant retards.

Well, I'm certainly ignorant as to the proof of his statement. If I knew the proof, and if it were a valid, sound proof, then I'd have good reason to reject things like the Kalaam Cosmological Argument.

Of course, I don't feel like I have any strongly compelling reasons to accept the Kalaam Cosmological Argument, but it would be nice to get off the fence about it.

Correct.

That's just intellectual incuriousity. Refusing to even consider the existence of God hypothetically (for the purposes of explanations) is only justified if it is known that God doesn't exist with 100% certainty. To my knowledge, no such proof of God's non-existence has been given.

Fallacious appeal to personal incredulity. You simply refuse to accept reality.

Nah, it's more of a semantic quibble about "proof". I can prove "A implies B" without proving that A is actually true; some people might call say that this shows that "A proves B" in the sense that "A, if true, necessitates that B is true".

But he probably said "A proves B" to mean a sound argument that concludes with "B is true".

It means d that if you cannot demonstrate that A is true, your argument is invalid. This is basic stuff here. No surprise that it is foreign to you.

Technically, it would mean it isn't sound. The following argument is valid, even though its first premise is false:

1) If I am in Germany, I am in Texas.
2) I am in Germany.
3) Therefore, I am in Texas.

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Two questions, Clive.

1) Does your reasoning disallow agnosticism due to "functionality?"
2) What is the faith status of those who believe in gods other than yours, or who have never known the concept of "god?"

1) Well, I don't know that I'd call it "my" reasoning, since I don't think of myself as a Pragmatist. I think an agnostic in my hypothetical pill scenario would refuse to take the pill, or would otherwise bear out his indeterminacy in his actions.

2) Not sure what you mean by "faith status". Do you mean whether I consider them theists, weak atheists, strong atheists, or agnostics? Anyone who acts on a belief that some god exists is functionally a theist. They don't have to think of it as "god"; they don't have to conceive of it in the same way that I do. I'm not sure if there's a sharp delineation there.