RE: Atheism Destroyed in Under 50 Seconds
July 4, 2012 at 1:32 pm
(This post was last modified: July 4, 2012 at 1:34 pm by CliveStaples.)
(July 4, 2012 at 1:20 pm)Ace Otana Wrote: Strawman argument.
The answer is - I don't know.
How do you know he's the only one who can draw a perfect circle? If I saw a perfect circle I'd think it was done by someone who had a tool or used a computer.
Not a straw man, because if I can show that you can infer that Mr. X drew the circle, without having shown that Mr. X has in fact drawn a circle, then I will have proved false your claim that you must show A before you can claim A caused B.
But perhaps we're getting bogged down in specifics. Maybe going more abstract would help.
Suppose that the only logically possible explanation for B is A. That is, A is the only thing that ever even possibly causes B. Suppose you don't have any evidence that A has ever happened. But then you see that B happened. Can't you infer that A happened?
(July 4, 2012 at 1:23 pm)Skepsis Wrote: The other reason your hypothetical fails is because a perfect circle could form due to natural phenomina, or chance. After all, this is a large world we are talking about, right?
Man, now you won't ever make any inferences? If you see a bear, will you infer that there's a bear? After all, you might be crazy, or in the Matrix! You have a strange commitment to ignorance for someone so supposedly devoted to reason and science.
“The truth of our faith becomes a matter of ridicule among the infidels if any Catholic, not gifted with the necessary scientific learning, presents as dogma what scientific scrutiny shows to be false.”