How does one respond to this argument?It's long but an interesting read. Thanks :)

[robvalue]

Sure, no problem at all

Yeah, you can edit for 2 hours after you have posted. However, you could always copy it all, work on it offline, and then repost it in this thread. Using "hide tags" can be useful for breaking things up for the reader too.

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[Mister Agenda]

That was a bit much, I didn't read enough to see if your interlocutor had anything but tu quoque and ad hominems.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Fruyain, your critic's objection is pretty basic. In the above exchange you repeatedly put forth, in various ways, the proposition that “The truthfulness of all propositions must be empirically validated to count as knowledge.” You did so as if this proposition was a first principle even though the proposition will admit to no first principles. By its own measure it is a proposition whose truthfulness depends on prior evidence. At best, the proposition is self-referencing and at worst self-defeating.

[fruyian]

Please succinctly summarize your position and what the counterargument is you would like debunked. I'm not reading that messy wall of text.

I suppose my main position is that the standpoint of viewing that there is no such being as god or place as heaven or hell is a rational and logical position both in scientific and philosophical terms. I would probably like to counter his refutations on my position and not his position.. meaning I don't mind if both sides are rational but my side (the one making no great claim) IS rational. You get what I mean?



**EDIT**: Now I have realised he keeps saying the existence is god can only be arguable in philosophical terms.. he is wrong there. It can be argued in philosophical but it can be argued in scientific terms too. If one, as all religion do, tried to fit god in with science, well then it can be argued on both scientific and philosophical terms. Scientifically.. there is no evidence to suggest a god exists and philosophically one can deduce a god, yes, but that does not make it true and a philosophy without some solid ground backed up with evidence is a weak philosophical point (The evidence for my position is that there is no evidence for the other position - ergo I don't have to disprove squat). The great thing about Occams Razor (Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.)  and Hitchens Razor (That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence), as mentioned above, is that it holds it's **meaning and merits** on both scientific and philosophical terms. The onus is on the person making the bigger claim and everything works without the assumption of a divine creator. That simplest version is usually the better one.

Sure, no problem at all

Yeah, you can edit for 2 hours after you have posted. However, you could always copy it all, work on it offline, and then repost it in this thread. Using "hide tags" can be useful for breaking things up for the reader too.

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Sweet (you learn something new everyday after all. ha), I'll see if I can get the time to revamp it.
As I mentioned to Alex K there and it might make my position a little clearer, is this:

I suppose my main position is that the standpoint of viewing that there is no such being as god or place as heaven or hell is a rational and logical position both in scientific and philosophical terms. I would probably like to counter his refutations on my position and not his position.. meaning I don't mind if both sides are rational but my side (the one making no great claim) IS rational. You get what I mean?


**EDIT**: Now I have realised he keeps saying the existence is god can only be arguable in philosophical terms.. he is wrong there. It can be argued in philosophical but it can be argued in scientific terms too. If one, as all religion do, tried to fit god in with science, well then it can be argued on both scientific and philosophical terms. Scientifically.. there is no evidence to suggest a god exists and philosophically one can deduce a god, yes, but that does not make it true and a philosophy without some solid ground backed up with evidence is a weak philosophical point (The evidence for my position is that there is no evidence for the other position - ergo I don't have to disprove squat). The great thing about Occams Razor (Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.)  and Hitchens Razor (That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence), as mentioned above, is that it holds it's **meaning and merits** on both scientific and philosophical terms. The onus is on the person making the bigger claim and everything works without the assumption of a divine creator. That simplest version is usually the better one.

I was going to say, if you want my full post that he cited the make things clearer, just ask, as I was afraid of having too much text and putting people off, but now I have the hide option. Below is basically what you have read from his citations but just to make things more understandable and less confusing.

Now I have another 2 feckin hours to do in work.. ah well has to be done

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Excuse my tardiness, I must of signed out of my gmail and singed into my work account...nevertheless…Well Old Man .....It may well be that in your somewhat jaundiced view I am "intellectually unsophisticated"...however I would point out it is myself who is championing rationality (more on that later) ........ while you seem to subscribe to the mythology of illiterate, nomadic, Bronze Age, cattle sacrificing, goat herders ..... and to this you patronisingly claim to be intellectually sophisticated...??? You keep saying 'sophisticated'. I don't think that word means what you thinks it means. Also: what a shining example of Christianity that you/they'laughs with cruelty' at those he thinks are wrong. I would say there's no such thing as sophisticated philosophy... somewhat. You can philosophize all you want but there's no amount of psychobabble that can prove God. Or prove anything really.

-- What you posted looks like the kind of copy past coupled with hate mongering that overly offended religious people love to post, being too idiotic to realise it hurts their case not helping it.

-- You have, I am sorry to say failed to support your claim. The burden of proof is on you, elsethe person who cannot support his claims is the guy who has "a child's view of religion."The onus is always on you, the person making the greater claim and it will always be, therefore any discussion to be had, one has to claim the burden before accusations are thrown out. How dare you accuse other people of anything without supporting your claims? So childish and NOT intellectual sophisticated that you do not even understand when the burden of proof is on you.
-- Even worse, make analogies, which are not even related to the topic at hand.
One needs to get rid of (or justify) all the assertions before going any further.

-- Outside of being generally condescending, with a near ad hominem opening only to be followed by word salad, your response composes a fair amount of assumptions and assertions. First, you asserts that God/the afterlife is somehow a rational philosophical conclusion and then proposes the notion that either
1: the philosophical view is the higher echelon of understanding while empirical investigation is only a small portion, preventing a person from understanding the big picture (one definition of category mistake) or
2: implies that heaven cannot be evaluated through scientific means because it is an abstract concept, so trying to relate the two processes is flawed (another definition of category mistake. I'm guessing you meant this one).
The second one poses a problem because you are essentially stating that there is nothing you can do to prove/disprove supernatural concepts via actual evidence and they are true because you believe them to be true.This game can be played with everything from ghosts to langoliers. If this is your mentality then my best bet would be to save myself the headache and walk away, nothing will change our mind… (Heaven is the ultimate goal of the theist and no logic can be employed to illustrate its irrationality), then again I am not really trying to change anyone’s mind, I never back down and I am merely giving an open minded view of things, If you don’t like it, so be it but do not say I am not “intellectually sophisticated”.

-- From here you assert how tyranny of servility is defined, the concept of a ultimate reality (which you fail to define/explain), the nature of God (deserving of worship since serving him is not servility), and a rather misplaced sense of the term "ultimate freedom." Your are playing connect the dots on a ginger's face and then trying to convince me there's a clear picture of a German Army tank. Where are these assertions coming from and how are they connected?
I could have a field day with your definition of omniscience and its real-life implications. The idea of an all-knowing god, fully aware of the choices every creature will make, creates them regardless, damning countless people to pain and torture while alive and/or eternal suffering in hell. The idea of God not needing to watch you because he already knows what you are doing and what you are going to do is even more terrifying/upsetting than constant surveillance.

I'm amazed at your degree of Orwellian doublespeak.

QUOTE: "The tyranny of servility comes from serving the undeserving and the inferior. Conforming to reality or Ultimate Reality Itself by definition isn't servility. Ergo serving God by definition can't be servility but is in fact the ultimate freedom."

-- When is slavery not slavery? When you think the Master deserves to have slaves, I guess. Yeah... THAT's "intellectually sophisticated".

-- If you're talking about reality, then philosophy is only effective when properly combined with evidence. Trying to extend knowledge beyond what can be measured in some way is not sophisticated, it is worthless blind speculation.

-- If you're talking about morality, what is and isn't acceptable, then there are no right answers. Any two people need to agree on what the goals of morality actually are, before the discussion can even begin. And unless some incredibly simplistic measure is being used, it's still going to be largely a matter of opinion (within a reduced scope). There are however bad answers, which use flawed reasoning and so aren't even internally consistent. There are also answers which offer a detailed explanation, and those which are simply a decree.

-- Religion loves to reverse things. "Servitude to a god equals freedom." Thinking only what he wants you to think, and doing only what he wants you to do, is somehow ultimate freedom? Heaven is a terrible existence, though I suppose people in heaven wouldn't recognize it, because they're not allowed to disagree with their god. In the christian afterlife, you're either given a lobotomy, or set on fire. Your choice. Servility comes in when one's servitude is imposed. In Christian doctrine, the consequence of dissent is eternal torture, which is about as obvious an imposition as you can get.

QUOTE: “Nope, you son have a child's view of religion that a sophisticated Philosophical Classic Theist laughs at loudly & with great cruelty.”
-- That's a nice way to open up a comment: starting with establishing yourself as the grownup with experience and knowledge while diminishing the opposition as the unwitting child that can be patronized. Your appear to have decided to play the "c*nt" card very early on in the game. I am entitled to say that as it was you who started off an attack on me using some ad hominem attack. The "you haven't read sophisticated theologists" dungturd is an ad hominem fallacy known as the Courtier's Reply.* (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/12/24/the-courtiers-reply/)
Here's a relevant article:
http://gretachristina.typepad.com/greta_christinas_weblog/2008/07/hypocrisy-and-the-modern-theology-argument.html

QUOTE: "...laughs at loudly & with great cruelty"
-- *Another hollow display of a need to feel superior, even down right sadistic.
Is that really what a "sophisticated Philosophical Classic Theist" is like? Is that what such a person should be like?

QUOTE: _“sophisticated Philosophical Classic Theist"
"Classic category mistake."_
-- I'd say that about 98% of theists are by no means "sophisticated Philosophical Classic Theists" and are not even aware of their own reasoning for believing. Most don't even realize that faith "requires a leap", but think that they have a solid foundation to stand on, as if it was based on empirical evidence. They just haven't analyzed their own beliefs enough to know this.

QUOTE: “the existence of God (& or the afterlife) is a rational conclusion of philosophical argument not empirical investigation.”
-- *Game over. You can't argue something into existence. You can argue that something may potentially exist but that is not proof of existence. The people that live by philosophy alone and do not include reality I don't understand. *
If you don't have evidence for it, then believing in something cannot be rational, by definition. Rational belief requires justification and you can't have that without....well...justification.

QUOTE: “Like claiming you disbelieve in Natural selection because you can't prove it using a large hadron collider or disbelieving in a Higgs boson particle because you can't find one in the fossil record.”
-- No, it's like saying: "I don't believe in pixies because there's no evidence for them".

QUOTE: ”The tyranny of servility comes from serving the undeserving and the inferior. Conforming to reality or Ultimate Reality Itself by definition isn't servility.”
-- *As you may have read I went into detail in this one above. The god character described in the bible is inferior to me in every respect save for his magical abilities. In every other arena, for example morality, competency and general intellect, I - and the majority of modern man - outstrip him enormously.
But putting that aside, you are have not demonstrated the reality of your god.* You have simply asserted it while being generally condescending.

QUOTE: "Conforming to reality or Ultimate Reality Itself by definition isn't servility. Ergo serving God by definition can't be servility but is in fact the ultimate freedom.”
-- *"Ultimate Reality" is just a philosophical term to package reality with a god.
You just stated that the existence of god does not rely on empirical investigation but is a conclusion of philosophical argument, so how does "Conforming to reality" equate to "serving God"? Even if god exists, serving someone who will brutally punish you if you don't is, by definition, not freedom. Ultimate or otherwise.*

QUOTE: “Also omniscience(knowing everything) isn't the same as Total surveillance.”
-- Yes it is. It is impossible to know everything and yet claim you are not constantly watching everyone. You are relabeling surveillance as "a need to know" to be able to form your argument. Surveillance is monitoring, even if it's not needed. As you state "God knows", that is total surveillance, needed or not.

QUOTE: “You employ surveillance because you don't know and need to observed. God doesn't need to observe anything from all eternity He knows.”
-- Semantics. And not particularly impressive semantics at that.

QUOTE: “your primitive views of religion are to me the Atheist version of a Young Earth Creationist type claiming evolution is wrong because of the second law of thermal dynamics or some such foolishness. Good God man if you are going to be an Atheist at least be more intellectually sophisticated.”
-- First of all, Atheism has no requirement for being "intellectually sophisticated", it is simply disbelief in god. Does such patronizing comments do justice to"sophisticated Philosophical Classic Theists"?

-- Is heaven a place where you will be separated from your loved ones on earth/hell?
Yes or No?
If yes, then you are being deluded to think it is a nice place.
You are a victim of brainwashing to the point to make you so arrogant to think you are "intellectually sophisticated" if you believe such contradictory nonsense.

-- My thoughts, I am sorry to say, are far more sophisticated than your refutations. So far, your argument appears to rest upon thepresupposition/assertion that god exists.
"Believing in god is rational, because it's rational to believe in god. Serving god is freedom, because serving god is freedom" - that's essentially the level of your argument. This isn'tsophisticated, and it certainly isn't "classic theology". It's just a string of circular assertions. You’re not actually demonstrating anything. Or giving anything to make us think what your saying is worth a damn.

Your philosophy, rather theology spoken philosophically, is worthless without science. I have a great philosophy. Philosophy is a never-ending search for wisdom. It asks all the questions and poses possible outcomes then science answers them. Sure you can logically deduce any god you want but there's nothing concrete without science. All the science and logic suggest that gods are man-made, not the other way around. Philosophy can't ever tell you whether! X is true, but if you do it right it may tell science where to start looking for evidence about whether X is true.
Philosophy can theorize that if A and B and not-C then X. Then science can go looking for A, B and C.

*As an atheist, my view of religion is the most sophisticated possible view. *I understand that God is an imaginary being, that there is no afterlife, and the bible is a work of mythology. I do not expect to go to heaven and spend eternity playing a harp and singing praises to God. That may be an unsophisticated view of what heaven is, but it is not my view, it is the view of millions of unsophisticated Christians.
There are many other possible concepts of heaven. There is a movie starring Robin Williams called "What Dreams May Come" in which he dies and goes to heaven. It's very charming, and certainly has a more sophisticated view of heaven than the belief that everybody just sings the praises of God all the time forever. Charming though it is, it's still just a work of fiction.
Theology does get very complicated, but all the complications exist merely to conceal the ultimate emptiness of the belief system. Making your theories more complex may make them more sophisticated but it does not make them any more accurate. I am an atheist, and I consider myself to be so called “intellectually sophisticated” in this area. As the saying goes, to become an atheist all you need to do is read the bible. An atheist is a person more likely to see all religions the same and usually with experience of actually being religious before one becomes an atheist. That to me is a good standpoint to be at when one is figuring out who has the more intellectual sophisticated view (as much of a neutral standpoint one can be at)... Not saying that every atheist is like this but for the most part it is true that former religious reads and learns about their religion and then decides to leave it. I view and critique all religions the same. Remember I was a Christian, I read the bible, I went to mass, heard the priest, went to a catholic school. I was a Christian.

When your worldview, at its foundations, isbased on faith, you may have difficulty understanding someone who requires MORE than faith. I require more than faith. I have set aside the indoctrination of my childhood and instead try to use critical thinking and skepticism as the foundation of my worldview. No idea should be exempt from critical examination. Faith is meaningless - it adds absolutely nothing to my knowledge base.
This is the critical concept that makes the scientific method so powerful. You are free to make whatever assertions you wish. However, if you also want other people to agree with you, then your assertions need to come with evidence. The scientific method allows you to build a model based on your assertions, and to then make predictions based on that model. If verifiable evidence is found that agrees with the prediction made by your model, this strengthens the validity of your assertion.However, if new evidence is brought forward that disagrees with the established model of understanding, then the current model must be changed - no matter how long that model had been accepted!
Now, contrast this with a worldview based onfaith. Evidence to the contrary is ignored - because you just need to have faith, or because god works in mysterious ways. Criticism and doubt is not allowed, and leads directly to eternal damnation in the fiery pit.

So, I do not need to "disprove" theism. I wait here patiently for someone, anyone, to bring forward evidence that can be analyzed and verified. Until then, I feel exactly the same way about your god as I do about an invisible pink unicorn that farts rainbows and craps sherbet. The onus is on you to prove something exists not on me to say why not. This NEEDS to be understood before anything else. And even before this it needs to be understood that your claim is based on assertion and theology not philosophy (these can be taking into philosophy but isn’t a philosophical standpoint), there is no validation inside or outside philosophy.

While big words and complex phrases may make an idea seem impressive to the ignorant, it won't work on me. There done. Thank you and goodbye.

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[Neo-Scholastic]

The great thing about Occam's Razor (Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.)  and Hitchens Razor (That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence)

You are applying only part of Occam's Razor. Among competing hypotheses that each explains all the relevant phenomena, the one with the fewest assumptions should be preferred. First, Occam's Razor is merely an epistomological guide. You cannot disprove a hypothesis using it. The hypothesis with greater number of assumptions could still be the correct one, even while adopting the lesser seems more reasonable. Secondly, it is a matter of debate whether the naturalist stance adequately accounts for all the things needed to be explained. Here, in the interest of time, I must only refer to the Principle of Sufficient Reason.

Hitchen's Razor (or was it Sagan's) is just plain wrong. No type of inquiry would be possible without asserting first principles that do not require any prior evidence.

[pocaracas]

Didn't read the whole thing... sorry.... too much for work hours...

>The scientific method allows you to build a model based on your assertions, and to then make predictions based on that model. If verifiable evidence is found that agrees with the prediction made by your model, this strengthens the validity of your assertion.However, if new evidence is brought forward that disagrees with the established model of understanding, then the current model must be changed - no matter how long that model had been accepted!

But God is a philosophical question not an empirical scientific one. God is know by philosophical proofs not science. Again trying to dig up a Higgs boson from the fossil record.

But this nugget caught my eye (yes, I was parsing from the bottom up)

God is a philosophical question, huh?
This is where people... believers... quit grasping reality.

If god exists, then it is a part of reality... the same reality where science operates.
Certainly, it seems our science is limited to the physics of our Universe... and the god they assume exists would maybe require new science, but would still be accessible to proper testing.

If it's real, it's a part of reality, then it's something that can be probed.

Not, as this fellow says, a philosophical construct.
A philosophical construct is not worth belief, wars, temples, or anything.... it's just mental masturbation.
Just like Russel's Teapot.

Does it matter if I can conceptualize of something, and yet can't measure it?
Should I assume that something to be real?

I'd say no.

[Neo-Scholastic]

If god exists, then it is a part of reality... the same reality where science operates.

...the same reality in which science operates...

Other than parsimony, why do you believe that the physical universe exhausts the whole of reality?

What physical evidence justifies the scientific method as the only means by which someone can gain knowledge?

[pocaracas]

If god exists, then it is a part of reality... the same reality where science operates.

...the same reality in which science operates...

Other than parsimony, why do you believe that the physical universe exhausts the whole of reality?

What physical evidence justifies the scientific method as the only means by which someone can gain knowledge?

Maybe you should read the sentence I wrote right after the one you quoted...?

[Aoi Magi]

If god exists, then it is a part of reality... the same reality where science operates.

...the same reality in which science operates...

Other than parsimony, why do you believe that the physical universe exhausts the whole of reality?

What physical evidence justifies the scientific method as the only means by which someone can gain knowledge?

No, the physical universe might not exhaust the whole of reality as you put it, but if your claims include a god interacting with the physical universe then it is safe to assume that the claimed God should at least be partially observable within said physical universe.

Also no scientific method isn't the only way to gain knowledge but it is the only way to ascertain and validate said knowledge against our observable reality.

[robvalue]

Before I dive into it wholesale, I'll make these comments:

Words are not as accurate as mathematical symbols. We don't always express precise meaning, as much as we intend to. There are all sorts of implications and concessions that we would assume the other person is aware of. So it's vitally important to negotiate the language, definitions and claims as much as anything else.

So it would be my way of stating it that, "It is reasonable to hold the belief that there is no such thing as gods." This isn't a statement of absolute truth, it's a probabilistic assessment of reality. I would assume this is what people mean when they say "there are no gods". I personally advise against making such statements of certainty, except in abstract systems where logic is absolute.

This stops the theist trying to raze the ground, to reduce everything to "you can't know anything for sure so I can dismiss what you're saying".

To begin with: what's a god? How do you differentiate between a god and a non-God? No theist has ever given me a coherent answer to this. The discussion seems kind of pointless if I don't even know what they are arguing for.

Secondly: when you've finished telling me what it is, if we ever get that far, why should I care? I've had answers, but they are generally either "isn't it interesting" (sure, if we could actually investigate it) or "obey or else" (mugging). Of course it would be interesting to investigate. But when someone is using arguments in place of evidence, they haven't even established its existence. See my video:

https://youtu.be/inw1fNItjdU