(August 16, 2016 at 10:30 am)SteveII Wrote:

(August 13, 2016 at 5:09 am)bennyboy Wrote: You didn't assert anything?  Do you want to link the many, many, many unsupportable assertions you've made in this thread?

The difference between my speculation about superstitious behavior is that it's a connection of very basic principles: animals want to live, they have instincts, and the instincts cause behaviors.  I'm not bothered by the possibility that it may be wrong, so long as in the meantime I'm making sensible inferences.

The same is easily observed in humans.  Humans have ALL KINDS of superstitious beliefs, only some of which are Christian religious.  But their beliefs are a response to how they feel, i.e. their instincts.  You yourself have said that among the many benefits of the Christian religion are how it makes you feel: deep peace, etc. and that Christianity is therefore a special snowflake, since no other religion makes people feel the way the Christian religion does.  This is an ASSERTION, by the way.

At any rate, fine, you have feelings.  How do you go from "I have feelings" to "the feelings are about God," if you cannot establish that God exists except BY your feelings?  Where's that point of convergence that lets you bridge from one to the other?

You might want to look up a picture of a circle, and then ask yourself if your circular path is likely to lead to forward progress in your thinking.

You responded to a comment where I mentioned that psychologist believe there is a god-shaped hole in our psyche. Not my assertion. I did assert other things. You didn't respond to those however. 

The point of the conversation about 'is belief in God properly basic' (as opposed to just basic) centers around the fact that it is an intuition (not inferred--based on evidence) that God exists and therefore is warranted (as opposed to justified) to believe so. They only way to defeat this position is to show this belief to be false. Simply proposing another way this intuition may have developed is not a defeater. 

The conclusion of this line of reasoning is that you (the atheist) are not justified in complaining that a Christian's belief in God is irrational. While there is other evidence, none is required if belief in God is 'properly basic'.

Using Christian-cultivated terminology to justify Christian beliefs, Steve?

"Belief in God is not irrational because theologians say that belief in God doesn't require evidence to be rational. Therefore, it is completely rational."

In what universe is this not circular reasoning?

Reformed Epistemology?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformed_epistemology

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(August 16, 2016 at 11:10 am)ukatheist Wrote: Reformed Epistemology?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformed_epistemology

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Right...

"It is tempting to raise the following sort of question. If belief in God can be properly basic, why cannot just any belief be properly basic? Could we not say the same for any bizarre aberration we can think of? What about voodoo or astrology? What about the belief that the Great Pumpkin returns every Halloween? Could I properly take that as basic? Suppose I believe that if I flap my arms with sufficient vigor, I can take off and fly about the room; could I defend myself against the charge of irrationality by claiming this belief is basic? If we say that belief in God is properly basic, will we not be committed to holding that just anything, or nearly anything, can properly be taken as basic, thus throwing wide the gates to irrationalism and superstition?"

(August 16, 2016 at 9:31 am)LadyForCamus Wrote:

(August 16, 2016 at 9:23 am)SteveII Wrote: If you think Muhammad's personal revelation is the same as having real churches across the Roman empire, containing real people believing the events were real just a few years following Jesus death, then the 22 letters from 4 authors to those churches confirming their beliefs about Jesus, and finally 4 editors that obviously used eyewitness and source documents to write 5 thorough accounts of the events within the lifetime of the eyewitnesses, then you are approaching this analysis without any intellectual integrity. 

Why isn't the life of Jesus and the NT evidence of God revealing himself? The "IS the claim" game is old and tired and is just nonsense. Of course historical events are written down and that's how we know today what happened 200, 2000, 4000 years ago. The first century thought they were accurate accounts of real events. Why don't you think they were accurate, or in your words, 'laughable' (forget your word games)?

Anybody else's head hurt?

(August 16, 2016 at 10:30 am)SteveII Wrote:

(August 13, 2016 at 5:09 am)bennyboy Wrote: You didn't assert anything?  Do you want to link the many, many, many unsupportable assertions you've made in this thread?

The difference between my speculation about superstitious behavior is that it's a connection of very basic principles: animals want to live, they have instincts, and the instincts cause behaviors.  I'm not bothered by the possibility that it may be wrong, so long as in the meantime I'm making sensible inferences.

The same is easily observed in humans.  Humans have ALL KINDS of superstitious beliefs, only some of which are Christian religious.  But their beliefs are a response to how they feel, i.e. their instincts.  You yourself have said that among the many benefits of the Christian religion are how it makes you feel: deep peace, etc. and that Christianity is therefore a special snowflake, since no other religion makes people feel the way the Christian religion does.  This is an ASSERTION, by the way.

At any rate, fine, you have feelings.  How do you go from "I have feelings" to "the feelings are about God," if you cannot establish that God exists except BY your feelings?  Where's that point of convergence that lets you bridge from one to the other?

You might want to look up a picture of a circle, and then ask yourself if your circular path is likely to lead to forward progress in your thinking.

You responded to a comment where I mentioned that psychologist believe there is a god-shaped hole in our psyche. Not my assertion. I did assert other things. You didn't respond to those however. 

The point of the conversation about 'is belief in God properly basic' (as opposed to just basic) centers around the fact that it is an intuition (not inferred--based on evidence) that God exists and therefore is warranted (as opposed to justified) to believe so. They only way to defeat this position is to show this belief to be false. Simply proposing another way this intuition may have developed is not a defeater. 

The conclusion of this line of reasoning is that you (the atheist) are not justified in complaining that a Christian's belief in God is irrational. While there is other evidence, none is required if belief in God is 'properly basic'.

This post adequately demonstrates the sleight-of-hand Christians indulge in when they play the Plantinga 'properly basic' card. Whether belief in God (or, more accurately, a god) is properly basic is debatable but of no particular concern to me. If that's all you claim, Steve, then you are in exactly the same boat as any other theist, of any stripe, should they make the same claim. But that's not what you're up to, is it? Captial-G god (your god) is not believed in by way of intuition. It comes with a baggage train of claims concerning its qualities that are derived from your holy book. Belief in the Christian god cannot, by its nature, be properly basic and you have done nothing to bridge the chasm between a deist god (which might, arguably, be basic) and your god, except to repeat claims nobody else is buying. If we did, we'd be Christians.

(August 16, 2016 at 10:17 am)bennyboy Wrote:

(August 16, 2016 at 9:23 am)SteveII Wrote: If you think Muhammad's personal revelation is the same as having real churches across the Roman empire, containing real people believing the events were real just a few years following Jesus death, then the 22 letters from 4 authors to those churches confirming their beliefs about Jesus, and finally 4 editors that obviously used eyewitness and source documents to write 5 thorough accounts of the events within the lifetime of the eyewitnesses, then you are approaching this analysis without any intellectual integrity. 

Why isn't the life of Jesus and the NT evidence of God revealing himself? The "IS the claim" game is old and tired and is just nonsense. Of course historical events are written down and that's how we know today what happened 200, 2000, 4000 years ago. The first century thought they were accurate accounts of real events. Why don't you think they were accurate, or in your words, 'laughable' (forget your word games)?

And what year, exactly, are those letters dated?  What's "just a few years" and how do you know, exactly?

You'd think if a dude was walking on freaking water, healing crowds of sick people, and doing water-to-wine party tricks, the Roman literature would be FULL FULL FULL of mention of him.  Instead, he's pretty much completely absent except by those who formed his church decades after his supposed death.

Are you sure the document evidence is as solid as you think it is?  Cuz I'm pretty sure it's not.

If you want to know the dates of 27 different documents, look them up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dating_the_Bible

So, your reason why my belief is 'laughable' is...what? There would have been more surviving Roman literature on what happened in Palestine during the life of Jesus? That is the criteria for laughable??? You're sure the evidence of the NT is not solid, yet...nothing of substance has been forthcoming.

(August 16, 2016 at 10:47 am)LadyForCamus Wrote:

(August 16, 2016 at 10:30 am)SteveII Wrote: You responded to a comment where I mentioned that psychologist believe there is a god-shaped hole in our psyche. Not my assertion. I did assert other things. You didn't respond to those however. 

The point of the conversation about 'is belief in God properly basic' (as opposed to just basic) centers around the fact that it is an intuition (not inferred--based on evidence) that God exists and therefore is warranted (as opposed to justified) to believe so. They only way to defeat this position is to show this belief to be false. Simply proposing another way this intuition may have developed is not a defeater. 

The conclusion of this line of reasoning is that you (the atheist) are not justified in complaining that a Christian's belief in God is irrational. While there is other evidence, none is required if belief in God is 'properly basic'.

Using Christian-cultivated terminology to justify Christian beliefs, Steve?  

"Belief in God is not irrational because theologians say that belief in God doesn't require evidence to be rational.  Therefore, it is completely rational."

In what universe is this not circular reasoning?

No, 'basic belief' and 'properly basic belief' are long-standing philosophical concepts that have nothing specific to do with religion. Your above characterization of the argument is way off so your conclusion is nonsense.

(August 16, 2016 at 10:30 am)SteveII Wrote: The point of the conversation about 'is belief in God properly basic' (as opposed to just basic) centers around the fact that it is an intuition (not inferred--based on evidence) that God exists and therefore is warranted (as opposed to justified) to believe so. They only way to defeat this position is to show this belief to be false. Simply proposing another way this intuition may have developed is not a defeater. 

Correction-- the only way to defeat this position is to be disinterested in it and to find something else to do. The world of ideas isn't divided into God/not-God. It's divided into JHVW, Thor, Zeus, Buddha, Krsna, atheism, and indifference. If you don't want to assert something, then you are using a suspiciously large amount of words to do so. If you want to assert something based on your intuition, then you have the BOP of demonstrating that your intuition is somehow more valid than that of literally hundreds of different intuitions.

See, that's the problem with intuitions-- they aren't shared in a common objective framework. So unless you can find a way to share yours with me, then however much you value the experiences which you attribute to God, that God idea will remain irrelevant in my framework.

Quote:The conclusion of this line of reasoning is that you (the atheist) are not justified in complaining that a Christian's belief in God is irrational. While there is other evidence, none is required if belief in God is 'properly basic'.

Sounds like WLC to me.

Anyway, if a belief in God were properly basic, as I understand you to mean it, young children would have an unnamed belief in God, and would instantly recognize the thing when it was described to them. This is not the case. It is more the case that people of different cultures have various religious beliefs, which are not coincidentally those of those parents, but that as adults, they cannot recognize that their ideas represent cultural learning.

Here's the thing that for me sinks you entirely-- you have a nearly impossible 2-step process: 1) claim that your intuitions and feelings represent knowledge of reality; 2) demonstrate that the intuitions and feelings of dozens of other cultures and thousands of subcultures do NOT represent knowledge of reality. That you will achieve that second step seems highly unlikely to anyone who isn't already a Christian.

(August 16, 2016 at 11:34 am)SteveII Wrote:

(August 16, 2016 at 10:47 am)LadyForCamus Wrote: Using Christian-cultivated terminology to justify Christian beliefs, Steve?  

"Belief in God is not irrational because theologians say that belief in God doesn't require evidence to be rational.  Therefore, it is completely rational."

In what universe is this not circular reasoning?

No, 'basic belief' and 'properly basic belief' are long-standing philosophical concepts that have nothing specific to do with religion. Your above characterization of the argument is way off so your conclusion is nonsense.

You're right, those concepts originally had nothing specifically to do with religion . . . until the concepts were hijacked by Protestant thinkers looking for a conceptual Trojan Horse to park in the fortress of rationally held beliefs.

(August 16, 2016 at 11:20 am)LadyForCamus Wrote:

(August 16, 2016 at 11:10 am)ukatheist Wrote: Reformed Epistemology?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformed_epistemology

Sent from my ALE-L21 using Tapatalk

Right...

"It is tempting to raise the following sort of question. If belief in God can be properly basic, why cannot just any belief be properly basic? Could we not say the same for any bizarre aberration we can think of? What about voodoo or astrology? What about the belief that the Great Pumpkin returns every Halloween? Could I properly take that as basic? Suppose I believe that if I flap my arms with sufficient vigor, I can take off and fly about the room; could I defend myself against the charge of irrationality by claiming this belief is basic? If we say that belief in God is properly basic, will we not be committed to holding that just anything, or nearly anything, can properly be taken as basic, thus throwing wide the gates to irrationalism and superstition?"

At any time, you can offer defeaters for a properly basic belief to show that it is not true. Go ahead, what is the defeater that shows that God does not exist? A 'properly basic belief' is both a belief that does not rely on inference and may be true. If it is not possible to be true, then it is not a properly basic belief.