(November 22, 2020 at 5:11 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: In any case, as a point of fact, Big Mo didn't come up with magic book at all.  Not one word.

(November 22, 2020 at 4:11 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Sure, np.  First, let's ask if anyone actually established the equality of the concepts.


An atheist believes that.....
1-they have a mind.
2-there is an external world.
3-there are other minds.

A theist believes.....
1-they have a mind.
2-there is an external world.
3-there are other minds.
4-at least one of those minds is a god.

Nope.  Looks like there's an additional commitment, right off the bat.  That 4th commitment is a doozy - no matter how you intend to rationalize it.

(November 22, 2020 at 3:34 pm)LadyForCamus Wrote: Many religions offer up prophets, holy texts, personal testimony, etc. as evidence sufficient for belief. If two different people can believe in mutually exclusive religions based on the same type of evidence, then how reliable is that type of evidence?

(November 22, 2020 at 5:24 pm)Klorophyll Wrote:

(November 22, 2020 at 4:11 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Sure, np.  First, let's ask if anyone actually established the equality of the concepts.


An atheist believes that.....
1-they have a mind.
2-there is an external world.
3-there are other minds.

A theist believes.....
1-they have a mind.
2-there is an external world.
3-there are other minds.
4-at least one of those minds is a god.

Nope.  Looks like there's an additional commitment, right off the bat.  That 4th commitment is a doozy - no matter how you intend to rationalize it.

I am still reading Plantinga's book. And I don't think this is how he presents his argument. For a start, it's the same criteria that leads the atheist to believe in2 and 3 that should be investigated, not the claim 4 taken by itself.

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(November 22, 2020 at 3:34 pm)LadyForCamus Wrote: Many religions offer up prophets, holy texts, personal testimony, etc. as evidence sufficient for belief. If two different people can believe in mutually exclusive religions based on the same type of evidence, then how reliable is that type of evidence?

It doesn't matter if people believe in mutually exclusive religions based on the same criteria. A lot more than evidence -how appealing the religion is for each individual personally, his culture, etc. - should be considered when asking why someone picked some religion.

(November 22, 2020 at 5:05 pm)Klorophyll Wrote: I am unable to demonstrate deductively the existence of a god. And it's not a problem. Deduction only works if we provide ourselves with a general enough set of axioms. In the context of the existence of god, such axioms will take the form of an exhaustive list of the most elementary facts about reality we can all agree about, unfortunately such a list doesn't and cannot exist.

Quote:Sorry to inform you, such an event cannot logically take place. The god of abrahamic religion can never be perceived by our finest machines. And again - and this is the relevant part- it's not a problem. Think about it, we now know that there are fundamental limits to what we can measure (e.g. the uncertainty principle, the Planck constant, etc.) . We can never surpass these limits regarding our own observable reality, let alone that of god.

Quote:I think it's unfair from a historical perspective to compare an obvious fraud with an abrahamic religion. And what you think without referencing any evidence is irrelevant. As long as you can't substantiate your claims about Islam which led you to dismiss it, you are the one having trouble with standards of evidence.

Quote:You are doing inference right now from what surrounds you. You only saw one person probably (yourself) typing words in the keyboard then sending them in this forum. Despite that you are convinced that all these members are actual people doing the same thing. There, we have an inference, which you do automatically, from the smallest sample (you only) to all the members of the forum.

Quote:Muhammad came up with the Qur'an as a literary challenge. A challenge which was relevant to his time. It's a very complicated topic, but overall, it's easier to explain his biography if he were a prophet than if he weren't. Many christian apologists today acknowledge he was sincere. The only hanging point worth a dicussion is whether his inspirational spells (i.e. the Qur'an) were the product of his subconsciousness, that is, the manifestation of some natural mental disorder like temporal lobe epilespy, or coming from up high. And the former doesn't look very defensible.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/793843/
Overall claims of prophets are actually more than claims, they either have a challenge relevant to their time and surroundings (Muhammad's contemporaries were highly proficient in Arabic, an extraordinarily eloquent book belittling their deities like the Qur'an is really, really miraculous for these folks ; Moses' contemporaries practiced sorcery, a staff turning into a serpent is then a "suitable" miracle, etc. 
No atheist will complain if they saw Moses' staff in action. But they complain a lot with Muhammad's miracle - the only miracle that exists today -, and it's not difficult, with all that has been said in mind, to understand why.

(November 22, 2020 at 5:24 pm)Klorophyll Wrote:

(November 22, 2020 at 4:11 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Sure, np.  First, let's ask if anyone actually established the equality of the concepts.


An atheist believes that.....
1-they have a mind.
2-there is an external world.
3-there are other minds.

A theist believes.....
1-they have a mind.
2-there is an external world.
3-there are other minds.
4-at least one of those minds is a god.

Nope.  Looks like there's an additional commitment, right off the bat.  That 4th commitment is a doozy - no matter how you intend to rationalize it.

I am still reading Plantinga's book. And I don't think this is how he presents his argument. For a start, it's the same criteria that leads the atheist to believe in2 and 3 that should be investigated, not the claim 4 taken by itself.

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(November 22, 2020 at 3:34 pm)LadyForCamus Wrote: Many religions offer up prophets, holy texts, personal testimony, etc. as evidence sufficient for belief. If two different people can believe in mutually exclusive religions based on the same type of evidence, then how reliable is that type of evidence?

It doesn't matter if people believe in mutually exclusive religions based on the same criteria. A lot more than evidence -how appealing the religion is for each individual personally, his culture, etc. - should be considered when asking why someone picked some religion.

(November 22, 2020 at 5:24 pm)Klorophyll Wrote:

(November 22, 2020 at 4:11 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Sure, np.  First, let's ask if anyone actually established the equality of the concepts.


An atheist believes that.....
1-they have a mind.
2-there is an external world.
3-there are other minds.

A theist believes.....
1-they have a mind.
2-there is an external world.
3-there are other minds.
4-at least one of those minds is a god.

Nope.  Looks like there's an additional commitment, right off the bat.  That 4th commitment is a doozy - no matter how you intend to rationalize it.

I am still reading Plantinga's book. And I don't think this is how he presents his argument. For a start, it's the same criteria that leads the atheist to believe in2 and 3 that should be investigated, not the claim 4 taken by itself.

(November 22, 2020 at 2:04 pm)Klorophyll Wrote: Hi there,

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One objection nonreligious people usually raise is why a deity would communicate through prophets altogether, or just leave signs. And at face value the objection looks serious, a supposed deity knows epistemology and, a fortiori, what would convince each and every individual to follow some doctrine. But further thought reveals that this is exactly what we have. People are generally more convinced and emotionally moved by models, idols, celebrities, than by dry, heavy readings. A human model is more appealing to human beings than, say, the most impressive fossil finding supporting the occurence of some miracle. And this is exactly what we have, human models throughout history guiding human beings on the right path.

When an atheist asks about evidence, his question entails that all what surrounds him and all what he heard about, like the existence of claims of prophecy throughout history, are not evidence. And when he asks about a logical proof, he ignores the fact that logical proofs in this context only make sense to talk about in some universally valid system of axioms, which doesn't exist. To clarify that, an impressive result in Euclidian geometry, say, for example, the Pythagorean theorem, entails less truths than the five postulates of Euclid. Namely, you can't reach Euclid's postulates based on the Pythagorean theorem.

Therefore, it's not a problem that there is no watertight, universally valid deductive proof for God. The underlying intuition is that God is "too much" to be deduced from a fixed set of axioms chosen by human brains. The only possible evidence for God is of inferential value. Inference by definition seeks the bigger scheme of things based on a small sample, while deduction starts by an already complete list of axioms, choices, hypotheses, etc.

And it's clear that one cannot prepare an exhaustive, universally agreed-upon list of independent axioms, the coherence of which is verifiable, to deduce the most complete being conceivable.

On a side note I would like to hear someone's thoughts on the equivalence between the existence of other minds and the existence of God. A result established recently by Plantinga and others. If one has enough "belief" to think there is an outside world and creatures like himself, this exact inference from a sample of the size of a singleton (only himself) to the entire human population is what he should apply to the orderly things around him to reach a supreme being.

And if one is stubborn enough to reject any inferential value from what we see, then he must accept the unbearable cost: either deny the existence of other minds altogether, i.e. endorse hard solipsism just to deny the existence of God. Or hypocritically acknowledge other minds while rejecting the existence of God.

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