(May 11, 2025 at 8:19 am)Belacqua Wrote: Sheldon, since you're into AI, I got Grok to write up something for me. What it wrote is accurate, as far as I know:

Quote:The principle of charity in argumentation is the practice of interpreting an opponent's argument in its strongest, most coherent, and most reasonable form, even if the original presentation is unclear or flawed.

Then you owe Alan a retraction, as he never claimed the beliefs were right, as you implied.

(May 11, 2025 at 8:27 am)Alan V Wrote:

(May 11, 2025 at 8:14 am)Sheldon Wrote: Where in that post did Alan remotely claim their belief was right?

[Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmInkxbvlCs ]

2:08: "It's just a flesh-wound."

Obviously you didn't say the majority is right. Nor did I say that you said so. I know that you think the majority is wrong. Why do you keep bringing up the majority, as if truth is determined by majority vote?

Here's what the current fight sounds like to me:

Suppose someone were to claim that fiction is a waste of time and all novels are trash. And I say "why do you say that?" And he says "Because Stephen King and Dan Brown novels are trash." 

Well, that's true: Stephen King and Dan Brown write trash. But by mentioning only those two writers the argument is distorted. 

I would say, "But Proust and Dostoevsky and Murasaki Shikibu are not trash; they are great monuments of human creativity." 

And the counter argument would then be: "But the majority of Americans don't read those. They only read trash. Therefore novels are trash." 

I don't care what the majority taste in novels is, and I don't care what the majority views of religion are. Quality is a completely separate issue.

Nope if not what your average joe Christian believes then it's just armchair waffling of bunch of apologists trying to make there absurd idea's sound reasonable

Quote:Belacqua Wrote:

(1 hour ago)Alan V Wrote: Wrote:[Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmInkxbvlCs ]

2:08: "It's just a flesh-wound."

I don't care what the majority views of religion are. Quality is a completely separate issue.

Then give us the highest quality reason for an extant deity? Lets take a look.

(May 11, 2025 at 8:45 am)Belacqua Wrote: Obviously you didn't say the majority is right. Nor did I say that you said so. I know that you think the majority is wrong. Why do you keep bringing up the majority, as if truth is determined by majority vote?

The majority defines what the majority believes, not theologians who assumably speak for themselves too. That point is important in assessing the relevance of certain atheistic critiques.

As for strawman arguments and strong-manning, I gave the God-concept the benefit of my doubts for over twenty years. Now I realize that I didn't need to take up the burden of proof.

Do you have some unaddressed God-concept you would like us to consider? Please offer it for conversation.

(May 11, 2025 at 8:45 am)Belacqua Wrote: I don't care what the majority taste in novels is, and I don't care what the majority views of religion are. Quality is a completely separate issue.

There may be some monk somewhere that's got it all tied up in a neat theological bundle, but he doesn't matter very much if nobody believes in his deity. When writing a book for popular consumption you don't go out and find the most obscure variants of religion and tackle them. You'd rightly call that out as absurd. You tackle a common issue, and what's common is a pretty simple deity with some pretty common super powers. Your rigorously-defined theologically-sound deity doesn't get any airtime outside of the hallowed halls of academia. Trying to feed that to the masses would see church attendance plummet as the average believer simply tuned out. Without the unwashed masses and their simple god belief would dwindle to a few scholars clinging to some rarefied theological concepts that we could all safely ignore.

As for that "theologically-sound" deity, simply coating absurdity in ever-deepening layers of obfuscating bullshit doesn't make them rational. A very quick reading of the "divine simplicity" reveals phrases that a child of twelve would rightly question, including "God is without parts or composition, that His essence and attributes are one and the same, and that He is not subject to change or potentiality." While I'm sure that sounded like a good idea to somebody, all you're doing is patching over one absurdity with three more. None of that is observed anywhere in reality and you'd have shit yourself laughing if an atheist had made an argument that patently absurd. It's nothing more than compartmentalization and long-winded justification for people who are just clever enough to need a bit more than the average mass-produced pulp paperback deity.

(May 11, 2025 at 8:09 am)Belacqua Wrote:

(May 11, 2025 at 8:01 am)Alan V Wrote: The vast majority of theistic believers think prayer is useful.  They can believe this only if they embrace the idea that God is both conscious and willful, that he will listen to prayers and respond if he sees fit.  So a super-intelligence super-being it is.

Ah, the majority. They are always right.

Don’t believer say billions of xians can’t be wrong?

(May 11, 2025 at 11:08 am)h4ym4n Wrote:

(May 11, 2025 at 8:09 am)Belacqua Wrote: Ah, the majority. They are always right.

Don’t believer say billions of xians can’t be wrong?

That is part of the reason why believers feel so comfortable believing -- that human compulsion to conform.  If ordinary people were called upon to believe something more rarified but more accurate, like Paleophyte said, they would disappear.  

If you use conditioning as a method of socializing people, don't be surprised if they are uncomfortable with change.

(May 11, 2025 at 8:45 am)Belacqua Wrote: I don't care what the majority taste in novels is, and I don't care what the majority views of religion are. Quality is a completely separate issue.

Right; and the majority of Christians don't hold any strong beliefs about what God is beyond his role as creator. In much the same way that the majority of people don't have any beliefs about the workings of human perception, they just know they have eyes and that they see. And any belief they did have is guaranteed to be wrong. You have to go to experts who have at least attempted to come up with reasonable answers to the question.