The pre-failure of apologetic arguments

[Matthaῖos]

In any case it doesn't point to any god, only to a cause.

This is certainly true of the syllogism (1)-(3). To be fair to Craig, we should mention that he then gives another argument for why one should believe that the cause is God, but I think that it fails. He basically says that there are only two possible things that could cause the universe to begin to exist: abstract objects, or an unembodied mind. And there are a whole host of problems with this argument - the main one for me would be that saying that God is an "unembodied mind" is just woeful theology (one might say 'the mind of God' but never 'the mind that is God'). But also claiming that unembodied minds exist begs a huge question against a whole host of mind-body theories.

And it begs the question, when assigning that cause to god and everything has a cause what caused god?

This is a bit of a bogus objection, as nowhere in the argument does Craig say "everything has a cause" (indeed, noone from the Western canon of philosophy - Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Aquinas - noone has said "everything has a cause" as part of a cosmological argument).

Is god the only possible way for the universe to begin? That's alot to provide evidence...

This is a better objection, and is the third objection that I would have to his argument that God is the cause. I would probably phrase it something like this: Craig needs to give an argument why the cause must either be God by necessity, or give an argument why the cause is most probably God. The second is pretty difficult to formulate given that we simply don't know anything about the space of possible causes of the universe. For the first, there may well be some intriguing line of argument but I haven't come across it yet, and Craig's attempt (which just looks like a false dichotomy) is very unconvincing.

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Indeed god is the least likely of the pre-big bang theories that i 've heard.

I'd be interested to see how you would even begin to formulate an argument for that. As I said above, I don't think we know enough about the space of possibilities to even get started.

[lucent]

I'm sure most people here are familiar with Thunderf00t and his videos. Recently, he posted one on the subject of the apologist's use (or perhaps misapplication) of philosophical arguments crafted to reach a desired conclusion. He points out that one of the main problems with this line of "proof" is that the universe is not under any obligation to conform to our concepts of what makes sense and all the conjecture about the unknown can't substitute for empirical testing and research.

I've posted before that abstract philosophy, theoretical constructs and pure conjecture, even if they all seem sound, can't substitute for hard evidence and certainly don't rise to meet the massive burden of proof called for by the extraordinary claims of Christianity. The fact that apologists can only offer philosophical arguments to make their case means that they fail before their arguments can even be examined.

On that basis, there is no reason to expect the Universe to conform to the results of empirical testing and research and either. You've really just exposed a glaring weakness in your position, because you cannot arrive at it without a vicious circularity. You've created a dichotomy between philosophical arguments for the existence of God, and "hard evidence", saying that we should prefer hard evidence over "abstract" philosophy(whatever that means) because we can't expect the Universe to conform to our expectations of how it should behave. Well I am sorry to inform you but this would also apply to the results of empirical testing and research.

For science to be done, the assumption of uniformity in nature must be made. This is the expectation that the Universe will behave in the future like it behaved in the past. The evidence for this of course only exists in the past. Therefore, the results of empirical testing and research in this sense are not any more reliable than the conclusion of a philosophical argument for the existence of God. After all, the Universe is not under any obligation to conform to our concepts of what makes sense.

So, your argument fails. The reason we expect a philosophical argument to be valid is because of the laws of logic. A philosophical argument can be considered to be sound if it is logically valid. You could show it is invalid if it violated the law of non-contradiction, for instance. These laws also serve as the foundation for mathematics.

The problem for atheists is that they have no way to account for them in their secular worldview. You cannot point to them in nature. Since they are immaterial and unchanging, they do not fit into a materialist worldview, because the Universe is material and always changing. I can account for them in my worldview, you cannot account for them in yours, unless of course you invoke your Deist God, but even then you cannot say anything about them for certain, because you have no way of discerning its intentions.

In any case, I believe that God has provided everyone with sufficient proof for His existence, and to most, evidence for who He is, and people are all more or less in denial of it. You, for instance, know there is a God but you refuse to acknowledge that it is Jesus Christ. Some people may not have received the special revelation of the gospel, but I believe everyone has a clue about whether there is a God or not.

[DeistPaladin]

Interesting video. However, I'm not sure that the analogy holds between his "spam" argument and Craig's Kalām argument...

Welcome to the forum.

Whether or not Tf00t's analogy applies, I think his main point was that what seems logical to us is not necessarily how the universe works. Our understanding of subatomic particles, light speed travel, the relationship between space, time and gravity are all examples of how "common sense" fails to predict what empirical tests prove. The universe is under no obligation to conform to our ideas of what would make sense to us and sometimes it can surprise us.

Thus, when speculating about unknowns like "what caused the Big Bang" or "how did the earliest forms of life come to be", pure conjecture is not "proof". At best, it is an untested hypothesis. It may be too charitable to even go this far, since many of the assertions are currently not falsifiable.

Christians (and Muslims) have no store of magical artifacts, no sightings of angels recorded on verified video footage, no miracles that faith is supposed to be able to generate (Mark 16:17-18). They have nothing of substance to back up any of their extraordinary claims. The best they can offer are these mental constructs.

I take his argument one step further and invoke ECREE (Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence). The nature of the claims of Christianity demand extraordinary evidence. Even if the arguments like the Moral Argument, TAG, Ontological Argument, etc were logically sound (and I would argue they are not), they fall short of the standard set by their own claims.

This is what I mean by "pre-fail".

[Jackalope]

A philosophical argument can be considered to be sound if it is logically valid.

Aren't you forgetting something here? Your argument is sound if it is valid and your premises are true. Interesting that you left off that last part.

[DeistPaladin]

On that basis, there is no reason to expect the Universe to conform to the results of empirical testing and research and either.

Perhaps I wasn't clear in what my point was. Let me simplify it for you:

In measuring the proof of a claim:
Repeatable tests + peer review > conjecture

saying that we should prefer hard evidence over "abstract" philosophy(whatever that means)

Hard evidence = repeatable tests that yield the same data.
Abstract philosophy = broad and subjective issues that philosophers have wrestled with for thousands of years (meaning and purpose of life, what morality is, why do we use reason, etc.).

For science to be done, the assumption of uniformity in nature must be made. This is the expectation that the Universe will behave in the future like it behaved in the past. The evidence for this of course only exists in the past. Therefore, the results of empirical testing and research in this sense are not any more reliable than the conclusion of a philosophical argument for the existence of God.

In measuring how extraordinary a claim is:
Basic assumptions (reality is real, consistency of the universe, etc). < Fantastic assumptions of faith that run contrary to all observed data.

ECREE: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Assumption: The laws of the universe will continue to apply tomorrow.
Degree of claim: Mundane
Proportional proof required: None

Assumption: God created this planet 5 billion years ago for us, created us circa 100K years ago, we remained in a "fallen state" for all but the last 2K years, he solved that problem by sending his only son, who was also himself, down to earth to be the bloody sacrifice that was the only means by which he could convince himself to forgive us for the sins that were the result of a woman made from a rib eating a magic fruit after speaking with a talking snake. This son of God was brought back from the dead and he flew up into the sky (presumably flying through space like Superman) leaving behind a deeply fragmented church that held deeply contradictory ideas about who and what this son was (Docetic, Arian, Ebionite, Marcionite, etc) because after all, the message of the son was critical to our eternal salvation but not important enough to write down during his 30 year life. That responsibility was delegated to Mark, who wasn't an eye witness, and three other Gospels followed based on the book Mark wrote. Anyone who doesn't believe this story will be burned forever in Hell by the god who loves us so much.
Degree of claim: Laughable
Proportional proof required: Heal Stephen Hawking. Then I'll believe.

"Blah blah blah" isn't going to cut it.

The problem for atheists is that they have no way to account for them in their secular worldview.

Not this merry go round again. See my exchange with Statler for my refutation of this drivel.

[lucent]

A philosophical argument can be considered to be sound if it is logically valid.

Aren't you forgetting something here? Your argument is sound if it is valid and your premises are true. Interesting that you left off that last part.

Yes, it was irrelevant to the point so I simplified it into being "logically valid"..perhaps its incorrect terminology but an argument is considered valid if it has a logical structure, but is that the same as saying it is logically valid? I would think an argument could only be logically valid if its premesis are true.

[Matthaῖos]

Whether or not Tf00t's analogy applies, I think his main point was that what seems logical to us is not necessarily how the universe works. Our understanding of subatomic particles, light speed travel, the relationship between space, time and gravity are all examples of how "common sense" fails to predict what empirical tests prove. The universe is under no obligation to conform to our ideas of what would make sense to us and sometimes it can surprise us.

Thus, when speculating about unknowns like "what caused the Big Bang" or "how did the earliest forms of life come to be", pure conjecture is not "proof". At best, it is an untested hypothesis. It may be too charitable to even go this far, since many of the assertions are currently not falsifiable.

Hmm. Granted that there have been discoveries of counter-intuitive phenomena, does it follow that in general we should not trust our intuitions about what appears to us to be true? Well, we can only act based on what appears to be the case to us. We accept the very phenomena we discover based on what appear to be the results of our observations and experiments. With every knowledge claim there is a leap from the appearance that the claim is true (whether that judgement is by scientific enquiry or by inference or by intuition or whatever) to the acceptance that the claim is true. Scientific enquiry gets no special status in this regard. If we are going to, in general, doubt what appears to be the case, we must also doubt what scientific enquiry appears to tell us.

I would want to take a middle way between naïvely accepting all appearances and over-sceptically doubting all appearances. After all, accepting that 'what appears to be the case is not necessarily the case' is itself only based on appearances. I like Richard Swinburne's option: The Principle of Credulity. The Principle of Credulity says that "with the absence of any reason to disbelieve it, one should accept what appears to be true". (Self-consistently, this appears to me to be a true principle of epistemology!)

Now a speculation that something caused the universe would not satisfy this principle - to speculate is not the same as to accept based on what appears to be true (appearance requires some kind of positive stimulus recognized by a person). But intuitions, even metaphysical intuitions, may well be able to fulfil this: we intuit basic laws and principles based on the workings of that which we observe by our senses and which we analyse by our mental faculties. All laws and principles (including scientific ones) are extrapolated from a finite number of data points.

It certainly appears that the causal order we experience abides by the general principle that 'whatever begins to exist has a cause'. What's more, when we try and imagine what a world without such a principle would look like, it seems absurd. So it appears to be the case, at least given our experience of the world and our thinking about other possible worlds. That makes it more than a speculation. It doesn't mean it is an infallible intuition, or an entirely established fact about the universe, but it is plausible, more so than its negation.

Christians (and Muslims) have no store of magical artifacts, no sightings of angels recorded on verified video footage, no miracles that faith is supposed to be able to generate (Mark 16:17-18). They have nothing of substance to back up any of their extraordinary claims. The best they can offer are these mental constructs.

I take his argument one step further and invoke ECREE (Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence). The nature of the claims of Christianity demand extraordinary evidence. Even if the arguments like the Moral Argument, TAG, Ontological Argument, etc were logically sound (and I would argue they are not), they fall short of the standard set by their own claims.

This is what I mean by "pre-fail".

To be honest, I have always found ECREE to be a rather extraordinary epistemological claim that I have never seen any extraordinary evidence for. It requires the dubious view that ordinariness is somehow a normative property, when it seems plain that ordinariness is an entirely subjective notion. The existence of God (and indeed the possibility of miracles) may be deemed an extraordinary claim in secular societies like ours, but it is by no means extraordinary for most societies at most places and times throughout history. It takes quite a high degree of cultural snobbery to claim that modern Western societies have finally got the right perspective on the claim that God exists (and on whether miracles are possible).

I cannot speak for Islam (indeed I would speak against it, rationally speaking), but as a Christian the key question is about the Resurrection of Jesus. It is the test of historical enquiry that it has to pass, and the test that the New Testament writers encourage us to examine. I think that it does pass that test; obviously you don't, and that's a discussion for another time.

As for philosophical arguments being mere 'mental constructs', if that is your indictment against arguments for theism, it is also an indictment on our whole conversation, which is a whole string of arguments, both explicit and implicit. The entire history of philosophy is the story of incredibly powerful arguments affecting the way we think about reality, overturning whole paradigms of thought. The arguments from the Enlightenment, from which we get our cosy secularity, are pertinent examples of that, as are many of the theistic arguments that have influenced Western thought for centuries. It would be foolish to underestimate their power, whether we accept their conclusions or not.

[lucent]

Perhaps I wasn't clear in what my point was. Let me simplify it for you:

I understood your point, and it is fallacious. Which you apparently realized, because you've abandoned one of your original premises of dismissing philosophical arguments based on the observation that "universe is not under any obligation to conform to our concepts of what makes sense". You abandoned it because you realized it contradicts the other part of your argument, which is that philosophical argumentation is inferior to empirical testing and research. So now you continue with your remaining premise and offer probabilities instead of certainties, because you cannot escape that your argument rests on an unprovable assumption.

In measuring the proof of a claim:
Repeatable tests + peer review > conjecture

Depends on what you're trying to prove. And what is the guarantee that a test will always give the same answer? What is a peer review except 2 or more limited beings agreeing with eachother?

Hard evidence = repeatable tests that yield the same data.
Abstract philosophy = broad and subjective issues that philosophers have wrestled with for thousands of years (meaning and purpose of life, what morality is, why do we use reason, etc.).

Your definition of "abstract philosophy" is meaningless. You can fit anything into that definition, which is apparently your goal. The Kalam Cosmological argument, since you brought it up, is hardly abstract. Again, there is no guarantee here, but you just offer a probability based on an inappropiate definition. Sure, hard evidence sounds better than abstract philosophy. Your arguments work great when you get to define the terms.

ECREE: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

God provides extraordinary evidence, which He did by raising His Son from the dead. We can test this claim as I outline below.

In measuring how extraordinary a claim is:
Basic assumptions (reality is real, consistency of the universe, etc). < Fantastic assumptions of faith that run contrary to all observed data.

I fixed your assumptions for you:

Assumption: Science is the best way to determine truth
Degree of claim: Extraordinary
Proportional proof required: A scientific experiment proving that this is true

Assumption: Jesus Christ rose from the dead proving He is God
Degree of claim: Extraordinary
Proportional proof required: Special revelation of His existence

The primary assumption is that there is a God, which you agree with, and further that God has revealed Himself through His Son Jesus Christ. It is a trivial thing for God to do miracles; the primary question is whether Jesus Christ rose from the dead. It's always interesting to see how you try to argue like an atheist when you seem to forget your blind faith in a Deist God.

On the question of whether Jesus rose from the dead, science has nothing to say. There is no way for it to test this conclusion, because it is not repeatable. Is it invalid because it is not repeatable? Of course not. History is filled with unique events which are not repeatable. The only way we can know if it is true is to test the claims made by the Christian religion. Those claims being, if we place our trust in Jesus Christ and ask for forgiveness of sins, we will become born again and receive the Holy Spirit. Receiving the Holy Spirit is sufficient proof, but we also have this:

John 14:21

Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him."

When we follow Jesus and obey His commands, He will reveal Himself.

So, the central claim of the bible is provable. If Jesus is alive, He will hear our prayers, we will receive the Holy Spirit, and if we follow His commands, He will reveal Himself to us.

Your assumption, that science is the best way to determine truth is unprovable. There is no scientific experiment to prove that this is true, and no way to guarantee it will be true even five minutes from now.

You cannot account for the Uniformity in nature either. The question of which is the superior worldview rests also on what better accounts for what we see in reality. A Christian worldview can account for Uniformity in nature, an atheistic/deistic one cannot. Since we cannot test your central claim, your supposition is no more probable than Jesus rising from the dead. Even less probable because we can test whether Jesus is alive but we can't test for your claim of the ultimate authority of science.

Not this merry go round again. See my exchange with Statler for my refutation of this drivel.

If your quote of Statler in your signature is any indication of your performance in that debate, I would like you to rehash it. I see why you seem to think it is amusing, but his statement is not actually circular, and neither is his statement false, because circular arguments can be logically valid. So if anything it makes you stupid and not him. And certainly you must believe that circular arguments are logically valid because that's all you really have at the moment.

[DeistPaladin]

Hmm. Granted that there have been discoveries of counter-intuitive phenomena, does it follow that in general we should not trust our intuitions about what appears to us to be true? ...Scientific enquiry gets no special status in this regard. If we are going to, in general, doubt what appears to be the case, we must also doubt what scientific enquiry appears to tell us.

OK, apparently I wasn't clear enough. Nowhere in my argument did I intend to suggest that nothing in the universe is as it seems.

What I've repeatedly said is that philosophical arguments alone are not sufficient to meet the burden of proof demanded by Christianity's claims and so apologetics, since it can only offer philosophical arguments, pre-fails.

So it appears to be the case, at least given our experience of the world and our thinking about other possible worlds. That makes it more than a speculation. It doesn't mean it is an infallible intuition, or an entirely established fact about the universe, but it is plausible, more so than its negation.

...and, even if your arguments were sound, you've still failed to meet the burden of proof established by the extraordinary nature of Christianity's claims.

To be honest, I have always found ECREE to be a rather extraordinary epistemological claim that I have never seen any extraordinary evidence for. It requires the dubious view that ordinariness is somehow a normative property, when it seems plain that ordinariness is an entirely subjective notion.

...and this is the point where I accuse you of sophistry and special pleading.

If I were to tell you that I had lunch with a local friend today, you'd probably accept that claim with no evidence.

If I were to tell you I had lunch with President Obama today, you'd probably be skeptical and want to see evidence.

If I were to tell you I had lunch with my father today, a man who's been deceased for eight years, you'd probably call the local mental institute unless I could immediately produce overwhelming evidence.

Now, if my speculations about your reactions to any of the above are wrong, that you would ask me how my father was or what Obama had to say instead of asking for evidence, please correct me. Otherwise, you operate by the same rules I do and only suspend them to protect your cherished beliefs.

It takes quite a high degree of cultural snobbery to claim that modern Western societies have finally got the right perspective on the claim that God exists (and on whether miracles are possible).

I would say "consistency" and not "snobbery". Again, we operate by the same rules until your favorite god is invoked.

I cannot speak for Islam (indeed I would speak against it, rationally speaking),

Just to be clear, I often say "Islamo-Christianity" because they share more similarities than differences. While it may seem crazy to you as a Christian, you should know that the earliest versions of Christianity were far more dissimilar than modern Trinitarian beliefs and Islam.

For example, the Marcionites believed there were two gods. The Docetics believed that Jesus was not a physical being. The Ebionites said that Jesus was the son of Mary and Joseph, conceived as all babies are. The Arians (no relation to the 20th century white supremists) thought that Jesus was an angel sent down from Heaven. All of these sects once labeled themselves as "Christian".

By contrast, modern Christians and Muslims agree that Jesus was born of a virgin, that there is one god, that Jesus was a physical being and that he had a childhood on this earth.

but as a Christian the key question is about the Resurrection of Jesus. It is the test of historical enquiry that it has to pass, and the test that the New Testament writers encourage us to examine. I think that it does pass that test; obviously you don't, and that's a discussion for another time.

*Ahem* Yes, that's for another thread.

As for philosophical arguments being mere 'mental constructs', if that is your indictment against arguments for theism, it is also an indictment on our whole conversation, which is a whole string of arguments, both explicit and implicit.

I'm asking "is this all you can offer?"

If the answer is "yes, I'm afraid so", then you've failed to meet the burden of proof no matter you sound your arguments are.

Oh, and the arguments are crap but that's another thread.

The arguments from the Enlightenment, from which we get our cosy secularity, are pertinent examples of that, as are many of the theistic arguments that have influenced Western thought for centuries.

The Enlightenment didn't happen because of Christianity. The Enlightenment happened in spite of Christianity. But this too is another topic for another thread.

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I understood your point, and it is fallacious. Which you apparently realized, because you've abandoned one of your original premises of dismissing philosophical arguments based on the observation that "universe is not under any obligation to conform to our concepts of what makes sense".

When did I abandon this?

God provides extraordinary evidence, which He did by raising His Son from the dead.

Are you for real? You have to be a Poe. Nobody can possibly be this much of a blithering fucktard and still know how to use a computer.

[Minimalist]

Are you for real? You have to be a Poe. Nobody can possibly be this much of a blithering fucktard and still know how to use a computer.

I disagree, D-P. I think he really is that fucking stupid.