The Case for Theism

[Jackalope]

So, if you really want to continue this line of reasoning then fine, but that does mean you'll have to admit you can't prove anything at all except your little sphere of experience either. And that means no god, and no evidence against evolution either unless you were there to see it.

So... really?

I predict we're about to hear some special pleading.

[Tartarus Sauce]

So, if you really want to continue this line of reasoning then fine, but that does mean you'll have to admit you can't prove anything at all except your little sphere of experience either. And that means no god, and no evidence against evolution either unless you were there to see it.

So... really?

I predict we're about to hear some special pleading.

Considering that's usually what's behind the meat of their "reasoning" special pleading is bound to appear on the stage eventually. Each time a preachy theist opens a thread, the countdown begins for when they will finally be backed into their special-pleading corner.

[genkaus]

Exactly people have to decide for themselves based on their own personal experience which explanation explains best.

That would be the wrong way to determine which explanation is the best since personal experience can cloud judgment.

The problem is you can't use a theory to support yet another theory.

Why not?

I've been going round and round on this issue and I still think its special pleading to claim that there could be some other option besides design and happenstance.

Except it's not special pleading because that fallacy applies when an unjustified exemption to the rule has been made and your rule about design and happenstance being the only two possibilities has never been accepted.

Secondly I think its a red herring because I don't believe the folks pining for some other option actually believe that the universe was caused by some circumstance that would be neither design or plan, they're just running interference to obfuscate the issue. I suspect your actual take on this is that mindless forces without plan or design caused the universe to exist and life is just the accidental by product or the laws of physics. I suspect this is exactly what most atheists think. So why hide and obfuscate. I don't raise objections I myself don't actually beileve in. Its seems disengenous some folks do.

Then all I can say is that you are the one being disingenuous. There are atheists who take that position and others who take a different one and provide justification for it. They have given no evidence for you to assume that they actually don't believe what they are arguing for. Its about as deluded as saying that atheists are just angry at god.

Why? On what basis should the laws of nature make sense?

On the basis that what makes sense and what doesn't itself is derived from the laws of nature.

Why does nature seem to act as if it is compelled by a set or rules?

Because humans tend to project their own nature onto things where it is not applicable. Nature is not compelled to follow a set of rules nor is it free to act as it pleases. Those concepts apply only to conscious entities - which nature is not.

Scientists have found these 'laws' of nature not because they projected them into nature but because they really do exist. I plan to submit that fact as another line of evidence.

Don't bother. These 'laws' do not have any existence beyond a conceptual one.

Correct most atheists would opine the laws we observe are not some blueprint the universe had to follow but are just patterns of regularity we happen to observe...unless they are raising an objection for instance to the argument of fine tuning in which case they do raise the objection that maybe in fact the laws of nature do have to be as we observe them, not that they actually believe that... but just because they don't actually believe something is true that's no reason not to raise it as an objection anyway and will argue the objection should carry weight even though they themselves don't believe the objection. I call it bullshit but thats just me.

That is just you and that's because you cannot comprehend that those two arguments are in fact the same. Nature is what it is. It does not conform to any external authority nor does it follow a set of blueprints. That is what necessity means. If there were blueprints or an external authority which it had to conform to then it could have been different if the dictates of that authority had been different - and then you might have had an argument for fine-tuning. The "laws of nature" that you refer to are the observed aspects of nature that have been identified and labelled for our convenience - they do not govern or determine what nature is or what it does. In fact, nature determines what those laws would be.

Again its another phoney objection, the atheist doesn't think there was a creator to a creator anymore than they think there was any creator.

The fact that atheist does not believe in a creator or a creator's creator does not make the objection any less valid. The atheist is simply holding you to your own logic and showing how quickly you choose to commit a fallacy when confronted with the uncomfortable implications of your position.

---

Now accepting that evolution is true

Which it is.

with all its premises and ideologies that tag along with it,

There are no ideologies that tag along with it.

would it embrace the idea of social eugenics?

No.

apparently Darwin thought so "With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox.Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed."[Darwin, The Descent of Man (1871 edition), vol. I, p. 168)

Are you fucking kidding me? Are you really that brainwashed and deluded or have you been living under a rock? Or are you simply being a poe and throwing in a well-known and publicized quote mine to misrepresent his position? Have you not even heard of trying to verify what you say before putting it out on the internet?

Here's the rest of the quote which you conveniently chose to ignore.

"The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil."

[Cyberman]

Did anyone really think we wouldn't recognise blatant quotemining when we saw it? Even WikiQuote knows this is a "Notable Charles Darwin Misquote". As Genkaus points out, Darwin went further than the point at which you decided to stop quoting, and indeed continued with:

Hence we must bear without complaining the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely the weaker and inferior members of society not marrying so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased, though this is more to be hoped for than expected, by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage.

Really, this stuff is so easy to look up it's insulting to the intelligence.

[Drew_2013]

Hello Apophenia

Whether or not anybody believes in these alternative explanations is completely irrelevant.

It is relevant. This isn't a debating class where someone is given a topic and a side to defend that they may or may not care about and all they want to do is win the debate. I'd like to believe the folks I am discussing this issue with are arguing in favor of atheism because they honestly and sincerely believe God doesn't exist and they have good valid reasons to think so as well as facts that lead them to this conclusion. If all they're are reduced to is raising objections by creating some hypothetical out of thin air they don't actually subscribe to then only people they will persuade to their point of view are fellow atheists who already share their view. What do you think would be the result if we were debating this topic before an audience of impartial people who are weighing our respective arguments and facts and my adversary admits even he doesn't subscribe to the objection he is raising. I know he'll explain to the audience its completely irrelevant whether I believe the line of bullshit I am promoting whats important is I attempt to fool you dim wits.

As a simple matter of logic, if you exclude them for any other reason than their being unsound and untrue explanations of the facts, then you have constructed an argument that is logically invalid, and its conclusions are therefore of necessity a non sequitur. If you fail to demonstrate their implausibility or otherwise account for these hypotheses on substantive and material grounds, your conclusions are worthless.

I have no idea what you're trying to say here...but it would seem to apply to anything that could be said.

[Angrboda]

Whether or not anybody believes in these alternative explanations is completely irrelevant.

It is relevant. This isn't a debating class where someone is given a topic and a side to defend that they may or may not care about and all they want to do is win the debate. I'd like to believe the folks I am discussing this issue with are arguing in favor of atheism because they honestly and sincerely believe God doesn't exist and they have good valid reasons to think so as well as facts that lead them to this conclusion. If all they're are reduced to is raising objections by creating some hypothetical out of thin air they don't actually subscribe to then only people they will persuade to their point of view are fellow atheists who already share their view. What do you think would be the result if we were debating this topic before an audience of impartial people who are weighing our respective arguments and facts and my adversary admits even he doesn't subscribe to the objection he is raising. I know he'll explain to the audience its completely irrelevant whether I believe the line of bullshit I am promoting whats important is I attempt to fool you dim wits.

Philosophers adopt propositions they don't believe all the time, ex hypothesi, in the construction of a reductio ad absurdum argument. And reductio ad absurdum arguments are one of the main work horses of philosophy. (Though as a "philosophical" theist, I wouldn't expect you to know such things.) Moreover, whether a Genkaus believes in the validity of a specific hypothesis counts for little unless you're willing to stipulate that Genkaus' judgement of what is or is not a plausible explanation of origins is reliably trustworthy on the subject, in which case I think we see the end zone much nearer to thee than I had anticipated. Nor am I particularly concerned about what you can persuade a bunch of people who are not competent to judge such matters to believe; if that's the standard, let's invite Derren Brown to convince a studio audience that the universe was created by a six foot penis named 'Bob' and be done with it. These alternative scenarios have to be discarded on the basis of real objections for your argument to stand. Convince whomever you like with your slipshod debate tactics; the truth will overrule you in the end. Moreover, I don't consider you or myself or Genkaus truly competent to dismiss such alternatives on the basis of their seeming credibility to us alone. While I find myself rather incredulous about Roger Penrose's Conformal Cyclic Cosmology model (Wikipedia: ), making credible objections to his theory is so fucking far above your and my paygrade that it's laughable. Moreover, hypotheses like the multiverse are essentially unfalsifiable at this time, yet are built on solid and well established physics and mathematics and thus can't simply be summarily dismissed because you find the possibility inconvenient to your attempts to predate on the weak and the ignorant. (It too, is likely way above our collective paygrade.)

If your goal is as stated, simply to convince people who are liable to be persuaded by unsound arguments, well have at it. I'm interested in something more substantial.

As a simple matter of logic, if you exclude them for any other reason than their being unsound and untrue explanations of the facts, then you have constructed an argument that is logically invalid, and its conclusions are therefore of necessity a non sequitur. If you fail to demonstrate their implausibility or otherwise account for these hypotheses on substantive and material grounds, your conclusions are worthless.

I have no idea what you're trying to say here...but it would seem to apply to anything that could be said.

The fact that I'm having to dumb this down for you is not a point in your favor. (And the kudos that post received are good evidence that the problem is in fact, "just you.") But whatever.

Allow an analogy. Let's say that you have an amateur athlete, a runner, who you claim is a serious competitor in the 100 metre dash. I as the manager of our country's Olympic team, have never seen any convincing demonstration that your boy is fit to compete at the level required to be given a slot on the team. So you suggest a tryout. You'll run your boy against runners on my team to determine if even considering him is reasonable. So I call everybody out of the clubhouse, and ask my top 6 runners to line up at the starting line alongside your boy, to see if he's got game. You immediately start in with the whining and pleading and complain that you should only have to prove your runner's mettle against Johnson over there. Whether he is anywhere close to being able to compete against the others is irrelevant, according to you. Why you picked Johnson, I don't know; perhaps you know something specific about Johnson that I don't know (like that he has the stomach flu, or just lost custody of his daughter recently and is suicidally depressed). I don't know the specific reasons for your insisting on running only against Johnson, nor do I particularly care. If you're not willing to prove your boy against a representative sample of runners with demonstrated track records, you're not getting a place on my team, no matter how long and loudly you complain about how unfair it is.

---

I'm going to reiterate something you've already been told more than once. I am not an atheist, I'm not committed to a specific theory of origins, and matter of fact, I'm not even committed to metaphysical naturalism. Moreover, if I can be allowed a little lack of humility, I have a fairly sharp mind, am somewhat knowledgeable about these arguments, and am fairly scientifically literate. By all accounts, I am your ideal "uncommitted" and impartial witness. Yet you seem to discount my opinion with prejudice. Why? I suspect because what you mean by "uncommitted" and impartial is not someone who, given appropriate arguments, might agree to either position. No, your idea of uncommitted and impartial is defined as "someone whom you can get to agree with you." Anyone who actually disagrees with you has their opinion discounted by you with appeal to unfounded accusations of bias and prejudice. I may not always think as highly of my peers as perhaps I should, but I would hope that anyone whom you hope to convince has sufficient common sense to see through such sophistry.

And this brings out another telling point. When you're more concerned about debating meta-issues, such as what is and is not an invalid objection, what the motives of your opponent are, and so forth, most people with a lick of sense realize you're probably doing so to cover over some weakness or flaw in your argument. Again, in my experience, people are not stupid, particularly atheists. And that you have such a hateful, contemptuous attitude, legitimately or not, sends up red flags for your audience. (Take a tip from William Lane Craig; you seldom see him deliver his counter-arguments without a joke and his patented shit eating grin. There's a reason for this.) Whether you've got a case or not is almost irrelevant at this point, as you've managed to be boring, unlikable, and spend an inordinate amount of time attempting to argue side issues; if I were to judge your credibility on these facts alone, I'd suggest you've likely already lost the hearts and minds of those you hope to persuade. (In candor, I suspected that your arguments in "Let's say that science proves that God exists" thread were just a dry run to allow you to test your arguments and debating tactics, and it's entirely possible this thread itself is also simply another dry run to prepare you for some other engagement. But aside from the obvious repetition of arguments which were so overwhelmingly persuasive in the first thread *rolls-eyes* I have no proof.)

Ultimately, I don't personally care, I just don't like seeing logical principles mercilessly trampled by an idiot. I won't, for obvious reasons, but I could grant you all the fine tuning bullshit you've trotted out so far, and still be relatively certain of your not being able to make your case. So carry on with your disingenuous sophistry, aimed at momentarily appealing to the ignorance and stupidity of people who are not competent to judge such matters. It's an old fashioned notion, and one I have serious epistemological doubts about, but I believe that the truth will out. It doesn't matter how many people you are able to flip to your side with a clever pitch, because in time, the truth will rise above your mere temporal victories.

(See also: )

[Mister Agenda]

Now accepting that evolution is true with all its premises and ideologies that tag along with it, would it embrace the idea of social eugenics?

Evolution isn't the sort of thing that embraces medical fads. It's a theory, not a person, and it's a description of what happens in nature, not a prescription for how people should act. And I'll assume, with great charity, that you've never seen the sentence immediately following your Darwin quote.

[Mister Agenda]

What I attribute to the existence of God is the universe and humans. It may not be much to go on, but its not nothing.

It's not nothing, but it IS affirming the consequent.

If God, then the universe and humans.
The universe and humans, therefore, God

That reasoning is no more sound than

If I am Bill Gates, then I am rich.
I am rich, therefore, I am Bill Gates.

Exactly people have to decide for themselves based on their own personal experience which explanation explains best.

I can't argue with that.

If all atheists had such an even handed response the issue would just be a discussion up for debate likes who's the greatest QB in the NFL. Most atheists frame the question as if its a 'no brainer' fact there is no God, that belief in God is on par with belief in Santa Claus but when questioned they all scurry to the position that atheism is a mere lack of belief and therefore they have no burden of evidence.

Thanks. People who identify as strong atheists are a minority among atheists, but they tend not to scurry. People who are weak atheists actually hold that position, so they don't need to scurry to reach it, we're already there. If you hang around long enough you might witness a strong atheist telling the weak atheists that it's ridiculous not to come right out and say Santa is impossible.

The problem is you can't use a theory to support yet another theory.

I am not familiar with that rule, and see no reason why it should be the case. You seem to think theories are weak constructs by definition that are therefore weaker when combined.

I've been going round and round on this issue and I still think its special pleading to claim that there could be some other option besides design and happenstance.

I suppose you mean it is only introduced as a diversion, not because it is an actual alternative. However, I think it is a legitimate alternative, and I think I can safely say that, in broad strokes, so does Lawrence Krauss, whom I've found persuasive.

Secondly I think its a red herring because I don't believe the folks pining for some other option actually believe that the universe was caused by some circumstance that would be neither design or plan, they're just running interference to obfuscate the issue.

It's an accurate assessment that most of us think it's more likely that no design or plan is behind the universe, but if you think we're trying to hide that, then you've misunderstood us.

I suspect your actual take on this is that mindless forces without plan or design caused the universe to exist and life is just the accidental by product or the laws of physics.

Yes, but I wouldn't say that is happenstance. I'm not in a position to pick a winner among the various hypotheses, no one is, but I certainly consider it a strong possibility that the laws of physics are constrained within a liimited, possibly very limited range of values, and thus aren't accurately described as happenstance. I don't think the origin of life happened purposefully and I don't think I've said anything that could reasonably be interpreted as indicating that my position is anything other than that.

I suspect this is exactly what most atheists think.

I suspect you sometimes have glimpses of what most atheists think, but then they escape you.

So why hide and obfuscate.

It's not hiding and obfuscating. It's precision. In a minute I will fix your claim for you so that it isn't a false dichotomy but a true one, and no atheist here will object to it. I don't know about atheists in general, but skeptics tend to be fussy about what a claim actually is.

I don't raise objections I myself don't actually beileve in. Its seems disengenous some folks do.

You might want to try entertaining objections without committing to them. It is one of the best tools of thought available. I don't know how the universe was formed, and neither does anyone else, but there are a number of plausible scenarios, one of which could be true. If you were to say there are only two scenarios, how is it disengenuous to point out some of the others? If you say there are either one or no cars in my neighbor's garage and I point out that maybe my neighbor has two cars in her garage, is that being disengenuous in your eyes?

Why? On what basis should the laws of nature make sense?

On the basis that they've all made sense so far. If your only knowledge about cats was from your own, you wouldn't think from the fact that your cat likes fish that there's no reason to think other cats like fish. You can say 'maybe not all cats like fish', but you can't say there's no reason to think cats like fish. There is, and it's that the one cat you've observed likes fish.

Why does nature seem to act as if it is compelled by a set or rules?

Why should we think it's possible to not have any rules? Conceiving of a universe without any rules is like conceiving of a theodic God. You can say the words, but you can't really imagine it. Although you've given me an interesting thought: if there were a universe without rules, there's no reason why it couldn't give rise to our universe! Or a God for that matter. Another possible origin for the universe: a preceding universe with no rules. And before you start, it's not what I believe, I'm just saying that if there could be such a thing, and YOU seem to think there could since you're mystified by universes having any rules, then it follows that it could produce a universe like ours.

Scientists have found these 'laws' of nature not because they projected them into nature but because they really do exist. I plan to submit that fact as another line of evidence.

And it will have the same problem of affirming the consequent that you already have with the universe and humans. You need something that starts with 'If X, therefore God', not 'If God, therefore X'.

We'll have to disagree on the issue of according to theism/atheism. At minimal according to theism, the universe and humans were caused to exist by a transcendent being and according to atheism...not so.

I don't think you're giving theists enough credit for their diversity. Mere theism is believing in at least one god. It doesn't necessarily have to be a creator God. Some theists have origin myths in which their gods are among the things created according to their understanding of natural processes.

Correct most atheists would opine the laws we observe are not some blueprint the universe had to follow but are just patterns of regularity we happen to observe...unless they are raising an objection for instance to the argument of fine tuning in which case they do raise the objection that maybe in fact the laws of nature do have to be as we observe them, not that they actually believe that... but just because they don't actually believe something is true that's no reason not to raise it as an objection anyway and will argue the objection should carry weight even though they themselves don't believe the objection. I call it bullshit but thats just me.

Particularly uncharitable, since I actually agree with Krauss that it's highly possible that the basic laws of the universe must be what they are. Although it doesn't matter if I really believe it, only that it be a genuine alternative, if the point is that there are more alternatives than two.

No, they'd decide for themselves if I am right regardless of an alternative.

You're the one that asked for an alternative. I just pointed out that if I don't have one, it doesn't raise the odds that your explanation is right at all.

Most people think Occams razor just means the simpliest explanation is best. but one can subtract entities below necessity.

No doubt. Most people tend to err in the other direction, though.

Again its another phoney objection, the atheist doesn't think there was a creator to a creator anymore than they think there was any creator.

Is your definition of a 'phoney objection', 'an objection I don't know how to refute?' Because it seems so to me.

My answer is I have no idea how the Creator came into existence or if in fact the creator was created. But even if the creator did require a creator, theism is still true no?

If you're comfortable with an infinite regress, okey dokey, but since God is popularly posited as an answer to an infinite regress of causality, you have to kick the legs out from under one of the main reasons given for suspecting the existence of a creator God in the first place, if you want to go that route. I'm just pointing that out, he says, before you start to go on about how I'm just raising phoney objections to hide and obfuscate.

However we can go down this line of thinking both ways. What created the universe? The singularity...what created the singularity? Some other unknown phenomena. The problem is for us to get to this point in time, we'd have to cross and endless recession of events. How could we?

I don't know and I'm comfortable saying so. I haven't heard a proof saying an infinite regress is impossible and objections that we could never get to the present that way strike me as variations on Zeno's Paradox. Despite the paradox, we still get where we're going. It all starts going over my head when I consider that we have to talk about different times than the one we experience in this universe to talk about anything 'before' (not the applicable word since 'before' requires time to happen in, but such are the limitations of English) our space/time began.

On the other hand the atheist could say something always existed...now they have attributed a divine characteristic to nature.

Just because an attribute has been attributed to a divinity doesn't mean only divinities can have it. You're well into semantics now. The Christian God says he's a jealous God, does that make jealousy a divine attribute now?

Some atheists promote the notion this universe came into existence uncaused out of nothing. Its appears thats out of vogue now.

Where you said 'atheists' it would have been more accurate to say 'physicists'. Some of physicists still entertain that one, it's more a matter of an embarrasment of plausible explanations crowding it out than anything being discovered that makes it less likely.

But of course they always claim its not magic. Our existence and that of the universe no matter how you slice it is problematic.

Probably because nothing in the history of anything has ever turned out to be magic. I don't find them problematic, I find them to be brute facts, and also find I'm in no position to demand an explanation for them, although I hope we eventually figure it out.

Almost like the belief at one time that nature abhors a vaccum.

It seems to the case that it may abhor 'true nothingness' ™.

Now for the dichotomy fix I promised. You offered happenstance and purposeful creation as the dichotomy, and I pointed out a physically necessary chain of causality as an alternative to those two. From what you've said since, I think it would serve your point equally well to make the alternatives purposeful and non-purposeful. That's pretty binary, and I think it doesn't subtract anything important from your point. What do you think?

[Ape]

Now accepting that evolution is true with all its premises and ideologies that tag along with it, would it embrace the idea of social eugenics?

Evolution isn't the sort of thing that embraces medical fads. It's a theory, not a person, and it's a description of what happens in nature, not a prescription for how people should act. And I'll assume, with great charity, that you've never seen the sentence immediately following your Darwin quote.

I think you need to read it and let darwin and his theory speek for themselves MA

[Drew_2013]

No, I don't happen to think either of those examples are true. But others do, and have advanced them as serious theories, with evidence to back them up. I'm holding off on judgement because I'm simply not well enough equipped yet to make that decision, but that's beside the point. The idea behind showing you these was to illustrate to you that there are more than two options here, whether you subscribe to them or not. Like it or not, other people believe different things, hence your dichotomy is false, either through your own ignorance of the alternatives, or dishonesty. I'd like to think it's just the former, but the fact that you continue to argue the same tired claim sort of shows me it's the latter.

Now, will you at least admit that there are other hypotheses other than design or chance?

Hypothetically or theoretically anything is possible. So if you want a hypothetical answer to a hypothetical question I will concede that hypothetically its concievable there could be a set of circumstances in which neither design or happenstance is the case. Will you agree that by that absurd standard, no dichotomy is true? The fact remains though that for all practical purposes in the real world (not the imaginary hypothetical one) the dichotomy holds true. What have you really gained by dragging out this conversation just so you can say hypthetically the dichotomy isn't true?

I quite agree, we can ask the question because we exist. But the fact that we do exist doesn't point directly to a creator, nor to random chance. It just points to the fact that we exist. Stop reading new information into things that can't support it.

Its up to the triers of fact to determine the significance. We already know your opinion.

We know that isn't true. Life adopted to the conditions on earth in a universe that has a plethora of other conditions that would allow the only type of life we know of to exist.

You're just pulling that out of your ass. Funny, I thought you said you weren't dealing in hypotheticals. Because unless you're telling me you've visited every other planet in the universe and seen that they have no life, and to have visited alternative universes with different physical constants and verified a lack of life there, then you really have no basis to make that claim.

No, I said the only type of life we know of to exist.

Let me rephrase, then: you are saying that since we've never seen life coming from non life, that's an argument against our position, right? Then isn't it also true that the fact that you've never seen a god creating things also an argument against yours?

The case I am making is inferential. If that's your rebuttal then impartial people can weigh our respective arguments and decide for themselves.

Yes, okay. And we've confirmed the theory of evolution. It... it's been confirmed. We've confirmed it. Go and look it up, if you don't believe me.

As far as I'm concerned evolution is a fact...its Darwinism I am skeptical of.