(January 4, 2017 at 1:05 am)robvalue Wrote: The way I look at it, deism makes two unnecessary assumptions at a minimum:
1) Our reality had a cause
2) That cause was an intelligent being
You can easily make more, as a lot of people probably do:
3) This being required no cause
4) This being created everything except itself
These second two preclude a computer programmer type situation, making sure it's the "top dog".
Once you move beyond this, you're just adding even more unnecessary assumptions. The more you make, the less rational you are being, in my opinion.
5) The being is concerned with the human race
6) The being is going to move us out of our reality when we die, into other realities, based on certain rules
7) The being interferes with our reality
...and so on. You're making more and more wild assumptions at each point. Of course, the theist will feel that they have justification for all of these, so they won't consider them assumptions necessarily.
I know all that already, I'm just asking if there's a name for it. Like the 'rockslide fallacy', where if you tip one rock over the precipice, then without having touched any of the other rocks on the cliff, they just simply follow the first one over the edge for no reason. I don't know if there is an official name, that's just kind of the way I look at it and my suggestion for a name if there isn't one for that type of rapid-fire piling on of fallacies.
Religions were invented to impress and dupe illiterate, superstitious stone-age peasants. So in this modern, enlightened age of information, what's your excuse? Or are you saying with all your advantages, you were still tricked as easily as those early humans?
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There is no better way to convey the least amount of information in the greatest amount of words than to try explaining your religious views.
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There is no better way to convey the least amount of information in the greatest amount of words than to try explaining your religious views.