RE: Theist Posters: Why do you believe your God exists?
March 6, 2017 at 5:30 pm
(This post was last modified: March 6, 2017 at 5:37 pm by Simon Moon.)
(March 6, 2017 at 5:04 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote:(March 6, 2017 at 3:55 pm)Simon Moon Wrote: But the negation is another proposition.
1. Proposition - gods exists
2. Proposition - gods do not exist
I do not have to take the contrapositive position when responding to the first.
There is only one proposition on the table. What is your stance with respect to P1, "God exists"? Either P1 is true or P1 is not true. As per the law of the excluded middle you have only two choices.
I agree, either P1 is true or not true. Those are the only possibilities.
My position on the truth values of P1 is, I don't know, with absolute certainty, if it is true or not. This defines me as agnostic.
My position on theist's claim that P1 is true, is I do not believe it, since I don't find that they have met their burden of proof. This defines me as an atheist.
But just because I do not believe gods exist, does not mean I am claiming that they don't exist. Only that I currently have no justification to believe they do.
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
