Atheism

[Angrboda]

You are straw manning your own argument.  First you note that the conclusion is based upon observation, and then you turn around and suggest rather that it's based on an assumption.  Your restatement misrepresents the position in a fundamental way.  So no, I don't think you get to the conclusion of question begging except by misrepresentation.   Which makes me wonder why you want so badly to drive towards that conclusion?  Having watched you on this forum, you seem to find a way to restate any position you don't like as being question begging.  I don't think you're being charitable to your opponent.  Your approach, at least superficially, seems vto be one of choosing the worst representation of the opposing position, rather than the best.

Not so. My contention is there is nothing underlying her statement I quoted: "hundreds of thousands of brains spread across different cultures with a method to reliably investigate reality in an impartial way". It was a way to make her assertion (that Christian experiences are not real) sound scientific.

I have been using that a lot lately. My post count is way down--replying to you mostly and then defending that reply. It seems that most people here don't realize when they say such-and-such is not true that it is an assertion. When pressed 'why?' the obvious underlying principle of "you can't prove a negative" applies (whether they know it or not) and if they persist that such-and-such is not true it almost always can be reduced to question begging.

I suspect this comes down to questions about the nature of induction, universal claims, science, and so on. At the very least, you seem to have jumped to the conclusion of question begging from your own universal assertion, when perhaps you should have reached it through discussion, example, and showing your work. So, I'm not necessarily inclined to side with either you or her, but I think you're jumping the gun here. I don't know that it's categorically true that universal negatives always lead to question begging, and, if it does, maybe you need to show that instead, otherwise you're doing your own question begging.

As a side note, not as a point in and of itself, but the claim that you can't prove a negative would seem itself to be a universal negative, so it would be self refuting, or at least, it's not immediately obvious that it isn't. Maybe it is, maybe it's not. Something I'd have to think about.

Anyway, I'm not given to such weighty speculations at the moment, so I'll leave it up to the rest of you to hash out whether there really is or is not an example of question begging at the heart of Mathilda's complaint. I don't offhand even know what her claim is (I haven't been following the thread). At the very least, you're not being as effective as you possibly could be by simply shutting down the dialog in this way.