RE: Evidence for a god. Do you have any ?
October 11, 2018 at 9:44 pm
(This post was last modified: October 11, 2018 at 10:51 pm by LadyForCamus.)
(October 11, 2018 at 1:19 pm)SteveII Wrote: I said "might be a miracle". I can't have used the fallacy unless I was making an argument. I was explaining the the probability that if anything is a miracle--context can be a clue--not proof.
You know as well as I do that one does not have to posit a formal, logical argument in order to engage in fallacious reasoning, Steve. I asked you to describe the method you use to distinguish a supernatural cause from an ‘as of yet unexplained’ natural cause. Your answer included a real life example; that if people first prayed for a child with cancer, and then the cancer disappeared, that could be a good reason to think the cause of the healing was supernatural. You and I both know that, “because the second event followed the first” is a faulty reason to think the second event was caused by the first. Your methodology, at least in this one particular instance, is invalid by way of fallacious reasoning. I don’t see that there is much to dispute here.
Quote:You may have missed the point of the three examples. Each of them is defined by what they are not--entirely. You can't flip it around. If you ask what is 'light', darkness is not part of the definition. What positive descriptors do you have for darkness, evil or cold?
Italics mine for positive, informatory descriptors:
Dark:
1. With little or no light. “it's too dark to see much"
synonyms: pitch-black, jet-black, inky.
2. (of a color or object) not reflecting much light; approaching black in shade. Ex: dark green
Cold:
1. Of or at a low or relatively low temperature, especially when compared with the human body.
2. a low temperature, especially in the atmosphere; cold weather; a cold environment.
So, what do you have for the supernatural, besides...”not natural”?
Quote:That is not to say we can't know more about what is supernatural. If you believe in the supernatural, you probably believe in entities like God, angels, human souls, demons and places like heaven and hell. Descriptions of what is supernatural help firm up the concept. Here's a good example: if we have a soul, then by definition it is more than the sum of our electro-chemical processes and is considered supernatural right?
Sure. Those are all the things that it’s not. Or, more to your taste, the “soul” is all of that other stuff we know about, plus some mysterious thing we don’t. What is it then?
Quote:Further, we believe we have free will and can act with intentionality. We (our soul) effect the physical world by deciding to direct our bodies to do something. There--supernatural causation. Even if you don't believe it, it is coherent.
Hmm? You believe in free will. That’s a claim in and of itself, and I’m not sure how it’s at all related to the concept of a soul, whatever that is. Plenty of people believe in free will but not a soul. Simply put, you haven’t explained what this soul-thing is at all, or how it is technically responsible for the free will you think you have.
Sorry it took me forever to fix the formatting on that, guys. Hope noone’s eyes are bleeding! 😝
Nay_Sayer: “Nothing is impossible if you dream big enough, or in this case, nothing is impossible if you use a barrel of KY Jelly and a miniature horse.”
Wiser words were never spoken.
Wiser words were never spoken.