RE: How to easily defeat any argument for God
August 10, 2019 at 11:19 am
(This post was last modified: August 10, 2019 at 12:37 pm by GrandizerII.)
(August 10, 2019 at 11:01 am)Belaqua Wrote:(August 10, 2019 at 9:38 am)Grandizer Wrote: Theology itself begins with the assumption that God exists and contains the assumption that God, in order to be God, must not be like other entities in existence.The field of Natural Theology attempts to use reason alone to say that God exists, and what it's like.
When/if theologians try to demonstrate God's existence through logic, they would then be doing philosophy, not theology.
If you want to declare by fiat that Natural Theology isn't really theology, I guess you can. But you'll be disagreeing with every other source, including Wikipedia, which says:
Quote:Natural theology, once also termed physico-theology, is a type of theology that provides arguments for the existence of God based on reason and ordinary experience of .
Anyway, the main point still stands: if you declare that a person's argument must be wrong because his motivations are bad, that's a textbook example of an ad hominem fallacy. Even if we could know what a person's motivations are, the argument still might be right.
Meh, natural theology borrows from both theology and philosophy, I suppose. Anyhow, not the theology I had in mind, but even in some of those arguments for God's existence, particularly the ones that are purportedly abductive arguments for God, the possibility of God's existence is nevertheless assumed in the premises.
And regarding your main point:
There's no ad hominem in saying that the arguments made by theologians can be quite ridiculous. This is because I'm focusing on the arguments I've read, along with what you have said as well, and then made my judgements based on that. Not the other way around.
Also, never said motivations are necessarily bad. Why must motivations be bad in order for strong biases to play a role?