Deism for non-believers

[Adjusted Sanity]

The whole god is needed argument seems to henge on whether god exists or not. If he does exist, he is likely needed. If he does not exist then he is not needed.

I would actually say if he is not needed then he does not exist.

That's pretty much what I said. The need for god is entirely based on whether or not it exists, which is something we don't know. We don't know if it exists, so we can't know if it is needed.

[FallentoReason]

What is damaging to the scale is not that I can insert size or shape, but that I can insert absurdity and return a result that is more plausible than your plausible god. If your position is that some creator god on this scale is plausible and therefore rational to believe in then you would have to concede that my bird or strawberry shortcake trumps any of these potential plausible gods by sheer weight of parsimony. The only question that remains is why you don't believe in my creator bird or my creator shortcake. Or, just maybe, your scale isn't as useful as you initially thought (and as I've mentioned before, that's regardless of whether or not this scale can be said to have any correlation to factuality.......I mean ffs, a scale that cant be connected to existence and also returns divine shortcake as a plausibility?).

Initially when I was thinking about writing this thread I thought that a Deistic god could basically be proven logically and therefore I would have no choice but to acknowledge its existence. But as I've said, after some discussion I have now realised that the scale only serves as a means for determining plausible gods. So the reason why I don't believe in any of these plausible beings, including your bird and cake, is that there is some other component needed still before we can logically say that such things exist.

No, we don't see it as impossible. I see it as un-evidenced, I have no idea how you see it because you seem to have conflicting narratives about this plausible god. It is intervention in that before creation "nothing exists" and after creation "something exists" That this something is material is icing on the cake for me, because again, it is theoretically falsifiable (unless you propose the possibility of "others means" as a convenient excuse for this creative agents "hidden-ness" which is why I mentioned it in the first place. Pre-empting the sort of bullshit that is inevitable once this line of argumentation is taken up.)

No, the last thing I want to do is shove a god-like-figure somewhere in creation just because. You might be wondering why I even started this thread and have defended it this whole time. Well, being a free thinker I see no harm in exploring these possibilities but at all times I want to know where I'm being fallacious or illogical, because that's where I have to stop and rethink what the next logical step should be (if any).

I can't see the material as 'icing on the cake' because it is through the material that we've defined 'intervention'. Early on in this thread some of us have agreed that a plausible god wouldn't intervene in the world today. That implies that intervention is the mucking-around of material things. Therefore, when nothing exists it's impossible to intervene because there's nothing to intervene with. After creation intervention is possible but our plausible gods just don't intervene. I have no problems in conceding this point only if you make it clear to me what you mean by 'intervention', because thus far I don't see any problems.

Lets's see if I can distill my problems with your scale down to a single line of criticism. You could use this scale as a tool to create a theoretically unfalsifiable proposition, and in fact it seems that you have designed this scale to be useful for nothing else(you haven't managed to do that yet but we're going to take a trip into the future where you have). If you were to succeed in doing this you would merely be demonstrating that such a thing as an unfalsifiable proposition exists -which is something that we already understand-. Your unfalsifiable proposition is not a god, it is an unfalsifiable proposition. You are not creating plausible gods, you are creating plausible unfalsifiable propositions. This might help to explain why remarks like "mental masturbation" have been leveled at your posts.

I guess you're right in saying that the non-material end of this scale is pretty much unfalsifiable. Does that mean that something plausible stops being plausible because it can't be tested? I'll explicitly tell you now that I'm not arguing for a plausible god to be an existent god. We established already that the scale doesn't work like that.

]Yes, yes you are. I won't be able to tell you the type of fallacy that you are commiting, because I'm not a logician; however, I can tel you you're problem and where I feel, logically, you went astray:
You basically equivocate the claim "It is likely that there exists X because of the overwhelmingly large quantity of hanes for X to exist."
With something like "It is likely that X exists because of the overwhelming amount of possible and plausible varients of X that I can imagine."
The difference being that scientists can predict and measure the chances of there being life on other planets through probability, etc. We can use a valid real way to measure the chances.
You propose a near infinite amount of plausible Gods, yet there is no reason to say that any one of those Gods is any more likely that the last, as they are all separate from each other probability wise.

To make this a tad more cognizant, think now of an infinite # of plausible universe-creating unicorns. Any one unicorn isn't any more likely than another because each individal unicorn must be independently verified.
All in all, this means that, regardless of the concept, what makes things more probable is the evidence we have for those things. We have evidence that we base our statistics on when trying to guess whether or not other life exists, but nothing for Gods (or unicorns).

Yeah I agree completely. The scale doesn't prove in any way that one of these plausible gods exists. It merely allows one to construct gods that wouldn't contradict reality.

I think evidence must be based on reality in the same way that mathematics is based on reality and then abstracted.
2+2=4 is quite the claim, but is ultimately based on reality.
There can be arguments that take into account the neccesity of a God that I would consider as evidence, if they were at all valid.

Maths is most certainly not based on reality. For example, the most fundamental concepts of geometry and mere assumptions that can't be proven in reality. Two parallel lines can't be shown to exist because you would need to check along their infinite lengths to see if they ever diverge or intersect. Parallel lines are just an idea that is accepted as being true without any real proof. Same thing with a circle, whose perimeter is made up of infinite amounts of points all placed at a distance R from the centre. Sure, you could draw me a circle, but it wouldn't match the definition because your pen has a thickness meaning that you have points that are closer or further away to the centre. Therefore, you are merely representing the idea of a circle, but you haven't drawn a circle. 2 + 2 = 4 is no different either. You could grab two rocks and another two rocks and throw them together to get four, but you're not showing me what four actually is. You merely have four rocks that represent the idea of 'four'. But what is four?

Now that I think about it, is a God plausible if he is immaterial? Because we don't know if a being without any matter is even possible.

I don't think that question has an answer because we live in a universe full of matter, therefore we can't answer with a 'yes' or 'no' with 100% certainty. There's no way to test it.

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Oh, sorry! I should have clarified that I briefly researched Shaktism and I responded to it by implying it's in the category of 'world religions'. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the belief is that the god visited the society 22 000 years ago. Well, we've all seen the flaws with Jesus so I wasn't going to bother trying to disprove an incarnate god that lived 11 x 2 000 years ago. Or was there something that I missed about this belief?

Yes, indeed there is quite a bit more. There are Shaktisms that would postulate a goddess that is indistinguishable from your Deist creator god. Same for other branches of Hinduism, Buddhisms and more. That you don't see these gods as plausible relative to your deist conception is not because they are not equally plausible — indeed, some are indistinguishable from yours — but because you are knowledgeable about your deist ideas, and ignorant of the same ideas in other religious contexts. Which gets me back to my earlier point, that you are constrained by the past, specifically your past, which leaves you capable of imagining certain answers in certain ways, but less able to imagine others, such as those you have no knowledge of, such as Shaktism. If you were born in India as a Shakta, you might be arguing the exact opposite, wondering what I see as flawed with thinking about the goddess, and ignorantly asking if deism is a world religion that postulates the creation of the world in 4,004 B.C. and believes in three gods. Your statement and your conclusions would be just as ignorant, and just as much a function of your ignorance.


But there's an even more significant problem with your thinking. You suggest that the universe had to have a motive for coming into being. Now I don't agree, but even if I did, motive implies an agent. Universes don't have motives, only agents do. So you are trying to reason backward from the effect to the potential cause. Even if a motive and agent is involved, this is likely to prove unproductive. Can we determine the reason an agent might create a universe? We have no experience with such examples to even know where to begin. And all your "models" are largely analogues of creation by human agents. Maybe a god-agent needs six mutually contradictory goals to have a motive to create a universe. How do we know what motives a god uses.

But beyond that, the whole method is flawed. You have an effect, the universe, and you're trying to guess a reason an agent might create it, and from that reason figure out what type of an agent might have those reasons. Reasoning backward in this way, each step is fundamentally unconstrained by the prior step. Does a physical universe imply a physical creator agent? How do we know? A physical universe doesn't require any specific process of creation; some are more probable, but as Rhythm points out (and Brian in his ignorance fails to see) is that assuming that because a physical universe can result from physical causes, that doesn't mean it had to do so; the latter is the fallacy of affirming the consequent. If I'm in the forest and I come upon a spot where there are plants arranged in a perfect circle, I might ask myself the same questions. Surely these plants didn't end up in a circle by accident. What purpose did putting them this way serve, and what does that tell us about the agent that did it? It actually tells us nothing, as this particular plant, actually a fungus, just naturally grows that way as a result of physical and biological constraints. You need to start with the agent, and evidence for that first, and then try to understand its motives, as the reverse will lead you astray.

I assume you're familiar with the Mona Lisa. What does that effect/artifact tell you about the motives of its creator? If you didn't know the artist, would your speculations about the artist's motives help you pick him out in a crowd, perhaps after in-depth interviews? Doubtful. Yet this is your method.

Definitely some food for thought here. I wouldn't discard Shaktism just like the other religions if I knew more about it. If you say that they describe Deist gods then to me that means there's something to look into. If on the other hand these gods apparently have an influence of some sort in reality, then I see them as pretty high up on my scale, which would make them non-existent.

I see what you're saying about my method. I have to disagree that because my method is effectively working backwards it then means that we can conclude the 'right answer' will never be found. See, if we take your example of the forest and weeds in a circle, we could assume all different things of how it came to be. We could assume a tribe planted them like that and for all we know that's actually what happened, but we wouldn't have any means to know that we know the truth.

[The Grand Nudger]

Wouldn't it be simpler and more reliable to do away with belief entirely, instead throwing our chips in with things that could at least theoretically meet that "other component" requirement?

If you limit the definition of intervention to something which isn't devastating to your position, sure, that would imply - therefor. Let me ask this another way, why have you decided that a plausible god does not intervene? Is it the mucking about you take issue with, or only recent mucking about? If the mucking about occurred in some distant (bonus points if currently unfalsifiable) point in the past are you okay to propose that particular mucking about as plausible? Why?

What I'm suggesting is not that the scale "doesn't work like that" but that it doesn't work -at all-.

It allows you to construct unfalsifiable propositions which you then label gods. It pays to be precise. However, as long as you stick to the creator requirement this gods unfalsifiability is severely suspect.

Two parallell lines of defined length are actually quite easy to demonstrate..I don';t know why you believe otherwise...

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(it;s the infinite bit that had to be inserted to get so confused, of course it would be difficult to check an infinite anything, but we find it to be a useful concept)

ta-da.

4 rocks is 4 rocks, the number is descriptive with regards to any defined set (rocks), it is only a "thing" in the context of the concept of numbers for their own sake.

It amazes me btw, how many times I've had this conversation since joining these forums. Math or numbers (nor logic) are "things" floating around bending the cosmos to their whims. They are descriptive terms and systems we have formed in order to communicate some observation or concept. I could call a "4" a "splurge" nd it would still return the same results when multiplied by itself, i would merely have a different name for those results. That -is- what 4 "is".

[FallentoReason]

Wouldn't it be simpler and more reliable to do away with belief entirely, instead throwing our chips in with things that could at least theoretically meet that "other component" requirement?

If you limit the definition of intervention to something which isn't devastating to your position, sure, that would imply - therefor. Let me ask this another way, why have you decided that a plausible god does not intervene? Is it the mucking about you take issue with, or only recent mucking about? If the mucking about occurred in some distant (bonus points if currently unfalsifiable) point in the past are you okay to propose that particular mucking about as plausible? Why?

Everytime we talk about creation I'm placing myself at the beginning of the universe. So, yes I would have a problem with mucking about in a distant point because it's no different to mucking about now. I thought I was implying all of this whenever I talked about just before and just after creation occurred.

What I'm suggesting is not that the scale "doesn't work like that" but that it doesn't work -at all-.

It allows you to construct unfalsifiable propositions which you then label gods. It pays to be precise. However, as long as you stick to the creator requirement this gods unfalsifiability is severely suspect.

I'm starting to get the feeling that you want me to 'admit' that I do want a plausible god to potentially exist. That way you can play the 'unfalsifiable' card on it which pretty much means game over. And, because I have to stay honest with myself at all times, I would have to agree that it would be game over and this is the very reason why I'm not proposing anymore that they would have to be real eventually, because that's a fallacy of some sort and therefore irrational. That is definitely not me. I stick to reasons for thinking something is at all times.

Two parallell lines of defined length are actually quite easy to demonstrate..I don';t know why you believe otherwise...

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(it;s the infinite bit that had to be inserted to get so confused, of course it would be difficult to check an infinite anything, but we find it to be a useful concept)

By your definition

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These two of defined length are parallel as well. Clearly that's ridiculous and how do we know it is? Because if you extend them you will show me that they're not parallel. Well...

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please extend them to infinity so that you can show me for certain that they will never intersect. Otherwise we're assuming they are parallel just like I assumed

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this extreme case was parallel.

So as you can see, 'the infinite bit' must be included for the concept to even stand on its own two feet.

4 rocks is 4 rocks, the number is descriptive with regards to any defined set (rocks), it is only a "thing" in the context of the concept of numbers for their own sake.

It amazes me btw, how many times I've had this conversation since joining these forums. Math or numbers (nor logic) are "things" floating around bending the cosmos to their whims. They are descriptive terms and systems we have formed in order to communicate some observation or concept. I could call a "4" a "splurge" nd it would still return the same results when multiplied by itself, i would merely have a different name for those results. That -is- what 4 "is".

I think I agree with some parts. Basically what I was saying is that you can't show me '4' (or whatever you want to label it as). It's a concept. A very useful concept, sure, but you can't ever show me what 4 is.

[The Grand Nudger]

This is the trouble with defining intervention so that it excludes an act like creation. You've simply set a floor for acceptable mucking about. The mucking about of creation is acceptable and indeed required. But for whatever reason, other mucking about is not. Have you considered whether or not the reasons you gave yourself for throwing out intervention also apply equally to creation?

Meh, I don't know anything at all about what you want. I'm wondering what in the statement you quoted led you to conclude this? I'd try to rephrase, but I can't honestly think of a simpler or more direct way to make those statements.

Epic facepalm on the math. You could, if you wished, instead of checking the infinite ends of any given line, measure the distance between the two lines at defined points and see if the measurement was increasing, decreasing, or equivalent. Now, at some point beyond the horizon those two lines may change their respective angles and intersect, but for the purposes of the set of two lines of a known length this isn't an issue, now is it? It also isn't an issue for the set of two lines of indeterminate length whose angle never changes, now is it? I think you're having trouble with this for the same reason that you're having trouble with the 4 below. These concepts are defined, the variables are defined. An infinite is a shady variable, and thats pretty well understood, that if you plug infinity into a number of our systems they do strange things (and conversely that a requirement of infinite [whatever] is unfalsifiable - by definition) Think of this in the terms of the line example. You cannot prove to me that an infinitely long line exists, because you would have to travel into infinity to be certain that it didn't end - a task which you could never accomplish, again, by definition. On the other hand, it's very easy to determine if something is not infinitely long, isn't it? In the same way it is a simple thing to determine if two lines are parralel with regards to any defined length, but the moment we ask for infinitely paralell lines, predictable hilarity ensues. The assumption, in paralel lines, is that the lines angles/orientation/arc will remain consistent throughout the length of the line..

4 -is- the name of a concept which we use to describe a set of (insert whatever here). Are you proposing here that there is a "thing" 4 that is not the descriptor 4? Theres a name for that. If not, you've just explained exactly what 4 is precisely before saying that I couldn't show you what 4 is. Why would I have to, you seem to have it handled all by your onesies.

[FallentoReason]

This is the trouble with defining intervention so that it excludes an act like creation. You've simply set a floor for acceptable mucking about. The mucking about of creation is acceptable and indeed required. But for whatever reason, other mucking about is not. Have you considered whether or not the reasons you gave yourself for throwing out intervention also apply equally to creation?

I'll simplify down my problem to two questions. How is creation intervention? Doesn't intervention imply something existed so that one could intervene?

Meh, I don't know anything at all about what you want. I'm wondering what in the statement you quoted led you to conclude this? I'd try to rephrase, but I can't honestly think of a simpler or more direct way to make those statements.

Sorry, maybe I was wrong. I just think we've lost a bit of traction between our arguments somewhere. Correct me if I'm wrong, but in a nutshell you see the scale as useless because for a god to be a part of the set it requires the 'creator' label. We have established that mucking about in modern times or even before humans were around excludes a god from being plausible, therefore IF the very act of creation can be shown to be a sort of mucking about then the scale is the null set, hence why it would be useless. Correct?

Epic facepalm on the math. You could, if you wished, instead of checking the infinite ends of any given line, measure the distance between the two lines at defined points and see if the measurement was increasing, decreasing, or equivalent. Now, at some point beyond the horizon those two lines may change their respective angles and intersect, but for the purposes of the set of two lines of a known length this isn't an issue, now is it? It also isn't an issue for the set of two lines of indeterminate length whose angle never changes, now is it?

You can't ever draw me two parallel lines, but only a representation of what they would look like. If you're suggesting that you can absolutely measure their distances and guarantee they are parallel then I have to disagree. That brings with it its own problems similar to drawing the concept of a circle. It's quite literally impossible.

4 -is- the name of a concept which we use to describe a set of (insert whatever here). Are you proposing here that there is a "thing" 4 that is not the descriptor 4? Theres a name for that. If not, you've just explained exactly what 4 is precisely before saying that I couldn't show you what 4 is. Why would I have to, you seem to have it handled all by your onesies.

I can't make much sense of this. It simply does my head in.

All I'm saying is that you can't show me the concept of 4. You can show me how 4 can be used to describe something, like rocks in an arbitrary position that then are identified as 'four rocks', but that isn't showing me what 4 is.

[The Grand Nudger]

I've decided against even arguing it, as you have a definition for intervention that differs from my own, and since it's just a thought exercise word games would only serve to draw it out. What I am suggesting is that this creative act may be untenable for the very same reasons that interventions (by your definition) are untenable (to you). I wouldn't know for certain though. I've asked a couple of times why intervention rules a god out for you (as a plausible god).

It requires the creator attribute for you, but the scale doesn't demand it in and of itself, that's just an attribute that you have given to a plausible god, is it not? I've already made mention of this several times. I think that the scale you've proposed doesn't work due to divine strawberry shortcake being more plausible than any plausible god due to parsimony.

-- There are your lines (these lines have a set length, btw, in many different ways, and you can be assured that they are parallel, defying your proclamations of what is or is not quite literally impossible).
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Here is your circle.

Concepts are not visible things.........

"You can show me how 4 can be used to describe something, like rocks in an arbitrary position that then are identified as 'four rocks'," which is precisely what "4" is..............I could also show you what "adventurous" is, even though "adventurous" itself is just a concept, it is a descriptive concept, and so is "4".

[Angrboda]

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[Brian37]

Cute kitten. But I always find it funny when someone with a pet predilection when they point at the beliefs of others and post rightful blasphemy like that, but cant seem to bring themselves to point that good mirror at their own label.

"I am not like the others", yes you are. Anything started that long ago and especially not in a lab, which amounts to nothing more than a social club, cannot replace our modern tools of how we gain knowledge. The can only be our personal predilections.

Evolution existed long before Christianity, Hinduism, Hebrew, Taoism ect ect ect. It was around before our current social clubs and will still be around if they morphed into something else or got scrapped all together. The ability to make babies is not dependent on holding any label.

[Angrboda]

Cute kitten. But I always find it funny when someone with a pet predilection when they point at the beliefs of others and post rightful blasphemy like that, but cant seem to bring themselves to point that good mirror at their own label.

"I am not like the others", yes you are. Anything started that long ago and especially not in a lab, which amounts to nothing more than a social club, cannot replace our modern tools of how we gain knowledge. The can only be our personal predilections.

Evolution existed long before Christianity, Hinduism, Hebrew, Taoism ect ect ect. It was around before our current social clubs and will still be around if they morphed into something else or got scrapped all together. The ability to make babies is not dependent on holding any label.