Necessity is not evidence

[Rampant.A.I.]

Maybe =/= Necessity.

A lot of people historically believed Thor was a logical necessity due to the existence of lightening and thunder, but were mistaken.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Maybe =/= Necessity.

A lot of people historically believed Thor was a logical necessity due to the existence of lightening and thunder, but were mistaken.

That' not even in the same ballpark. You clearly do not know what you are talking about.

[downbeatplumb]

But you can prove something true about existence by applying reason to experience independent of what one hopes to find.

No you can't.

[Anomalocaris]

Something I have noticed with the regular theists who post here is that their main concern of evidence for god's existence is that he is necessary.

That is not evidence, because god is absolutely not necessary.

If god was a veritable necessity, people would be unable to live normal lives without god.

Considering that atheists are quite capable of living perfectly normal lives without god, the necessity of god is negated.

Necessity, after all, is the oxygen we breath. Without it, we would die. We are perfectly capable of not dying without god.

God is merely the crutch to which theists cling because they have deluded (yes, there is that apt word again) themselves into thinking life is meaningless without the ruling delusion.

Not that I disagree with the position that "god is necessary" is bullshit, but I think I think you are tying yourself into a knot here by your analogy trying to show why god is not necessatry.

Something may be true, and may necessarily be true, without it being necessary for you to perceive a need for it.

For example. Plate tectonics is true. It is necesssarily true in both the sense that there is no other competitve alternatives to explaining the evidence from geology, fauna, and flora on earth, and in that plate tectonics is necessary for earth to remain habitable to higher animal life such as yourself. Yet I bet most people don't perceive a need for it.

[DeistPaladin]

List of Logical Fallacies Found With This Line of Reasoning:

Appeal to Consequences:
"If God doesn't exist, there would be no basis for morality and that would be bad, therefore God exists"
(Just because you want something to be true doesn't mean it is)

Bare Assertion Fallacy:
"Without God, there would be no morality/logic/etc."
(You find these unsupported assertions all over the place in even classic apologetic arguments)

Straw Man Fallacy:
"Atheists believe there is no God so how do they account for..."
(Skepticism is not a belief system but an approach to other belief systems, asking other beliefs to meet their burden of proof)

Shifting the Burden of Proof:
(continued from above) "...so how do they account for morality/logic/universe/etc. without God?"
(Saying "I don't know" does not require that the person admitting lack of knowledge explain anything.)

Argument from Incredulity:
"I can't imagine how we could have morality/logic without God."
(Your inability to comprehend something does not mean it's not true)

Argument from Ignorance:
"GodDidIt. GodWillsIt. GodIsIt. GodDoesIt. GodVerbIt."
(Just because we don't know doesn't mean made up answers are true)

Non-Sequitur:
"You don't know everything, therefore Jesus."
(Conclusions must actually follow from the proofs offered).

Special Pleading:
"By 'God', I of course mean Jesus. This argument doesn't prove anyone else's god. It can't be used for Zeus, Odin, Ra, Allah, et. al."
(It's hypocritical to ask for a lower standard of proof for your favorite beliefs than one you'd demand for someone else's beliefs.)

Begging the Question:
"We know that Yahweh is good because we define Yahweh as the source of goodness. And since Yahweh is the source of goodness, we know that Yahweh is good."
(We often see contrived definitions like this to escape Euthephro's Dilemma ("Is something good because GodWillsit or does GodWillIt because it is good? If the former, then divine command morality is just might-makes-right and, if the latter, morality exists outside of God and therefore God is not required"). The apologist will seek a third way and say that Yahweh is the source of goodness. Beyond the problems that this is a contrived definition established by bare assertion in order to work backward toward a desired conclusion, such thinking quickly devolves into circular reasoning about the goodness of Yahweh and how we can know that he is good.)

Ad Hominem Tu Quoque:
"Look, you have your faith in the basal assumptions of science. I have my faith in Jesus. It's a wash." -or-
"Everyone has presuppositions."
(Instead of defending against accusations, the other person offers a "you do it too" defense, whether or not it's true. As with the Ad Hominem, it's OK to question the character of the other person as long as it's not a substitute for an argument).

False Equivalency:
See above.
(the axiom that repeatable experiments will tell us what we can predict in the future or that reality is real and not just a computer simulation, etc. are not the equivalent of a faith in an Iron Age holy book that makes all manner of supernatural assertions contrary to how the observable universe operates).

Confirmation Bias:
"The Bible said (some vaguely worded prophecy) and look, this happened."
(Don't start with a belief and look for evidence to confirm it).

Ad Hoc Hypothesis: (my favorite)
"Well, maybe... well, maybe... well, maybe..." (repeat endlessly until all contrary evidence is dismissed)
(If you have to keep inventing reasons, often improvised and pulled out of the air, why contrary evidence doesn't count or invent unlikely, obtuse interpretations of scripture to fit what you want to believe, eventually the opponent can invoke Occam's Razor and go with the simplest explanation that scripture really does say what it appears to say).

Misunderstanding of Logical Fallacies:
"Explain why science works better than faith. Don't say 'because it works' or I'll call that circular reasoning."
(Presuppers don't understand what circular reasoning is. If you write a book and footnote another book, that's not circular reasoning (using books to prove books) because you have different authors. If different people get the same results doing the same thing, it's not circular to say it works because the corroborating results come from different sources.)

Misunderstanding of Skepticism:
"You have a bias against miracles."
(Skepticism is not an agenda but a rational approach to extraordinary claims, one that the religious believer applies to other people's religions. A lack of a belief is not a belief. The assertion of miracles is an extraordinary claim that requires a proportional amount of evidence, more evidence than is required for mundane claims like "I had a hamburger for lunch today". These are the rules that we operate by in every area of our lives outside our favorite beliefs. See also Special Pleading.)

Please feel free to add any I missed.

[Esquilax]

But you can prove something true about existence by applying reason to experience independent of what one hopes to find.

Not really. I mean, that can help form a predictive model replete with falsifiability, or to help you interpret the evidence, but you don't ever prove something to be objectively real by applying subjective reason to subjective experience. We're too cognitively impaired and too prone to bias to ever reach the truth using that method exclusively.

Your psychological speculations about believers do not apply to all.

I never once said they did.

I was an atheist but reluctantly accepted the reality of God when confronted with specific philosophical problems.

Sounds like you got suckered by an argument from ignorance, then. Because when I read "philosophical problems" there, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, what I see is yet more negative reasoning. Would these philosophical problems be the same ones you keep trying to assail us with? Because if they are, then you became a theist because somebody poked holes in a "secular" worldview, you didn't have an answer, and so therefore god, which... is not compelling. It's an argument from ignorance, in fact; you can poke hole after hole in one thing, but that doesn't make another automatically true.

That's enough speculation for now, though. I'm sure you'll come back with more.

Just because someone reaches a different conclusion than you does not always mean they must be delutional, weak, or stupid. Maybe they're merely wrong. And just maybe you are wrong.

I always remember that possibility, of course. But these arguments from necessity are so laughable that I fail to see them convincing anyone without some form of pre-existing attachment to the idea of a god. I think you're editorializing a bit by adding in all that stuff about delusions and weakness and stupidity, which I also never said, though. All I said was "personal," in that they're being clouded by some bias or another. It happens to everyone at least once.

[Neo-Scholastic]

But you can prove something true about existence by applying reason to experience independent of what one hopes to find.

No you can't.

I challenge you to name one thing you know that did not come from reason applied to experience.

[JesusHChrist]

So Chad, which of these definitions do you mean when you say "necessary"?

The concept of a metaphysically necessary being plays an important role in the ontological argument for the existence of God. This concept has been criticized and partly rejected as incoherent by David Hume, Immanuel Kant, J. L. Mackie and Richard Swinburne.

The philosophers of religion John Hick[1] and William L. Rowe[2] distinguished three different types of necessary existence:

factual necessity (= existential necessity): a factually necessary being is not causally dependent on any other being, while any other being is causally dependent on it.

causal necessity (subsumed by Hicks under the former type): a causally necessary being is such that it is logically impossible for it to be causally dependent on any other being, and it is logically impossible for any other being to be causally independent of it.

logical necessity: a logically necessary being is a being whose non-existence is a logical impossibility, and which therefore exists either timeless or eternally in all possible worlds.

While most theologians (e.g. Anselm of Canterbury, René Descartes, and Gottfried Leibniz) considered God as logically necessary being, Richard Swinburne argued for factual necessity, and Alvin Plantinga argues that God is a causally necessary being. Because a factually or causally necessary being does not exist by logical necessity, it does not exist in all possible worlds.[3] Therefore, Swinburne used the term "ultimate brute fact" for the existence of God.[4]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysical_necessity

[MindForgedManacle]

The latter is the subtext though, as the logical reasons they state ultimately fail, and yet are never retracted. As I've said many times, you can't logic something into existence, and if your whole position attempts to do an end run around demonstrability by just arguing why it's impossible for something to not exist, well then you're probably hiding a more personal reason for why you think this thing should exist.

Well you've shown that Chad is right in that you're applying a psychological evaluation to all believers, and unjustifiably so, I think. And I think it's hyperbole to say no believer has ever retracted theit claim that God is a necessary being.

Maybe =/= Necessity.

A lot of people historically believed Thor was a logical necessity due to the existence of lightening and thunder, but were mistaken.

The necessity involved in discussions of the supposed necessarity of God's existence are nothing like that. They involve things like saying God, by virtue of his nature, must exist in all possible worlds. And to exist in all possible worlds means that one's existence is necessary, because there is no state of affairs in which that being's existence does not obtain.

The above is nothing like your Thor comparison. At best people thought Thor existed because lightning or whatever provided otherwise inexplicable evidence for Thor.

For example. Plate tectonics is true. It is necesssarily true in both the sense that there is no other competitve alternatives to explaining the evidence from geology, fauna, and flora on earth, and in that plate tectonics is necessary for earth to remain habitable to higher animal life such as yourself. Yet I bet most people don't perceive a need for it.

Plate tectonics isn't true by necessity, plate tectonics just happens to be (most likely) true, or contingently true, in other words.

---

So Chad, which of these definitions do you mean when you say "necessary"?

The concept of a metaphysically necessary being plays an important role in the ontological argument for the existence of God. This concept has been criticized and partly rejected as incoherent by David Hume, Immanuel Kant, J. L. Mackie and Richard Swinburne.

The philosophers of religion John Hick[1] and William L. Rowe[2] distinguished three different types of necessary existence:

factual necessity (= existential necessity): a factually necessary being is not causally dependent on any other being, while any other being is causally dependent on it.

causal necessity (subsumed by Hicks under the former type): a causally necessary being is such that it is logically impossible for it to be causally dependent on any other being, and it is logically impossible for any other being to be causally independent of it.

logical necessity: a logically necessary being is a being whose non-existence is a logical impossibility, and which therefore exists either timeless or eternally in all possible worlds.

While most theologians (e.g. Anselm of Canterbury, René Descartes, and Gottfried Leibniz) considered God as logically necessary being, Richard Swinburne argued for factual necessity, and Alvin Plantinga argues that God is a causally necessary being. Because a factually or causally necessary being does not exist by logical necessity, it does not exist in all possible worlds.[3] Therefore, Swinburne used the term "ultimate brute fact" for the existence of God.[4]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysical_necessity

That Wikipedia article is actually wrong here. Platinga's modal version of the ontological argument states that God must exist in all possible worlds, so Plantinga does believe God is a logically necessary being: that's the whole point of his argument. :p

[Esquilax]

Well you've shown that Chad is right in that you're applying a psychological evaluation to all believers, and unjustifiably so, I think. And I think it's hyperbole to say no believer has ever retracted theit claim that God is a necessary being.

Do I really need to put a little asterisk around everything I say that adds the caveat "in my experience."? I thought that was implied by my being a human that isn't omniscient.