Apologetics open challenge

[Minimalist]

God doesn't enter into it though does he?

 If you believe there is some extra special about love compassion empathy and friendship, I think you would see a divine basis, a spiritual reality behind this, and it's not simply a program and experience created through chemicals in our brains.

So in order to see it you have to already be crazy enough to believe it, huh?  Thanks for your input.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Indeed morality is founded upon empathy. And empathy evolved.

A house of cards on a shaky table in the wind. Tell me again why you trust empathy over disgust or fear?

[TheRocketSurgeon]

Indeed morality is founded upon empathy. And empathy evolved.

A house of cards on a shaky table in the wind. Tell me again why you trust empathy over disgust or fear?

You know, Chad, I actually agree with you. I don't trust it. But empathy is what we (except sociopaths) naturally feel. All the rest has to be "carefully taught".  Religion, unfortunately, all too often serves not as a boost to our empathy, but as a boost to tribalism and xenophobia. It's certainly not the only reason that hate and fear override our natural empathy, but it's a common one.





You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!

[robvalue]

MK: No one can agree on exactly what "good" and "bad" mean, so yes, they are arbitrary. What is "good" for one person may be "bad" for another, and vice versa. It just so happens that most of humans have a general overlap with these concepts. This evolutionary result is not evidence for objective morality. If you come up with even a general list most people agree on, not everyone will agree with you. Do you just announce they are wrong, by appeal to popularity? If they don't believe in the same goals of morality as you, who gets to say which goal is better? You have to first assume one goal to be better before even making this judgement, hence it's circular.

You said that objective morality is "doing the right thing". People can only do what they think is the right thing. Say I'm a Christian and I truly believe killing non-Christians who won't convert is the right thing to do. That would make it objectively moral by your standards, right? But to most people, this would be considered immoral. So it's not objective at all.

If you insist that what someone considers to be the "right thing" agrees with your own definition, then you're simply holding up your own subjective morality as the correct objective moral standard. That is making yourself the god of morality.

We start off by trying to agree what is "good" and what is "bad". If we agree for example that being alive is generally good, being happy is good, being well is good, being dead is bad, suffering is bad, hurting people is bad.... and so on... we can then build a subjective but relative morality. We can argue that some things are more moral than others, within this framework. But until we agree what things are good and bad, we can't do anything. Just announcing that some things are inherently good or bad doesn't make it so. An action is ultimately just a bunch of particles moving around, and is not objectively "good" or "bad". It only seems that way from the point of view of a sentient being. And this is a judgement, not a measurement.

Back to reality, and this part is important. Because we do generally agree in each society about what is good and what is bad, enough so to have a reasonable majority, then we are generally happy to live by these principles. We don't have any choice, we have to pick some basis of behaviour. "Good" is what society generally agrees is "good", nothing more.

As another example, I'm a vegan. I think killing animals for food, and owning them as property, is wrong. Society, by the vast majority, disagrees. Who is "objectively" right? In the future, it may well be that this changes and animals are no longer treated this way. The society then would look back and think our society was immoral. But most people right now think it is fine. So how is this objective? It's ultimately a matter of opinion. If there is objective morality, eating meat is either moral, immoral or neutral. Which is it, and who gets to say so? The goals of my morality are different from the general goals of society right now, simple as that. Objectively, my goals are no better or worse, because such an objective comparison is meaningless.

[bambi_swag]

I feel almost certain that all forms of religious/theistic apologetics/arguments are flawed, in one way or another. So I'm putting it to the test. Please post any arguments about religion or a general God that you think are valid, and I will analyse them. They can be about whatever aspect you like, anything that demonstrates them to be something outside of your own imagination.

I will be looking for dishonest techniques and logical fallacies. As soon as I find one, I will highlight it, explain the problem, and stop. You are then welcome to amend your argument and resubmit it. There are many common problems I am likely to highlight, so please familiarise yourself with them on my website here. If you don't understand why any of them are dishonest/broken thinking, please ask. They are important for anyone who cares if their arguments are valid.

If I can't find a mistake, I will concede that your argument is valid. Don't bother with mundane arguments such as "Religion does charity, and charity is good". Yes, that is true. I'm not going to argue with such statements, but they don't prove anything about the truth of religion.

You can use any argument, either your own or from your favourite apologetic. But like I say, I'll identify one error then stop. If it's a concise argument, I may highlight several errors if present.

Go! The challenge is open. Other counter-apologists are welcome to step in on my behalf to identify errors if they so wish. But this is intended to be about the validity of arguments, rather than full rebuttals.

Ok. This is not really an arguement for the Existence of God, but rather the probability for its hypothetical Existence:

A= If it is true that: that there is a realm of existence hidden beyond the physical universe.

B= If it is true that: an experiment using the scientific method requires empirical Physical data.

C= If it is true that: entity #1 is not a physical member but exclusively a member of the Existence mentioned in A.

D= If the above are true then: Science (as in an experiment exclusively using the scientific method) cannot prove the Existence or non-Existence of entity #1 or the realm of Existence mentioned in A.

Is this "((A & B & C) -> D)" valid and true?

L= If it is true that: God is Entity #1


So is "(((A & B & C) & L) -> C)" valid and true?

[robvalue]

Yes, that sounds pretty good to me.

You've described the principle of an unfalsifiable claim. Science does not deal with those, because by definition it cannot investigate them. Science does not attempt to disprove such things, or comment on them at all.

I can make any number of unfalsifiable claims, and all of them are useless in practical terms.

As you say you didn't actually make a claim, because you used an "if" qualifier at the start.

If god is defined to be outside the scope of science, then god is unfalsifiable. Unfalisiable concepts are useless. Anyone making that statement admits they themselves have no way of knowing anything about it, even of its very existence. It amounts to pure speculation, and no probability can be assigned. Speculation on a subject does not indicate a nonzero probability.

Trying to use this as a positive argument for the existence of god is called the argument from ignorance fallacy (in case you've not heard of it) It disregards the scenario where the claim is false, but cannot be proven false.

[marianomanto]

"What those fanatics do is not true Catholicism/Islam/etc. They are misinterpreting the texts, any religion well studied will lead you to peace."

[robvalue]

No True Scotsman, laddy sonny Jim!

(I know you know that )

I'm at perfect peace after interpreting religion to be a bunch of stories and nothing more. That seems to work.

[Angrboda]

Well of course they experience it.  But what makes you think any of these things have an existence outside of someone's head?

The very experience of it.

People can feel transcendant experiences for ordinary causes.  Temporal lobe epilepsy can result in highly spiritual experiences.

[Neo-Scholastic]

The very experience of it.

People can feel transcendant experiences for ordinary causes.  Temporal lobe epilepsy can result in highly spiritual experiences.

That doesn't necessarily mean the experiences are invalid.