Do Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence?

[Neo-Scholastic]

Wait a minute. I thought all you had to do was yell debunked....and insult them.  You know...show off the old critical thinking!

Fuck, dude, you don't have to betray your own ignorance so overtly. If you don't want to bother to do the fucking research that shows all your bullshit has been debunked six trillion ways from Sunday for centuries if not millennia, that's your intellectual laziness shining through. Saying you don't care, well, that's your intellectual and moral dishonesty shining through. See how this works?

It's blatantly obvious.

[Amarok]

Wait a minute. I thought all you had to do was yell debunked....and insult them.  You know...show off the old critical thinking!

That's all you have to do when the subject is dead .Or the person wanting debate said subject has a dubious track record. And critical thinking generally leads to both conclusions . I know that makes the apologists on this site cry and triggers their  persecution complex but that's not our problem.

[Whateverist]

A formal debate takes a fair amount of time and effort. I was in the middle of a bathroom remodel when the drain line above my unit broke so now I have no sink with running water in my apartment. On top of that I am managing the relocation of 9 mentally ill deaf people and that requires my full attention during 12 hour days. So my time for debating is extremely limited, but I so sick of hearing people like Tiz repeatedly claim the 5W have been "debunked". He needs to either put up or shut up.

Wait a minute. I thought all you had to do was yell debunked....and insult them.  You know...show off the old critical thinking!

Almost as good as "I haz the special feels that tells me God is in the room .. in a basic kind of way."  *struts all over the chessboard, shitting all the way*

[Harry Nevis]

Sorry I haven't been following this thread, but can you tell me what the "it" is which you cannot do for a couple weeks?  Just curious.

A formal debate takes a fair amount of time and effort. I was in the middle of a bathroom remodel when the drain line above my unit broke so now I have no sink with running water in my apartment. On top of that I am managing the relocation of 9 mentally ill deaf people and that requires my full attention during 12 hour days. So my time for debating is extremely limited, but I so sick of hearing people like Tiz repeatedly claim the 5W have been "debunked". He needs to either put up or shut up.

Take your own advice.

---

A formal debate takes a fair amount of time and effort. I was in the middle of a bathroom remodel when the drain line above my unit broke so now I have no sink with running water in my apartment. On top of that I am managing the relocation of 9 mentally ill deaf people and that requires my full attention during 12 hour days. So my time for debating is extremely limited, but I so sick of hearing people like Tiz repeatedly claim the 5W have been "debunked". He needs to either put up or shut up.

Wait a minute. I thought all you had to do was yell debunked....and insult them.  You know...show off the old critical thinking!

All the old arguments have been debunked.  Don't blame us when we point it out.  And, by presenting the same old canards as new or unanswered deserves insults.

[pocaracas]

I cannot do it for two weeks because on my work schedule but if anyone wants to formally debate the 5 ways later we can plan to do so at a future date and work out the terms of the debate now. That will give you the opportunity to do your research.  You might want to take a look at my last debate in which the previous debater was not able to follow through on his commitment.  My arguments  would be essentially the same, so that will also give you another advantage. Surely if the 5 Ways have been so thoroughly debunked as skeptics claim it shouldn't  be too hard to rise to the challenge.

Why would you want to debate 5 arguments from ignorance?

[Neo-Scholastic]

The resolution is "The Five Ways of Aquinas have been debunked." Who is willing to show that that assertion is actually true?

It can wait if you want because I realize not everyone has the time for a formal debate. I just want to know who, in principle, thinks they could logically and exhaustively present the proposed objections and defeaters to the 5W that are much talked about.

Tell you what, if a formal debate is too much bother, post your best references on this thread, including YouTube videos, if you must.

[Astonished]

The resolution is "The Five Ways of Aquinas have been debunked." Who is willing to show that that assertion is actually true?

It can wait if you want because I realize not everyone has the time for a formal debate. I just want to know who, in principle, thinks they could logically and exhaustively present the proposed objections and defeaters to the 5W that are much talked about.

Tell you what, if a formal debate is too much bother, post your best references on this thread, including YouTube videos, if you must.

No need for any formal debate. Four of them are simple fallacies of special pleading and one of them is just plain fucking nonsensical. Then there's the fact that they're all completely unwarranted assertions that have no basis for comparison. You'd have to have access to view a multiverse where you'd already know for a fact that two of them you were observing were 100% for certain created/designed, and the other not, and see how they differed to even think to make this assertion in the first place, otherwise you're just making up bullshit.

Satisfied? If not, fuck off. That's more than you deserved to get from any rational thinker.

[pocaracas]

The resolution is "The Five Ways of Aquinas have been debunked." Who is willing to show that that assertion is actually true?

It can wait if you want because I realize not everyone has the time for a formal debate. I just want to know who, in principle, thinks they could logically and exhaustively present the proposed objections and defeaters to the 5W that are much talked about.

Tell you what, if a formal debate is too much bother, post your best references on this thread, including YouTube videos, if you must.

I remember once discussing the 5 ways, on some thread, here... I'd never looked at those 5 ways before and, as soon as the other person gave me a link to them, I saw that they were mostly arguments from ignorance... I can't be bothered to go find that thread.
But it's easy enough to find the wiki's article on it:

The Argument of the Unmoved Mover
Summary
In the world we can see that at least some things are changing. Whatever is changing is being changed by something else. If that by which it is changing is itself changed, then it too is being changed by something else. But this chain cannot be infinitely long, so there must be something that causes change without itself changing. This everyone understands to be God.

Let me rephrase that:
I am ignorant of the Universe. I am ignorant of physics. So I decide to posit an arbitrary start for everything. This start is obviously the super complex thinking non-physical entity known as God.


Current astrophysics and Quantum Mechanics state that everything we see changing has a counterpart. The Universe's total Energy content is zero. And this zero can have always existed.

The Argument of the First Cause
Summary
In the world we can see that things are caused. But it is not possible for something to be the cause of itself, because this would entail that it exists prior to itself, which is a contradiction. If that by which it is caused is itself caused, then it too must have a cause. But this cannot be an infinitely long chain, so therefore there must be a cause which is not itself caused by anything further. This everyone understands to be God.

Same as above.

The Argument from Contingency
Summary
In the world we see things that are possible to be and possible not to be. In other words, perishable things. But if everything were contingent and thus capable of going out of existence, then, given infinite time, this possibility would be realized and nothing would exist now. But things clearly do exist now. Therefore, there must be something that is imperishable: a necessary being. This everyone understands to be God.

If only he knew about the second law of thermodynamics... he'd have a lot of fun with it!
Sadly, it applies to closed systems of the matter we know.... not to the unknown beyond it.... the part of the Universe that renders its total energy as zero.
From zero you come... .to zero you go.... no change!

The Argument from Degree
Summary
We see things in the world that vary in degrees of goodness, truth, nobility, etc. For example, sick animals and healthy animals, and well drawn circles as well as poorly drawn ones. But judging something as being "more" or "less" implies some standard against which it is being judged. Therefore, there is something which is goodness itself, and this everyone understands to be God.

ooohh.... this one is about psychology. Bred from ignorance of evolution.
That which humans deem good is that which provides them with a survival advantage.
But... that which is good for humans will not necessarily be good for other animals. So goodness itself is relative to the observer. It's not absolute, as this "way" implies.

The Teleological Argument
Summary
We see various non-intelligent objects in the world behaving in regular ways. This cannot be due to chance, since then they would not behave with predictable results. So their behavior must be set. But it cannot be set by themselves, since they are non-intelligent and have no notion of how to set behavior. Therefore, their behavior must be set by something else, and by implication something that must be intelligent. This everyone understands to be God.

So... Physical objects have a set behavior that must have been set by some thinking being. Electrons have a particular charge and mass that make them behave in a particular way.... hmmm... actually the generic things mass and charge and energy are what determine how each particle behaves. So it is this behavior of masses and charges that is claimed to be imposed by an outside intelligence.
Why? How?
Actually, we know that mass has an effect on the geometry of space-time... Could space-time, the best candidate at stuff outside our Universe, have been the driver of mass (and energy - E=mc2, remember?) and charge? Could mass be just a particular ripple in space-time? Could it be somehow related to the multi-dimensional superstrings?

So, the truth is, we don't know how stuff in our Universe got to behave the way it does. Nobody knows. [argument from ignorance] Hence god done it!



There you go, ignorance all around. Enjoy!

[RoadRunner79]

The resolution is "The Five Ways of Aquinas have been debunked." Who is willing to show that that assertion is actually true?

It can wait if you want because I realize not everyone has the time for a formal debate. I just want to know who, in principle, thinks they could logically and exhaustively present the proposed objections and defeaters to the 5W that are much talked about.

Tell you what, if a formal debate is too much bother, post your best references on this thread, including YouTube videos, if you must.

I was going to say... I wish I had time to prepare. It could begin to debate you. But now that I see the resolution.... I think I'll keep silent.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Ooooohhhh...a Wiki! Good for you. Saves you the bother of thinking for yourself.