[Serious] Fallacies & Strategies

[R00tKiT]

Yes, a theist believes God is real, that's what the word theist means...

An atheist asking a theist for empirical evidence of the divine, for example, has already committed a category mistake.

A god who intervenes in the world may intervene simply by means of natural laws, and a naturalist will obviously be content with these as the final explanation.. All the misconceptions with regards to this crucial issue arise from an unwarranted assumption: that god's intervention should be solely through miracles and jaw-dropping events.

[The Grand Nudger]

Also not a category error. If someone asks for evidence of some god and you give them what you take to be that evidence, and it's "natural" evidence...then perhaps they just don't find it compelling?

Thing is, people can believe, or not believe, without making any logical errors. I personally think it's foolish to look for fallacies at the heart of either, because it's unlikely to be some fallacy that genuinely underpins either state of affairs.

[R00tKiT]

That's a bold statement coming from a non theist.. if you think theism is unjustified, you necessarily think that all theists committed a logical error at some point when they formed their beliefs.

I likewise think all atheists have a logically flawed position, knowingly or unknowingly, or, at best, don't have access to all the relevant facts yet, or didn't identify which facts are relevant...

[The Grand Nudger]

Not in the slightest, let alone necessarily. Not having access to the relevant facts is not a logical problem. A fallacy is a problem even if a person does have access to all relevant facts. What you're describing is the notion that people who don't believe in gods are wrong... not that they've committed some fallacy. A perfectly valid structure can yield incorrect conclusions. Happens all the time. Similarly, people seem to be certain that my constant comparisons of mythical whatsits, legendary people, and fairy tale creatures is wrong, somehow..but if it were, it's not because the comparison is invalid.

More an antitheist than a non theist, personally...if I did believe in gods I would be a maltheist - and I don't see anything bold in the idea that people believe what they do, or don't, and disagree in their relative states of belief, without having uniformly committed some logical fallacy or another. This place is a bit of a white elephant...but I doubt that most people, believing or otherwise, give the matter much thought at all. They're not trying to rigorously apply logic to a state of belief anymore than they might rigorously apply logic to their favorite flavor of icecream. As such, they're not really in a position to employ (or even have need of) a fallacy in the first place. Fallacies find themselves more when people feel compelled to argue gods in or out of existence, which is a completely irrelevant fact to my position on the matter, speaking of facts and relevance.

[R00tKiT]

Not having access to the relevant facts leads to arguments from ignorance, this much should be clear.. the well-known logical argument from evil is a textbook example, as the premise "There is no good reason for God not to prevent all evil" can't be proven at all, unless one knows all the true propositions about God and evil. And still, many very abled philosophers tried this argument, and this alone is very shocking. I mean, what were they thinking? Obviously, no one can prove than God should or shouldn't do x or prevent x, precisely because no one can have access to all the relevant facts. You need to be omniscient in order to assess the actions of an omniscient being, the same way one needs to be a surgeon to understand why surgeons sometimes intentionally severe arteries and cut chests open.

But sure, we don't need to know everything to form an argument. this implies however that the argument will necessarily have a modest conclusion, not the kind of conclusions that atheists usually have in mind: like God doesn't exist, nature explains everything, etc.

As for comparing beliefs to flavors of icecream... I don't think that's fair -I don't think you think it's fair, either-. Choosing a bad or unusual flavor doesn't have any implications, unlike belief systems that people adhere to, sometimes very strongly.

[The Grand Nudger]

There's a difference from being wrong in-fact, and mounting an argument from ignorance...though I suppose the terms in plain english probably lend themselves well to that conflation.

Perfectly fair, and another good comparison. States of belief are facts of a subject, just as their tastes in ice cream are facts of a subject. Rationalizations or justifications for those states of belief or taste are overwhelmingly ex post facto - and both can and have and do have far reaching consequences. I knew vanilla was the best flavor of icecream before I could articulate why...and some chocolate loving filth will be around shortly to explain why I'm wrong in-fact. Further, they'll explain, vanilla accelerated the deforestation of madagascar. Long hair, don't care, still the best flavor of ice cream.

IDK about these requirements for understanding. I'm not a surgeon, and I understand why surgeons sometimes intentionally severe arteries and cut open chests. Even if it were true, despite that observation...that you might need to be a god to understand a god (which probably holds some weight)... I don't think that people with moral disagreements are looking to understand a god, but a moral agent - and we're moral agents...so...surgeon to surgeon, right? Ultimately, though, the idea that any moral disagreement with gods -must- be an argument from ignorance is an implicit admission that there doesn't appear to be any good reason for many states of affairs. This defense of a gods alleged existence comes at the cost of it's moral warrant - which is going to be the final word in what and whether a person could cosign or worship - as that's referent to yet another set of facts of a subject. What they can personally stomach. You can probably imagine some world with a bad god you wouldn't worship. You don't believe that this is that world - but...for example, you might not be thrilled to find it was zues or wotan or the dagda or kali running the show, eh?.

If gods could be bad, and were bad, would it mean they couldn't exist? Well, no, that's a bad argument..i agree... but not on any point of fact. It's the structure. A bad existent god is still an existent god.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Might as well kick the hornet's nest...

I find it interesting that theists have pointed out more common logical fallacies we see in atheist positions than athiests claim to observe in those of theists.

(Way to go 13.87%!!!)

[Neo-Scholastic]

Yes, a theist believes God is real, that's what the word theist means...

An atheist asking a theist for empirical evidence of the divine, for example, has already committed a category mistake.

A god who intervenes in the world may intervene simply by means of natural laws, and a naturalist will obviously be content with these as the final explanation.. All the misconceptions with regards to this crucial issue arise from an unwarranted assumption: that god's intervention should be solely through miracles and jaw-dropping events.

An atheist asking for evidence of God is a bit like a presentist asking for proof that the past is real. The presentest will say of anything you show them from fossils to documents are all in the present now. Is the past real? The past is just a current memory; the future is just a current hope, right? What is at stake is the notion that there can be modes of being that fall into different ontological categories, just as the past is modally different from the present.

I would invite my atheist friends to consider the idea that to consistantly apply the category error by which they dismiss the existence of God (by putting Him in the same category as one type of being among other beings),...by applying the standard that there is only one way to be real to the issue of time, i.e. a single ontological category, how could they consider the the past real in any meaningful sense.

The same could perhaps be said about holes. IMHO holes are real in a meaningful sense. They are numerable. They have size and shape. Etc. Their being may be contingent, but it is a type of being none the less.

It seems to me that inisting there is only one category of being that counts as real is similar to the "excluded middle", i.e. that the one true way to be real exhausts all the ways something can be real. IMHO the tooth fairy comparision commits one to a very narrow and limited ontology.

[The Architect Of Fate]

Translation you have no evidence and think you can just rationalize your way around the issue .....Lame 

The excuse of invoking a category error is essentially theists inventing superpowers to try to get their claims off the hook of having to provide any actual evidence for them and to invent imaginary distinctions between their imaginary friend and all the other imaginary friends.

[The Architect Of Fate]

Might as well kick the hornet's nest...

I find it interesting that theists have pointed out more common logical fallacies we see in atheist positions than athiests claim to observe in those of theists.

(Way to go 13.87%!!!)

No they have not