P: God exists
P2: God probably exist
E1: the fine tuning data provide strong evidence to favor the design hypothesis over the atheistic single universe hypothesis — KingOfTheSouthBay

Huh? A pretty messy syllogism. Nether premise 1 or 2 can be established. 3 does not follow from 1 or 2 and you have introduced a new item (atheism) which does not appear in 1 or 2 and therefore should not be included in a conclusion.

The other problem is that any fine tuning argument can also be used to support the idea that we are living in a curated simulation designed by an alien race. Given that there is increasing documented evidence of alien visits and technology on earth, this scenario seems slightly more plausible and does not need to make appeals to the supernatural. :wink:

Suffering, in some sense, is the purest form of truth. Even happiness can be faked. — Jonah Wong

Huh? Both happiness and suffering can be faked. Suffering especially because it is so often seen as a symbol of authenticity and worthiness. Sounds to me more like you have particular fondness or bias for suffering as a sign of integrity. That is common with some philosophically inclined folk and pessimists who often assume happiness is either inappropriate or delusional while suffering is genuine. :wink: Of course Christians have fetishized and made a cult of suffering for centuries, so in Western culture suffering is synonymous with sanctification.

Western culture has made the mistake of glorifying comfort. — Jonah Wong

No, capitalism, marketing and advertising have done this. What's left of culture after this onslaught is incoherent and broken.

If God ended suffering, humans would not know what it means to be separated from Him.
If humans did not know what it means to be separated from God, they would not know that they need to be rescued.
If humans did not know they needed to be rescued, they would have no reason to cooperate with God.
Suffering is necessary for humans to cooperate with God. — Jonah Wong

This sounds like a twisted way of thinking and a good example of how a Christian might work really hard to overlook the fact that god (based on the stories and what we see in nature) is an abject cunt who treats creation with disrespect and malevolence.

However, the point is, despite human effort, suffering is inevitable: and our mission on an individual level ought not to be to suffer as little as possible, but instead to choose to suffer in the hope that it develops character and brings us closer to God. — Jonah Wong

The thing is, this is exactly the kind of thinking that I heard in Baptist church sermons in the 1970's and 80's and is a common Christian refrain. Suffering is a form of blessing that makes us better people.

:up:

I enjoy reading these debates. @Philosophim is like a calmer Garrett Travers.

What was it Nietzsche said - 'If you believe in grammar, you're a theist." The possibility of us making meaning and having reliable cognitive facilities may be just as 'miraculous' as the abstract, seemingly transcendental status of math.

I think Tom Storm's second possibility, that there is no ultimate truth, is probably correct. — T Clark

And if you think ultimate truth is elusive, try finding a plumber on the weekend.

There is very good evidence, I might say. We understand most parts of the universe, so why not the fundaments? What we will never understand is where the fundaments themselves come from. And that's where God comes walking in. — EugeneW

:lol:

If you don't make this assumption you will never hit rock bottom — EugeneW

Exactly - which is why I don't make it. This seems to be a simple fallacy from personal incredulity or an appeal to common sense.

There is no good evidence that humans will understand ultimate truth or that ultimate truth is even a thing. It might be argued that we've simply inferred this foundational concept from the limitations of human understanding.

It's a proof of the gap argument. The assumption it can be closed is more reasonable than that it can't be closed. — EugeneW

An 'assumption' as you say which is an unnecessary one. Plus there's the problem with the premises I mentioned.

But I enjoy these games sometimes so keep them coming. :up:

1. For any possible limit, there’s a possible external explanation
2. Explanations aren’t entirely included in that which they explain
3. Having limits is a limit
4. Therefore, there is a possible explanation of having limits
5. The only possible explanation of having limits must be in terms of something without limits
6. Therefore, it’s possible that something has no limits
7. Whatever has no limits is of supreme nature
8. Therefore, it is possible that there’s a supreme being
9. A supreme being is either impossible or necessary
10. A supreme being is not impossible.
11. Therefore, a supreme being is necessary — tryhard

There's a modest trick being played here with the word 'supreme'.

7 - Whatever has no limits is of supreme nature. No - you could equally say is of 'unknown nature'.

Supreme is here in order to lead to supreme being. It's a conceit of linguistic prestidigitation.

I don't think so. No 2 is an assumption. 'Gap' is a metaphor - 'closing it' is another own. What we might be dealing with is a kind of information humans can't fathom.
3 doesn't follow from 2 (even if you grant 2 as possible). Potentially 'a gap can be closed' without us understanding how it works. 4 is just a claim (something William Lane Craig might assert).

Seems a long way to present a woo of the gaps argument. :razz:

I've met many theists over the years who are idealists. They don't believe in matter. Rather like the good Bish Berkeley, they are monists.

There is almost no useful information about Jesus as a real person which could furnish us with evidence to build this kind of argument.

The gospels were written many years, sometimes decades after the claimed events by anonymous sources. Once oral traditions, the accounts come to us as copies of translations of copies of translations. The New Testament is essentially Jesus fan fiction.

1. Jesus was either a lunatic, a liar, or lord
2. Jesus wasn’t a liar or a lunatic
3. Therefore, Jesus must be lord — tryhard

Perhaps -

1. Jesus is a character in an old book of collected myths.
2. Jesus may have been based on someone who lived but this is uncertain
3. Therefore, we can't say anything substantive about Jesus as a historic figure.

So what we come back to is not argument as such but the presuppositions which inform the argument. I regard the gospel stories as a set of manufactured myths, perhaps based on a real person. Lewis seems to regard the gospels as fact.

And what implications does your stance have here for the possibility of philosophically approaching the topic? — baker

Well mainly this - if this is what you consider to be a philosophical approach -

The idea is that doing things that one finds pleasurable (in the broadest sense of the word) cannot actually make one happy. Ie. that it's in the nature of doing worldly things that they cannot satisfy. (This is also the theme in Ecclesiastes, so it's not some "esoteric Eastern" notion.) — baker

- the idea that it 'cannot actually make one happy' is not really a defensible posture. It might have been closer to being trivially true if you phrased this like so - 'doing things that one finds pleasurable may not make one happy.' However, from what I've seen, it's a hell of a good start.

God is an all-loving being and people believe that God loves everyone on an equal level. We have come to this conclusion because we know that God has to love everyone according to the Christian bible — stressyandmessy

Not sure what kind of Christian theology you dig - there are so many versions - forget that an old book says a thing, a quick look around at nature says to me God is a cunt. Having favourites is the least of its deficiencies. :wink:

My experience is that when I am calm the mind is not "racing". For me it is the difference between a raging torrent and a gently meandering stream. But there's nothing to say we are all exactly the same. — Janus

Interesting. I rarely have racing thoughts. Only when stressed. I can sit still and barely have anything going on thought wise - generally I visualize a line across a grey horizon and that's all I see or think of. I never worked on this it just came to me.

Pascal’s wager is flawed because there are more options than believing in the Christian God there are also other religions that we would have to take into account. But the greatest flaw is that the logic is built on fear. The possibility of going to hell incites people to believe in God it is all fear-based. — stressyandmessy

I think you nailed it for the most part.

No one can choose to believe in something, you either are convinced or you are not convinced.

Running with this kind of narrative any god/s who run a mafia boss style protection racket - 'believe and you will be saved' - are worthy of scorn and shunning, surely?

I'm an atheist, and I can't make enough sense of the concept of God to motivate myself to even think "yeah, I should belief." Pascal may talk about infinite gain and infinite loss, but it's all so abstract and alien to me that I just can't feel the loss, not even — Dawnstorm

I think the idea of god/s are incoherent too. Above and beyond all the arguments in both directions, I lack a sensus divinitatis so belief is not really possible in my case.

Someone claiming that the ultimate truth is organisms being machines programmed to pass on genes or memes has a loose screw somewhere in his machinery. Comparable to God psychotic schizo manias. — EugeneW

Not at all - perhaps you don't understand his book.

“Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to do.”

― Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

It is an incoherent position like blaming people yet claiming we have no freewill. — Andrew4Handel

No, it's a romantic position. It reminds me of the famous quote by Pablo Casals talking about life. "The situation is hopeless - we must take the next step."

I think Dawkins altruism phobia exists because of his desire to have a purely robotic, mechanical universe and to endorse the worst form of natural selection and ubermensch. Maybe he will post on here and enlighten us. — Andrew4Handel

Dawkins is an altruist - he does not take the facts of nature as an ought only as an is.

:razz: :up:

Vague references and a lack of evidence will convince no one. — Philosophim

Well, clearly that's inaccurate. The world is made up of beliefs without evidence.

Yep - it would be a rash person who argues that there is a moral code embedded in nature. However, we can't infer an 'ought' from an 'is' - so just because nature is like this doesn't mean we can't work towards positive change (for humans at least) - which we have done in so many ways over time.

He left and seems to have changed his mind about being a member. I don't know why.

Isn't that the same? If the evidence is not reliable, is it good evidence then? — EugeneW

Not to me, but I probably wasn't very clear there. The claim 'there is no evidence for god' is false. It's important to recognise any evidence which is provided, it's a matter then of assessing how convincing the evidence is.

Then what's the evidence? A personal experience? God talking to us in our mind? What's your measure of evidence? Someone saying he/she has seen them? — EugeneW

I think the question for atheism is not the lack of evidence for god/s so much as the reliability of the evidence provided. Unfortunately personal accounts of religious experience offer very little to others who haven't had this experience and/or doubt its veracity. Religious experiences also cancel each other out - the Muslim, the Christian, the Hindu all have 'unique' experiences that to them 'prove' the authenticity of their version of god/s and how we should to live. It doesn't get much more problematic than constructing certainty out of something so evanescent.

Since there is no evidence of a universal mind, then it is false. — Philosophim

As @Wayfarer will tell you, there are philosophers and scientists who would say there is no evidence of physicalism. I suspect both world views in the end come down to a kind of faith.

"Everything is all in the mind, there is no physical world." Of course, just because I can propose something that would potentially show it to be false, it does not mean it IS false. As it is clear that everything is not in the mind, and there is a world outside of our thoughts, this claim against physicalism which could show it to be false, is false itself. — Philosophim

Not really. Many forms of idealism argue for a universal mind (essentially a primitive instinctive consciousness) which holds object permanence and provides us a shared reality independent of our minds. Humans are dissociated alters of the Great Mind - that kind of thing.

I have a theory: Morality is, I believe, an unsolvable puzzle and God knows, very well, that humans will never get to the bottom of what good and evil are. Hence, he puts down one condition for citizenship in his kingdom of heaven: be moral, avoid immorality. — Agent Smith

For me this kind of thinking is an unnecessary complication. I've often thought morality is fairly simple. Morality is created by humans to facilitate social cooperation in order to achieve our preferred forms of social order. This is why morality varies across times and cultures - there are variations in what order looks like.

I have no interest in what a god's silly plans and egomaniacal thinking might be. The taboos around 'good' and 'evil' are simply ways to control people's behaviour by appealing to some kind of transcendent foundation which can't be argued with or even understood. Good and evil are poetic terms which have no specific meaning and are generally applied according to an individual's or a culture's value system.

There’s something missing from it, though. — Wayfarer

The Inquisition?

Fortunately, in fact, Western "culture and philosophy" has been predominantly anti-foundationalist since the late 1500s CE (re: nominalism Copernicus/Galilleo, secularism, empiricism, Wallace/Darwin, pragmatism ...)
— 180 Proof

I don't know what that means. — T Clark

I think @180 Proof is referring to the ongoing Enlightenment project of human knowledge which has incrementally dismantled the notion of god/s and the usefulness of religious models as a foundation for all human thought - also the unravelling of Greek models of absolute reality such as Platonism.

No, no such opposition. The idea is that doing things that one finds pleasurable (in the broadest sense of the word) cannot actually make one happy. Ie. that it's in the nature of doing worldly things that they cannot satisfy. (This is also the theme in Ecclesiastes, so it's not some "esoteric Eastern" notion.) — baker

I've known too many people who are, for want of a better term, 'happy' doing things they find pleasurable to agree with this in its entirety. I think it's true that some people find that do not attain happiness this way, but there are some people who are always unhappy. In my view, a person is more likely to find happiness doing what they enjoy than doing what they hate doing. This is certainly my personal experience. The term 'happiness' is a problem I think because it sounds a bit trivial and Californian to me. 'Contentment' may be a better word and preferable from where I sit.

:up:

Propaganda is just spin or lies designed to influence an audience - it might be for politics or for a religion. It need not involve nationalism. It's closely related to marketing. We can't stop people lying on behalf of a cause or product. Society is built on this fact. But perhaps we can try to make people more discerning.

Why are paradoxes/contradictions (so) important? — Agent Smith

Not sure this is relevant but I generally accept that humans are clever animals who use language to help manage their environment. As a consequence, meanings and worldviews are riddled with inconstancies and subversions, some of them more striking than others. When I encounter a paradox it tends to remind me of the poetic, imprecise nature of language and the manufactured character of human understanding.

Problem is, many of them hate religion and feel contempt for those who believe. That's not atheism, it's... I don't know, what is it? It's not reason. — T Clark

I understand. Yep, they are often angry. I think the issue is that often atheists have come to their views the hard way and have often been shunned by family and friends for their freethought. My friend John, a priest, says, 'Who can blame people for angry atheism when the church has done so many evil abusive things and God seems completely absent from much church activity?'

I've never seen an argument on either the atheist side or the theist side which I have found wholly convincing. — RolandTyme

As an atheist, I don't think that generally there is an argument being put forward. The atheist is simply someone who is unconvinced that god/s exist and considers the claims and evidence produced to be inadequate. A responsible atheist would not make an argument that there is no god - why would they need to?

Followers of religion never seem to present things in this way. They always seem to be happy to take God's side against humanity, trading on only the "bad people" being in hell. — RolandTyme

Followers of religion may hold very different views to the evangelical apologists who seem to monopolize discussions especially re hell. Many Christians hold to universalism - we will all go to heaven. And many think the Bible is just allegorical stories not be taken literally. I grew up with mainstream Protestantism, hell and punishment was not part of the tradition.

Thinking about laws of physics is often a sign of mental illness. — EugeneW

Especially flights of fancy about God proven by Quantum Mechanics. :joke:

Likening religiosity to mental illness is taking it a little too far. — ToothyMaw

It's an aphorism - it's not meant to be taken as a law of physics.

Incidentally, I have often worked in psychiatric hospitals (on and off for decades) and have met dozens of dozens of people who hear God's commands, and feel the presence of divinity every day and talk to Krishna or even claim to be God, Moroni or Jesus in the flesh. Mental illness often expresses itself in religious terms.

It's an idiom. — baker

I know it's an idiom. I simply thought the idiom didn't sit right. People can be content or cheerful when you think they should be miserable.

The afore-mentioned assumption is that people should do things that they enjoy, that they are "passionate" about, and that one's whole life can and should be filled with such things as much as possible. — baker

As opposed to the assumption that people should do things they hate and are indifferent to. I get it. Many people would tick these boxes.

Lives are tough and people suffer. No surprise there.

Or maybe the widely held and tabooed assumption that life is for eating, drinking, and making merry, is not justified. — baker

I don't think that's it. Personally I don't drink, am indifferent to food and rarely go out.

I agree with you. I am often astonished at the range of knowledge and verbal acuity here, along with concomitant astonishment at the levels of dogma and ignorance. But that's life, hey?