Only to add you (generally, not specifically you) have no reason based ability to determine gods existence in addition to gods nature. (Is it part of gods nature to exist?).

agree

Well that was quick
What discussion were you hoping for here?

second that.

on the value of the concept

As far as i know there are only 3 types of rational arguments against the existence of God.

Arguments from evil
No seeum arguments
And god paradox’s

If you value the rationality of skeptical theism, none of those arguments are valid.

Skeptical theism has this great virtue: One doesn't have to engage with any believer about what God is or is not like. Whether Baptist, Bahá'í, or Baboonism, one can avoid godly discussion with them because you already know that they don't know, can't know, and will never know what they are talking about. The only secure position for the skeptical theist is to keep his mouth shut.

agree all discussions about the nature of god, made by theist, agnostic, or atheist are outside of reason

What discussion were you hoping for here?

as I stated the board has had quite a few a posteriori God arguments. The concept of skeptical theism say all such claims are outside reason. Seemed an interesting point, at least to me.

Then a skeptical theist is really an agnostic.

Thats just stating the concept of skeptical theism. I got it. What about it are you offering for discussion? The validity of skeptical theism? The validity of criticisms against it? A comparison to other theistic positions? If all you have to say is something like “any of those”, I would frustratingly remind you that YOU made the thread, YOU are supposed to have something to discuss instead of just offering what is essentially a definition of something. IF you were going to answer that way ;)
So what about skeptical theism do you want to discuss? Nothing? Just letting us know its out there?

Not really, a skeptical theist is still a theist. They believe in god. They just dont boeve in god based on what is known about god. Not a position with much merit, but not agnosticism.

no Harry, skeptical theism just says that there is rational basis for any one to say anything about the nature of such a thing as god. All such discussions, by both theists and atheists are faith based, and are matters of theology not philosophy.

Sorry there is no rational . . .

no just that the belief is faith based. Because there nothing any of us can say about the nature of god that we could support with reason, all such discussions by theist or atheist are faith based.

A discussion about you being wrong it is then.
You are a bit confused about Skeptical Theism. It does not make the false equivalence you are making about faith based discussion on both sides. You have added this. It is actually a counter argument to the problem of evil and other, similar atheist arguments. You are mis-using the argument to make all “rational” discussion about god faith based, and thusly you do not actually have to defend your belief in god, or worse actually you make a false equivalence of your indefensible position and every other position including the very strongest non-theist positions.
I was going to refrain from arguing the value of faith, since you mentioned to someone else in another thread that you weren’t interested in discussing the value of faith, but for reasons I hope are obvious you are inviting the discussion.
Why is faith a good?

You are a bit confused about Skeptical Theism. It does not make the false equivalence you are making about faith based discussion on both sides. — DingoJones

What is false equivalence please.

It is actually a counter argument to the problem of evil and other, similar atheist arguments. — DingoJones

Think I said this

As far as i know there are only 3 types of rational arguments against the existence of God.

Arguments from evil
No seeum arguments
And god paradox’s

If you value the rationality of skeptical theism, none of those arguments are valid. — Rank Amateur

You are mis-using the argument to make all “rational” discussion about god faith based, — DingoJones

I am starting the position of skeptical theism that you can not make a reason based statement about the nature of god

If you think that is incorrect make an argument that ends with the conclusion therefore I can say something authoritative about the nature of god

When you compare two positions as though they are equivalent when they are not.
The Skeptical Theism argument is a good argument against problem of evil and other classic atheist arguments, but it does not apply to ALL arguments or reasons.

you do not actually have to defend your belief in god, — DingoJones

I feel no reason to defend my belief in god. The only concern I have is the claim my belief in god is unreasonable.

I am starting the position of skeptical theism that you can not make a reason based statement about the nature of god — Rank Amateur

The nature of god is not the only reason to be an atheist. This is another false equivalence.

I feel no reason to defend my belief in god. The only concern I have is the claim my belief in god is unreasonable. — Rank Amateur

If you feel no reason to defend your belief, you are being unreasonable.

have no clue what point you are making here

again I just stated what ST is, no clue how you got that out of it

one does not follow the other

I've been making a similar point in many threads, so count me in as being in agreement. It makes perfect sense to me that if there is something like a God, it's ability would be so far beyond our own that we become rather like ants trying to understand the Internet.

As best I can tell from discussing this for 20 years, philosophy can get to this point and then it gives up and quits. Rather than continue to build on this logic and explore the trail further, philosophers typically retreat back in to the familiar very well worn merry-go-round to nowhere patterns of the God debate.

As best I can tell, this happens because philosophy is experienced not as a means to an end, but as an end in itself. Thus, any path that appears to lead away from philosophy is rejected. To explore this theory, imagine that it were proven beyond all doubt that the best way to explore the God subject was to go bowling. Would we step away from philosophy and go bowling? If not, then what we're really interested in is philosophy and not God, and so we shouldn't be surprised if our God investigations never seem to go anywhere.

If a God investigation were to proceed beyond the same old tiresome ruts we might focus on two realities:

1) There has been an incredible level of interest in this subject for thousands of years, and...

2) Nobody is able to prove any position on that subject.

To summarize, some fundamental human need is driving this interest, and philosophy is not able to meet that need.

Why is philosophy not able to meet the need fueling the God debate? Imho, that's because philosophy is made of thought, the very thing generating the need. That is, thought is seen as the solution, when really it is the problem.

Why is thought the problem? The fundamental human need driving interest in this subject is a profound desire to reunite with reality, to overcome a sense of separation which generates fear, which in turn is the source of many human problems. Thought can not meet this desire for unity, because thought operates by a process of division.

As evidence, consider how all the great religions try to sell us some collection of thoughts regarding achieving unity with God and each other, and what typically happens instead is that these religions divide internally and begin to go to war within themselves. These religions generally have sincere good intentions, but don't realize they are trying to create unity using a tool, thought, whose explicit purpose is to create division.

The logic failure operating here is the unwarranted leap from the fact that thought is a very useful tool for very many jobs, to the unexamined assumption that therefore thought is the best tool for EVERY job. Theists and atheists seem united in making this mistake, and the more adamant they are about their position the more that is true.

So what then? Where do we go from here? It seems the philosopher should make a clear minded decision as to what their priority really is. Is it doing philosophy? Or is it in exploring and perhaps meeting the fundamental human need which is fueling interest in God topics?

If there is no compelling evidence that philosophy will ever lead to anything but more of the same old God debate we're already heard a million times, do we keep doing philosophy anyway, or do we set philosophy aside and search for other more useful tools?

What is our real interest?

I did promise myself that I would not get involved in this kind of nonsense, but I just have to ask, what is this method you're referring to for "exploring and perhaps meeting the fundamental human need which is fueling interest in God topics"?

I keep hearing arguments of this sort, every mystic, religious or other mumbo-jumbo begins by arguing that the topic of religion/mysticism cannot be explored by rational investigation from a physicalist premise, and then there's this huge pregnant "therefore..." and we all wait for the answer (which is inevitably their own brand of book/philosopher/alternative to physicalism).

I entirely agree that trying to say anything about God (including his existence) using rational thought is pointless. I think that saying things about God (such as prayers or expressions of feeling) serve a purpose that has nothing to do with the meaning of the words used in other contexts (for example, rational argument). But none of this leads to the discussion of books about religion, none of this leads to an interest in religious scholars or opinion. No mystical philosophy, no analysis. This is not because there is no meaning in religious language, its because religious language has no truth value in the sense that objectively valuing a text would require.

So yes, logical arguments trying to say something about the nature of God are nonsense, they take discourse suited to one language game and expect it to apply in another, but in order to keep to this distinction, the same must be true the other way round. No one should be consulting an ancient Buddhist monk for wisdom, the monk cannot in any way 'possess' some object (in the Tractain sense) which he can pass to the student, to treat him this way is to reverse the problem and treat his religious language game as if it were a epistemological one.

There is literally nothing to say about religion in the language game of a forum like this.

So yes, logical arguments trying to say something about the nature of God are nonsense, they take discourse suited to one language game and expect it to apply in another, but in order to keep to this distinction, the same must be true the other way round. No one should be consulting an ancient Buddhist monk for wisdom, the monk cannot in any way 'possess' some object (in the Tractain sense) which he can pass to the student, to treat him this way is to reverse the problem and treat his religious language game as if it were a epistemological one.

There is literally nothing to say about religion in the language game of a forum like this. — Isaac

I agree. My only addition would be this.

I believe one can believe something to be true and act accordingly based on fact, reason, or faith. With the only caveat that what one believes by reason can not be in conflict with fact, and what one believes by faith can not be in conflict with reason or fact. The valid God arguments one can have in philosophy are those that test the boundaries of truth claims based on faith to see if they are un-reasonable, not outside reason, but against reason. All other faith based truth claims - both theist and atheist are outside of philosophy and are theology.

I'm not sure. The problem I can see with testing faith based positions against boundaries determined by rational statements of fact (or the limits thereof) is that the names (the terms) used in each area would have different meanings within their respective language games.

Let's say we were to ask "is it reasonable (by which we mean not in conflict with reason or fact) to believe that prayer brings about that which is prayed for?". The trouble with such an analysis is that 'brings about' and 'that which is prayed for' mean very different things in the language game of a prayer to a language game of the rational relation of facts. This would also be true of all of the terms used in the prayer.

Even for something as broad as the belief in God. To test the reasonableness of such a belief against the boundaries of a rational relation of facts, one would have to ask "is there some fact which prevents 'god' from existing? But to ask this is already to mix the meaning of the terms. 'some fact' means something very specific in the language game of rational relations, but 'God' does not mean anything in that language game, 'God' only means something in the language game of whatever religion or mystical experience one is expressing.