Surprisingly almost none of this is true. Each of those things that did not exist, until they existed began as a thought, an idea, a concept. And without doubt all of those ideas where scoffed, and dismissed. The real start of the scientific method is the idea of something new that becomes the hypothesis. — Rank Amateur

A virus, atom and quark didn't exist until we named them? Really? So people didn't get sick with viruses before they were discovered and named? The atoms and quarks didn't exist before they were discovered, yet chemical reactions throughout history during warfare technology and similar worked, even though they didn't know it was atoms and quarks responsible for those reactions?

You are applying a causation ≠ correlation on the idea that consequences act like things not proven yet and therefore God. Then compare it to specific things that had very observable and specific existences before discovered and named. You don't see how backward this is and a jump to conclusions?

Why can't one believe God is? Is there some fact I should know that says there is no God, and my belief is outside fact? Is there some overwhelming reasoning that says God is not a reasonable concept? And my belief is in conflict with reason? Why do you feel such a need to challenge ideas of others not in conflict with fact or reason? It smacks of fundamentalism. — Rank Amateur

There's nothing to conclude consequences in the universe and world is related at all to any concept of a God. The whole idea is a big fat causation ≠ correlation fallacy and bias towards the belief in God. People didn't believe in viruses or didn't know about them. They got sick, there were many guesses, many of them, supernatural beliefs about why people got sick. But no one thought "there are these things called viruses and just because no one believes in them doesn't mean they don't exist" and later they proved they exist. They didn't know about them at all. Your argument even gets a bit meta, since people back then thought it was God that punished them through sickness.

Which leads to a great analogy to why your argument is so very flawed:

They believed it was a lack of faith or other nonsense ideas and then when they later proved it to be viruses, it proved the religious beliefs wrong. You used an example of when faith blinded people to the reasons why people got sick, later to be proven by science discovering something they hadn't seen before, which overturned and erased all religious explanations for why we get sick with viruses. So it's kind of what you are doing with God right now; seeing causality or whatever you choose as a sign of God and therefore he can be proved, when it's more likely the whole thing is exactly like the virus analogy, that we simply don't have enough data right now to explain everything and when we do, people will abandon a religious explanation since the evidence is indisputable.

The rational idea is that we are the sick with viruses right now, not knowing about viruses and it makes people, like you, to argue wild speculations of faith only because we don't have enough data to prove or observe something yet. This is why I am so strict about scientific methods and why I wrote my argument about irrational belief being unethical because it not only holds back epistemic progress, it can be harmful to people when putting a veil over the eyes looking for answers. Just like how people acted on the belief that sickness was caused by those people's lack of faith.

Russel's teapot is tactic, not argument. Russel desperately wanted a definitive argument that ended with, Therefore there is no God, he couldn't find one. — Rank Amateur

Russel's teapot analogy lead up to the use of falsification in science, one of the most powerful tools we have to reach actual scientific truth in theories. It's been such a foundational concept in scientific methods since then that our world would probably have been a lot different if we didn't have it. So, no, it's not a tactic, it's a tool to reach actual truth or actual rational reasoning. It was also an actual argument, it's called an argument from analogy and it was powerful since it spawned the concept of falsification.

Just like with the viruses, there has to be something observed that we cannot explain, then we need data to identify no link or causality with known properties or things we know about in order to search for data in support of a hypothesis related to the observed specifically. A hypothesis that we then can push through verification and falsification in order to call it a scientific theory and fact.

What you are doing is having no observed actual data in support of a hypothesis with properties that have no real relation to the conclusion and therefore is pure speculation and not even a hypothesis. It's pure faith, a belief. A hypothesis needs some observation or support for it and a causation ≠ correlation fallacy cannot exist within a valid hypothesis. And a hypothesis cannot be used as truth either, which is the biggest problem with any argument for God. They all jump to conclusion and then tries to create a truth around it by proving after the fact. Post hoc.

It just feels desperate, like desperation to prove that the belief is true or valid because of the existentialism of the 20th century which put a lot of hard questions on the rationality of belief. And I'm with existentialism on this, just as they questioned the driving force of believing irrational eugenics beliefs during Nazi Germany I see a clear connection between the dangers of clinging onto beliefs that don't have true support. It's the most fundamental reason we have bad things happening between people in the world. To justify belief without support is unethical and I see no reason to justify it with broken arguments.

Calcuating how many different possible games can be isn't the same thing as there being those games. You calculate how many different possible game there can be by mutiplying n number of possible opening moves by m number of possible second moves, etc. — Terrapin Station

Misread the OP, thought the computer calculated it by playing the moves. But, let's say that it does just this. Wouldn't that count as the games being played and therefore exist? So if they program a computer to play a new game that is always in a slight variance of the last game, but can never be the same game, it would eventually have played all games possible, i.e all games exist.

No. The only ones that exist in some form are the ones that people are currently playing, currently thinking about, or the past ones that are recorded in some manner where the record is still extant.

It must be possible to calculate all of the possible moves, though, since there would be a finite (but ridiculously huge) number of them. — Terrapin Station

But if the computer already calculated it to 10^80, it would have reached that end and therefore these exist, as they have been tested out? Or can they only exist if humans do the calculation?

A stickied list of logical fallacies probably wouldn't help... But maybe if we zoom out a bit, a stickied list of philosophical resources would probably be quite helpful. A link to logical fallacies could well be a part of that. — fdrake

This actually sounds like a better idea! :ok:

I'm often using this as a resource and way of reminding some things that might slip my memory from time to time. Could maybe be part of such a resource material.
https://www.iep.utm.edu/

EDIT: saw that it already was part of it :smile:

On the contrary -- if it were a slippery slope I would be substituting what the proposal is for some other proposal. So something along the lines of "If we post a list of tips, then this is just one step on the road to making them rules, which is surely just a way for the socialists to take over the forum" — Moliere

Sure, was just making a bit of a meta-joke :wink:

I think the misconception about this is that they should be rules, but they are tips. It's not about limiting people's ability to write philosophy, but focusing an argument when focusing is needed.

it's a common sophomoric mistake to dismiss arguments by quickly categorizing them into their respective domains of invalid inference. — Moliere

But can also be used to point out holes in an argument in a very clear and to the point way than incomprehensible counter-arguments that goes on for pages after pages.

The names are better served for self-criticism than as a list of do's and don'ts for others. — Moliere

Tips aren't do's and don'ts, rules are. These things should be tips on how to improve your way of creating arguments and participate in discussions. There are many who don't even seem to know what fallacies and biases are.

I think all it would accomplish would be to endorse the bad use of fallacies. So I voted no. — Moliere

That's a sound counter-point though, hard to know if it's gonna go down that road, but.... isn't that a slippery slope? :wink:

Yeah, it's good to know about those fallacies, but I don't think it's a case for pinning. — jamalrob

I think the general idea that was proposed earlier was to include them in the already pinned guidelines as "General tips on how to improve your writing" or something like that. So no new post pinned and clear point that they are tips and not rules that must be followed. Just like there are guidelines to include an actual argument in the first point, which can't be a rule since sometimes there's a question to be asked and discussed rather than making an argumentative point.

And among the bad posts and obnoxious posters, I suspect that fallacies and biases are far from being the biggest problems. In fact, the identification of fallacies can be part of a bad argumentative style, and a preoccupation with fallacies seems sometimes to indicate an interest in critical thinking at the expense of philosophy.

And there's just something so middlebrow about it, like a preoccupation with "correct" grammar.

So I say no way. — jamalrob

I only see fallacies used in arguments when the other one is actually brutally bad at making a point without totally bonkers reasoning or ad hominems. I don't see fallacies as part of a bad argument, they can be, as any language can be used in a bad way, but they can also be used in a good argument, especially counter-argument. If someone has fallacies and biases within their argument and it's pointed out, then the OP poster might have a very clear understanding of what is wrong with their argument.

This is part of a healthy dialectic in my opinion.

And it's not really about rules that must be followed, but tips for being a better participant in philosophical discussions and dialectics. If I want heated brawls and extreme focus on opinions there are thousands of other forums, FB and Twitter. Having tips on how to improve your argument and participation of discussions I can't see what's wrong with having such tips. It's also good for newcomers who are new to philosophy and get blasted by others for their way of reasoning and they have no idea how to really improve.

Tips aren't rules, they're just tips for those who want them. I never suggested them to be rules we must follow without exception, i.e you get banned if you don't use them, that's not it at all.

Baden mentioned that it's not correct to say valid premises and true arguments. Harry then countered by a quote that says just that, which made him counter himself. That was the point.

True premises and a valid argument guarantee a true conclusion. An argument which is valid and has true premises is said to be sound (adjective) or have the property of soundness (noun).
So in order to be true, your argument need to be valid. — Harry Hindu

Which is in line with what Baden said.

Having a sound logical structure is the bare minimum requirement for an argument — SophistiCat

...and these things are not only a tool in order to spot counter-arguments that doesn't work, but it can also be used to help someone who's interested in a dialectic to improve their own argument. An argument free from fallacies and biases helps the one who wrote the argument to communicate the idea. People treat it as a negative, but as I mentioned earlier, it's not limiting to the argument, it's focusing.

Hahahahaha, didn't see that :rofl:

Maybe just the wikis?

Biases
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

Fallacies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

We're not going to overwhelm the guidelines with a list of fallacies and their explanations, but we could possibly put a link to a list of fallacies in there. Although that may be a compromise that pleases no-one. — Baden

Sounds good! :ok:

Found these two, which are a nice and clear to some fallacies and biases, maybe these links?

Fallacies
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/

Biases
https://yourbias.is/

I happen to agree with Willow. Fallacies are so basic as to be entirely philosophically uninteresting. If one is arguing over fallacies, one has ceased to engage in any interesting discussion at all. — StreetlightX

They're foundational for philosophical arguments. I've seen way too many examples on this forum where arguments go nowhere since people just bash opinions and doesn't listen to the other side.

I'd be against because fallacies are a terrible way of relating to philosophy. At best the only describe some kind of logical error in abstract. It's not helpful to engaging with philosophical claims because doesn't really address them. In the face of a claim regarding what is true or not, fallacies only pick out some element of logical structure of an argument.

Pointing out a fallacy doesn't actually tell us about whether a philosophical claims is worthwhile. People argue poorly (or not at all sometimes), for true claims. If we are thinking about pointing out fallacies, we've lost sight of what we are interested in. We cease to be investigating what is true or which claims are worth accepting, and have insert became obsessed whether someone has said a word we think to be wrong.

The VR of fallacies holds no truths. All we see there are some rules we've grown to like playing in, a game of handing out jellybeans or not, depending on whether someone has said all the right words. Fallacies are for debaters, who are not interested in learning anything.
— TheWillowOfDarkness


We could pin this as an example of what not to do. — Terrapin Station

Yes, I think there's a lot of misunderstanding towards what a fallacy and bias really is. If we are interested in truth, we cannot arrive there if every post reads like personal opinions and facts mixed in with personal values around those facts.

Keeping fallacies and biases in mind while writing is not limiting, it's focusing.

3.3k
I believe the idea is that the less pinned, the better. There's only so much real estate, and we want to save it for discussion. Fallacies and biases would be nice and all, but a bit of a luxury that we don't really need. — StreetlightX

Maybe have it in the already pinned post as an addition to what's already pinned there?

My fear would be that pinned rules would not appear as helpful and educational, but they would be viewed as pedantic rules that must be adhered to or face the consequences of being chastised for failing to read and understand the fundamental rules of logic this board apparently is prioritizing. — Hanover

The suggestion wasn't really about "rules", but recommendations or a list to have in mind in order to not drift away too much when writing.

Perception of gender in terms of how we move our bodies, how we process perceptual information, how we perceive others in terms of sexual attraction, is not simple socially constructed. — Joshs

This is straw-manned. Of course not everything around sexuality is a social construct, but how you act on the biological impulses and emotions you have and what is creating those feelings externally is very much a construct. Everything around you, how you navigate the world is based on what you've learned and experienced so far.

If I were to take you in a time machine back to when you were still in the womb and flood your brain with certain sex hormones , your brain physiology would be altered in terms of gendered perceptual-affective processing(such studies have been done on lab animals). — Joshs

Yes, but you are missing the entire point. Did you read the previous posts with the of back and forth arguments? If you did that, it's exactly what I'm talking about. If you have emotions and biological drives that don't comply with the norms of society and that's why you lean towards another gender concept, you try to fit in within that social construct as there are no concepts in our social construction of a person that is balancing in between. People want to fit everyone else into boxes with labels, this is how we process the world around us. If someone doesn't fit in either box with labels "man" and "woman", people will behave like they're from outer space. Read my earlier posts.

I could steer you in more of a masculine or feminine direction. I'm not saying that the definition of masculinity and femininity is fixed, though. It changes throughout human history as a consequence of the interaction between biology and culture, but there is an underlying brain physiology basis that is independent of culture. — Joshs

It changes throughout human history as a consequence of the interaction between biology and culture

You counter-argued your own argument here since it's exactly what social construct is. The culture is the construct and the clash between biology and culture creates our gender identities. I don't know why it's difficult to juggle the two concepts at the same time? Gender identity is a construct as it relates to the perception of the biological gender, which is our biology.

The clash between the perception of our biology and our biological drives is the basic things we have tried to control ever since society was created in human history. And that is culture, which is a construct, we have constructed ideas about men and women, different in different cultures. Put any child with any type of hormonal makeup into a culture and they will grow up within the confines of that construct. It will affect how they act, process the world and process their own emotions. If you remove the construct and have two people: a man and a woman just existing together without any previous culture, they will spot the biological differences they have between them and then start constructing behavior around it. If you have three people as a starting point, one who in our culture would be unsure which gender they belong to, they wouldn't ask those questions in a tabula rasa culture, since there are no constructs to measure against. There would just be three people without any demand to put them in two boxes, they essentially exist in three boxes without labels. As that culture grows, it may be that such a culture then has three labeled boxes for their basic understanding of gender.

Everything around you is a social construct. From the time you wake up to when you go to bed, you navigate through societies construct. Built up through thousands of generations each changing small things about how we should handle our biological drives and impulses.

Think about this every time you have an impulse or a thought of doing something and you don't, why didn't you? Do you think that's biology? No that's how we've reasoned around our biology, that's the construct that programmed you not to act on that impulse; "oh, if I did that, people would think I'm crazy" or "I can't do that, it's stealing" ...or "I can't do that, it's not what a man should do". That is a construct.

Maybe tips on how to improve posts scare those away who just want to express opinions and not do philosophy at all.

It's not a threat. It's a fact which I am reporting. If you are a person of reason you will dismember your atheism yourself. — Jake

This is religious preaching and not tolerated on this forum. The rest is just an insult to my intellect and ad hominem that's directly out of line.

Yes, really. Anybody who claims atheism is "merely a lack of belief" doesn't understand atheism. I didn't say stupid, but would say immature, lacking experience, typically lacking a real interest in the subject. — Jake

You seriously aren't following forum guidelines now. This is evangelistic spamming.

Why are you an atheist? — Jake

Stop spamming

Ah, so your lack of belief in a God just magically sprang into existence out of nothing. It's a miracle!! — Jake

You have a belief that people are born into this world, growing up with a belief as a primary starting point and then move over to atheism. Without anyone imposing religion and religious belief onto you, you will not evolve a belief in God or the supernatural. Outside influences always determine your core values. You learn things, you do not learn no things. You learn to follow a religious belief, you do not learn not to follow a religious belief.

Once again the fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of something absent. You imply atheism as something, it is the absence of something.

You do not learn there is not a chair in your room, you either learn there's a chair in your room or you don't have a chair and it's not part of your room or your perception of the room.

The chair doesn't exist, it's absent from both your idea of there being one and your experience of it. You don't learn there's not a chair in your room. Just as you don't learn to have faith in supernatural stuff, that faith is that chair, it's not there and you don't have it. You come in contact with others who claim there to be a chair in your room and it's just irrational in your perspective that there would be a chair in there.

Then there are those, like you, who claim that someone made me not think there's a chair in my room. And also claim that not accepting there to be a chair in that room is responsible for evils in this world. It's absolute nonsense.

Not sure why people are against it? It's just some tips about how to improve an argument and handle a dialectic properly. Weird.

What is this lack of belief based on? What is it's source? How does the atheist arrive at this lack of belief? It didn't just magically pop in to existence out of nowhere, right? — Jake

This is why it seems so hard for theists to grasp the concept of atheism. There's no source, there's just no belief in God or the supernatural. Do you believe in unicorns? If not, what's the source? Why don't you believe in unicorns? Did that lack of belief just pop into your head out of nowhere? Do you see the irrationality of asking that question?

You try so hard to find evil in atheism and this is what at least I find scary about theists way of reasoning. Maybe that's why my argument is about making irrational belief unethical.

Not a threat, a fair warning. I'm alerting you to what is coming so you can avoid it if you wish. Should you choose to avoid the dismemberment of your atheist belief system, feel free to do so, with no complaint from here. It's possible that I'm three times your age and have been doing this since before you were born. If so, I don't wish to be a bully. Anyway, enough about that, you will continue or you won't, and I'm agreeable either way. — Jake

You keep doing it, warnings, threats of "dismembering my atheism". It's anti-intellectual theist preaching and by my understanding, it's against forum rules.

So "gender" is a cultural characteristic - something that is part of the identity of a culture, not an individual, and "gender identity" is one's perception of one's self relative to this cultural characteristic of a particular culture? So, in essence one isn't changing one's "gender" when moving to a culture with a different "gender". They are changing their "gender identity". — Harry Hindu

Yes, biological gender doesn't change, but their perception of their gender identity may change. However, it's more likely that the culture they grew up in become their definition of gender. If someone grows up in a place which has a strict idea about what it means to be a woman, they will view those ideas and characteristics about "woman" as the norm of what it means to be a woman. Even if they move to a new place, they will not be able to easily erase their "programming" and they will view women in the same way. Which is why people who moves to another country with a vastly different culture, will have a hard time mixing well into that culture, it might take years or never at all.

So when someone says that they feel like a woman, they are referring to their gender identity, not their gender. Gender is a social construction and gender identity is not. Gender identity is a personal view. Is this all correct? — Harry Hindu

The perception of gender is the social construct and that social construct informs how we view our gender identity. If a culture has an idea of how a man should be and you are a woman who feels like your identity fits more with the construct of a man in that culture, you might become confused as to why you biologically are a woman, but every aspect of your feelings and psyche points to the idea of a man. When you then come into contact with other people in that culture, they treat you like a woman because that's your biological gender, but you feel awkward like you don't belong in that category, that all the ideals of being a woman don't apply to you.

In that case, you might start thinking about things like a sex change and acting out like a man instead of a woman, because that is what you feel is right for you in that culture. The social construct of how genders should act and behave put your identity into a category that was in conflict with your real biological gender, so you either try to deny your gender identity or you go ahead and accept your own identity where you feel at home.

I think this is like anything really. We have something physical in front of us, but we experience it by perception. Our bodies apply to this as well, we have a perception of it and it has a physical existence. Perception and physical existence don't always play hand in hand.

I think mods should do it so that it's properly done, not users.
But it seems very few want such a pinned post. Don't know why though, seems people don't want to be reminded that their argument might be flawed :chin: :lol:

Atheism is the faith based belief that human reason is a tool of sufficient power to credibly analyze the very largest of questions about the most fundamental nature of everything everywhere (scope of most God claims). — Jake

What? Atheism is just not a belief in God or any supernatural things. That's the only thing it is, what you apply to it after that is your own invention, which is the problem.

If there are no doctrines or teachings within atheism, what in the world are you posting about?

The horrors of the atheist regimes were built upon the faith based belief that there is no higher power that we are accountable to, that is, we are free to make up our own rules. And so they made up a rule that it's ok to slaughter millions if we can claim some greater good down the line. — Jake

Atheism is just a denial of the existence of any supernatural elements or God/Gods. You cannot blame atheism for the ideas that people had which led to these things.

The fundamental difference here is that religion HAS TEACHINGS that becomes a basis for ideas, ATHEISM HAS NO TEACHINGS. This is fundamental.

You are making a causation does not mean correlation fallacy because you don't seem to understand the basic concept of what atheism is and what it is not.

Like most of the atheists I've met online, you have no idea what atheism really is, a faith based belief system. That is, an immature faith based belief system which typically doesn't even know it is a faith based belief system. — Jake

This is your own definition and you call out atheists as being stupid not to understand their own atheism. Really? Are your online encounters with atheists and your own ideas about atheism the definition that is true?

To dispute this, please provide the proof that human reason, the poorly implemented ability of a half insane semi-suicidal species only recently living in caves on one little planet in one of billions of galaxies, is capable of credibly claiming what doesn't exist in all of reality, a realm which we can't currently define in even the most basic manner such as size and shape etc. — Jake

What does this, what so ever, has to do with your attack on atheists and atheism? Atheism is just the absence of belief in any supernatural things or God/Gods. Nothing more, nothing less and what you do with that, if you are an atheist, is by your own responsibility.

This is the same kind of request for proof we would reasonably ask from those quoting Bible verses etc. That is, please prove the qualifications of your chosen authority for the task at hand. Anyone who can't provide proof of the qualifications of their chosen authority is a person of faith. — Jake

What are you talking about? It appears that you don't understand the basic concept of atheism.

This all falls apart when we notice that all 'rational' beliefs can be traced back to unprovable axioms that we take on faith, such as the Principle of Induction.

Religious beliefs can be as rational as non-religious ones. They just use a slightly different set of axioms.

If one insists on ranking beliefs in order of 'worthiness', one will have to do it by looking at the axioms. One way to do that is to observe that some axioms are accepted by all people. The Principle of Induction is one. We might then claim that the only reasonable beliefs are those that are derived from the minimal set of axioms that is believed by all humans. That would rule out religious belief, but it would also rule out many other beliefs that most people are very attached to - such as the belief that there are other consciousnesses (anti-solipsism).

That's why I think it's a doomed and unhelpful exercise to try to categorise beliefs based on 'rationality'.

There are other and better ways to oppose beliefs that one finds harmful (and only a minority of religious beliefs are harmful anyway). — andrewk

The basic point of the argument is to distinguish belief that we take for truth without evidence or support. What I mean is that this argument is primarily an inductive argument for the most moral way to act around the concept of belief. If irrational and unsupported belief eventually leads to a distortion that is harmful, directly or indirectly, it's not ethical to hold on to that type of belief. Type B and C are beliefs that we primarily know are beliefs.

The difference and the basic moral act is to always move away from type A beliefs and hold onto type B and c, since we then always treat them as beliefs, we know that we don't know they are true, we know that they might be, but we would never act on them as truths.

This applies to more than religion, like for anti-vaxxers beliefs which are supposed, in their eyes, to be for the greater good, but if they had treated their fears as unsupported and in need of verification before they acted on them, they would not be responsible for the return of almost eradicated diseases. They all act on a type A belief.

So in religion, there's nothing wrong with the belief specifically, but the risk is that they influence society with their religious belief; that the consequences, even after their death, is a distortion of truth and reality for other people who then act out with harm.

My point is about how we treat belief, that we don't have a good line drawn in our heads about what beliefs are unsupported and what have support or at least that we know are beliefs. If we always had in mind that it's immoral to keep unsupported belief unchecked and act out by such unsupported belief, we would treat beliefs much more rational and always know them to be beliefs instead of through bias distort our irrational belief into truths. The different types reflect this; type A as belief that we accept as truth without evidence or support and type B and C as a belief that we know is only belief and in need of further support.

Such statements always disqualify any commentator in my eyes. If Stalin and Mao had been ardent Catholics leading explicitly Catholic regimes (or Islamic regimes) I'm guessing you'd be more than happy to offer this as evidence of the evils of religion. Which you will now deny of course, further discrediting your analysis. Seen all such dodging a billion times, bored to tears by it. — Jake

But you treat atheism as something with doctrines and rules to live by, which is a fundamental misunderstanding of what atheism is. You compare it to religion in the way that these regimes took "ideas out of atheism and applied to the terrors they acted out", which is impossible because there are no doctrines or teachings within atheism, as it isn't based on anything like that.

It's such a misunderstanding of atheism that I see time after time. The idea that atheism is some religious doctrine to follow. Communism and Nazism have nothing to do with atheism, that's pure nonsense.

How can you attach atheism to these regimes? In what way did atheism cause them according to you? I'm genuinely interested in how you make that correlation without straw-manning the concept of atheism or applying attributes to atheism that does not exist.

beliefs , even irrational beliefs, are not inherently bad or good, the just are. Even specific ideological beliefs such as Christianity or communism are not inherently bad or good. — Rank Amateur

The argument is about beliefs you think is true, as per my A-C belief types. Type A is irrational belief which you think is true without anything to back it up. Type B and C are beliefs which you know is not proven, but you think they might be true. The difference is that with these beliefs you act with caution, you tell them with the disclaimer "it's only my speculation" or "it's only a hypothesis". Type A, however, is "This is the truth", without anything to back it up with. Such beliefs are not good or bad, but they influence and distort society over a long period of time.

My point is that you can have type B and C beliefs, but never type A, which should be considered unethical as it distorts people's ideas of truth.

Specific actions taken by individuals or groups can be evil, and often ideological beliefs are used as justification for such acts. Rarely on review are these justifications the unique, major or even the real motivation, they are just the best excuse. — Rank Amateur

All belief of type A should be considered unethical, regardless of origin or use.

Without even going into a premise by premise argument, it fails because

If a group of people jointly share a belief, And some of those people do good, and some do bad, it is illogical to assign the bad to the belief.

You point turns into many murderers like chocolate ice cream, therefore chocolate ice cream causes murder. — Rank Amateur

No, I think you misunderstand the conclusion of the argument. What my argument points out is that Type A beliefs should be considered unethical since they distort truth over a period of time. If people believe things and do not care to understand that they are beliefs, they become truths for them, just like with anti-vaxxers going into cognitive bias and claim truth in vaccines causing autism.

It doesn't matter if some do good and some do bad, all belief of type A eventually lead to distortion of truth and may result in bad things happening. There is no reason to have, act or live by type A beliefs.

I think you should read my argument in detail again, this feels a bit straw-manned.

In the 20th century it was explicitly atheist regimes that led the mass murder assault upon humanity. — Jake

No, they were based on irrational beliefs and a form of similar religious followings of their leaders that you can see within religious groups, there was nothing atheistic about any of it. If you look at how they close to deified their leaders and how they followed their irrational belief you will understand that it has nothing to do with atheism. My argument is also focusing on irrational belief as a whole, which means it also includes things like eugenics and fantasies about social structures without any insight into psychology or sociology.

My personal opinion about the idea that it was atheism that caused these mass murders is that its pure nonsense and without any real insight into how these regimes formed, what doctrines they built their society upon and the irrational ideas that they lived under and ruled by. It's often used to disparage atheism whenever someone brings up how religious beliefs has caused harm during thousands of years.

Irrational ideas without foundation in evidence or rational thought will always be the root of any mass murder. I recommend that you actually look into these events during the 20th century, they acted out far closer to religious forms than any atheistic ideas. Charles Manson and his followers are closer in form to how Hitler and the Nazis acted out than any atheistic groups of people.

So, in what way is your comment any counter-argument to my argument? What is irrational belief is irrational regardless of form.

They would have a different gender identity, not biological gender. But gender as it's used in language and culture rarely focus on the biological, except for within medicine and biological applications. So if we are talking about a cultural approach to gender, how it exists within a society, how it is referred to, how it affects social interactions etc. gender in that sense has nothing to do with biology and all about the construct society formed around the biology.

• Biology is empirical.
• How we relate to our own biology is perception.
• How we categorize that perception is an individual construct.
• Categorizing that perception into an individual construct is through comparing individual perception to social norms of perception.

Therefore, gender identity is a social construct.

I think it would be better to break down the actual premises, what is wrong with each etc. Not that you don't like, but actual problems, like what is unclear, is the validity of each in question and why. Inductive arguments do not need to have premises written in categorical statements, but they need to be true. Like as we have been talking about, the first premise is not about definitions of God, but that the concept of God, any definition of God is unsupported by evidence and arguments, therefore God is a belief, regardless of its subjective definition. This is true, it can only be false if God had actually been proven to exist. So, as inductive premises, what are the problems with them?

• No argument or evidence has ever been able to prove the existence of a God or Gods, regardless of definitions for what God is, since God as a concept always refers to a concept outside of conclusions or the evidence at hand. Religious belief is therefore based on pure belief in something that is unsupported by evidence or rational deduction.
  - Updated this with the new premise to include individual definition differences.
  
• Kierkegaard or Pascal presented reasons to believe in God not linked to the existence of God, but either through Pascal's wager, in which it's most logical to believe than not to. Or by Kierkegaard, to believe because of the belief itself is a way of life (in his case Christianity).
  - Are there any problems with how I frame their ideas? Are they not true to what they proposed?
  
• Russel's Teapot analogy points out the importance of burden of proof. If you make a claim or believe in something, you have the responsibility to prove it first. You must do this before claiming it to be true or demand others to disprove your belief or claim. If not, you could possibly invent any belief you want, like teapots in space and conclude it to be true since no one has the means to prove against it.
  - Is this not what Russel proposed?
  
• By Russel’s teapot analogy and according to premise 1-2; religion or other beliefs can be made into whatever people can think of. This opens the door for people with dark and twisted thoughts and ideas to make up any type of belief they want, which could consist of harmful ideas such as murder, rape, torture and other kinds of harm to other people and themselves.
  - Is this not true? If people can make up a belief about whatever they want, by human nature wouldn't someone be able to intentionally or unintentionally create a belief around harming others? As we have plenty of historical examples of?
  
• If there’s a possibility that hateful and dangerous belief-systems will be created, it has a high probability of happening over a long enough timeline.
  -This is a regular probability premise. If there's a possibility of it happening, it will eventually happen if the timeline is long enough.
  
• There is no such thing as personal belief since you do not exist in a vacuum, detached from the rest of society and other people. As long as you interact with other people and the world, you will project your personal belief into other people’s world-view and influence their choices. The only way to not affect other people is to isolate yourself, but as soon as you interact you are projecting your ideas into the world.
  - Based on basic conclusions in psychology, out of observations about human psychology and how people interact in social groups. That we influence and change other people's mind through what we believe can be seen all around us. If this premise wasn't true, we wouldn't, for example, be able to control people's consumption through commercials.
  
• Epistemic responsibility put a responsibility on the ones who make choices without sufficient evidence. To choose to believe in something that you have no rational reasoning behind or no evidence for, is to accept something as true, without evidence or rational reasoning behind. This, based on premise 6, can lead to you projecting beliefs into others world-view and influence other people's choices and ideas based on a belief that you have not falsified, hold to scrutiny, proved or rationally reasoned behind.
  - This is primarily just the definition of Epistemic responsibility and how it relates to the previous premises. It might be that this should be included in the conclusion than as a premise though?
  
• Belief can be categorized into three parts:
  A) Belief without rational cause, a belief that is without evidence, accepted as truth and acted upon by the believer.
  B) Belief with rational cause, a belief that has rational reasoning and logic and which has gone through falsifiable reasoning as much as possible, acted upon with caution because it is never considered to be true.
  C) Scientific belief, i.e Hypothesis, an educated guess based on observations, previous evidence, careful induction, partly researched, but never accepted or acted upon as true before proven into a scientific theory.
  - This is a breakdown of different belief types, I don't see how the definitions are wrong about each belief type?

They were categorical questions asked in the context of a piece of argumentation. — tim wood

I think you are avoiding the questions themselves. It feels like you focus too much on the semantics here and don't look linguistic pragmatic of the text. But let's rephrase them as an actual argument:

• Personal beliefs are unable to be contained as it influences both how you communicate and your behavior.
• During a lifetime, a person's beliefs will eventually influence others and/or even be communicated directly.
• Personal belief can be both rational or irrational, but follow the same pattern of an idea without full support in truth.

Therefore, regardless of the belief, it will eventually influence other people even if it wasn't intentional.

Psychology our measure of truth? That's a whole other discussion. — tim wood

Psychology is an empirical science and science is a better measurement for truth than anything else. The truth, in this case, is that the above argument is based on logic in behavior, it's basic psychology. You can pretty much take that argument and try and falsify it with as many scientists in the field as you can and I doubt it will break. But even so, you need to counter it with something more than just dismissal.

But you're missing my point - consistently. Argumentation is an exercise in both content and form, and there are rules. You're breaking them in a consistent manner in support of your conclusion. The kindest term for that is sophistry. As to any psychological insight that might be in your questions, sure. But that wasn't what you're asking. In short, I answered the questions you asked. If you want to ask different questions, fire away. — tim wood

You answered no to them and therefore you deny basic psychology. You are therefore essentially denying results in science and it would require much more than just "no". It seems you want to have a dialectic about my argument, but I cannot just go by a "no", should I just take your word for it when I have support for the claim? The premises of the above argument are true, with support in science. How is that sophistry?

In this topic, a care with language is preferred to a lack of care. As it happens - as you would know if you looked - there are a variety of definitions of God. — tim wood

You mention this, but my counter to that is that they don't, it's a normal counter to argue that God is so undefined it can't be used like this, but God is always a sentient creator at least, and further down the road it gets more attributes depending on the religion. Even in pantheons, there's always the first one, the creator. In some cases, there's an event, but no first cause arguments focus on those religions since they would imply an event as the first cause and therefore render the argument not usable (but probably more true) for trying to prove God. There are no real ways to define God in any other way that isn't a sentient being. If you remove that definition, it could just be a rock and it would be irrational to even name it God. God is pretty defined by everyone who uses the word, of course, different as well, but not in its prime definition, a sentient being, a creator. And even if a religion has Gods appearing after an event that was the creation, it has even less deductive arguments or proof for their existence. However you turn it , God is pretty defined as a sentient being, a creator.

But I get your point and it might need to be rephrased since the premise obviously stirred up confusion.

If you have any evidence that supports any one of them over any other, please refer to it. What I did notice in my brief survey is that none use the word "responsible." So then instead of your "which is responsible for the creation," I would substitute, "who is worshiped as the creator of the universe." Really the important word is "as." This concept of God is God "as." And the as-clause is just what is attributed as accident to the concept God. Inasmuch as the substance, or essence, of God is unthinkable, God accumulates accidents. But no being, real or otherwise is equal to, the same as, a partial listing of its accidents. If "God" could be considered as you consider him, then your argument might itself have more bite, more substance, but He can't be, and thus yours can't either. — tim wood

If definitions of God is anything other than a supernatural sentient being, why call it God? That opens up to calling anything God, my coffee cup is God. But the premise points to no evidence or argument in support of God, so even if your definition is different it is still valid since there are no arguments that can conclude with "God". All arguments or attempts at proving God ends up with a result where the one doing the argument slaps the word "God" on top of their conclusion, they are all flawed. Therefore however you define "God", the premise about there not being any argument or evidence for God still holds up. In order to prove that premise false, you need to actually prove that there is support for God and not that it's a coffee cup.

So, the premise is about evidence for God and there are none, why is that false? Since however you turn it, using God as a definition about something, whatever it is, is a belief that is unsupported. I.e the premise points to belief in God without proof. If this is not true as a premise, why is it false? Because people define God so differently? No, God is always a belief, there is nothing that supports God as real.

So would the premise work better if it's phrased like this:
Old
No argument has ever been able to prove the existence of God or gods through evidence. Religious belief is therefore based on belief in something that is unsupported by evidence or rational deduction.
New
No argument or evidence has ever been able to prove the existence of a God or Gods, regardless of definitions for what God is, since God as a concept always refers to a concept outside of conclusions or the evidence at hand. Religious belief is therefore based on pure belief in something that is unsupported by evidence or rational deduction.

What that might leave is a concept of God that works - is at the least self-consistent. I have that, and nothing in the least bit supernatural about it. And because there is no touchstone for the concept of God, mine, being functional - if not as satisfying; I never claimed it was globally satisfying - has fair claim to being correct, or no less correct than others. — tim wood

But here's the problem, calling something that actually exists, a dead object or just plain causality or whatever as God is distorting everything to such a degree that no one can ever talk about God in any way or form since everyone has their own definition of what God is. If I started using definitions that we have in language, to refer to other things, like calling a plane - a car, a chair - a plant, a person - a dog, I would distort communication because of personal preferences of language. Like Wittgenstein pointed out: the meaning of a word is out of its use in language. If you start calling God something else than a supernatural sentient being, you are breaking the definition as it's used in language. But it's also according to my new version of the premise a definition that doesn't have a correlation with what you apply it to. Let's say that you call causation or entropy God, that is unnecessary since causation is causation and entropy is entropy. Is my friend God if I call him God instead of Bob? Can I use that as a counter-argument to someone using God in an argument? You can't use God in the argument because I define Bob as God, therefore your premise is false? It ends up as an absurd critique of the actual point of the premise and I would assume that Wittgenstein would have agreed with me on this.

You're making categorical statements and arguments. And one problem with categorical statements is that they're either all right or all wrong, no "neither-nor." So while if you tempered your arguments to the probable or the existential or the "some" or the "sometimes" and worked with that, your arguments would merit consideration. But expressed in universal terms, the argument does not merit consideration because the premises are false. — tim wood

But you are still defining my argument as a deductive argument, when it is an ethical inductive argument about how we ought to act around the concept of beliefs.

Inductive arguments do not demand categorical statements in the same way as deductive arguments. They still need to have valid premises and from what I gather you don't think the first premise is valid because you have your own definition of God, which per Wittgenstein, breaks meaning out of language.
If textbook definitions, common definition, common use in language etc. define God as a supernatural sentient being, possibly a creator, that is the meaning and definition. Otherwise, Bob is God.

As to inductive argument, you might care to read the definition you provided. Inductive arguments are suggestive, deductive conclusive. I read you as arguing for conclusive conclusions. If you want to make a good substantive argument, then you have no choice but to do the work. If a problematic argument, then you have to change your language. — tim wood

But my conclusion is a "should" conclusion. It's an "ought to" conclusion. It doesn't say that people "must". I conclude a result of the premises in support of the actual inductive conclusion that was to prove reasons on why not to accept an irrational belief of any kind and instead focus on evidence and proving ideas and beliefs you have. The actual conclusion is suggestive:

Therefore, religious or other types of belief that are of type A, should be considered unethical and criticized. The moral obligation should be to always uphold epistemic responsibility (Premise 7) and prioritize belief type B and C as ethical while condemn type A as unethical. This applies to all people for any belief of type A; religious, personal and in institutions, research and politics. — Christoffer

Yeah, I've seen it. I wonder what the level of tolerance is for this? Discussions need a lot of room so that people dare to keep doing it, but how far?

Evangelists: Those who must convince everyone that their religion, ideology, political persuasion, or philosophical theory is the only one worth having.

Is a definition of what's not welcome on the forum, not sure if it applies and I don't want to be pushing in that direction, but some overview might be needed?

Downvotes weren't actually an option, just upvotes. The main issue was that there was a cumulative total on a user's profile and an option on the members list to list members by the total number of votes they received creating a hierarchy of users, and most people didn't want to live in my shadow. — Michael

Understandable, but what if you removed the ability to list by rank or see how many votes?
I mean that if the rank score is invisible to everyone, including yourself and then, let's say 10 votes, gives you a "sign" beside your name on posts that say something like "Reliable Poster", then at 15, it switches to "Respected Poster", then at 25 it says "Quality Poster" and at 50, "Platinum member" and at 100, "Gold member" and a star of approval.

And a post describing the different levels with an explanation about what it means.

That way there's no real hierarchy, only personal stats and it might even give the incentive to behave better in order to earn a better status. Instead of competition, it's about your own effort put into the posts you write.

(of course, we can have funnier levels, like "Sokrates Master" as the highest or something :grin: )

I'm not sure he will understand further. The argument is stuck for him and he doesn't falsify it with our counter-arguments. So instead spamming the same thing over and over ignoring certain parts. It's almost troll-level reasoning right now.

I've assumed that time exists in some form before the Big Bang. But if that assumption is false; time has a start anyway and my argument still holds. — Devans99

No, it doesn't hold because you assume a creator, God, which is pre-Big Bang. Your argument for such a creator falls flat if you start time at Big Bang since your conclusion refers to something before it.

But we are doing statistics and probability here so correlation maybe causation depending on how much correlation there is and there is a lot. — Devans99

I was talking about you slapping a sentient creator God on top of your numbers and Big bang, which has no correlation or causation at all. You cannot just end each sentence with "...and therefore God". It's as invalid as philosophical arguments come.

I'm a deist and that means I believe in science only; God has to be logically possible; not some magic invention of conventional religion. So God is not some mythical creature with the omnipotence, omnipresence etc... he is a real, viable being. So God is not in any way akin to a unicorn when it comes to calculation of probabilities. — Devans99

God does not have to be logically possible, because a sentient God is as magical as anything else you describe. It does not correlate with your argument at all. You basically just decide that God has to be logically possible, it's not, it's speculation, assumption, and fantasy, just as unicorns. You are also describing God as a "he" which means you are acting out pure belief here, you are far from someone who only believes in science. Your way of arguing and your claim to believe in science only is a big oxymoron.

Based on logic; if it happens naturally it will happen infinite times (given infinite time). — Devans99

You defined the unnatural. How can you define the unnatural when first you don't have a strong case for what and what isn't natural? Second, how can you define unnatural as only happening in singular?
You have nothing to back any of this up, it's basically gone into Deepak Chopra territory now.
It's not based on logic, you apply logic on top of a false premise and claim truth.

But if the constants were set during the big bang, they must of been set by something intelligent and that intelligent entity would require a fine tuned environment. That must of been fine tuned by someone else and so on it regresses until we find God. — Devans99

No, they don't have to be set by something intelligent. You cannot apply such assumption onto your argument.

You are just spamming the same thing over and over. Your arguments have been countered already. Go read the arguments from the list of names I provided, apply some effort to your argument because you are running in circles right now, you don't give any thought to the counter-arguments you get and you are speaking nonsense. Do some research, try and do some falsifications and read up on cognitive biases.

Your argument has been countered and is invalid, not just by me. Try again (for real instead)

My argument does not rely on dimensions. It uses the loosest possible definition of time (I don't assume eternalism or presentism). All it relies on is the presence of 'stuff' (matter/energy). — Devans99

Nothing which you can by any confirmation, apply to before Big Bang. You don't even know which dimensions if at all or if by more, existed before Big Bang. Period.

I argue that the Big Bang was not natural or time is finite. Both of those are strongly suggestive of a sentient God. Pretty conclusively so when fine-tuning and other evidence is also taken into account. — Devans99

Causation ≠ Correlation. You cannot apply God to that and you cannot decide if Big Bang was natural or not. Your fantasy correlations do not apply.

Fine-tuning is not evidence, you need to reply to all those who pointed out flaws before concluding anything like that. I listed names, stop just spamming the same thing over and over, you are not doing philosophy now, you are preaching nonsense. Stop ignoring things.

Its a shockingly efficient design if you ask me; the stars provide the energy, the planets provide the living surfaces. Gravity has to be strong to enable nuclear fusion and hence energy for live. And we have to have radiation else energy would not reach the places life lives. It's inevitable that not all parts of the universe would support life whatever universe design you use. — Devans99

You are not a physicist, that much is clear. Because you don't seem to understand what he is talking about and you don't seem to understand the scale of the universe. You need to study physics.

And the fact that even the atom holds together is a miracle of fine-tuning - how likely is that in an arbitrary (non-fine tuned) universe? I think 99.999% of universes would just have particles endlessly bouncing off each other (no adhesion); nothing close to the amazing complexity of matter we have in our universe (see the periodic table and the compounds... all that diversity from just elections and quarks... and that diversity in matter is required to support life). — Devans99

You do know that humans naturally seek patterns in almost anything? You are doing it right now, this is the biggest flaw with the fine-tuning argument. It relies on the psychological effect of just finding a pattern where you see it and you cannot support the fine-tuning argument with that bias. You need to actually prove it and without so, you cannot use it as evidence.

Fantasy rants about how perfect you think things are in nature do not apply as validity to the argument. It's the "finding Jesus in a sandwich"-kind of idea for philosophy, but with a lack of knowledge in physics instead of a lack of knowledge about toasters.

You can calculate the probability of a 'unicorn standing in your back garden' as virtually zero. How has that got anything to do with the probability of 'is there a creator'? Unicorns are magical creatures and magic does not exist. Creators are not magical creatures. — Devans99

Are you seriously not understanding the analogy? This is religious apologetic nonsense you are pulling. God is as real as a unicorn and your argument is as valid as calculating the probability of a unicorn. Leave your beliefs behind when you are trying to prove God, they don't apply here.

If I choose to define my creator as my God that is my prerogative. — Devans99

It doesn't matter what you believe, no one cares, you cannot apply it to your conclusion.

Natural things come in a multiplicity, unnatural things are singular. — Devans99

Based on what? Your beliefs?

The laws of physics do not 'evolve' - there is no selection mechanism. So these constants had to be set a precise values initially in order for life to occur. — Devans99

The laws of physics most likely (by scientific findings) came to be during Big Bang. You cannot conclude that these constants existed before Big Bang and you cannot conclude that they were set intentionally.

Stop making assumptions every time you write, you don't know anything about this. You have a serious cognitive bias and you see patterns and think they prove the things you believe. It's nonsense.

I do not assume that 'there can only be these constants if someone intended for life' - I assigned it a 75% probability that fine-tuning implies a creator. A very conservative estimate, some people put in much higher than that. — Devans99

You cannot calculate the probability at all as have been stated numerous times with numerous counter-arguments. You're just acting out biases and fallacies constantly and you do not actually counter any of the counter-arguments you get. You pick and choose then you say the same thing over and over.

You need to apply yourself to the dialectic, this is actually getting ridiculous.

This is one form of philosophy, the systematic kind. There are disputes on whether or not this approach is the "one true" philosophy. I personally much prefer the systematic approach, but I don't know that it's the only valid one. — Echarmion

At least it demands true arguments without fallacies and biases, everything else is just speculation, regardless of validity as in it's the same as a shepherd seeing a dog that looks like a sheep on a hill far away. He concludes there is a sheep in front of him, when out of his sight, behind the hill the dog stands on there is a real sheep, making his conclusion true, but not correct as an argument.

Systematic and analytical philosophy demands valid premises, that's why I regard continental as thought-provoking, but invalid to make true conclusions from if they cannot be validated through proper arguments.

I define... — Devans99

That's the problem right there.

Because I've established... — Devans99

Not if you began with "I define".

Assumptions assumptions assumptions.

There are no flaws in the fine-tuning argument. — Devans99

You might read the counter-arguments by Mark Colyvan, Jay Garfield, Graham Priest, William H. Jefferys, Elliott Sober, Robert L. Park, Victor Stenger.

Prove their points wrong, I've already given mine. Just saying it has no flaws is uneducated and wrong about the argument. Those people found plenty of flaws, but you are right because... you say so?

But my argument addresses what happens in the case of both:

- Can get something from nothing
- Can't get something from nothing

IE 100% of cases. Did you read the OP?

If quantum fluctuations cause a matter increase on average then we get infinite density with infinite time so it can't be quantum fluctuations that caused the Big Bang. — Devans99

You still don't know the properties of things or the properties themselves before Big Bang. So you cannot conclude anything since you are talking about something probably (based on science) outside of spacetime itself. If you cannot define the dimensions, things or properties themselves, you cannot conclude anything, this is fact. You don't know more than the scientific consensus and the scientific theories around, so why argue that you do?

But what properties do we need to know? My argument makes no assumptions at all about the properties of the universe pre Big Bang. Maybe you did not read the OP. The point is if you make no assumptions about the state of the universe pre-big bang, you can still reason about it. — Devans99

You make an assumption about how it happened, i.e there was a sentient creator, God, that's a pretty big assumption about pre-Big Bang, right? The reasoning you do assumes a sentient God as a property of something you cannot possibly know about at this time and you use that as a value to calculate. Why can't you see this flaw in your reasoning?

A natural creation implies multiple creations, so the creator must be unnatural; IE a zero percent probability of naturally occurring, IE God. Plus fine tuning for life of the universe/multiverse is impossible without an intelligent creator. — Devans99

You still haven't defined natural and unnatural post your own assumption i.e...

I define... — Devans99

...and even if you validate it as unnatural, it doesn't mean it's God, that is an assumption.

And the fine-tuning argument is still not as valid as you accept it to be. Can you please do some falsification on it? Instead of just Texas Sharp-Shooting everything in your reasoning?

Here's a quote from physicist Robert L. Park:

If the universe was designed for life, it must be said that it is a shockingly inefficient design. There are vast reaches of the universe in which life as we know it is clearly impossible: gravitational forces would be crushing, or radiation levels are too high for complex molecules to exist, or temperatures would make the formation of stable chemical bonds impossible... Fine-tuned for life? It would make more sense to ask why God designed a universe so inhospitable to life. — Robert L. Park

Then you can go through more falsifying by looking into the names I mentioned above on the matter. Problem is that you accept the fine-tuning argument, therefore you have the assumption of God in your head while making your own argument. That's why it's flawed.

I made conservative estimates on the percentages. It is a systematic and mathematically correct way to carry out a probability meta-analysis. At least I'm making an effect instead of throwing my hands up. 'I don't know' is not an informative answer. — Devans99

Your calculations do not have anything to do with a sentient God, period. Stop doing a causation/correlation fallacy and make assumptions out of that to conclude nothing that has support in the premises. You are actually not listening to any of the counter-arguments you get, you just decide which assumptions and arguments are correct, then do your calculation based on what you think is correct and conclude that it has a probability without any connection to anything other than your assumptions.

I can not calculate the probability of a unicorn standing in my backyard, but I can calculate the probability of a horse. How is this not crystal clear?

Point to exactly where I am using 'belief' in my argument please. I believe in logic and maths and nothing else. 1+1=2 applies before and after the big bang so yes, maths and logic can make statements about what happened before the Big Bang (as long as no axioms about the pre-Big Bang period are used). — Devans99

God, a sentient God, it is not a math number or quantifiable, it is your belief it is your unicorn. You are trying to calculate the probability of the existence of a unicorn by applying valid math on made up probability values about a unicorn that you assumed to exist before the calculation of probability. It's pure nonsense. It's not 1+1=2, it's 1+1=[UNICORN]

But the question 'Is there a creator?' does exist within logic and is fair game. — Devans99

"Is there a creator?" is a vague question that through logic conclude it to be a sentient God, without nothing more than math.

I have defined these terms; again:

- Natural events have a non-zero probability of occurring naturally given sufficient time
- Unnatural events have a zero probability of occurring naturally however much time — Devans99

Even with this reasoning, how can you conclude Big Bang to be unnatural if you don't know the things, properties or properties themselves of what was before Big Bang? How can you define if Big Bang was natural or unnatural when you don't have any data since science has no data on the event themselves?

So we can use these definitions to reason about the pre-Big Bang universe. — Devans99

No, we can't, because you cannot define whether or not it was natural or unnatural at the same time as your definition of natural and unnatural is your own. So you cannot connect it to anything pre-Big Bang.

Fine tuning is not a fallacy; there are about 20 physical constants that if changed would result in no life in the universe. — Devans99

What does that prove? How can you not just turn that around and say that because the universe evolved these 20 physical constants it enabled life to evolve? There's no connection between any intention of fine-tuning and the natural evolution from these constants to life. You apply the assumption that there can only be these constants if someone intended for life, which is only an assumption and therefore a fallacy. How can you possibly connect the constants to the intention of life? False cause fallacy if I ever saw one. Also, there are 22 known constants, not 20.

I have not in my argument made any assumptions about the pre-Big Bang period. I have not even assumed gravity, the standard model, cause and effect. So as there are no assumptions about the pre-Big Bang period it is OK to reason about it. — Devans99

A sentient God as a creator is your assumption. Valid conclusions end just after Big Bang, since that's where we are at in science, beyond that is speculation and if you are trying to conclude anything with "sentient God the creator" you are making assumptions about what was before Big Bang. This is crystal clear.

Where then would you suggest I start with a probability analysis if it is not 50%/50% ? — Devans99

You cannot, because you cannot measure the probability of something that is made up, like a unicorn. If we can prove that there are signs of a unicorn, we can calculate probabilities of them existing. But we cannot use probability to calculate nothing. Since we don't have any idea what came before Big Bang, and since there are no arguments that show signs of any sentience responsible for the universe, we have no properties to calculate. It is essentially like creating a probability calculation for the probability of a unicorn or a teapot in space by saying there's a 50/50 chance there is a teapot in space and a unicorn in my backyard just because I believe there to be one there and one in space. Then demand people to accept my logical calculation out of 50/50 without even explaining how it relates to either teapots or unicorns in any logical and verified way.

But for philosophy in general, there is no such need. "I don't know" is a valid answer. — Echarmion

Isn't that dependent on the type of claim and argument? A deduction must be true, an induction must be a probability, but both need valid premises. Otherwise, it's just ranting from a chaotic mind and everything comes down to "this is my opinion", "this is that person's opinion".
Philosophy should be about dialectics, pointing out flaws in others arguments and reading objections to your own in order to fine-tune the argument towards a valid deductive or inductive conclusion.

Maybe I'm just leaning towards analytical philosophy more than continental? Continental is interesting and thought-provoking and I like it, but when doing a dialectic it rarely holds up if not supported by actual evidence and science.