Biff the unclean

I have never met anyone who honestly believed that he'd had an experience involving the IPU; I have met people who claim to have had such experiences of God.
Do you know everyone in the world? Then how do you know that no one has? How do you know that you have not met one who just hasn't mentioned it to you? If you opened yourself to the IPU, if you believed then you would know. You have closed yourself to her, otherwise she would come to you.

See how it works?

I can also point out that all the people I have met who have actually seen God with their own eyes and had a one on one conversation with him--and I have met several--have been quite insane.
You aren't telling me about something God has done you are telling me about something people have claimed. And I would be willing to bet, that if they were passably sane, that these people were relating what they would call an internal experience and not an external one. In other words they were relating their own emotions and not an actual incident. It's called imagination.

pariah

what do you say when the christian turns it around on you and asks if you can disprove the IPU?

K

I've noticed that many of the theists that come to this forum do not seem to grasp the purpose of a counter-example.

A counter-example is used to invalidate a proof.

Generally, an assertion is made and a proof is provided to back up that assertion.

If a known false counter-example can be found such that the same method of proof indicates that the counter-example is true, then the proof is invalid. It can be used to prove that false things are true.

The IPU is just a counter-example. The important thing about the IPU is that it DOESN'T exist. If the IPU can be proven to exist with the same reasoning used to prove the existence of God, then the proof of the existence of God is invalid.

The IPU works well to counter arguments such as:

You should believe in God because you can't prove that He doesn't exist.

How can you deny God's existence when He has given you so much?

and Pacals Wager.

It doesn't work so well with arguments based on historical and eyewitness evidence.

GeoTheo

Well, If the IPU were to come to earth in the form of a man and die as a martyr to ransome mankind how would you emulate the IPU?

K

GeoTheo:

???

I still don't think you grasp the concept of a counter-example. The IPU is only an example of something that doesn't exist which can be proven to exist using the same reasoning as many of the proofs for the existence of God.

Emulating the IPU is completely irrelevent (unless your argument is "God exists because I can emulate Him.").

seebs

Sorry, but I don't buy it; there's a substantial gap between "I have information about dozens of people who know this is made up, and no people who believe otherwise" and "I have met people who think this is real".

Internal experience is experience nonetheless. I don't see how you can draw a line between "their own emotions" and "an actual incident"; unless you've never experienced emotion in your life, this seems like a very strange line to draw.

You could draw a line between "internal experience" and "external experience", but you haven't done anything to convince me that the former is "not real". Having had experience of emotion, I'm convinced that it's "real". I am just as willing to avoid things that I think would cause me emotional pain as I am to avoid things that I think would cause me physical pain. In any meaningful sense, my emotions are real things, and they are not entirely volitional, so I may as well treat them as "external", even though they are purely subjective.

seebs

I agree entirely with this. Those are stupid arguments, and the IPU is a good way of showing the flaw in them.

However, strictly speaking, the differences between the IPU and real religions *are* arguably sufficient to change the merit of the arguments. Looks to me like a fallacy of accident; applying the general rules used for evaluating peoples' beliefs in a case where an exception could reasonably be taken to apply - the exception being "we know this to be made up, and recently, and can talk to the people who made it up". The same is involved in the God/Santa thing; we have specific concrete reasons to dismiss reports of Santa, but we don't have the same reason to dismiss most reports of God. (Televangelists and Hovind excluded.)

keyser_soze

Well, you just don't understand the love the IPU has for you, and the fact that she has promised to send a sacrifice so that she can then LEGALLY let you out of the punishment that she created for you...well, you don't understand, so you just bash it! Maybe if you would open yourself up to her love...well, I'll just hope, and pray to the IPU for your biscuit to be given jam forever and ever...amen.

K

seebs:

Does that mean that the things in our dreams should be treated as reality?

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you've heard about the witnesses' dream of the defendant killing somebody. I'm sure that's more than enough evidence to convict."

seebs

No, but I think most of us can tell the difference between dreams and our waking experiences.

While we're playing at strawmen, do you think that we should all feel free to cheat on our spouses, knowing as we do that emotions are "not real"?