Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

Koy,
Aha! You are assuming what you want to prove! Shame on you. Bad atheist.


More seriously. How is this logically different
than someone claiming 'God demonstrably created the universe' ???


SOMMS

Clutch

SOMMS,

FWIW, I have yet to figure out just what your point is. Could you make it clear -- or failing to do so, could you retire the project? Thanks.

Philosoft

You're being silly, SOMMS. One of the premises is demonstrable, the other just claims to be demonstrable.

Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

Clutch,
Just this.


It seems Koy regards 'lack of sound logical proof for God' as a pillar of evidence for the atheistic worldview.

This is fallacious. To demonstrate this I simply remarked that there are no 'sound logical proofs' for milk. When Koy presented an argument, I-using the same tactics many on this board employ-derailed the proof. Almost trivially.


In addition it is asinine to *only* believe in things that have been logically or mathematically proven. For what it's worth 99.999% of what one believes is based upon empirical experience and pattern recognition...not strict logical proof.

All of this is simply to point out that God (like many other things that we believe in) is not something that can be proven. We have knowledge of God like we have knowledge of anything else...personal experience.


SOMMS

[ July 12, 2002: Message edited by: Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas ]</p>

Goliath

SOMMS,

Strawman. Atheism is not a worldview. Atheism is nothing more than a lack of belief that any gods exist. Two different atheists will more than likely have two different worldviews.

Sincerely,

Goliath

Koyaanisqatsi

I clearly qualified what I meant when using the terms I used.

Why is that difficult for you to comprehend or accept? It is the very first thing one does when making an observation or argument.

These are the terms I'm using. Here is how I define them for the sake of my argument.

End of story.

I'm well aware, which is why I qualified my own terminology and the context in which I was applying it.

It qualifies the terms so that everyone involved understands the context and meaning I am applying, so that pointless strawmen like these do not sidetrack from the argument.

There is nothing "idiosyncratic" about defining "know" to be a state of certainty and "belief" to be a state of uncertainty.

That is a perfectly legitimate qualification and delineation of those terms as used by me in my own argument, as is the caveat to you not to bring up pointless semantics games regarding what can or cannot be truly "known;" aka, empiricism vs. solipsism, since that would only serve to muddy--unnecessarily--the definitions I was using for the sake of argument.

It's my argument and those are the terms I am using in the context I am using them and your objections to them are noted, but not applicable nor relevant to the argument and therefore summarily discarded, since they would only serve to mire the argument into pointless semantics games that I deliberately sought to avoid by so qualifying and defining my terms.

If a mathematician is counting from zero to one and you come along and inform him or her that they can't actually do that because there are an infinite number of decimal points between those to numerals and the mathematician in turn says to you, "Thanks, but I am simply equating .99999 repeating with 1 for the sake of my calculations" then that's it for you and your input, yes?

Exceedingly simple and perfectly legitimate.

Stuff that straw. It is precisely because I am well conversant in the quagmire that is empiricism vs. solipsism, for example, that I forbade its irrelevant intrusion to the argument at hand and so qualified my terms.

It is pointless mental masturbation--literally--to argue solipsism, for example, since by definition alone it means there can be no debate, so if that's at all where you were going with what you had posted--as I feared and thus pre-empted with my caveat--then have fun, but don't do it here.

The sheets aren't clean.



Care to qualify that to this thread in some manner, or do you consider generalized, unqualified, borderline ad hominem observations from a past thread to be a legitimate form of argumentation here?

I defined my terms and clarified the context. I did not make them up.

The delineation between "know" and "belief" for the sake of my argument is a matter of certainty vs. uncertainty, a perfectly legitimate delineation.

I clearly defined my terms and when those terms were subsequently challenged, I pre-empted what I perceived to be the end game of that challenge and--based upon that--rejected the challenge as irrelevant and ultimately unnecessary sidetrack to my argument.

You are, of course, free to object to this as I'm sure you no doubt do, but to what end?

Unless you can come up with a legitimate counter argument to my delineation of certainty vs. uncertainty as expressed in the use of the terms "know" and "belief," what would be the point other than to mire the thread in pointless semantics games, IMO?

[ July 12, 2002: Message edited by: Koyaanisqatsi ]</p>

Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

Goliath,
...yet share the same view that there is no evidence of God.

Syntax is arbitrary. You say tomato...

SOMMS

[ July 12, 2002: Message edited by: Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas ]</p>

Koyaanisqatsi

What? I "wanted" to prove that "milk" exists.



One (a cow excreting liquid) is demonstrable, as in, it can be demonstrated; the other (a god created the universe) is not, as in, it cannot be demonstrated.

Clear now?

[ July 12, 2002: Message edited by: Koyaanisqatsi ]</p>

Koyaanisqatsi

Not nearly as fallacious as that claim!

No, you did not.

Strawman. My question was, "Can anyone think of a single sound theist argument?"

As I granted and further clarified was the other point of my thread; that theists should completely discard any calls to formal logic since they do not apply it properly and no sound argument can exist for theism as a necessary quality of theism, according to the terms I used and qualified and you confirm.

Which is precisely why I made my point that no theist should ever attempt to resort to formal logic in an attempt to argue for the logical existence of their gods.

Were you not paying attention?

[ July 12, 2002: Message edited by: Koyaanisqatsi ]</p>

Clutch

Koy, you say repeatedly that you defined your terms -- that this is all you were doing, and quite properly. But no. That's a rather short memory on your part: See, you did not introduce this idiosyncratic definition of belief as your own term of art. You introduced it in taking issue with my observation about the (now manifest) pointlessness of this thread. The correct "technical" definition of "belief", you wrote, was the one you gave. Which is false. As a conceptual matter, knowledge is standardly understood as entailing belief, and as a logical matter is not characterized as "demonstrable", on pain of requiring the KK Principle.

As for solipsism and empiricism, I have no idea what relation they might bear to this thread; nor why you are "forbidding" discussion of something to which I have made no allusion, not even obliquely; nor what conversance with epistemology you have demonstrated by conflating these issues. The point I have made requires nothing but an understanding of the notion of soundness. In particular, that a sound argument has a true conclusion.

Hence, by definition, if there was even one sound argument for theism, theism would be true. Your observation that you are unaware of such an argument amounts to the observation that theism has not been proven true, to your knowledge.

I have not commented in detail on your further claim that your lack of awareness in this respect somehow "implicates" or "indicates" that theism *cannot* be proven true. I assume that you did not intend this claim to be taken seriously.