Not Prince Hamlet

I would now like to reveal my secret argument against theism. It will seem facetious, but hear it out.

I worship a deity. His name is George, and he is a giant turnip. George is all-powerful, omniscient, deceitful, and mischevious. He is fond of planting false information, confusing His worshippers, and changing His mind (that is, when He actually tells you what He's thinking in the first place).

So, I worship George.

The gauntlet I cast before theists is this: prove to me that my god is false and your god real.

Seems facetious, no? But there's a method to the madness.

You see, any evidence you could come up with to support, say, the Christian God, will also support my god, George the Giant Turnip. For instance, if you say, "Look, there's a Bible that explicitly mentions Christ," I turn around and say, "Yep, that crazy George is all-powerful and a prankster. He deliberately planted false information about Christ in the Bible because He wanted to confuse people and make them think that there was such a person."

What does this do for theism? Well, it essentially negates any argument a theist can use. You will have demonstrated that the same arguments that they are using support a vast number of equally (or more) valid hypoethese and that, therefore, their evidence is merely suggestive evidence, and not conclusive evidence.

Basically, they're saying: A -> B -> C -> God. You're saying, yes, but A -> B -> C-> George, too. Therefore, A, B, C do not prove the existance of God. If they did, they would also prove the existance of George the Giant Turnip.

Enjoy!

Jeff

tronvillain

With all the IPU worship that goes on around here, I don't think people will take too warmly to George.

Not Prince Hamlet

IPU? Not familiar with the acronym.

Jeff

bonduca

Hamlet-not first caught my eye when preaching the Way of the Turnip.

Piece,
bonduca-sa

[ March 07, 2002: Message edited by: bonduca ]</p>

Not Prince Hamlet

Praise be to George, sister. Do you wish to testify?

Jeff

bonduca

Well, now I'm in the soup.

Tercel

Not Prince Hamlet,
IPU = Invisible Pink Unicorn.

I suppose you believe the world you touch and move in is real and that other people are real.
I believe that none of it really exists and George is just tricking you into thinking it does by putting an illusion of it into your mind.

Prove me wrong.


Whoops, you can't. Similar reasons as you gave above. Therefore you have no reason to believe that the world really exists over believing it to be a trick of George’s: or such would seem to be the conclusion anyway by your logic.

Solution: We find it convenient to assume that we are not being tricked unless we have good reason to suspect otherwise. Hence we can believe the world exists and isn’t a trick of Georges’, and hence we can believe the evidence for the Christian God points where it appears to point without seriously considering, or even bothering to consider at all, the case that it’s a trick of some George-like deity.

Tercel

Not Prince Hamlet

Actually, that's not true. It's trivially simple to disprove solipsism. There's just one catch. The proof only works for one believer at a time.

The proof? Kill the believer. The problem with the proof? It only proves it to the person who's been killed, and now that he's dead, he won't appreciate the proof. Meanwhile, everybody else still doubts.

Heh. I can see it now: "Honestly, your honor, it wasn't mass murder: I was disproving solipsism!"

Agreed that similar arguments apply, but with differing results. The way to separate the two in terms of equivalence, is assume the conclusion is correct and work backwards.

Assuming George is real has no negative effects on day-to-day living that assuming a god is real wouldn't have, either.

However, assuming solipsism, like determinism, is essentially debilating. In a nutshell, if solipsism is true, then what's the point of doing anything, since it's just an illusion?

That being the case, it is convenient to assume that solipsism is not true. It may very well turn out to be the truth, but if it is, it gets you nowhere fast. Basically, a dead-end in a logical trail. (cogito ergo non sunt?)


My word: Occam's Razor rears its ugly head once again! Ironic, since Occam's Razor, favoring the simplest solution, essentially sides against the existence of a god. (Which is simpler: a universe whose origin can't be explained, or a universe created by a creator whose origin can't be explained?)

Jeff

HRG

But "being tricked" must include any deviation from the naturalistic processes involved in observation and perception (propagation of photons, their absorption in the retina, the nerve impulses etc.). A trickster entity need not put illusions into our mind, but can proceed like this: the external world exists and we do actually observe something, only the causal chain between the event and our perception has been altered.

IOW, the very concept of "not being tricked" requires (at least methodological) naturalism. Let's not forget that all we directly observe are (real or virtual) photons; from those we reconstruct the event according to naturalistic principles: that photons are not created in transit and generally propagate linearly etc. Our whole construction of the external world around us depends on these principles.
But "where it appears to point" is defined only if we start from a firm naturalistic basic: the conclusion that an event really happened because we observed its consequences (photons) depends on naturalistic assumptions. This has nothing to do with solipsism, as I've shown above.

Once we admit supernatural explanations, all bets are off. If you assume that supernatural being X can transform water into wine, I'm entitled to assume that supernatural being Y can transform the photons *) emitted by water so that they are identical to those coming from wine, while the water stays water. In both cases, the same information will reach our sensory organs.

IOW, if we stay consistently within methodological naturalism, the proposed evidence appears to point to a case of measurement error, in the broad sense. Otherwise the evidence points to either the Christian God (who intervened at the event) or to a Loki/Coyote-like god (who intervened during the observation) - but we cannot resolve the ambiguity.

*) Note that hearing, smell, taste etc. are transmitted by photons, too (virtual ones).
If you admit supernatural explanation only at the source of our observations, but not during the process of observing, you are applying a double standard, IMHO.

Regards,
HRG.

[ March 08, 2002: Message edited by: HRG ]</p>

Jayhawker Soule

It must be a slow day ...