Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Kantian · 08-09-2002, 02:07 PM

Quote:

Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas: Kant, How is... 'the existence of Evil implies a moral standard or law by which Evil and Good exist'...a strawman?

Why did you leave out the "universal" qualifier that was in your original statement? I hope that was not done intentionally.

This website presents the definition of <a href="http://gncurtis.home.texas.net/strawman.html" target="_blank">strawman</a> quite well, IMO.

You originally said this: "Thomas, If you claim evil exists then you are claiming there is some universal moral standard or law by which both good and evil exist" in response to what Thomas actually said: "Regardless, I am claiming that "gratuitous evil" as apologists use the term probably exists."

You made an illegitimate move by misrepresenting your opponent's position as one that is charitable to your own purposes. You ignored the face value of the statement and read your own theistic urges into it, thereby you distorted, embellished and misrepresented what Thomas said with extra inferences and dubious reasoning that Thomas would never arrive at.

A strawperson is often committed by reducing a person's position to something easily refuted in order to score cheap points. But don't let me stop you in your running marathon of bad arguments!

[ August 09, 2002: Message edited by: Immanuel Kant ]

Thomas Metcalf · 08-09-2002, 02:11 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Philip Osborne:
"So every possible proposition is accounted for, and it seems that either Q and -Q are equally good, or one is better than the other. Thus, there is considerable intuitive reason (I think) to believe that there is a best possible world or several worlds that are equally best."

This argument doesn't seem to do much in the way of establishing that a "best possible world" is possible; it is true that every possible proposition is accounted for, but this doesn't help your position if it is not assumed that at least one best possible world is counted among these propositions, which is just to say that the best possible world is possible.

Do you agree that for every Q v -Q, either Q is better than -Q, Q is equally as good as -Q, or Q is worse than -Q?

Quote:

"If I were aware of every proposition in the universe, I doubt I could always find a way to make the universe slightly better."

As a side note, there has been considerable argument that there is no set of all propositions. But consider Gaunilo's Lost Island, which is the Greatest Conceivable Island. Suppose that having a lot of fruit is a great-making property for an island. Thus, the Greatest Conceivable Island must have the greatest possible amount of fruit in order to be the Greatest Conceivable Island. But there is no such thing as the "greatest possible amount of fruit." Why couldn't the same considerations apply to possible worlds?

But it's considerably more appealing that there's such a thing as several best possible amounts of fruit. It's certainly conceivable that there could be too much fruit on such an island.

Really, I think it's still quite believable that God has removed as much gratuitous evil as it is possible to remove. Perhaps this verbalization is more acceptable than "This is one of the best possible worlds." If you say that there is no such thing as "as much gratuitous evil as is possible to remove," I believe you face something of an intuitive burden of proof.

Quote:

"Well, first, do you understand why an infinity of possible worlds means that the actual world is infinitely complex?"

I'm not convinced that this is so; your statement seems to presuppose a recombinationist view of possibility, according to which possible worlds are formed from maximal compossible combinations of properties instantiated in the actual world. If our account of the layout of logical space included alien properties (properties not instantiated in the actual world), it is not clear that the presence of these contingencies would add any complexity to the actual world.

Well, I don't believe that alien properties exist or subsist, and I think your position requires that there be an infinity of them.

Thomas Metcalf · 08-09-2002, 02:23 PM

(The "prime mover" argument...)

Quote:

Originally posted by Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas:

Correction. *Every* competent apologist uses this argument. See here for a whold gaggle of contemporary apologists who use it. In addition I have never heard a competent rebuttal.
The only argument the atheist can muster is 'Well why can't the universe have always existed?' Seldom do they admit that all empirical evidence (big bang, entropy, etc) suggests the universe did not always exists and did have a beginning.

You did not answer my criticism. No one has provided the additional stages necessary to demonstrate that a prime mover is (1) omnipotent, (2) omniscient, (3) morally perfect, (4) the creator of the universe, (5) sentient, etc. And many contemporary apologists use some form of cosmological argument, but Aquinas' prime mover argument itself is almost universally accepted to be unsound.

(The finetuning argument...)

Quote:

Uh.m..there is no 'Lottery Fallacy'.
I believe what you are refering to is the wearisome atheistic claim that 'somebody always wins the lottery so we shouldn't be suprised at that we won the lottery of life'.

Of course the correct usage of the lottery analogy would be to paint 100 billion people red and one or two people blue then ask the question 'What is the probablity that a blue person wins the lottery?' Unfortunately for the athiest one can statistically show that if a blue person (life) is chosen one can have absolutely no confidence that this happened at random. Thus one must reject the hypothesis that a life (blue person) happened at random.

The lottery analogy fails because we know that there are people in a position to tamper with the lottery. A better analogy would be if we ran a computerized random number generator (from 1-1000) and produced the sequence 354 99 122 2 98. The probability of this sequence is one in 1,000,000,000,000,000. Do we assume that a magical elf exists who likes the sequence "354 99 122 2 98"? Or that someone was tampering with the machine? According to you, one can statistically show that we can have no confidence that this sequence was produced at random. Do you care to support that statement, or have I misread you?

(The moral argument...)

Quote:

Translation: The only contemporary proponents I can think of is everybody.
Until you can form a single convincing argument that objective moral law does not exist I'll consider this a closed issue.

Once again, you failed to address my criticism. Does God choose what the correct morality is, or does He merely report it?

Quote:

Hmm...lets see.
On one hand we have over 26,000 documents describing in detail God's interaction and relationship with man AND the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ AND this collection of documents has been analyzed, verified and authenticated a plethera of times AND there are a multitude of supporting non-Biblical sources verify many facts in this collection AND we have a single event that had such tremendous ramification and impact that now, more than 2000 years later over 2 billion people claim it to be true....

...and on the other hand we have some Scottish guy who doesn't believe in God saying 'You shouldn't believe in miracles.'

Hmm...tough call. Think I'll 'go out on a limb' and stick with the first one.

For yet a third time, you failed to address my criticism. No one observed Jesus' resurrection, and the documents we have, I'm afraid, posit all sorts of supernatural things that go against everything we know today, and in addition, the translations we have are filled with contradiction and error. Think of all the times we've observed hoaxes, misreporting, lies, hallucinations, historic revision ex post facto, etc. Now compare that to the number of times we've observed a verifiable resurrection. I think the more likely alternative is obvious.

(Personal experience...)

Quote:

Great.

So now you are not only saying I should disregard all the global evidences of God...your are saying I should disregard all my personal experience, knowledge and witness of God as well.

Amazing.

Yes. How do you know that what you "observed" was an omnipotent, omniscient, morally perfect creator of the universe who sent His son to die for humanity's sins, flooded the earth, and exists somewhere outside of space? When did you observe these specific properties of God?

TooBad · 08-09-2002, 02:23 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas:
If our hypothesis is that a blue person won (a life friendly universe happened) at random, we can use statistics to determine that we should reject this hypothesis with unbelievable amounts of confidence.

"Last week's winning numbers had only a 1 in 14 million chance of coming up. Yet, somehow, they came up. How can that possibly be a random outcome?"

The Lottery Fallacy does exist, and you've just committed it.

Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas · 08-09-2002, 02:25 PM

Thomas,

Quote:

Originally posted by Thomas Metcalf:

Then your god is not essentially sentient, morally good, or much else.

Quite the opposite.

If I were to describe God to somebody I would start by saying 'God is the absolute moral standard or law of the universe'.

It is a fallacy, however, to assume that is ALL God is.

Quote:

Originally posted by Thomas Metcalf:

Suffering exists whether or not some universal objective morality exists.

Here we see the common atheistic mode...philosophical backpeddling.

So are you then saying Thomas that evil DOES NOT exist...but that suffering DOES?

Which one is it? I don't care which. Just pick one and stick with it.

SOMMS

Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas · 08-09-2002, 02:30 PM

TooBad,

Quote:

Originally posted by TooBad:

"Last week's winning numbers had only a 1 in 14 million chance of coming up. Yet, somehow, they came up. How can that possibly be a random outcome?"

The Lottery Fallacy does exist, and you've just committed it.

Uh...no.

A quick probability review:

Probability that you win lottery: 1/14,000,000
Probability that someone wins lottery: 1

PS:There is no 'Lottery Fallacy'. That's a term somebone on this board made up and tried to pass off as a legitimate fallacy (like the Fallacy of Composition).

SOMMS

Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas · 08-09-2002, 02:37 PM

Kant,

Quote:

Originally posted by Immanuel Kant:


You originally said this: "Thomas, If you claim evil exists then you are claiming there is some universal moral standard or law by which both good and evil exist" in response to what Thomas actually said: "Regardless, I am claiming that "gratuitous evil" as apologists use the term probably exists."

You made an illegitimate move by misrepresenting your opponent's position as one that is charitable to your own purposes.

I made an 'illegitimate move'!??

An 'illegitimate move' would be to inadvertently prove your opponent's point...which Thomas has done.

Thomas proved my God exists.

SOMMS

TooBad · 08-09-2002, 02:41 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas:
Uh...no.

A quick probability review:

Probability that you win lottery: 1/14,000,000
Probability that someone wins lottery: 1

PS:There is no 'Lottery Fallacy'. That's a term somebone on this board made up and tried to pass off as a legitimate fallacy (like the Fallacy of Composition).

Last week's winning numbers were 10, 22, 23, 30, 33, 42. The probability of this particular combination being drawn was just under 1 in 14 million. Pretty damn unlikely. But it happened.

A fallacy is a fallacy, whether or not you give it a name.

Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas · 08-09-2002, 02:49 PM

TooBad,

Quote:

Originally posted by TooBad:

Last week's winning numbers were 10, 22, 23, 30, 33, 42. The probability of this particular combination being drawn was just under 1 in 14 million. Pretty damn unlikely...

...and (as illustrated above) not at all related to the Fine Tuning Argument.

SOMMS

[ August 09, 2002: Message edited by: Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas ]

Thomas Metcalf · 08-09-2002, 03:08 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas:
Quite the opposite.
If I were to describe God to somebody I would start by saying 'God is the absolute moral standard or law of the universe'.

It is a fallacy, however, to assume that is ALL God is.

You said I proved your god exists. Show me where I proved that your god Himself (omnipotent etc.) exists, rather than "proving" that an absolute moral standard exits. Or apologize for lying to us all.

Quote:

So are you then saying Thomas that evil DOES NOT exist...but that suffering DOES?

No. I am saying that "gratuitous evil" as philosophers of religion use it probably exists, and that is defined as suffering with no greater moral purpose. So gratuitous evil as philosophers of religion use the term, and suffering, both exist.

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