jlowder

Many skeptics think so. The Internet Infidels are soliciting a paper from a theist who disagrees. See <a href="http://www.infidels.org/infidels/call_for_papers.html" target="_blank">http://www.infidels.org/infidels/call_for_papers.html</a>

offa

offa;
Wow! #5. Jeffrey Lowder! By golly, I will read your post tomorrow and reply. Seasons Greetings and damn nice hearing from you!

Thanks,
Offa

bd-from-kg

jlowder:

Actually not only do many skeptics think so; all sane skeptics think so, as do all sane non-skeptics. This principle is so basic that discarding it constitutes insanity. For example, if I say that I had dinner, as I often do, with my old friend Smith last night, no sane person would demand extraordinarily strong evidence before believing me. But if I claimed to have had dinner with my old friend Jones, who was observed by dozens of people to have died of massive hemorrhaging after being shot in the chest, and was buried two days ago, any sane person is going to demand extraordinarily strong evidence before believing me.

What some Christians really say is that the Christian claims are not extraordinary. They say that, while the claim that Jones walked out of his own tomb would be extraordinary, the claim that Jesus walked out of His own tomb is not extraordinary. (See, for example, C.S. Lewis’s book Miracles: A Preliminary Study.) Or alternatively, they say that the evidence that He did so really is extraordinarily strong. (See any number of works by Christian apologists.) Often a combination of these arguments is used: the claims are “extraordinary”, but not nearly so extraordinary as miracle claims that seem similar at first sight; and the evidence for them, though not so strong that similar evidence would justify belief in “similar” miracle claims, is strong enough to justify belief in the Christian claims because of their “special” nature that makes them more a priori plausible.

Then there are the presuppositionalists, who seem to argue that no evidence at all is needed to justify believing the Christian claims. This position (if I am interpreting it correctly) really is insane. It’s very similar to the convictions of many paranoids that they are victims of a massive conspiracy, or that they really are Napoleon. They seem perfectly sane in many ways, and are quite capable of reasoning correctly in most respects and functioning adequately in most ways, but at the heart of their “belief system” is a conviction which is impervious to all contrary evidence.

Polycarp

Is it an extraordinary claim to state that no god exists? It would seem to me that doing so would require an exhaustive knowledge of the entire universe.

Peace,

Polycarp

MortalWombat

I guess the same could be said about tooth fairies, gnomes, Santa Clauses, UFOs, etc

Earl

Polycarp,

All you have to do is follow that line of reasoning to see its difficulty. How many other things do we call non-existent even though we're not omniscient? You're forgetting the burden of proof issue. I simply don't have the burden to show that unicorns don't exist. I'm justified in saying that their existence is improbable even though I'm not omniscient and I haven't searched through the whole universe for unicorns. Atheists say that God is impossible rather than just improbable when "God" is defined in a logically contradictory way. Otherwise, God is as improbable as the unicorn and the burden of proof is the same. The fact that people actually believe that God but not the unicorn exists does not count as a non-fallacious reason to believe that God exists.

A better theistic counter-argument is that the requirement of extraordinary proof for a miracle amounts to that of a miracle to prove a miracle, which practically defines miracles as impossible from the outset. Precisely how much evidence counts as "extraordinary evidence"? Should there not be a standard stated beforehand? This is easily enough answered, however. Even if "extraordinary evidence" were a vague concept that wouldn't mean there isn't a recognizable difference between obviously ordinary and obviously strong evidence. Hearsay testimony, for example, is weak not strong evidence. An appeal to extreme popularity is also weak evidence.

Notice the difference, by the way, between the appeal to Christianity's popularity and an appeal to the popularity of the statement that 2 + 2 = 4. In the case of mathematics no one makes the latter appeal. Rather the appeal is to the theorems, the axioms, and so forth. No one says "2 + 2 = 4 is true because everyone believes this is true." Rather there are irrefutable arguments in favour of this equation. The same is, of course, not at all true of the resurrection claim. Here there really is often just an appeal to popularity, which is fallacious and therefore weak evidence.

Mike Rosoft

&gt;Is it an extraordinary claim to state that no god exists?

I'll go even farther to say that it is virtually impossible to prove that God doesn't exist. However, it is not up to me to prove non-existence of God; it is up to the believer to prove his existence. And I am not aware of any such evidence. So I don't believe in him.


Mike Rosoft

CX

Most definitely, but more than that I submit that the statement itself is meaningless. What is important to note, however, is that lacking a belief in god (atheism) is not the same as disbelieving in god (postively affirming god's nonexistence).

Polycarp

See the replies of Mike Rosoft and Cowboy X in this thread. They clarify my point. The sole intention of my statement was to point out the fact that atheism depends on faith in the same way as theism does. Unless a person is omniscient, they are utilizing some measure of faith in adhering to atheism. As to the size of the claim involved, I guess it lies in the eye of the beholder.

Peace,

Polycarp

Muad'Dib

I don't know how many people are aware that 2 + 2 = 4 can actually be proven, rather than simply being proclaimed as self-evident, so I'm going to clarify this by giving one common set of assumptions and definitions that lead to the proof that 2 + 2 = 4. (Note that I list only the relevant assumptions; others are made that are very important in other places, but not in this example.) Since strictly speaking this is off-topic, if you're not interested in this proof feel free to skip it. I have no desire to hijack this thread.

Definition. Let N be the set of natural numbers (i.e., positive integers).

Definition. "+" is a binary operation that takes two elements of N and returns another element of N.
Partially define + on S as follows (note that for a rigorous definition we would have to define "+" over all of N, but for brevity I give only a partial definition):

(a) 1 + 1 = 2
(b) 2 + 1 = 1 + 2 = 3
(c) 3 + 1 = 1 + 3 = 4

Note that "+" has the following properties:
(P1) a + b = b + a, and
(P2) (a + b) + c = a + (b + c).

Now, the proof.

2 + 2

= &lt;by part (a) of the definition of "+"&gt;

2 + (1 + 1)

= &lt;by (P2) of the definition of "+"&gt;

(2 + 1) + 1

= &lt;by (b) in the definition of "+"&gt;

3 + 1

= &lt;by (c) in the definition of "+"&gt;

4.

As a side note, this proof mimics the action of children who are first learning to add; they don't immediately leap to the conclusion that the symbol 2 plus the symbol 2 is the same as the symbol 4, but rather they break each symbol down into 1's by counting on their fingers. I challenge anyone who proclaims the self-evidence of addition to quiz a first-grader with some simple arithmetic problems. More than likely (s)he will find that what is allegedly self-evident only becomes so after extensive traning and practice (if at all--many people suffer from math anxiety throughout their lives and in some cases are unable to perform even simple addition).