lpetrich

My heart sank when I read Alvin Plantinga's arguments. Though he is supposedly a great philosopher, his arguments were almost too specious to be worth commenting on.

For example, his Argument from Natural Numbers is that because there are many numbers which we have great difficulty comprehending, that there must be some mind that is capable of comprehending them, which is presumably God.

Another is the correspondence of experiences of colors and flavors to their physical causes (different wavelengths of light; different sorts of substances -- which trigger distinct sorts of sensory cells).

I've run out of patience with this idiocy.

Jesus Tap-Dancin' Christ

God damn, both of those lists suck ass. The atheist, and the theist. Not necessarily is the phrase most often running through my head as I read them. Physical constants as proof of God? It boils down to an argument from incredulity. Sad, really. For any argument you propose to say, for CERTAIN, whether or not there is a God, I can, and WILL, find a hole in it. If there could be an argument with no holes, by now, it would have been discovered. It hasn't, for if it had, the other side would have similarily been utterly destroyed by now. As such, it cannot truly exist. You cannot craft a flawless argument against, or for, what must solely rely on faith, and faith alone. You can say that without solid evidence you will not believe, but that will not necessarily make it true. Trying to prove what must be taken on faith is self-defeating. For this reason, also, there can be no flawless arguments for or against the existence of God. You must either believe, or not. No foul for either--especially if God exists. Just the way things are.

Tercel

Plantinga is for the most part merely giving a really brief summary of the arguments of others as opposed to trying to seriously argue each one.
But I agree that they look pretty crap as they stand. Which was mainly why I stuck in a link to Metacrock's list - who does have some reasonable arguments on his list, although IMO he has some really bad ones too: Of Metacrock's list I suggest that arguments 2-4, 20-22, 24-25 and 27-28 are definitely worth reading.

~Sigh~, I need to get around to writing a list sometime of all the decent arguments.

HRG

Why don't you start at your next coffee break. After finishing with all of them, you should still have the time to enjoy a cup of Jamaica Blue Mountain ....

HRG

Vorkosigan

Here are the Crock's arguments. I think there are 36 here....It's wonderful that he has collected them all in one space.

I.Argument from First Cause
II. Argument From Big Bang Cosmolog (6 pages)
III. Fire in the Equasions
IV. Anthropic Principle (2 Pages)
V. From Religous Instinct (3 pages)
VI. From Religious a priori
VII. From Mystical experience, (3 pages)
VIII. Thomas Reid Argument, (2 pages)
IX. Argument from the Sublime
X.Existential Argument.
XI. Feeling of Utter Dependence(#1)
XII. Hartshorne's Modal Argument(ontological)
XII From Perfection.
XIV. Plantinga's Possible Worlds
XV. Reity
XVI. Trancendental Signifyer
XVII. Tillich's Ground of Being.
XVIII. Being has to BE.
IXX. Garrett's Argument from Logical Necessity.
XX. Argument from Consciousness.(3 pages)
XXI.Moral Argument.
XXII.Argument from Moral Judgement and Abstract Values.
XIII. The Berkeley Argument.
XXIV. Argument From Temporal Begining.
XXV. Eligance of God hypothesis.
XXVI. Hartshorne's Deep Emperieicism.
XVII. Near Death Experince.
XVIII. Why anything at all?
XXIX.Posative Epistemic Status.
XXX. Confluence of Proper function and reliability.
XXXI. Argument From Induction.
XXXII. Rejecton of Universal Skepticism.
XXXIII. Hick's Argument from Personal Origin.
XXXIV. Materialism Vanishes (2 pages).
XXXV.Argument from Logical Necessity
XXXVI. Cummulative Case.

***************

Most of these are pretty silly arguments. We'll delete the obviously ridiculous ones, like those based on feelings -- like the argument from the sublime (holds nose), or ontological arguments, all of which assume what they are trying to prove, as Guanilo pointed out at the time, or are vulnerable to the IPU counterargument, or are simply word games. Also deleted are any moral arguments. I have saved arguments I am not personally

I.Argument from First Cause (deleted)
II. Argument From Big Bang Cosmology (6 pages)
III. Fire in the Equasions
IV. Anthropic Principle (2 Pages)(deleted)
V. From Religous Instinct (3 pages)
VI. From Religious a priori (deleted)
VII. From Mystical experience, (3 pages)
VIII. Thomas Reid Argument, (2 pages) (deleted)
IX. Argument from the Sublime (deleted)
X.Existential Argument. (deleted)
XI. Feeling of Utter Dependence(#1) (deleted)
XII. Hartshorne's Modal Argument(ontological) (deleted)
XII From Perfection. (deleted)
XIV. Plantinga's Possible Worlds (deleted)
XV. Reity (deleted)
XVI. Trancendental Signifyer (deleted)
XVII. Tillich's Ground of Being. (deleted)
XVIII. Being has to BE. (deleted)
IXX. Garrett's Argument from Logical Necessity. (deleted)
XX. Argument from Consciousness.(3 pages)
XXI.Moral Argument. (deleted)
XXII.Argument from Moral Judgement and Abstract Values. (deleted)
XIII. The Berkeley Argument. (deleted)
XXIV. Argument From Temporal Begining. (deleted)
XXV. Eligance of God hypothesis. (deleted)
XXVI. Hartshorne's Deep Emperieicism.
XVII. Near Death Experince.
XVIII. Why anything at all? (deleted)
XXIX.Posative Epistemic Status. (deleted)
XXX. Confluence of Proper function and reliability. (deleted)
XXXI. Argument From Induction. (deleted)
XXXII. Rejecton of Universal Skepticism. (deleted)
XXXIII. Hick's Argument from Personal Origin. (deleted)
XXXIV. Materialism Vanishes (2 pages).
XXXV.Argument from Logical Necessity (deleted)
XXXVI. Cummulative Case. (deleted)


Let's see what is left....

II. Argument From Big Bang Cosmology (6 pages)
III. Fire in the Equasions
V. From Religous Instinct (3 pages)
XX. Argument from Consciousness.(3 pages)
XXVI. Hartshorne's Deep Emperieicism.
XVII. Near Death Experince.
XXXIV. Materialism Vanishes (2 pages).

Fire in the Equations turns out to be another variant on the Design claim, and hence worthless as an argument for gods. It can be safely tossed.

Hartshorne's Deep Empiricism turns out to be an exceedingly stupid argument about how unbelievers deny the god that it is in their hearts. <sigh> Really weak.

Materialism Vanishes is what even the Crock recognizes as not a particularly strong argument. We've discussed it here, it's not particularly good.

The others have been discussed and shown to be wrong here, except for the Big Bang one. I'll have to read it and report back.

Michael

tronvillain

I presume the "Argument From Big Bang Cosmology" is either a fine tuning argument, or a first cause argument. Either way, it's been dealt with.

Tercel

Apart from the 35 rational arguments (One of the links is not... hence 35 not 36) for the existence of God, Meta has another entire section of his website devoted to some of the evidential arguments such as miracles and investigations of prayer <a href="http://www.webspawner.com/users/apologete2/" target="_blank">here</a> (Scroll down the page a bit).

Silent Dave

Go back and re-read (or read for the first time) the first few paragraphs of my page.


Dave

Silent Dave

Have that cup of coffee that HRG suggested -- you'll need it to wash the taste of foot out of your mouth. I wrote the article.

And like Plantinga, my objective was simply to present summaries, not explicit defenses. For atheists it is something like the "training manual" for debating Christians that William Craig once believed lurked everywhere in the Secular Web, and for theists it's simply a taste of what's out there for an open mind to discover. Perhaps I should have accompanied the arguments with a summary of probabilistic logic, as theists almost invariably attack such arguments by showing that they do not establish their intended conclusion with certainty -- which, being probabilistic arguments, they are not designed to do -- as if that somehow weakened them.

But I feel that these are all good arguments for God's nonexistence, and I am quite prepared to defend them.

As for making up numbers, I did feel that E through I represented seperate issues, and thus split them into seperate arguments. In other cases, I have combined two or three different issues into one argument (cf. the free will argument), so as to not exceed the 26 letters of the alphabet. So if you really want to get into a numbers war, Tercel, I could "unpack" those combined arguments, and add summaries of the arguments I didn't include, some of which are mentioned at the bottom of the article. I believe I could come away with eight or nine dozen easily.


Dave

Silent Dave

That's actually Plantinga's main course in his religious thinking -- it's a spiffy-looking god of the gaps approach. Read "Warranted Christian Belief" and the last couple chapters of "Warrant and Proper Functioning" to see what I mean. Actually, you needn't bother, because it's the same basic line of reasoning as in his book "God and Other Minds," the basic line of reasoning of which can in turn be aptly summarized by the following joke:

Q: How many Alvin Plantingas does it take to change a light bulb?

A: 1.37 (and I don't need to justify that because it's a properly basic belief).


Incidentally, I'm a second-generation Plantinga protogee -- that is, Plantinga mentored my mentor. I don't think the guy would be very pleased with me if he actually knew me . . .


Dave