Jayhawker Soule

As one 'strong atheist' to another, I'm curious about something. You appear to correlate 'concept' and 'claim' as follows:

• Meaningless ::= 'nonsensical
• Unfalsifiable ::= irrelevant
• Falsified ::= (most probably) false

How does an existential claim of a falsified concept become 'possibly' true? Also, with regards to the second bullet point: 'irrelevant' to what/whom? Thanks.

( btw: I wish you had a slightly less glaring signature )

[ May 31, 2002: Message edited by: ReasonableDoubt ]</p>

seebs

I think the santa argument is actually a very weak one; there are a number of reasons to believe in a hypothetical God that don't apply to Santa, and a number of reasons *not* to believe in Santa that don't apply to God.

The general assumption made by theists is that the events recorded in $HOLY_BOOK were observed by real people. Eyewitness accounts have some value as evidence. Now, after thousands of people, we have less certainty about their reliability - but nonetheless, there are claimed eyewitness accounts, which we have no clear reason to condemn as intentionally made up.

By contrast, every story about "Santa" is rooted in people who know full well that no such thing exists, and are making it up for consistency with a social norm. However, *they* don't believe it either. That makes it weaker evidence.

Secondly, every phenomenon that has been attributed to Santa has known explanations that are more prosaic. Not *hypothesized* explanations; not "we think this could be how that happened". We *KNOW* how they happened; we have the parties involved available for interview. By contrast, many of the things attributed to "God" are not easily explained. Now, we may not know for sure even that they *happened*, but we can't say, with absolute certainty, that we know the mechanism. By contrast, with presents that kids get, we *do* know the mechanism; we have receipts, we can observe the parents wrapping the presents.

So... I don't think they're particularly comparable. Now, if you want to compare, say, Buddha's tale of Nirvana and Enlightenment, to Christian theology, you have a much more level playing field; both are essentially beyond simple claims of proof or disproof.

Synaesthesia

Seebs, Some very good points,
As child I had dozens of sincere stories claiming to have seen Santa flying through the air, placing presents or to have heard him laughing. The people from whom I heard this are, admittedly, highly unreliable (as with the bible’s putative witnesses) but they were totally sincere eyewitnesses. (As with the bible.)

Many people do not believe in God, and those who do, believe in him mostly because of social norm.

I do not agree that there is anything that God can explain that science cannot explain better. At any rate, human delusion can explain at least the vast majority of God-related phenomenon.

Even if theist theory could explain more than secular theory, it would not be supported by the additional explanatory power because the prediction is derived from an infinite complexity of the assumption. (That is, if everything you predict is assumed only after the fact, your theory isn’t worth much.)

It’s important to remember that even every day events are beyond simple claims of proof or disproof. All that we can do is judge the claim given the evidence we have relative to other theories we have.


The admitted weakness of the Santa analogy is not shared by the ‘elf’ or ‘[b]Elusive Little Freak[/i]’ analogy. For example, the historical background of the delusion goes back at least as long as abrahamic religions. The claims of sightings are made by competent adults. People still today believe in some form of Elusive Little Freak. There is no clear prosaic explanation for all sightings.

Never the less, the majority of humans are aelfist. We do not claim with absolute certainty that they don’t exist, we simply think that it is silly to believe in them.

Regards,
Synaesthesia

himynameisPwn

Seebs, the Santa analogy is admittedly weak on some points, because no one has claimed Santa to be all of the three o's, however, the basic premise of why you should believe in God when you don't believe in Santa stands. Replace Santa with Bigfoot and your argument gets a bit weaker as eyewitnesses claim to have seen big foot and sware on it. Same as the people in the bible right? It also takes away the argument that people know Santa already doesnt exist. Which is the entire point of the argument, it makes the comparison from something we know doesn't exist to something most people believe exists.

seebs, lack of proof isn't proof. Just because we don't know why something happened doesnt mean God exists. Similarly, when we can't explain something that alludes to a belief in Santa, big foot, the abominable snowman, it doesnt prove they exist. If Santa had the three O's seebs, it would be impossible to prove he doesn't exist, get the point?

DieToDeath

Well, there are some basic no-god arguments.

1. Where's the proof? ("Miracles" don't count.)
2. If god exists, where is he, pray tell?
3. If god exists, why are there so many differeng beliefs about him? Wouldn't he intervene to set the record straight?
4. If god exists, why does he allow his people to wage nuclear war on one another?
5. If god exists, why does he allow different religions to fight over which one is right, instead of just telling everyone?

I have more, but I can't properly word them right now.

But it's true, most atheistic arguments are more religion-based than god-based.

seebs

Yes. As Father Brown once commented, though, I'm more willing to believe, in some cases, the outright impossible, than I am to believe the merely improbable. I'm more willing to believe that someone's ghost came to someone and warned him of danger than I am that one of my friends was playing bridge and got all spades two hands in a row.

True - and if people have seen some such thing, and choose to believe in it, it's fine by me.

I'm a skeptic. I don't believe it's silly to believe in something just because *I* don't believe in it. It has to contradict something I'm fairly certain of. It's silly to form a strong opinion in the absence of sufficient data. For impossible things, though, people are welcome to set their own standards of "sufficient".

seebs

Agreed. However, the people who have "seen" bigfoot have generally not talked to him, and I've never heard of, say, two eyewitnesses to a specific conversation with him. Also, the number of people I've met who claim to have any experience involving bigfoot is smaller than the number of people I know who claim to have seen "miraculous healing".

I never said it was possible to prove that God exists; I just think the question remains open, and there's not sufficient grounds for contempt towards either side. I am equally offended by people who say "How can you deny that God exists?" and people who say "How can you believe in such a silly thing?".

seebs

This attack has *precisely* the overall rational coherence of "God exists because the Bible says so."

If the person playing Civilization exists, why can no one in the game see him?

Free will.

Indeed. In the end, I firmly believe that all of the "proofs" on both sides have flaws. I have *never* seen a good "proof" either way. I've seen lots of very good *arguments* on both sides - but they become good arguments by recognizing up front that they won't be proofs.

tronvillain

Are we really weak atheists? Well, I'm certainly not, since as I believe that God does not exist and therefore call myself a strong atheist. Of course, it is possible that God exists, but then it is possible that leprechauns exist too. I don't claim to be able to proove the nonexistence of God, but since belief is generally a matter of probability, that isn't a problem.

himynameisPwn

If God is not provable seebs, then it all goes back to blind faith. Blind faith in anything is quite stupid.