Theism, Agnosticism, & Atheism: Which Is Logically The Weakest?

metis · Mar 28, 2019

TagliatelliMonster said:
Good for you. I can't comment on it because I don't know what you are talking about.

And that's fine as the only reason I posted it was to basically show that my experience(s) were not based on just imagination or emotion but on something very real, which I still have a hard time understanding how this all happen. But it certainly has been a life-changer for me, let me tell ya.

Anyhow, take care.

TagliatelliMonster · Mar 28, 2019

metis said:
And that's fine as the only reason I posted it was to basically show that my experience(s) were not based on just imagination or emotion but on something very real

Or so you believe, anyway.

, which I still have a hard time understanding how this all happen.

Yet somehow you seem convinced about what it was eventhough you don't understand it?

But it certainly has been a life-changer for me, let me tell ya.

Sure.
The experiences of alien abductees are life changing as well.

My point exactly.

I don't doubt people's sincerity. I think people have real experiences. I think you too had experiences that impacted your life or way of seeing things. I also think (and know) that people are frequently fooled by what they think they have experienced.

Sometimes it's about attributing special value to things that are simple silly random events. Other times, they draw from their a priori religious beliefs, or the religious beliefs of the culture they find themselves in or know about in other ways, and use that to attribute their experiences too. Even other times, it's just full blown hallucination.

There's a million and one ways how people can be fooled by experiences they don't understand or which seem "too coincidental". There's also many instance of people who think they've experienced something while nothing actually happened.

This is exactly why I don't trust people's mere "experiences" when they can't be verified.
In fact, I don't even trust MY OWN experiences in that sense. The human brain is so easily fooled, it's not even funny.

joe1776 · Mar 28, 2019

Augustus said:
The research on the intuitionist position generally acknowledges that intuition only operates within a specific cultural framework (as human history seems to provide vast quantities of evidence to support). Your idea that there is a universal moral intuition that is the same in everybody is not supported.

You're making false claims. About the only thing moral researchers generally agree on is that the rationalist explanations, which are still taught in college psychology courses, are bunk. They agree that moral judgments are intuitive but, beyond that, they offer very different theories.

Even if there were a common 'morality' in babies, this does not mean that it must survive until adulthood; animal babies do not behave like the adults of their species. It is unlikely to ever be possible to isolate intuition from culture in the mind of any adult.

On the other hand, cultures develop and evolve from all kinds of influences, many of which are random, and are beyond the control of any person or group. To a limited degree they involve the consequences of conscious reasoning, but the idea that they are formed from pure, purpose-driven reason is as implausible as them being pure universal intuition.

Yes, of course, cultural biases, such as the notion that women are subservient to men, certainly do have their effect on moral judgments. However, this particular bias will one day vanish in the same way that the bias which permitted the strong to legally enslave the weak vanished from all cultures.

I explain the abolition of legal slavery this way: At first, only people with the most sensitive of consciences felt the wrongness, but gradually the feeling grew stronger and moved from mind to mind. Then, over the course of about three centuries, it spread across borders and influenced cultures to change -- even those cultures which were influenced by religions which condoned slavery.

If you have a better explanation of the abolition of slavery phenomenon, I'd like to hear it.

If you had lived in the era when the abolition of slavery was in its early stages, as the womens' rights and homosexual rights movements are today, and seeing cultural differences, you would have claimed that slavery supported your position that culture shapes conscience and not the other way around. It's only now that legal slavery has been wiped out that you should be able to see that conscience (intuitive moral judgments) are reforming cultures.

metis · Mar 28, 2019

TagliatelliMonster said:
There's a million and one ways how people can be fooled by experiences they don't understand or which seem "too coincidental".

True, but if I negated all of my life's experiences I'd pretty much have the knowledge of a toadstool.

Life is a learning process, and the minute I tell someone that they should just ignore life experiences because they're not 100% certain that they read them correctly is the minute I know that I've "lost it" and that all my years in education were for nil.

Very little in life is 100% of anything, but yet that shouldn't stop us from learning and evaluating what we've learned. Therefore, even though I cannot pass my experiences on to you, I also am aware that this is also true the other way around.

Therefore, if you say "I experienced X", why would I be so condescending and bigoted so as to tell you that it's like those who believe in "alien abductions" or from some previous beliefs you might have had that you blindly accept? Even though I many have doubts that you have actually read those experiences correctly, nevertheless the last thing I would do would be to mock you and tell you that you're wrong or probably wrong, which appears to be the main difference between you and I.

Augustus · Mar 28, 2019

joe1776 said:
You're making false claims. About the only thing moral researchers generally agree on is that the rationalist explanations, which are still taught in college psychology courses, are bunk. They agree that moral judgments are intuitive but, beyond that, they offer very different theories.

Have you got any sources that support your view?

joe1776 said:
Yes, of course, cultural biases, such as the notion that women are subservient to men, certainly do have their effect on moral judgments. However, this particular bias will one day vanish in the same way that the bias which permitted the strong to legally enslave the weak vanished from all cultures.

Why should this be seen as a cultural bias rather than something that developed out of human biology? Sexual equality developed in a society where the need for traditional gender roles was significantly decreased.

It wasn't that the intuition had always been there, but that intuitions change as the social environment changes.

joe1776 said:
I explain the abolition of legal slavery this way: At first, only people with the most sensitive of consciences felt the wrongness, but gradually the feeling grew stronger and moved from mind to mind. Then, over the course of about three centuries, it spread across borders and influenced cultures to change -- even those cultures which were influenced by religions which condoned slavery.

If you have a better explanation of the abolition of slavery phenomenon, I'd like to hear it.

If you had lived in the era when the abolition of slavery was in its early stages, as the womens' rights and homosexual rights movements are today, and seeing cultural differences, you would have claimed that slavery supported your position that culture shapes conscience and not the other way around. It's only now that legal slavery has been wiped out that you should be able to see that conscience (intuitive moral judgments) are reforming cultures.

The abolition of slavery was largely a product of European empires enforcing it (ironically, it was the product of supremacism). European abolitionist ideas developed very slowly, partly out of Christianity, partly due to changing economies whereby slaves were not essential to the functioning of society, partly due to the increasing power of non-elite members of society (democracy, revolutions, etc.), partly due to increased security and the reduced threat of being enslaved yourself, probably numerous other factors played a role too.

Changing social and cultural factors over time seem more plausible than a universal conscience that suddenly started to kick in after 100,000 years and then only in one particular cultural environment. There are still millions of slaves in the world, and I have no doubt that in the 'right' circumstances a significant proportion of the world's population could be convinced that slavery is actually ok again. Tens of thousands of people from Western democracies went to fight for ISIS. The Nazis had sympathisers all over the world, as did the communist regimes which had millions of de facto slaves

In addition, we intuitively discriminate against out groups, even when these groups are completely arbitrary. In human society, many out groups are not arbitrary but based on significant differences. Feeling too much sympathy for outsiders is not a good evolutionary strategy, so it seems strange we would have evolved to feel a universal pacifistic brotherhood with all humans. Increased intelligence in primates doesn't correlate with increased pacifism, if anything, it's actually the opposite.

joe1776 · Mar 28, 2019

Augustus said:
Have you got any sources that support your view?

The final results of Harvard's still-running Moral Sense Test won't be published until the test concludes but this is an excerpt from their justification for the test.

Most of our moral intuitions are unconscious, involuntary, and universal, developing in each child despite formal education
.
As in every modernly held view, there are significant historical antecedents. The origins of our own perspective date back at least 300 years to the philosopher David Hume and more recently, to the political philosopher John Rawls. But unlike these prescient thinkers, we can now validate the intuitions with significant scientific evidence. Over the past twenty years, there has been growing evidence for a universally shared moral faculty based on findings in evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology, anthropology, economics, linguistics, and neurobiology.
Edge: THE MORAL SENSE TEST

Since I've supported my position. I think it's only fair that you support yours that...

The research on the intuitionist position generally acknowledges that intuition only operates within a specific cultural framework (as human history seems to provide vast quantities of evidence to support).

If it's a generally-held position as you claimed, it shouldn't be difficult for you to offer one or two links.

After I see your support, I'll comment further on your recent post.

Tiberius · Mar 28, 2019

blü 2 said:
And that's the point! There is NO spec for a real god.

But isn't that going in circles? You claim there are no specs for a real God, and then you use that to claim there's no real God.

On the contrary, this god is real, so you wheel [him] into the lab, take your videos, X-rays, measurements, blood (ichor?) sample, do a DNA (or whatever) scan, and you'll then be heading for a meaningful definition of God ─ not some imaginary one.

And how do you know such a God doesn't exist?

Nope. No such place in reality.

If a programmer wrote a computer program which included little virtual people, one virtual person might say he believeres in a programmer who lives outside the program, and another virtual person would dismiss it as crazy, since there is no outside of the program.

And yet there would still be a programmer.

How do you plan to show it created the universe?

No idea. But if we found such a god, then presumably it could demonstrate its technique, or at least explain it, or it could be determined by an examination of this god.

It's not my job to devise the definition. It's the job of the person who asserts the reality of God.

I never said it was. I simply said that if you want to claim "A god must have characteristic X," then you must show why a god must have that characteristic. I've only suggested two characteristics, and those were on the basis that most gods I have heard of are claimed to have them.

No believer of my acquaintance has ever suggested such an identity.

And the question brings into focus the need for a clear definition of 'godness'.

If superscientist=God, why would anyone want to worship a superscientist? If out of fear, 'grovel' would be a better word than 'worship', no? If not out of fear, then priority one is to get access to what [he] knows.

God might only be a god from our point of view, just like the programmer would only be a god from the point of view of the virtual people inside the program. From our point of view, the programmer is just another guy.

Tiberius · Mar 28, 2019

Polymath257 said:
OK, I propose a race of high-dimensional beings that have the technology to create universes. As a high school project, one of these being produces a four dimensional universe.. The 'thumb prints' of this student are the interactions with the universe at various places and times (four dimensional=space and time).

Then, after getting a 'C' on the project, our universe is stored in the attic and forgotten about.

Would this high school being be God?

One could certainly make that argument.

It would certainly disappoint a lot of people though.

blü 2 · Mar 28, 2019

Tiberius said:
But isn't that going in circles? You claim there are no specs for a real God, and then you use that to claim there's no real God.

To say there's no real God, first I have to know what real thing I intend to denote when I say 'a real God'. I don't, and no one seems able to tell me. Imaginary gods, no problem. Gods with objective existence, big problem.

Tiberius said:
And how do you know such a God doesn't exist?

The first step to saying whether X exists or not is to know what X is. And as I said, I don't, and it appears no one does.

Tiberius said:
God might only be a god from our point of view

To know that, we'd first have to know what we intend to denote when we say 'a real god'. We apparently don't.

Tiberius · Mar 29, 2019

blü 2 said:
To say there's no real God, first I have to know what real thing I intend to denote when I say 'a real God'. I don't, and no one seems able to tell me. Imaginary gods, no problem. Gods with objective existence, big problem.

I agree with you. Any specific God that I have ever heard proposed has had some pretty serious flaws in the concept. And I doubt I'll ever hear of any god concept that does not have such flaws. The whole problem of evil is a demonstration of such a problem that plagues nearly every god concept.

My point is just that since we are not aware of every single possible god concept, we can't discount the possibility that there is a god concept with no such flaws.

The first step to saying whether X exists or not is to know what X is. And as I said, I don't, and it appears no one does.

There's also the fact that we can find something we are completely unfamiliar with and find out what it is by examining it. It could be that if God exists, he could fit into that category.

To know that, we'd first have to know what we intend to denote when we say 'a real god'. We apparently don't.

I could use this same argument as an example of how a virtual person could discount the existence of the programmer.

TagliatelliMonster · Mar 29, 2019

metis said:
True, but if I negated all of my life's experiences I'd pretty much have the knowledge of a toadstool.

I don't think I said that one should negate all life experiences. Nore did I say that all life experiences are useless.

Life is a learning process, and the minute I tell someone that they should just ignore life experiences because they're not 100% certain that they read them correctly is the minute I know that I've "lost it" and that all my years in education were for nil.

Very little in life is 100% of anything, but yet that shouldn't stop us from learning and evaluating what we've learned. Therefore, even though I cannot pass my experiences on to you, I also am aware that this is also true the other way around.

I also didn't say that it's either 100% or nothing.
All I said was that experiences HAVE the potential of fooling you into believing wrong things.

I don't think anyone can disagree with that.
Your senses can fool you, your experiences can fool you.

To not keep that in mind when trying to figure out things in reality, doesn't seem very wise.
And the more crazy something seems, the more skeptical one should be imo.

To be aware of how the mind can play tricks on you, of how emotion or bias or whatever can lead you to false conclusions, will help you prevent reaching false conclusions.

Therefore, if you say "I experienced X", why would I be so condescending and bigoted so as to tell you that it's like those who believe in "alien abductions" or from some previous beliefs you might have had that you blindly accept?

Because it is. From my perspective.

The stuff you are telling me about your extra-ordinary experience sounds the exact same to me as the stuff alien abductees tell me about their experience.

It's equally unverifiable, it's just as life altering for them as your god-experience was to you, and it sounds equally extra-ordinary to me. Well, mostly. To be perfectly fair here, alien abduction sounds less extra-ordinary to me as opposed to supernatural things, because at least the concept of aliens kidnapping humans doesn't necessarily involve the suspension or violation of natural laws, while "miracles" or "the supernatural" does.

But that's another discussion.

Even though I many have doubts that you have actually read those experiences correctly, nevertheless the last thing I would do would be to mock you and tell you that you're wrong or probably wrong, which appears to be the main difference between you and I.

Maybe it's just you who consider it mocking?
I'm not mocking you. I'm drawing analogies so that you may better understand where I'm coming from.

As a matter of fact......................
If you believe that me comparing your "testimony" with the "testimonies" of alien abductees, is an attempt at ridiculing your beliefs..... Then you are basically saying that the beliefs of alien abductees are ridiculous. Which would in fact be actually mocking people's beliefs.

I believe alien abductees are very sincere. Just like I believe you are sincere.
I'm not mocking either of you.

I just think the both of you are wrong.

If you wish to consider it "insulting" that I think you are wrong, go right ahead. But that's on you, not on me. I'm not mocking anybody.

blü 2 · Mar 29, 2019

Tiberius said:
My point is just that since we are not aware of every single possible god concept, we can't discount the possibility that there is a god concept with no such flaws.

A striking feature is that there's no theology on the point ─ I'd better specify Christianity here lest I speak whereof I know not ─ indicating that everyone, from the highest ranking churchmen and most esteemed theologians down, no one thinks in terms of a real God. There's no objective test that can distinguish 'supernatural', 'spiritual', 'immaterial' (&c) from 'imaginary', which is, I think, to say that they're all imaginary, and that 'God' is a set of related concepts in the heads of the individuals of particular groups of believers.

Which raises a related point: have you ever heard a sermon encouraging skepticism, informed criticism, of what is being taught? A minister telling his congregation to read Bart Ehrman (let alone Hitchins or Dawkins) before they accept a particular doctrine or view? I haven't. (Come to think of it, I have ─ a rhetorical point in order to demolish the notion as ridiculous.)

Tiberius said:
I could use this same argument as an example of how a virtual person could discount the existence of the programmer.

That's a fair point. There is in fact no 3D refutation of solipsism, or being an icon in a Tron game, or a dream in the mind of a super-being, or that the universe, complete with its history and our memories, only came into being last Thursday. In such cases I have to rely on functional statements like, We have no reason to think that's correct.

Augustus · Mar 30, 2019

joe1776 said:
Since I've supported my position. I think it's only fair that you support yours that...

Last time we discussed this it was supported by the source you used, J Haidt.

If you want another one:

Intuitionism tries to account for the fact that in order to form a moral
judgment people often do not reason about an issue or weigh up the different
aspects of a situation. Rather, their answer regarding the right thing to do
seems to come up immediately and spontaneously, and its content tends to
conform to the rules and the habits of the culture or group they belong to.
Moral Intuitions vs. Moral Reasoning - S Dellantonio & R Job

joe1776 · Mar 30, 2019

Augustus said:
Last time we discussed this it was supported by the source you used, J Haidt.

This was your claim:

The research on the intuitionist position generally acknowledges that intuition only operates within a specific cultural framework (as human history seems to provide vast quantities of evidence to support). Your idea that there is a universal moral intuition that is the same in everybody is not supported.

The key word in your claim is research. Jon Haidt's research was limited to finding that moral judgments were intuition and not reason. He did no research that would support your claim and the link to the Italian paper you offered was not research. It's title explains that it is "A Philosophical Analysis of the Explanatory Models Intuitionism Relies On."

Now, if you'd like to amend-weaken your claim and state that some social researchers philosophically have positions that would oppose mine and favor yours, I'd agree.

There may be others but the only ongoing research on our topic that I'm aware of is the Moral Sense Test which, as you've read, is justified by my position. While the final results have yet to be published, it's unlikely that Harvard would be supporting a test going into it's 16th year if the preliminary results weren't confirming their hypothesis.

About six years ago, I found the preliminary results of the MST online but I can't find them for you now. They showed uniformity in all cultures and against all demographics including age which is interesting because the leading rationalist theory (Kohlberg) is based on age-related stages of moral development.

The abolition of slavery was largely a product of European empires enforcing it

Here, you are struggling with the concept of cause as in cause-and-effect. We aren't confused about who did it. We want to know what caused them to do it. If the conscience (moral intuition) didn't cause governments to abolish slavery as I've asserted, what did?

(ironically, it was the product of supremacism).

Once again you struggle with the concept of cause. One might say that slavers were "like supremacists," moved by the need to feel superior to others, but to say that supremacism caused the abolition of slavery makes no sense.

European abolitionist ideas developed very slowly, partly out of Christianity...

This claim will require further explanation since the Christian Bible contains more than 100 comments on slavery and none condemn the practice.

My explanation is that Christians are human and we humans have moral intuitions that we refer to collectively as conscience. When encountering an immoral practices, like slavery, it feels wrong to own other humans as property. After years of nagging us, conscience eventually causes us to cave in and mature morally.

Conscience caused Christians to support the abolition of slavery despite scripture that condones the practice.
.
Conscience caused Christians to stop burning heretics at the stake.

Conscience caused Christians to stop initiating crusades as a means of spreading God's Word.

Conscience caused Christians to stop writing laws that make homosexuals criminals despite scripture which would support that practice.

Conscience caused Protestant Christians and Catholic Christians to stop killing each other.

Conscience is causing Christians to regard men and women as equals despite scripture opposed to that idea.

If your explanation on the formation of moral intuitions was correct, in a Christian culture, Christianity would form our conscience (moral intuitions). But, just the opposite is true: Our moral intuition (conscience) is reforming Christianity.

Augustus · Mar 30, 2019

joe1776 said:
The key word in your claim is research. Jon Haidt did no research that would support your claim and the link to the Italian paper you offered was not research. It's title is: "A Philosophical Analysis of the Explanatory Models Intuitionism Relies On."

It's from the text Philosophy and cognitive science, which was based on papers presented at an international conference on cognitive science, and it is summarising a wide range of scientific literature.

joe1776 said:
Now, if you'd like to amend-weaken your claim and state that some social researchers philosophically have positions that would oppose mine and favor yours, I'd agree.

I've never seen any.

Can you provide links to any actual scientific papers which support your view rather than newspapers, websites, etc?

joe1776 · Mar 30, 2019

Augustus said:
Can you provide links to any actual scientific papers which support your view rather than newspapers, websites, etc?

Beyond the fact that moral judgments are intuitive? No, and you can't either. That research doesn't exist yet. That's why I was 99.6% certain you were overstating your claim.

My position is a logical argument that is rooted in the philosophy of David Hume, as the Harvard link I sent you pointed out. I began years ago (when everyone agreed that the judgments of conscience were judgments of reason.) with the fact that "All knowledge begins when we sense an effect." Science doesn't happen unless we first sense an effect.

I reasoned that since we cannot see, hear, taste or smell the difference between fair and unfair or moral right and wrong, we must feel it. That conclusion leads to intuition rather than reason as Hume correctly asserted many years ago.

Augustus · Mar 30, 2019

joe1776 said:
Here, you are struggling with the concept of cause as in cause-and-effect. We aren't confused about who did it. We want to know what caused them to do it. If the conscience (moral intuition) didn't cause governments to abolish slavery as I've asserted, what did?

You miss the point. Had it not been enforced militarily and through empire, it is likely significant parts of the world would still be practicing slavery and you wouldn't be able to tout it as evidence of the universal morality suddenly starting to kick in.

joe1776 said:
Once again you struggle with the concept of cause. One might say that slavers were "like supremacists," moved by the need to feel superior to others, but to say that supremacism caused the abolition of slavery makes no sense.

See above

joe1776 said:
This claim will require further explanation since the Christian Bible contains more than 100 comments on slavery and none condemn the practice.

The first 'European' text that explicitly condemns slavery as a moral evil was a work of Biblical exegesis by Gregory of Nyssa in the 4th C.

The classical world had viewed slavery as natural and necessary.

joe1776 said:
Beyond the fact that moral judgments are intuitive? No, and you can't either. That research doesn't exist yet. That's why I was 99.6% certain you were overstating your claim.

The ideas that a) moral values are significantly dependent on culture and b) there is a universal morality that makes global harmony inevitable are not equally plausible.

a) has thousands of years of evidence to support it, b) has hundreds of thousands of years evidence against it.

Whether morality is 'rational' or intuitive, it should be assumed to be culturally dependent until proved otherwise as there is vastly more evidence in favour of this position.

joe1776 · Mar 30, 2019

Augustus said:
You miss the point. Had it not been enforced militarily and through empire, it is likely significant parts of the world would still be practicing slavery and you wouldn't be able to tout it as evidence of the universal morality suddenly starting to kick in.

You're right. I do miss your point. It's not making sense to me.

BTW the notion that conscience only then "started to kick in" is your claim not mine.

The first 'European' text that explicitly condemns slavery as a moral evil was a work of Biblical exegesis by Gregory of Nyssa in the 4th C.

(1) you have no idea if Gregory's was the first European text opposed to slavery nor does anyone else.That's an obviously wild claim that grasps at straws.. (2) Gregory was human, he therefore owned a conscience. (3) Are you implying that Gregory's influence was greater on Christians than their Bible with more than 100 teachings on slavery with none condemning it?

As late as 1866, well after the abolition movement began in earnest (early 1700s), the Catholic Pope was telling his large Christian flock that he saw nothing in Divine Law against the buying, selling and trading of slaves. And, according to his Bible, he was right. Most Catholics, following their conscience, ignored him.

The ideas that a) moral values are significantly dependent on culture and b) there is a universal morality that makes global harmony inevitable are not equally plausible.

I don't believe that conscience is dependent on culture. I believe it's an intuitive force, universal, aligned with survival that reforms cultures over time just as it has reformed Christianity.

a) has thousands of years of evidence to support it, b) has hundreds of thousands of years evidence against it.

Those are claims you can't possibly prove.

Whether morality is 'rational' or intuitive, it should be assumed to be culturally dependent until proved otherwise as there is vastly more evidence in favour of this position.

Baloney. You're claiming evidence that doesn't exist except in the minds of people who are making the same logical mistakes that you are. You haven't made a single, logical argument for your position and you won't because there are none.

Augustus · Mar 30, 2019

joe1776 said:
I don't believe that conscience is dependent on culture. I believe it's an intuitive force, universal, aligned with survival that reforms cultures over time just as it has reformed Christianity.

This is where your reasoning starts to become very suspect. Animals don't evolve to live in one big, unified society of genetic brotherhood.

Humans evolved to live in small groups of closely related people who may come under threat from other humans and may have to compete for scarce resources. We didn't evolve to live in a technologically mediated global society full of WMD.

Your assumptions seem to rest on the idea that we evolved to live in modernity, and that our genetic instincts evolved for this particular environment.

As we know, our thoughts are impacted significantly by in/out group divisions. Even when these divisions are transient and completely arbitrary we favour in-group and discriminate against the out-group. This makes perfect evolutionary sense.

Throughout human history morality has included things such as loyalty to your people and respect for authority, again things which are very important for survival, yet not conducive towards a global Humanist utopia. Limiting morality to questions of physical and emotional harm is erroneous.

Why should we assume that conscience shouldn't instinctively 'punish' us for disobeying our leaders, or for not favouring a member of the in-group over the out group? Why should we assume that conscience doesn't push us towards vengeance rather than forgiveness?

Can you explain how your universal, humanistic morality aided survival for the first 95% of human history?

joe1776 said:
Those are claims you can't possibly prove.

Read a history book or get on an aeroplane. There's a whole world of evidence out there.

joe1776 said:
Baloney. You're claiming evidence that doesn't exist except in the minds of people who are making the same logical mistakes that you are. You haven't made a single, logical argument for your position and you won't because there are none.

Of course it exists. It is the world we live in.

You can't get more ivory tower abstraction than ignoring the entirety of human history simply because it is inconvenient for your thesis.

If it turns out this is all an illusion, and that this can be proved without a shadow of a doubt, then so be it. Until that point, we have masses of empirical evidence that there is a link between moral instincts and culture and very little evidence for the contrary.

Tiberius · Mar 31, 2019

blü 2 said:
A striking feature is that there's no theology on the point ─ I'd better specify Christianity here lest I speak whereof I know not ─ indicating that everyone, from the highest ranking churchmen and most esteemed theologians down, no one thinks in terms of a real God. There's no objective test that can distinguish 'supernatural', 'spiritual', 'immaterial' (&c) from 'imaginary', which is, I think, to say that they're all imaginary, and that 'God' is a set of related concepts in the heads of the individuals of particular groups of believers.

Which raises a related point: have you ever heard a sermon encouraging skepticism, informed criticism, of what is being taught? A minister telling his congregation to read Bart Ehrman (let alone Hitchins or Dawkins) before they accept a particular doctrine or view? I haven't. (Come to think of it, I have ─ a rhetorical point in order to demolish the notion as ridiculous.)

My point was simply that there could be a god concept without any flaws, regardless on whether there's theology on it or not.

That's a fair point. There is in fact no 3D refutation of solipsism, or being an icon in a Tron game, or a dream in the mind of a super-being, or that the universe, complete with its history and our memories, only came into being last Thursday. In such cases I have to rely on functional statements like, We have no reason to think that's correct.

True. And I'd expand that to, "There's no reason to think it's correct, and it being incorrect is entirely consistent with what we know of the universe". In short, it's Occam's razor. If two explanations explain something, it's better to go for the one that assumes the least. I find God to be such an assumption. Likewise, I find the idea that I'm a brain in a jar to be another such assumption, and I reject them both for the same reason. The world works perfectly fine without that assumption, and there's nothing to suggest that it is the case.

Theism, Agnosticism, & Atheism: Which Is Logically The Weakest?

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