Percy is a Deist - Now what's the difference between a deist and an atheist?

Your "world view" argument is just inadequate.Do you think that the unevidenced existence of Wagwah is equally as plausible as the unevidenced existence of life elsewhere in the universe?Do you think that any perceived difference in likelihood between these two equally unevidenced claims is the result of subjective world view alone?Honestly?Do you discount all of the evidence that we have regarding the conditions that are conducive to life forming? Evidence which I would argue logically suggests that the existence of life elsewhere in the universe is highly probable despite the fact that we have no direct evidence for or against such life?Do you discount all of the evidence that we have in favour of the fact that humans are very good at creating imaginary entities for various purposes? Evidence which I would cite in favour of the fact that Wagwah's actual existence is deeply and highly improbable despite the fact that we have no direct evidence of Wagwah's non-existence or otherwiseNo claim, not even one that is in itself strictly unevidenced, operates in a vacuum of evidence.Specific unevidenced claims can be evaluated probabilistically in terms of the logical alternatives for which evidence does exist. Your analysis to date completely ignores our ability to reason in this manner.E.g.god X actually exists Vs the likelihood that god X is the product of human imagination.Alien life does exist elsewhere in the universe Vs The likelihood of the conditions conducive to life exist elsewhere in the universeWhilst the first term may well be completely unevidenced it is not as unknowable as you claim in terms of likelihood if the logical alternatives are able to be evaluated in terms of objective evidence.Not all unevidenced claims are equally plausible.Why are you so unwilling to confront this fact? Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Well if the Deists God is so non-specific as to be essentially undefined how can we determine how much weight there is behind it? OK. But if A) These various spiritual experiences are in many cases mutually exclusive and B) Many such spiritual beliefs have in fact turned out to be demonstrably wrong through evidence based investigation (fertility gods, Sun gods etc. etc. etc.) then where does that leave your argument?If anything it suggests that humans are particularly good at creating false beliefs based on unreliable subjective evidence. We both agree that my Wagwah example was made-up and silly. We both agree that the face sucking jellyfish was made-up and silly.But what I want to know is exactly what it is about these entities that makes them obviously made-up and silly as opposed to just unevidenced and worthy of our agnosticism.I have repeatedly asked RAZD this question in various formats and all he has come back with is some waffle about preconceived subjective world views. I think we all (even RAZD if pushed) would agree that there is something innately unworthy of agnosticism about these examples but I want the deists/theists to identify and explicitly state what that "something" is. Marketing and flexibility seem a better explanation here. If a specific belief is willing to energetically and consciously set about recruiting new believers (e.g. missionaries) and is able to be flexible enough to adopt aspects of the cultures it seeks to convert (e.g. adopting Pagan holidays as it's own) then it is hardly surprising that it prevails above those beliefs that do not take such measures.Add to this some circular but internally consistent promotion of belief ("blessed are those that believe but do not see" etc. etc.) and you have recipe for adaptive and evolutionary success.But that is not the same as a recipe for veracity. Well I admire your consistencey.I take it you will be advocating that scientology receives the recognition it so obviously deserves...................? Please remember that the vast majority of the beliefs that these experiences have resulted in have been mutually exclusive.Please also remember that most of the spiritual claims made throughout history have now been pretty comprehensively debunked.On this basis it seems that the remaining widely held spiritual beliefs are simply those that are inherently the least falsifiable due to their comparitive vagueness and lack of specifity (e.g. the deistic type gods we started with)Given the history of elimination this is not a cause to assume that the remaining spiritual beliefs are any indication of veracity. Almost certainly. But we need to work out what the criteria for increasing reliability actually could be. In the case of gods I think that the "evidence" is wholly subjective. I also think that the indisputable historical elimination of all but the least physically definable gods is a clear indication that gods in general are a human construct as opposed to an entity that can be said to exist in any objective sense at all.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Wow! Maybe I really was divinely inspired by Wagwah. Maybe in response to my broad rejection of gods he specifically revealed himself to me as evidence to the contrary. Maybe my world view is so stubbornly entrenched that I have relegated this divine revelation to fantasy and rejected this honour bestowed upon me as a product of mere imagination. Maybe I was the potential prophet of Wagwah?Maybe my PC would never inexplicably freeze, bluescreen or crash if I only had the courage to believe.It seems that we will never now know...............Oh well.

Why do the face sucking jellyfish and Wagwah not equally benefit from being "gods in general"?Why does your generalised argument not apply to these entities? OK. But once again we are left with such a vague and unspecific definition of god(s) that the only thing that can really be claimed in their favour in terms of objective evidence is the inability to be falsified as a result of sheer "woolliness". By these criteria every religion should have started off being considered equally as ludicrous and insane as a belief in Wagwah seems now.Do you think that you would have deemed the concept of Christ, the saviour born of a virgin, as evidently non-sensical as you do the concept of Wagwah if you had been there for the conception of that concept?Is history and prevalence really all there is to perceived veracity? If adaption is the key to the evolutionary success of a "meme" then that is exactly what you are describing here. Why?It meets the criteria of being relatively widely believed and has stood the test of time to some extent at least.Is scientology worthy of our agnosticism to any greater extent than is Wagwah?How long or how many followers will it take before you consider Scientology to be religiously valid in any way? As I have been failing to explain to RAZDIF either A or B where A is unevidenced.
THEN where B is evidenced the likelihood of A is diminished.If we have evidence that supports the fact that humans make-up gods then this dimishes the unevidenced claims of further gods actually existing. But that is the problem. It is not a question of just getting the details wrong. It is the fact that after this elimination process we are only left with the spiritual concepts that are so un-detailed, so un-specific and so unfalsifiable that they cannot be "wrong".It all just smacks of retreat into the safety of vagueness.Edited by Straggler, : Slightly anal punctuation and terminology changes.

The notion that supernatural entities exist has arisen and prevailed independently in so many different human cultures that there must be "something" to it. Right? No. In fact if anything it demonstrates quite the opposite.The sort of deistic entity being proposed here is nothing more than the ultimate god of the ultimate gap.EVIDENCE
Deity - An entity so ethereal, so "woolly" and so pointless that the only objective reason advocates of such an entity can give against rejecting that such a thing exists at all is it's inherent and wholly convenient immunity from any sort of falsification at all.However such claims completely ignore the very obvious fact that when it comes to assessing the likelihood of such an entity being nothing more than the product of human invention we have a wealth of evidence to suggest that this is indeed the case.All the gods of history were un-falsifiable in their day. All the gods of history were invented in order to provide answers for which, in their time, there were no more reliable or rational answers available. Fertility gods, harvest gods, Sun gods, gods of thunder and lightening etc. etc. Gods that as human knowledge and understanding have progressed have effectively been debunked out of existence. Until the only gods left standing are those gods left cowering in the corner of irrelevance seeking refuge from the glare of reason in the shadows of vagueness. The gods of deism.Is a deity that supposedly restricted itself to the spark of creation and, perhaps, fulfils the role of providing a higher purpose for us mere mortals really any different at all to any of these rejected gods of yesteryear? With the exception of it’s inherent vagueness and immunity from falsification — No it is not.MOTIVE
What do human cultures do when they are confronted with a deep question for which they have no answer? Do they just embrace ignorance and move on? No. Human nature is such that instead of accepting ignorance we will instead invent an answer whether one exists or not and whether one can be rendered reliable or not. Whilst being correct is obviously advantageous, not being demonstrably wrong would seem to be a far greater concern.In such a situation what better answer than an un-falsifiable entity which can be piggy-backed onto wholly subjective concepts like higher purpose, "destiny" or the "nobility of faith"?(Ironically we re now being asked to officially declare our ignorance regarding these very same products of ignorance by deists advocating agnosticism as the reasoned position)Throw in some raised social status for the human representatives of such an entity and the promise of rewards (increased harvest yield, greater fertility, wealth, heavenly virgins pandering to ones every need after death, the promise of eternal life in paradise etc. etc. etc.) for the followers of said entity and it is not difficult to see the wide appeal of such things. Whilst these latter advantages are not directly relevant to woolly concepts of non-interventionist deities, these concerns are very relevant to the prevalence of supernatural explanations in human cultures from which the deistic point of view is derived and from which it claims support. This aside -The primary purpose of any particular god is to supply answers to otherwise unanswerable questions in a manner that is unable to be proven "wrong". Even if such answers cannot actually be demonstrated to be trueHuman cultures will not tolerate ignorance and desire an answer even where one cannot reliably be obtained. Deists are human too. They seek answers to the currently unanswerable questions of origin and purpose.So we have the motive.MEANS
As for the means — Well the fact that I can pluck the concept of Wagwah out of my arse with barely a pause for thought is testament to the fact that such creations are all too easily inspired. Humans seem to have an innate capacity for such invention. We can all think up any number of gods. We can all think up gods that are as implausible as our argument against gods requires. We can also make our invented gods as ethereal and un-falsifiable as our argument in favour of the existence of such gods requires.We can do this because the human capacity for such invention is in no way limited by the facts of reality.CRIMES AGAINST REASON - THE CASE AGAINST
So, in summary, we have our motive — The very human desire for answers that are not wrong even if they are not demonstrably right either. And we have our means - The apparently innate ability for humans to create concepts that require little basis in fact.So is the claim that deities exist a crime against reason?
Well the deities being proposed are essentially no different in essence to the variety of false gods that have already been falsified or abandoned as so unlikely as to be irrelevant. The deities being proposed are borne of exactly the same motives and produced by exactly the same means as these rejected gods.When the deists claim that there is no evidence they are wrong. There is a wealth of evidence. A wealth of evidence in support of the fact that humanity is ready, willing and very very able to invent false supernatural concepts as a means of answering the questions that are otherwise unable to be answered in such a way as to be immune from being wrong.So we have the means, the motive and a perpetrator (i.e. humanity) with a long and relentless history of repeat offending.We may not be able to prove whether any particular undetectable supernatural being actually exists but we can be pretty fucking certain that such entities will be invented whether they exist or not.CONCLUSION
Where past gods filled the gaps in our understanding of nature deistic gods attempt to fill the gaps in our need for purpose and ultimate origin. There really is no difference between the two concepts and as such very good reason to think that such deities are just less directly falsifiable versions of exactly the same phenomenon that gave rise to all of those now debunked and rejected gods.In short — Is deism a crime against reason — Guilty as charged. Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Percy I totally accept your rational approach to irrationality. What I just do not understand is RAZD's insistence that the question of a deity should be treated as if it operated in a vacuum of evidence.Whatever the lack of direct evidence that exists (or more accurately does not exist) for or against the existence of such beings it cannot be claimed that there is also no evidence for the logical and mutually exclusive alternatives.Namely that gods are a human invention.

Gods actually existing or gods not actually existing and being the product of human invention are two mutually exclusive alternatives. Well see Message 175 for a fuller answer to that point.Whatever the lack of direct evidence that exists (or more accurately does not exist) for or against the existence of deities it cannot be claimed that such a question operates in a vacuum of evidence.There is a wealth of evidence in favour of the logical and mutually exclusive alternative.Namely that gods are a human invention.

Absolutely. We do not know. No we cannot be certain. But maybe we can get an indication of the relative probability of the available options from the related evidence that is available. No. There is more to this than simple preconceived world view. If we have rejected the existence of other such beings to all practical intents and purposes, rejected them as being very probably the result of human imagination, rejected them on the basis of increased knowledge and understanding, rejected them on the basis of empirical investigation and objective physical evidence then that in itself is undeniably a relevant form of evidence.Why exactly have we all but abandoned belief in fertility gods, harvest gods, Sun gods, Thor, Neptune etc. etc. etc? On what basis have these been abandoned? Is it just the shifting of one subjective and irrational world view to another world view that is equally subjective and irrational? No.Any given specific god either actually exists or it does not. If it does not then said god is the product of human invention and nothing more.If we know that the probability of humans inventing gods is very high then when assessing the plausibility of any given god for which there is no other evidence available we know that there is a high probability that it is a human invention.If there is a high probability that it is a human invention then there is a correspondingly low probability that said god actually exists.Now if you want to tell me that my degree of certainty is rationally unwarrented and that my over-interpretation of the evidence reflects my world view rather than the actual reliability of the evidence at hand then we can have that discussion. Given that in my experience when strongly held beliefs are put under the micoscope they rarely come out as black and white as initially seemed justified I think it highly likely that I would have to concede some ground.BUT don't tell me that there is absolutely no evidence available relevant to the question of any specified god actually existing - Because. This. Just. Is. Not. True.No matter how directly unevidenced a claim may be there is no such thing as a total vacuum of evidence. Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

There is no such thing as a vacuum of evidence. We can always apply logic and reason to some degree of evidence such that not all conclusions are equally substantiated. Even when the scientific method is unable to supply a tested reliable conclusion due to lack of direct evidence it is still a vastly superior method of determining the likelihood of a claim as compared to subjective 'world view' or faith.With regard to gods/deities we have two facts regarding the evidence:1) There is no objective scientific evidence in favour of the existence of gods.2) There is a vast array of objective verifiable evidence in favour of the fact that humans are extremely capable of inventing false concepts for both rational and irrational purposes.With these two facts in mind I would suggest that the chances of any particular claimed entity being the result of human invention are very high. Correspondingly I would suggest that the chance of any particular claimed god actually existing are very low. If we apply the scientific method to the greatest degree possible on the limited evidence available then the metaphorical coin toss is weighted in favour of the atheist conclusion.The degree of weighting may be in dispute but the fact that there is a weighting should not be.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

In the case of atheists rejecting a belief in God/gods/deities what information is being ignored? Specifically?

Well if they are worthy of consideration at all then what we should do is evaluate them as objectively as possible in light of the limited evidence that is available whilst acknowledging a degree of uncertainty relative to this lack of evidence.Otherwise we end up back in the position of logically having to claim agnosticism with regard to all things that are not directly contradicted by evidence. And I know how much you enjoy the Immaterial Pink Unicorn and his friends...........When considering the likelihood of any particular god actually existing we cannot just ignore the human capacity for invention.The IPU is ridiculous because we know that people can create false concepts without pausing for thought. Given a motive to create such a concept (e.g. as an example of an unevidenced logical comparison in a debate) we absolutely know that human beings are able to think up a concept wilfully contradicing, indeed in defiance of, reality.It is true that not all 'god' concepts are created from such explicit, evident and conscious motivation to wilfully defy reality. The motives for most are more unconscious and subtle. Time and extended mythology over time also play a part in making some gods seem less "absurd" than others.However to implicitly accept the innate human ability and capacity for invention and imagination when considering the IPU and other such concepts whilst not doing so when considering various other gods, including your own, is inconsistent and hypocritical.

Nobody is denying that world views exist.Likewise nobody can doubt that people will come to different conclusions even where the evidence is utterly conclusive - So simply pointing out that people come to different conclusions, whilst true, is irrelevant.The problem with your "world views" argument is that it fails to acknowledge that not all "world views" are equally objective, logical or evidentially supported.If you absolutely insist on lumping together tentative conclusions derived fom objective evidence AND claims that are wholly unevidenced in any objective sense under the single banner of "world views" then let us at least acknowledge this distinction between the two. Your implicit assertion that all claims which do not directly contradict known evidence are equally lacking in objectivity and reliability is just not true.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Not all untested conclusions are equally objective or logical. By claiming otherwise you are both denying the validity of the scientific method and opening yourself up to yet more examples of absurdity. Examples which you will no doubt find insulting but against which you will have no logical defense.Science would be impossible if we were unable to make reasoned tentative conclusions by the logical extrapolation of evidence. Hypotheses such as the existence of dark matter and the Higgs boson are not directly evidenced but as tentative conclusions they are far superior in terms of logic and evidential foundation than conclusions derived from consulting with the spirits, seeking guidance from your favourite god or any other example of purely subjective interpretation.Incomplete Empirical Evidence + Logic = Untested Conclusion

What evidence plus logic leads you to your belief in a deity?

Can this same evidence and logic combination equally result in conclusions that you find absurd?

If so then on what basis do you conclude that this evidence and logic is valid?

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What you fail to consider is you can have two world views that are "equally objective, logical or evidentially supported" but which reach contradictory conclusions.

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Yes RAZ. That is how competing scienetific hypotheses are arrived at. Nobody, especially not me, is denying that.

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But not all conclusions are deserving of the name "scientific hypothesis". Many are better described as "subjective unevidenced nonsense".

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when you run out of evidence pro or con, and when you run off into what you consider logical extrapolations, you are basing your conclusions on your opinions concerning what is a logical extrapolation, and thus two different people can reach contradictory conclusions from the same evidence. The plain fact that contradictory conclusions can be reached is, to my humble way of looking at such things, evidence that such extrapolations do not provide a means of testing them for validity.

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Depending on the empirical evidence available there may be one or more equally valid logical conclusions. I could not agree more. But so what?

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This hardly justifies your underlying argument that belief in the existence of a deity which has no objective empirical evidential basis whatsoever is a valid logical conclusion.

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Incomplete Empirical Evidence + Logic = Untested Conclusion

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What evidence plus logic leads you to your belief in a deity?

Can this same evidence and logic combination equally result in conclusions that you find absurd?

If so then on what basis do you conclude that this evidence and logic is valid?

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In contrast do you not agree that there is a wealth of evidence to suggest that humans invent gods?

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Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Ah yes the topic......When it comes to accepting scientific evidence on a day to day functional basis there seems to be little practical difference between the atheist and the deist.But there does seem to be a significant division between the atheist and the deist in terms of the consistency of rational approach.DOES GOD X EXIST?
There is no evidence contradicting the idea that god X does exist. However there is no objective evidence based reason to think that such an entity even might exist.The atheist position is not to explicitly deny the existence of any such entity. Instead the atheist raises a metaphorical eyebrow at the very validity of the question, a question which itself only has any meaning if we accept the subjectively derived conclusion that such an entity is even possible or worthy of consideration, before pointing out that in the absence of any evidence to suggest such a thing might exist there really rationally and logically is no reason at all to think that it does exist. Thus non-belief is the only rational course of action.Conversely the deist must by definition subjectively conclude that at least one, but not all, such entities do exist. This inherently requires a form of special pleading and is an indisputably irrational conclusion.I cannot for the life of me work out why RAZD is disputing this clear difference between the two positions.

When it comes to the presentation and analysis of detailed scientific evidence there is nobody better here at EvC than RAZD. He has been one of my favourite posters ever since I joined. Well I am glad that I am not alone in my bewilderment. The normal theistic arguments go something like this:1) Your position requires just as much faith and reliance on subjective interpretation as does mine.
2) My evidence is just as valid as yours.
3) Whatever evidence does or does not exist you cannot prove that my god does not exist so I win anyway.RAZD's "world view" assertion is a relatively sophisticated version of 1) above. I guess it remains to be seen if any of the other strategies from the theists standard playbook will be employed. Well I intend to try.