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Author Topic:   Broken Thinking Skills & Pointless Discussion
mike the wiz
Member
Posts: 4758
From: u.k
Joined: 05-24-2003


Message 76 of 78 (921129)
01-01-2025 9:05 AM
Reply to: Message 75 by Taq
11-04-2024 12:33 PM


Re: Regarding Broken Thinking Skills
Taq writes:
What I see is injustice caused by men, and no supernatural deity doing anything about it. Again, the universe is indistinguishable from a universe where God does not exist.
How can we falsify that last bare assertion?
How can we even know a universe can exist without God? For all you know the intelligibility of the universe, the mathematics, and all the usual features of design, would not be there in a universe where God does not exist.
Indeed, for all you know, there could be no universe at all, if God did not exist.
Your first assertion is also an anecdotal-fallacy when you say, "I see no deity doing anything about it".
Why would that be consequential?
If one man does see Jack the ripper committing a crime and another does not, do we value the statement, "I saw no crime!"
What can your prejudiced, subjective, biased view of God's existence, really mean if one person genuinely does experience God in their lives but you do not?
Such an ignorance would be bare-ignorance, like that of the man that did not see the crime. If you are scientific as your side proclaims, then why would what you see even matter to you? You also don't see any black swans.
And also, in relation to the bible's claims it is also a fallacy-of-irrelevance because it is clearly mentioned in the New Testament that God will judge at the end of time and will allow the wheat to grow with the tares meaning that God is not judging each injust action in the present.
So if God is not going to judge the world until the day of judgement, then we would expect it to look like God is not doing anything about it, meaning your statement doesn't prove a thing.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 75 by Taq, posted 11-04-2024 12:33 PM Taq has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 78 by Taq, posted 01-03-2025 2:00 PM mike the wiz has not replied

  
mike the wiz
Member
Posts: 4758
From: u.k
Joined: 05-24-2003


(1)
(1)
Message 77 of 78 (921131)
01-01-2025 9:58 AM


Since there is a discussion of similar things here, I also submit my comment here; (which basically debunks "God would have to be evil" as an argument, because I follow such reasoning to where it leads)
mike the wiz writes:
A good reductio-ad-absurdum is that the inventor of the trilobyte's eye if he was evil, should cause a lot more suffering and life should be like a horror movie for most people. After all if Hitler has average IQ and can cause tremendous suffering to millions, wouldn't we expect something more spectacular from the inventor of the universe than the results that can be explained as coming from random-chance alone?
Just for starters I myself with a slightly above average IQ, can think of more inventive ways to get evil pleasures met such as the absence of all anaesthetics from nature. Children should be getting chased and eaten regularly by Freddy Krueger and all sort of monsters designed to slowly and sadistically kill children after instilling great horror.
But when something happens like a child is killed by a wild animal, any rational person with a high enough IQ can see that this is simply an aberration caused by the bad luck you get from random-chance-probability figures which could predict this happening occasionally.
Here is the logic that BUSTS your position wide open;
Random chance alone is a better explanation than an evil God. But you also at the same time want to argue that it is evidence of an evil God.
So which is it? Do you believe God is not there, and that is why bad things happen, or do you believe the evidence is consistent with an evil God being there?
A true logician can admit that you would expect a different outcome than that of random-chance, if God is taking pleasure in these incidents.
You want to argue both yet it seems like a reasonable contradiction.
I admit I CAN believe in a world where the answer for bad things is that God is not there to stop them(hypothetically my mind could see it makes some sense), but I would not then argue that it fits with God being evil, because that would be the same as admitting there is evidence of design by looking at the figures for bad luck incidents.
Are you forgetting your position is atheist?
All you can do is argue that God as a sadistic God, would somehow be happy with the evil produced by random-chance figures, but we know this is not true because an innately evil person is known to have an appetite to do evil. To say that a serial killer would be content to hope and wait on his neighbour randomly falling off a cliff and dying rather than obeying his instinct to murder him if it in his power, is an absurd argument in how WEAK it is.
And what do I infer from this? "If" God exists, "then" why God allows suffering can't be for the reason put forward, of Him being evil. There MUST be another reason, logically.

  
Taq
Member
Posts: 10385
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.7


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Message 78 of 78 (921205)
01-03-2025 2:00 PM
Reply to: Message 76 by mike the wiz
01-01-2025 9:05 AM


Re: Regarding Broken Thinking Skills
mike the wiz writes:
How can we even know a universe can exist without God?
What God?
How can we even know a universe can exist without invisible pink unicorns?
How can we even know a universe can exist without the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
The burden of proof is at issue here.
Your first assertion is also an anecdotal-fallacy when you say, "I see no deity doing anything about it".

Why would that be consequential?
I make the claim that I can correctly predict the rank and suit of the first card drawn from a shuffled deck. We set up an experiment where we track how many times I correctly predict the drawn card. It turns out, I correctly predict the drawn card once out of every 52 draws, on average.
Is that consequential? Yes. It shows my claimed predictive power is no better than randomly guessing. Someone without my claimed powers of prediction would do just as good at predicting cards as I do. It is no different than if my claimed powers didn't exist.
The same for God. The world operates in such a way that there is no obvious changes caused by God. Children still die of cancer even though there is supposedly a loving God. That makes no sense. Would a loving parent let their child die if all they had to do was snap their fingers and cure their cancer? No.
What can your prejudiced, subjective, biased view of God's existence, really mean if one person genuinely does experience God in their lives but you do not?
People make all sorts of claims about experiences with supernatural beings that occurs in their heads, most of which you would reject.
Such an ignorance would be bare-ignorance, like that of the man that did not see the crime. If you are scientific as your side proclaims, then why would what you see even matter to you? You also don't see any black swans.
Why would a objective measurements matter when using a method based on objective measurements? Gee, I don't know. Let me think about that.
[/sarcasm]
And also, in relation to the bible's claims it is also a fallacy-of-irrelevance because it is clearly mentioned in the New Testament that God will judge at the end of time and will allow the wheat to grow with the tares meaning that God is not judging each injust action in the present.
That would be indistinguishable from a world where God does not exist.
Sorry, but I'm not impressed by arguments that require me to die before I can get evidence as to their truth.
Added in edit:
Carl Sagan's "The Dragon in My Garage" probably does a better job of explaining the problem:
quote:
"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage"
Suppose (I'm following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin[6]) I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!
"Show me," you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle — but no dragon.
"Where's the dragon?" you ask.
"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."
You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints.
"Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."
Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.
"Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."
You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.
"Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick."
And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.
Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so.
--Carl Sagan
The Dragon in My Garage - RationalWiki

This message is a reply to:
 Message 76 by mike the wiz, posted 01-01-2025 9:05 AM mike the wiz has not replied

  
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