Insights into Non-believers' strategy in debate

[StrawberryJam]

I don’t think anyone is making that assumption. Dr. Kreeft is certainly well versed in the project of apologetics since he is a philosopher who has been at it all his life. But that is beside the point. Certainly apologetics has a proper place in the history of Christianity for St. Paul used it himself, as described in Acts;

" Acts 17:22-31 (NIV):

22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.

24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’

29 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”Because the Jewish God could not be named, it is possible that Paul’s Athenian listeners would have considered his god to be “the unknown god par excellence”.[6] His listeners may also have understood the introduction of a new god by allusions to Aeschylus’ The Eumenides; the irony would have been that just as the Eumenides were not new gods at all but the Furies in a new form, so was the Christian God not a new god but rather the god the Greeks already worshipped as the Unknown God "

The effectiveness of apologetics is another question. If it does no more than give people an occasion to think, that alone is a positive. Beyond that it reinforces believers in faith, showing them that even nature and the reason God gave them does indeed serve as a preamble to the Faith, a proto-revelation which God has placed in nature itself.

Linus2nd

Paul had no converts in Athens.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Paul had no converts in Athens.

That is incorrect. True he did not have great success because the city had already devolved into a deep seated hedonism, following the Epicureans. " So Paul went out from among them. But some men joined him and believed, among them Dionysius the Aeropagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them. ( Acts 17:33,34 ). Dionysius was a great philosopher to whom Thomas Aquinas often referred in his philosophical discourses.

Linus2nd

 

[StrawberryJam]

That is incorrect. True he did not have great success because the city had already devolved into a deep seated hedonism, following the Epicureans. " So Paul went out from among them. But some men joined him and believed, among them Dionysius the Aeropagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them. ( Acts 17:33,34 ). Dionysius was a great philosopher to whom Thomas Aquinas often referred in his philosophical discourses.

Linus2nd

Tell me about the great Dionysius and others. And how your Paul converted him using primary sources.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Paul had no converts in Athens.

Yes he did. Not many but several.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

His post, while well formulated, is not anything new. He observes, correctly, that our current understanding cannot answer some fundamental questions (and perhaps the most fundamental question of all- where did it all come from?). But that’s all we know- there’s a gap in our understanding. He’s right that there must be something we don’t understand, but potential explanations still have be supported by evidence. It is quite literally a god of the gaps argument- an argument from ignorance. There’s a gap, but Zeus, the flying spaghetti monster, and my multi-winged multi-eyed creature fill it just as well. At one time, the origin of the sun and species were gaps to- but folks far smarter than I were willing to put in time and effort to fill the gap based on observable evidence, rather than being content to insert the supernatural.

“Zeus, the flying spaghetti monster, and my multi-winged multi-eyed creature” do not fill any gap, nor do they pretend to. None of these imaginary beings come close to the explanation of a Creator God. For one thing, it doesn’t really matter that any of these other things do not exist. It matters tremendously to everybody if a Creator God does not exist. Only a Creator God can fill the gap of explanation, without which everything devolves into a meaningless and absurd gap of existence.

The rational mind does not resign itself to the irrational without a very good reason.

I can’t think of a very good reason. Can you?

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Tell me about the great Dionysius and others. And how your Paul converted him using primary sources.

Scripture is the source? I don’t think the author of Paul’s letter was lying, what would be his motive? In those days there were no " primary sources " as we understand them today.

Linus2nd

 

[JapaneseKappa]

The thing that perplexes me about atheists is their glaring discontinuity with their predecessors.

Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

JackVk;12658019:

The thing that perplexes me about atheists is their glaring discontinuity with their predecessors.

Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.

For those needing translation:

“Kill them. For the Lord knoweth them that are His .” ref]

“Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.” was a phrase allegedly spoken by Papal legate and Cistercian abbot Arnaud Amalric prior to the Massacre at Béziers, a massacre in the French town of Béziers that formed the first major military action of the Albigensian Crusade. A direct translation of the Latin phrase would be “Kill them. For the Lord knows those that are His own.” Less formal English translations have given rise to variants such as “Kill them all; let God sort them out.” Other sources give the quotation as “Neca eos omnes. Deus suos agnoscet.”

 

[JapaneseKappa]

While all the posts on this thread are magnificently written by exceptionally fine human beings they all seem off-topic.

Which is upsetting as, for the first time in the history of the world, Kreeft actually makes a good point:

*"The basic form of these arguments [ontological disproofs] is something like this:

• If God exists, he must be like ‘X’. [Here ‘X’ = some attribute(s) of God, e.g., he must be good, loving, omnipotent, etc.].
• ‘X’ is actually impossible.
• Therefore, God cannot exist."*

Such arguments don’t disprove God, they only disprove that God is ‘X’, where ‘X’ is whatever someone thinks God is supposed to be. Which is fine, because God will always transcend ‘X’, because God isn’t limited by our puny definitions, God is beyond our understanding.

I am the Lord, and there is no other.
I form the light and create darkness,
I bring prosperity and create disaster;
I, the Lord, do all these things.

Phrased another way: the reason non-believers go for emotional persuasion is because the concept of God is not well defined. Why should they engage with strict rationality when their opponent’s position is essentially “there exists this thing-we-don’t-actually-know-what-it-is-or-how-it-behaves?” There simply isn’t enough to go on. They’ve found there is no point in arguing with any particular conception of God, because believers can simply abandon the ship anytime they suspect there is a leak. God’s “transcendence” is simply a band-aid to patch up the cognitive dissonance that comes with switching between mutually exclusive conceptions of God as though they are equivalent.

This is closely related to the problems with many of the evidence-based arguments for God. For example, consider the fine-tuning argument. If it is true that finely tuned parameters are evidence of God’s existence, it must necessarily be true that non-finely-tuned parameters would be evidence against God. Such parameters exist, but are not held as evidence against God.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

This is closely related to the problems with many of the evidence-based arguments for God. For example, consider the fine-tuning argument. If it is true that finely tuned parameters are evidence of God’s existence, it must necessarily be true that non-finely-tuned parameters would be evidence against God. Such parameters exist, but are not held as evidence against God.

We can infer certain things about the finely-tuned-parameters at the time of the Big Bang. What can we infer about the non-finely-tuned parameters at that time?

 

[JapaneseKappa]

We can infer certain things about the finely-tuned-parameters at the time of the Big Bang. What can we infer about the non-finely-tuned parameters at that time?

I’m curious what sort of things you think we can infer.

I’m not talking about inference, I’m talking about evidence. We are weighing the plausibility of two claims: that God finely tuned the universe for life, or that the universe got the properties it does through some other mechanism. Which one best fits with what we know about the universe? Certainly we know that some parameters make the universe hospitable to life (or we wouldn’t be here!) But we also know that some parameters make the universe less hospitable to life, and other parameters are way out in left field as far as life is concerned. It certainly seems that this combination would be a little slapdash for a perfect universal engineer who wanted to create life. On the other hand, we would expect random, or natural, phenomenon to be rather agnostic as far as life is concerned.

Lets think about it a little differently. Imagine we lived in a universe where all the parameters were clearly tuned to create us as the centerpiece of our universe. Would you cite this perfect tuning as evidence against God’s existence? I very much doubt that you would. I think you would actually claim the opposite, that such a perfect ordering was evidence for God’s existence.

But how can this be? If both perfectly tuned parameters and slapdashedly-tuned parameters constitute evidence for God, you’re basically double-dipping. If you know God well enough to predict slapdash-parameters, then you would actually have to conclude perfect-parameters are evidence against God’s existence. If you knew that God would create perfect-parameters, then slapdash parameters are evidence against God’s existence. But the reality is that you, and others sympathetic to the fine-tuning argument, actually don’t know what sort of parameters God would choose. As I said in my previous post, God is not well defined enough for you to make those sorts of declarations. Therefore, since you don’t know what parameters God would choose, you cannot claim that any particular set of parameters constitutes evidence for God.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

But the reality is that you, and others sympathetic to the fine-tuning argument, actually don’t know what sort of parameters God would choose. As I said in my previous post, God is not well defined enough for you to make those sorts of declarations. Therefore, since you don’t know what parameters God would choose, you cannot claim that any particular set of parameters constitutes evidence for God.

Well, we know what sort of life-giving parameters God did choose. Some that appear to be hospitable to life. On the other hand, not all parameters have to be geared toward life, or there would be nothing but life. So the non-life giving parameters are useful for things other than life, such as the rocky planet we need to live on, the sun we need to see by, the air that gives us breath, the water that quenches thirst, all those distant stars and galaxies that give us a chance to wonder at the power and glory of this God you say we cannot define, but that I say we can define in part because he has created us (among other reasons) with the gift of wonder at his power and glory.

What you offer is a purposeless universe with, therefore, no purpose for wondering.

 

[Bradski]

…all those distant stars and galaxies that give us a chance to wonder at the power and glory of this God you say we cannot define, but that I say we can define in part because he has created us (among other reasons) with the gift of wonder at his power and glory.

What you offer is a purposeless universe with, therefore, no purpose for wondering.

I recall as similar argument put slightly differently, but amounting to the same thing. A young Christian posting on another forum a few years back, when questioned about the reason for all the heavens, areas of existence which we can never directly experience, and he suggested it was there so we’d have something to look at through our telescopes.

There is a small rock in the shadow of a dusty hill on a barren moon circulating a rocky planet which is orbiting a small sun in a corner of a tiny solar system in an non-descript galaxy at the far ends of the heavens. Indeed, it is so far away that it is outside the observable universe, moving away from us faster than light and so literally impossible for us to even confirm its existence. It has sat there for billions of years. You think that God caused it to be there. In the grand scheme of things, we each have as much meaning to the universe as that piece of rock.

When you understand that, you’ll enjoy your brief moment in the sunlight so much more and realise that, as short a time as you have, it is full of meaning. Make the most of it.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

When you understand that, you’ll enjoy your brief moment in the sunlight so much more and realise that, as short a time as you have, it is full of meaning. Make the most of it.

I try to make the most of it, realizing that this world is but a portal to the next; and that without a next world, this world would be able to offer me no more than it offers any other beast of the earth. I choose to believe this desire to know God was not planted in me without a purpose. The bigness of the universe is no more a proof against God than the littleness of me is a proof against me. I like how Pascal put it:

“Man is a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed…. Even if the universe should crush him, man would still be nobler than that which kills him, because he knows he dies; and he knows the advantage the universe has over him…. All our dignity, then, resides in thought.”

 

[JapaneseKappa]

Well, we know what sort of life-giving parameters God did choose. Some that appear to be hospitable to life. On the other hand, not all parameters have to be geared toward life, or there would be nothing but life. So the non-life giving parameters are useful for things other than life, such as the rocky planet we need to live on, the sun we need to see by, the air that gives us breath, the water that quenches thirst, all those distant stars and galaxies that give us a chance to wonder at the power and glory of this God you say we cannot define, but that I say we can define in part because he has created us (among other reasons) with the gift of wonder at his power and glory.

What you offer is a purposeless universe with, therefore, no purpose for wondering.

I never denied your ability to say “see how things are, that’s exactly what God has done.” The problem is that such a statement is fundamentally not an evidence based argument. That sort of statement is only an assertion that it is possible to rectify the idea of God with the current state of affairs. I have been telling you that the problem is that you would be able to rectify the idea of God with any state of affairs because the idea of God is not well defined.

Purposelessness is a transparent appeal to consequences, and would seem to me to be the very sort of emotional argument others have been criticizing non-believers for making in this very thread.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

Did you read the article by Dr. Kreeft?
He is the author of Twenty Proofs for the Existence of God which can be accessed at the same site. strangenotions.com/god-exists/

We are glad you are here and hope you will find something fruitful.

Linus2nd

*"The basic form of these arguments [ontological disproofs] is something like this:

• If God exists, he must be like ‘X’. [Here ‘X’ = some attribute(s) of God, e.g., he must be good, loving, omnipotent, etc.].
• ‘X’ is actually impossible.
• Therefore, God cannot exist."*

Such arguments don’t disprove God, they only disprove that God is ‘X’, where ‘X’ is whatever someone thinks God is supposed to be. Which is fine, because God will always transcend ‘X’, because God isn’t limited by our puny definitions, God is beyond our understanding.

I wonder how many of the twenty proofs have been abandoned at one time or another by people in this thread based on the “X is impossible” arguments. To honestly claim there are 20 proofs, you would have to find all 20 compelling and never have encountered a scenario where you were unable to defend one. Otherwise, I could just slap together a list of 20 strings of baby words and claim I had 20 proofs for God’s non existence.

The list has some incredibly weak proofs, including a variation of the fine tuning argument I’ve already mentioned here.

I think this is another reason non-believers frequently go for emotional arguments. When faced with the sort of shotgun approach that is the list of 20 proofs, it is not practical to try to address them all at once. Instead, non-believers might focus on one and potentially make some headway into getting religious people to water down the conclusion, perhaps in a manner inocente pointed out. However, by the time a non-believer has done this for a handful of the “proofs,” the religious people will have forgotten about some of their earlier shortcomings, and so the non-religious person would have to start all over. And even after being unable to defend a few proofs, the religious people would still be blithely claiming they had 20 proofs.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Purposelessness is a transparent appeal to consequences, and would seem to me to be the very sort of emotional argument others have been criticizing non-believers for making in this very thread.

You have never been denied the right to live a purposeless life in a purposeless universe.

If that gives you comfort, go for it.

My guess is that most people will not go for it, and would prefer a purposeful life in a purposeful universe even without the kind of hard evidence (whatever that can possibly mean) that you require for believing same.

At some point the reason of the heart trump the reasons of the head. This is one of those points!

 

[JapaneseKappa]

You have never been denied the right to live a purposeless life in a purposeless universe.

If that gives you comfort, go for it.

My guess is that most people will not go for it, and would prefer a purposeful life in a purposeful universe even without the kind of hard evidence (whatever that can possibly mean) that you require for believing same.

At some point the reason of the heart trump the reasons of the head. This is one of those points!

I think this further cements the non-believer’s strategy of emotional appeal as a valid one. You are clearly demonstrating their point: believers frequently believe not because of some cerebral justification, but because of some sort of emotional gut reaction. Non-believers find that logical argumentation is not effective against such people, and instead attempt to speak to them in terms they understand.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

I wonder how many of the twenty proofs have been abandoned at one time or another by people in this thread based on the “X is impossible” arguments. To honestly claim there are 20 proofs, you would have to find all 20 compelling and never have encountered a scenario where you were unable to defend one. Otherwise, I could just slap together a list of 20 strings of baby words and claim I had 20 proofs for God’s non existence.

The list has some incredibly weak proofs, including a variation of the fine tuning argument I’ve already mentioned here.

I think this is another reason non-believers frequently go for emotional arguments. When faced with the sort of shotgun approach that is the list of 20 proofs, it is not practical to try to address them all at once. Instead, non-believers might focus on one and potentially make some headway into getting religious people to water down the conclusion, perhaps in a manner inocente pointed out. However, by the time a non-believer has done this for a handful of the “proofs,” the religious people will have forgotten about some of their earlier shortcomings, and so the non-religious person would have to start all over. And even after being unable to defend a few proofs, the religious people would still be blithely claiming they had 20 proofs.

I am going to assume it was an honest mistake for you to argue that Kreeft offers 20 proofs for the existence of God. He offered 20 “arguments” which are not the same as proofs. An argument is based on evidence that may or may not be acceptable to all, whereas a proof requires acceptance by all if the proof is conclusive.

I think Kreeft would be the first to concede that very possibly none of these arguments would persuade an atheist because none of them is conclusive proof (whatever that means) of the kind that an atheist requires.

peterkreeft.com/topics-more/20_arguments-gods-existence.htm

 

[Charlemagne_III]

I think this further cements the non-believer’s strategy of emotional appeal as a valid one.

It is a valid one and for the reason that Reason is powerless to defeat the reasons of the heart. If God gave us the desire to know him, there is no way the atheist can prove that is not so, and the person who believes this knows in his gut that it is so.