The demand for evidence for the existence of God

[Betterave]

…]
Nevertheless it forms a part of the analogy, so I don’t understand why you think that the analogy can make a valid case independent of that consideration.

“…evidence-seeking as part of the action that is called for” forms part of the analogy? I don’t think so. Can you explain?

Well, this might just be my preference, but in matters of moment, I see no reason whatsoever to accept what others have to say, simply because they say so. In that case, you would have to accept all sorts of bizarre and ludicrous ideas. As soon as you start rejecting the claims of those who believe in astrology or ouija boards or get-rich-quick schemes, you are exercising a good reason. A good reason for dismissing what others have to say is that they have no epistemic warrant for saying it - a reasonable argument that unbelievers in theism have and that Billy has not.

I’d say there’s a big difference between “*dismissing *what others have to say *without *a good reason for doing so” and “*accepting *what others have to say, *simply because they say so” - so for the most part you’re working on a straw man here. Can you see that?

As for your “good reason,” it may be good (you’d have to justify that claim), but for now you’re just begging the question about the foundational nature of sincere and widespread testimony as *constituting *a prima facie epistemic warrant.

I don’t know about you, but I do not accept arguments from authority unless I have good reason to think that the authority has a strong epistemic warrant for its position, which warrant I could, in principle, personally explore should I wish to do so.

I think that is probably just a “warm and cuddly” story you tell yourself, but it is not actually true, because it doesn’t actually claim anything, though it purports to do so - and we can see this to be true from the fact that your statement - “I do not accept arguments from authority unless I have good reason to think that the authority has a strong epistemic warrant for its position” - was quite rightly qualified with an “in principle” clause, a clause which in fact makes evident what is almost certainly the truth: that your claim unqualified would be counter-factual, so that in fact you DO “accept arguments from authority without having good reason to think that the authority has a strong epistemic warrant for its position.” I think the only way for you to escape this is by smuggling in your own prejudicial interpretation of “good reason” - which is obviously not a real way of escape at all.

That’s true, but it doesn’t save the claim that behaviour is evidence per se for the truth of the proposition. It is only evidence for the truth of the proposition in so far as it is evidence for the strength of the warrant.

What is the point of saying that?

On the other hand if your contention is that a default stance of acceptance is justified, then you will accept it as reasonable that I expect you to accept my claims without seeking any further justification for me making them

LOL! Very nice! I do accept your expectation as reasonable, but only in the measure that you are asking me to honestly consider your view on its own terms. And it seems that as a piece of testimony, yours is merely the random view of a confused individual, who, on the “further justification” side of things, has demonstrated a failure to grasp the true nature of his own epistemic situation vis-a-vis testimony.

The fact is that life would be untenable if we are credulous in the face of all the myriad competing and incompatible claims that bombard us in our lives. I think that the idea of a default stance of acceptance without considering the merits of the underlying warrants of those making the claim has such obviously absurd consequences and is so clearly what reasonable people do not do, that no further justification for my point is required. But if you want, we can start another thread on the positive role of scepticism and doubt in a reasonable epistemology and the negative epistemic consequences of unwarranted credulity.

“The fact is that life would be untenable if we are credulous in the face of all the myriad competing and incompatible claims that bombard us in our lives.”

And the other fact is that life would be just as untenable if we are incredulous in the face of all the myriad competing and incompatible claims that bombard us in our lives. Can you see that?

Your attempt to again create a false dichotomy, where recognition of a defeasible “default epistemic warrant” for testimony supposedly translates into willy-nilly acceptance of various claims “without considering the merits of the underlying warrants of those making the claims,” is preventing you from seeing what all reasonable people in fact do do, and from which no absurd consequences follow whatsoever.*

 

[Betterave]

Of course thinking that you are right and knowing that your perspective is shared can lead to warm and cuddly feelings and there’s nothing wrong with that, so long as the reason for thinking what you think is not solely that it makes you feel warm and cuddled.

“so long as the reason for thinking what you think is not solely that it makes you feel warm and cuddled”? - but as I said: perhaps there are those who smugly cultivate their own “warm and cuddly” feelings precisely by lampooning those who admit to valuing the “warm and cuddly” - and this might be an embarrassment for them, but perhaps they just never notice.

As TS claims: ‘“everyone thinks their ideas perform in some respect” describes my view as well.’ But no one thinks that the performance of their ideas is “solely that it makes you feel warm and cuddled” - do they? So you imply the existence of a non-existent contrast class here (“them” vs. “us” - “*them *irrational people, who aren’t like me”), which suggests that your statement’s sole purpose was in fact to make yourself feel “warm and cuddled.” Make sense?

When I referred to the game and the rules that was shorthand for a foundation for a worldview and for exploring beliefs which is based on an acceptance that there is an objective external reality and that there are objective criteria by which one’s beliefs about reality can be shown to align more or less with that reality.

Which again invites the question either about the existence of the contrast class implied by your statement here, or about the non-arbitrary nature of your position. (You don’t do this kind of thing as crudely as TS, and I am grateful for that.)

That, on the face of it, the proposition is about an external reality and that there are, at least potentially, means by which its truth (ie alignment with reality) can be demonstrated.

On the face of it, I don’t know what that is supposed to imply, whether it is justified, and specifically, again, how you are proposing to recognize when “an alternative proposition is ‘potentially within the game’”…

 

[The1one]

If the kid had NEVER seen a single ice cream truck emerge from the reports from the kid, if they could not produce ANYTHING by their claims, objectively, he’d be a fool on an epistemic basis to go along. Humans have strong “herd instinct” as the social species we are and there are strong sanctions put in place for dissidents who don’t play along with the group pretending. So perhaps the kid (and other kids in the crowd heralding this “ice cream truck”!) just goes along to get along.

-TS

Touchstone,

Does the Eiffle Tower exist? If someone were to ask me that question, with me not actually being there, I would say no. How could I know if the Eiffle tower existed unless I actually experienced it in myself, or if I had some proof or something. One man shows me a picture. A picture doesn’t prove anything—it can be decieving. Then, countless people come and tell me of there experiences at the Eiffle Tower with great description. What it felt like, what it looked like, what was said there.

That is the idea of religion. Can I prove God exists with concrete proof (like here he is) - no. However, I go off the experiences of others- apparitions, miracles, proofs such as the tilda of Lady of Guadalupe, accounts in the Bible, and other experiences. So do I know for sure that the Eiffle Tower is real? No. But I go off the experiences of others and trust them that it is INDEED there.

Bless,
Mathew

 

[Asemodeus]

Touchstone,

Does the Eiffle Tower exist? If someone were to ask me that question, with me not actually being there, I would say no. How could I know if the Eiffle tower existed unless I actually experienced it in myself, or if I had some proof or something. One man shows me a picture. A picture doesn’t prove anything—it can be decieving. Then, countless people come and tell me of there experiences at the Eiffle Tower with great description. What it felt like, what it looked like, what was said there.

That is the idea of religion. Can I prove God exists with concrete proof (like here he is) - no. However, I go off the experiences of others- apparitions, miracles, proofs such as the tilda of Lady of Guadalupe, accounts in the Bible, and other experiences. So do I know for sure that the Eiffle Tower is real? No. But I go off the experiences of others and trust them that it is INDEED there.

Bless,
Mathew

That was one giant false equivalency. False equivalency on the value of faith. Your Eiffel tower example only makes this all the more clear. The Eiffel Tower could be shown to you by various people with pictures and video and plenty of eyewitness testimony, and you can reasonably take their word on it since it is a tower. Something that could exist given the properties of nature, that can be taken on faith and no harm done.

Your example falls apart when you try to compare the faith of the towers existence to god. God cannot be shown to be real in any meaningful or real fashion, and to proclaim such a false being to be real is blind faith. Faith in a tower can be constructive since towers do exist and you have plenty of previous experience with them. Comparing the two faith values is illogical to the extreme.

It is the same with my car. I have faith that it will start in the morning since I have previous experience that it has actually started before. Given as such, I know full well that this isn’t a 100% given, and when it does break I don’t freak out and start sacrificing goats to the car gods. In order for your example to be reasonable, you would have to be sacrificing goats all the time for faith based assumptions. To do otherwise is to show doubt to your deity. If faith is absolute for your god, and you are equating that faith to faith in real objects and behaviors, then that is the logical extreme you are showing us.

 

[tonyrey]

Your example falls apart when you try to compare the faith of the towers existence to god. God cannot be shown to be real in any meaningful or real fashion, and to proclaim such a false being to be real is blind faith. Faith in a tower can be constructive since towers do exist and you have plenty of previous experience with them. Comparing the two faith values is illogical to the extreme.

It is the same with my car. I have faith that it will start in the morning since I have previous experience that it has actually started before. Given as such, I know full well that this isn’t a 100% given, and when it does break I don’t freak out and start sacrificing goats to the car gods. In order for your example to be reasonable, you would have to be sacrificing goats all the time for faith based assumptions. To do otherwise is to show doubt to your deity. If faith is absolute for your god, and you are equating that faith to faith in real objects and behaviors, then that is the logical extreme you are showing us.

In other words you have faith only in material objects and not in persons…

 

[grannymh]

That was one giant false equivalency. False equivalency on the value of faith. Your Eiffel tower example only makes this all the more clear. The Eiffel Tower could be shown to you by various people with pictures and video and plenty of eyewitness testimony, and you can reasonably take their word on it since it is a tower. Something that could exist given the properties of nature, that can be taken on faith and no harm done.

Your example falls apart when you try to compare the faith of the towers existence to god. God cannot be shown to be real in any meaningful or real fashion, and to proclaim such a false being to be real is blind faith. Faith in a tower can be constructive since towers do exist and you have plenty of previous experience with them. Comparing the two faith values is illogical to the extreme.

It is the same with my car. I have faith that it will start in the morning since I have previous experience that it has actually started before. Given as such, I know full well that this isn’t a 100% given, and when it does break I don’t freak out and start sacrificing goats to the car gods. In order for your example to be reasonable, you would have to be sacrificing goats all the time for faith based assumptions. To do otherwise is to show doubt to your deity. If faith is absolute for your god, and you are equating that faith to faith in real objects and behaviors, then that is the logical extreme you are showing us.

In other words, are you saying that the problem is not with faith but with the objects of faith? If the two objects are both in the realm of the material/physical in space and time, then one could say that the possibility of both of them being objectively real is close to 100%. An example of something damaging the 100% reality would be a sudden tornado demolishing one of them. Is this paraphrase what you mean?

Blessings,
granny

Human life is sacred.

 

[The1one]

That was one giant false equivalency. False equivalency on the value of faith. Your Eiffel tower example only makes this all the more clear. The Eiffel Tower could be shown to you by various people with pictures and video and plenty of eyewitness testimony, and you can reasonably take their word on it since it is a tower. Something that could exist given the properties of nature, that can be taken on faith and no harm done.

Your example falls apart when you try to compare the faith of the towers existence to god. God cannot be shown to be real in any meaningful or real fashion, and to proclaim such a false being to be real is blind faith. Faith in a tower can be constructive since towers do exist and you have plenty of previous experience with them. Comparing the two faith values is illogical to the extreme.

It is the same with my car. I have faith that it will start in the morning since I have previous experience that it has actually started before. Given as such, I know full well that this isn’t a 100% given, and when it does break I don’t freak out and start sacrificing goats to the car gods. In order for your example to be reasonable, you would have to be sacrificing goats all the time for faith based assumptions. To do otherwise is to show doubt to your deity. If faith is absolute for your god, and you are equating that faith to faith in real objects and behaviors, then that is the logical extreme you are showing us.

I don’t think I was equating faith in God to faith in real objects, sorry if you misunderstood. I was simply drawing a parallel between the two.

 

[Mystic_Banana]

…]

Nevertheless it forms a part of the analogy, so I don’t understand why you think that the analogy can make a valid case independent of that consideration.
Well, this might just be my preference, but in matters of moment, I see no reason whatsoever to accept what others have to say, simply because they say so. In that case, you would have to accept all sorts of bizarre and ludicrous ideas. As soon as you start rejecting the claims of those who believe in astrology or ouija boards or get-rich-quick schemes, you are exercising a good reason. A good reason for dismissing what others have to say is that they have no epistemic warrant for saying it - a reasonable argument that unbelievers in theism have and that Billy has not.
I don’t know about you, but I do not accept arguments from authority unless I have good reason to think that the authority has a strong epistemic warrant for its position, which warrant I could, in principle, personally explore should I wish to do so.
That’s true, but it doesn’t save the claim that behaviour is evidence per se for the truth of the proposition. It is only evidence for the truth of the proposition in so far as it is evidence for the strength of the warrant.
On the other hand if your contention is that a default stance of acceptance is justified, then you will accept it as reasonable that I expect you to accept my claims without seeking any further justification for me making them

The fact is that life would be untenable if we are credulous in the face of all the myriad competing and incompatible claims that bombard us in our lives. I think that the idea of a default stance of acceptance without considering the merits of the underlying warrants of those making the claim has such obviously absurd consequences and is so clearly what reasonable people do not do, that no further justification for my point is required. But if you want, we can start another thread on the positive role of scepticism and doubt in a reasonable epistemology and the negative epistemic consequences of unwarranted credulity.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

I’m not sure if this is the best analogy but I think I’d like to return to it anyway! I’d say ultimately, Billy is expecting the icecream van to turn up because everyone else has told him to expect it, based on a rather large number of testimonies that a number of different door to door salesmen have been around advertising the arrival of the icecream van

Of course, just to muddy the water, there are some people in the next town who are told to expect a burger van at the same time, but oddly the burger van is expected to charge the same for burgers as teh icecream van for icecream…

 

[grannymh]

When debating the existence of God, the non-believer often demands evidence. He usually means by that proof delivered by science, which, in his view, is the most solid (and sometimes the only) reliable source of knowledge.

In my view, he is like the boy in the school yard who sees other kids run off and asks them where they’re going, and when the kids tell the boy that the icecream van is around the corner and want him to come along, stubbornly shakes his head and says: No, I haven’t heard the bell ring yet.

Does the boy really need to hear the bell ring before he can trust the existence of the icecream van? There seems to be no irrefutable scientific proof for the existence of God. But, is that really needed, considering that the majority of humans believe in His existence nonetheless? Doesn’t the non-believer want his life and actions to have meaning? Doesn’t he want eternal life, eternal happiness, fulfillment of all desire?

Non-believers, don’t wait for the bell to ring, please come, and have icecream with us!

Having gone back and forth regarding various post solutions, I have decided that the onus is on Billy, the boy who said no because he hadn’t heard the bell ring. Obviously, he is capable of making a reasonable decision even though people may not agree with it. Being capable to decide his own position, he is also capable to change his own position. Billy possesses both intellect and will and can freely choose to be a believer at any time.

Blessings,
granny

Every human person is worthy of profound respect.