Thommo wrote:

Ragwortshire wrote:Firstly, one could go back to old pagan-ish ideas - it would be possible for the behaviour of a universe to be determined by conscious "spirits" which were not gods (in the sense of not having created the universe). Secondly, the behaviour of the universe could be determined in a random fashion, according to some completely arbitrary probabilistic principle. Perhaps (although this is an offhand idea which I do not really expect to be coherent) we could be even more fanciful and imagine a universe in which every single particle has free will, so that the whole universe has literally complete freedom to behave in any way at all.

So your alternative suggestions are relabelled god (remember that it was any god, not just a creator god, I took pains to point that out) and relabelled natural laws (quantum mechanical laws are probabilistic, there's no prohibition in the definition of natural laws on randomness).

Hmm. I actually can't find where you said you were ruling out all gods - I assume then that the belief you are proposing here is something like "No conscious being exists which does not depend fully upon the physical universe"? I assume you would hold free-willed particles to be ruled under this definition as well? And also apologies if I have missed an obvious statement in one of your posts to this effect.

On the other hand, I quite agree that natural laws as they are normally understood do include probabilistic ones - and I am happy that the point is now clarified.

Thommo wrote:

Ragwortshire wrote:There is, however, and even more fundamental point to be made: Why does the behaviour of the universe need to be determined by anything at all? Why couldn't it just behave in an arbitrary fashion, obeying no laws - not even probabilistic ones - short of listing, at every point in time, the position and properties of every single particle?

Interesting question. Is disproved by observational reality and so isn't a possible alternative answer to my question, but a nice hypothetical.

Hmmm. Is "observational reality" supposed to refer to something like the weak anthropic principle? Or are you rather saying that we observe natural laws to exist and therefore the universe is not in fact arbitrary in nature?

In either case, I should point out that this is not just an isolated example - the universe could be partially determined by natural laws, and partially arbitrary. Indeed, partly following on from your own logic, a partially arbitrary universe seems to be the only possible alternative to a universe governed by natural laws, regardless of whether or not God exists! After all, if a God exists and intervenes in the world, then either those interventions follow some sort of natural law, or they are themselves arbitrary.

I do think this is rather a fascinating topic by the way - quite apart from questions of theism or atheism.

I apologise that I do not have time to respond to all of the points you have raised so far - I will of course do so as and when I am able. For now, I just want to return briefly to the point about omnipotence (and omniscience), and the language in which these concepts ought to be expressed.

So far I have the following: We might start with first-order logic, using function-symbols and relation-symbols as our structure. We could also bring set theory - ZF, I guess. Then all we need is a set of agents (who can do things), a set of actions, and a relation between the two, say C(a, b) which says "a is able to do b". The omnipotence of x is simply the statement "For all y, C(x, y)".

Does this seem to make sense so far? If so, then my main problem is how to define the set of actions. At this point I am quite unsure of how to proceed, so if you have actually gone through this same process before (I got the impression from your posts that you have), I would appreciate knowing how you approached this problem.

Ragwortshire wrote:

Sophie wrote:

Ragwortshire wrote:It isn't a case of sometimes believing and sometimes not believing - of course I have doubts sometimes, but I wouldn't say it's gone as far as actually not believing for as long as I can remember. Rather it's a case of admitting that I don't know, but nevertheless realising that I believe. And I guess it would be dishonest of me to claim that I know exactly how that is supposed to work - but hopefully this current discussion may provide me with either something of an answer, or a good reason to conclude that it can't possibly work at all.

This may or may not have been partial motivation for me arguing so strongly that it was possible to love God without knowing of his existence; I can't really recall at this point. After all, I do feel, emotionally, that I love God, despite professing this lack of rational knowledge.

That doesn't really make sense to me because you've talked about your faith. What is the difference, then, between believing in the existence of God and having faith that God exists? You seem to be saying that you have faith in God, and yet, you are are agnostic in regard to the existence of God. I don't see how those two things can be reconciled unless when you refer to your faith, you just mean that think that God might exist. I guess I thought that when you referred to your faith, you meant something more than that. I thought it meant that you trusted God. And to me, you can't trust God without first knowing that God exists.

Faith, I guess, has more than one possible meaning. For example, one often refers to the overall body of beliefs held by (most) Christians as "the Christian faith" - or indeed to the body of beliefs held by Catholics as "the Catholic faith". On the other hand I would also use it, depending on the context, to refer to this idea of trust in someone, for example God.

How can one trust in someone without knowing that they exist? I guess I would say the same thing as I did for love - by trusting in individual human beings, and perhaps more generally by trusting in humanity as a whole. Or maybe one can be more concrete and say that the difference is that faith involves believing in a good/benevolent/loving God, rather than just an arbitrary God. Trust is also quite closely related to the Christian virtue of hope, which is separate from faith, so it's possible faith ought to refer more to belief itself, than to the trust which may follow from it.

Ragwortshire--the problem I have with this is that you seem to be defining "God" in such a way that God doesn't really have to exist at all in order for you to be a Christian. i.e. Loving God is "loving other people." Having faith in God is (you "guess") something that "involves believing in a good/benevolent/loving God" or as "having hope" that a good and loving God exists. The very tentativeness of your definition of faith seems to indicate that you don't have faith at all. And if you don't have faith at all, I'm not sure that you can be a Christian.

I could be wrong about all of this, but it seems to me that your "belief" in God is kind of like my on-again, off-again "belief" in Skippy. The difference is that, in your case, you have very elaborate and somewhat sophisticated "explanations" for your belief. When it comes to my "belief" in Skippy, I know and admit, from the get-go, that I'm making Skippy up as I go along. When people ask me questions about Skippy, I have to laugh at how preposterous my answers are, and as I do so, I can't take my belief in Skippy seriously for very long. Thus, I jump ship re: my belief in Skippy, and feel kind of embarrassed after each short, increasingly infrequent bout of belief in Skippy. Either that, or I resort to silence and/or denial re: my belief in Skippy since the intellectual part of me knows my "belief" in Skippy is entirely emotional and is a sort of defense mechanism. It's like an emotional blanket that I need to carry around with me every once in awhile, and even though the intellectual part of me knows it's just a blanket and not a true belief--the emotional part of me really and truly needs it at times, and so I take it up, and when I do that, I don't care what anyone else has to say about it because at that moment, my need for the feeling of security and strength it gives me is much greater than my need for anything else.

I guess what I am saying is that I'm not convinced that you believe in God as much as you believe in hope and in being good and kind to people. The thing is, you don't have to be a Christian in order to believe in those things. The kind of "faith" you're describing strikes me as the kind of superficial faith that C. S. Lewis referred to as intellectual assent. Yet, in your case, because you are now referring to yourself as an "agnostic theist," it's not even intellectual assent. It seems to me, at this point, that for some reason, you want/need to refer to yourself as a Christian, and that's fine. However, from what I can tell, you don't need Christianity in order to believe what you do. You don't even need God to believe what you do. Rather, you are using the word "God" (it seems to me) as a symbol for a belief in something else, and your beliefs seem to be more consistent with secular humanism than they are with Christianity. However, I'm extremely sleep-deprived right now, and perhaps I'm getting it wrong. Just out of curiosity, when you use the word "God," how are you defining God? Specifically, are you defining "God" as a divine being that exists outside of people's minds or are you using the word "God" as a symbol for something else?

Ragwortshire wrote:

tytalus wrote:

I have, in fact, altered my beliefs many times over the years for a wide variety of reasons, but I do not see what evidence I could possibly provide, on this forum, for this fact. If you can suggest evidence which I could provide but have not actually provided, then by all means, go for it!

So is it safe to say that none of the discussion here has produced any change? Because you could readily point to it if so. For my part I am an ex-xian, change noted; I also made a recent change to my views on abortion as a result of a thread on this forum, admittedly a slight one but still a change. You might understand why, after various skeptics have savaged your various apologetics over the course of this thread, that I would be dubious about these rules of yours.

This of course is a good question. Firstly, whether I have changed my views in the course of this thread is quite ambiguous in itself. There is no fundamental belief I can point to as having been discarded or changed beyond recognition. However, some have changed a little. For example, when I first posted on this thread, I would have said that I believed in an omniscient, omnipotent, loving God. Now I would say I believe in a loving God who created the universe with no external constraints - so he could have created it in any way he wanted, which is a weaker analogue of omnipotence - and with full knowledge of everything he created or could possibly have created - which is a weaker analogue of omniscience. Of course this is not the whole story, because I might still hold full omnipotence and omniscience as being implications of my beliefs. (Note that I do still intend to defend these concepts as best I can - even if they are not implied by my beliefs, they are certainly very closely related to them!)

So, it is safe to say; noted. You haven't changed a thing.

Also, on more minor matters my beliefs have changed more definitely. The most prominent case of this is that when I first posted on this thread, I really did think that the free will defence alone was sufficient to resolve the Problem of Evil. Now I am rather of the opinion that this theodicy is indeed, in itself, too weak.

As mentioned before, these are merely apologetics for your belief system that have been demolished, and clearly nothing of import has changed as we see above. If they were that important, some change might presumably have resulted.

So perhaps the most major change is not one of beliefs, but of method. On coming to this thread I was pretty much in the latter part of step 3 of my algorithm - in the process of justifying, on the basis of soft evidence (or at least something like it), things like the resurrection, the truth of the gospels, etc. Now I am really back at step 2, trying to determine if the whole idea of God is consistent with reality at all!

That's nice, although our objections to your poor standard of evidence is already out there; you're not going to impress many here with your method.

Still, all of these "changes" might seem to be incredibly minor and inconsequential. Why haven't I simply discarded large swathes of my fundamental beliefs, since I do admit that the most comprehensive apologetic I have posted so far, namely my original Free Will defence, turned out to be sufficiently flawed that I could no longer hold it? Well, for one thing, I am of the opinion that my apologetics were a bit rubbish - that is, they didn't use the full available strength of the concepts involved. I think a stronger defence is possible, and moreover, I think that this stronger defence follows rather naturally from considering why my original one failed.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi3qeROYDZc[/youtube]

Yeah, well, when you can skip to the part where your next apologetic's power level is over 9000, let me know. Till then I guess I'll stand over here with my hair blowing in the rhetorical wind of your many unfounded opinions.

Could this process go on forever, with me simply raising additional defences each time the previous one was shown to be fallacious? Well, for one thing, even I would realise at some point that this was simply stalling for time. More than that, if a new defence really is stronger, then it ought to prompt a stronger formulation of the problem - which might be genuinely more persuasive than the original. In other words, it might actually give rise to an alternative belief in itself, which might have more going for it than those I currently hold.

In our next episode of Dragonball Z -- is Ragwortshire actually stalling for time now?!

tytalus wrote:Edit: I suppose it's best to address what you would 'doubtless remember.' Do you remember everything that happens to you? Do you remember everything you owe to everyone?

Indeed it is best to address it, since otherwise your analysis has a large hole in it - much like the hole that would exist in my memory, if I really did owe you $10,000!

Of course I do not remember everything I owe everyone - but I remember every instance in which I have borrowed $10,000 from someone! This would be like someone forgetting that they had ever received a student loan - or like Bertie Ahern (the former Irish Taoiseach) forgetting from whom he received donations of tens of thousands of pounds. It was incredible when Bertie Ahern said it, and it is equally incredible in this instance.

You do realize that by offering an example of this very thing happening, you've verified that it is more than possible. We now have a greater evidential standard than for immortal souls. Awesome.

Nor is there any definite event in my past which could have caused me to undergo the substantial memory loss required for me to forget such an important alleged fact.

That you know of.

tytalus wrote:Why is your memory or intuition better than mine, in this hypothetical? I can pretend to be just as certain, after all.

I don't have access to your memories. On the other hand, if you really did remember me borrowing $10,000 from you, then you would be perfectly justified in believing that I owed you the sum - but I would still have no reason to entertain the idea.

Now apply this same rhetoric to how believers talk of their personal justification in theism...you can practically word-substitute.

tytalus wrote:What if it's been a couple of decades? What if it was recorded and no one told you? All possible.

I borrowed money from you when I was three years old? Do I really need to drag the whole concept of whether a three year old has sufficient responsibility to borrow $10,000, into this? And similarly the whole idea of owing money without ever having known about it is incredibly dubious.

Oh, I see, you have no problem with three-days-dead corpses getting up and going walkabout but toddlers owing money, oh no, that's ludicrous. Sure.

That, I think, is enough analysis of your claim. Your objections to it being totally inconsistent with reality seem to me to be on the same level as doubting the evidence of one's senses, doubting that scientific measurements are within their margins of error, etc. The best that may be said about these is that they are theoretically possible - but if we are to take them as valid objections to a rational argument, then we really will end up with Descartes at the start of his meditations, knowing literally nothing at all!

Well, I think the argument demonstrates it's on a par with typical theistic arguments and apologetics, and you finding the one ridiculous shows how the other is, too. Of course, the idea of doubting all knowledge is yet another believer's apologetic. Hopefully this exercise in the reductio ad absurdum makes its point.

Sophie T wrote:Ragwortshire--the problem I have with this is that you seem to be defining "God" in such a way that God doesn't really have to exist at all in order for you to be a Christian. i.e. Loving God is "loving other people." Having faith in God is (you "guess") something that "involves believing in a good/benevolent/loving God" or as "having hope" that a good and loving God exists. The very tentativeness of your definition of faith seems to indicate that you don't have faith at all. And if you don't have faith at all, I'm not sure that you can be a Christian.

I should probably point out that "Christian hope" is a rather different concept from hope as one would usually define the word. But regardless of that, I actually think you have made an extremely good point. I have thought more than once to myself that perhaps I am deceiving myself, not with regard to whether I am rational or with regard to my emotional biases, but rather whether I actually believe at all! However, the reason for my thinking this was because I observed that in my actions, I often tend to behave in various ways as if God does not exist. At least that was the way it seemed to me at the time.

But even if I were to stop believing even nominally in God, there would still be a definite difference between our positions. For me, even if the concept of God were fictional, then in my opinion it would be an extremely beautiful, powerful and consistent fiction, like The Lord of the Rings or something. Whereas I gather that for yourself, God is either a highly improbable reality or a rather incredible fiction - the sort that requires an awful lot of suspension of disbelief to read. And for many members of the forum it seems to be even worse - something not only unbelievable but morally fundamentally flawed, or even a deliberate fraud invented for the purpose of manipulating people.

Sophie T wrote:I guess what I am saying is that I'm not convinced that you believe in God as much as you believe in hope and in being good and kind to people. The thing is, you don't have to be a Christian in order to believe in those things.

Absolutely; I could not agree with either of those two statements more.

Sophie T wrote:The kind of "faith" you're describing strikes me as the kind of superficial faith that C. S. Lewis referred to as intellectual assent. Yet, in your case, because you are now referring to yourself as an "agnostic theist," it's not even intellectual assent.

Perhaps it is better to think of things in a more continuous way, rather than as binary properties? That is, I assent intellectually to the point of belief (but not knowledge), and I assent emotionally at the very least to what I see as the fundamental values of Christianity - "Love your neighbour as yourself", etc. So in a way I have a little of both kinds of faith - or maybe just a small amount of faith, full stop.

Sophie T wrote:It seems to me, at this point, that for some reason, you want/need to refer to yourself as a Christian, and that's fine. However, from what I can tell, you don't need Christianity in order to believe what you do. You don't even need God to believe what you do. Rather, you are using the word "God" (it seems to me) as a symbol for a belief in something else, and your beliefs seem to be more consistent with secular humanism than they are with Christianity.

I would actually agree that one can indeed, if one wishes, take the fundamental values of Christianity but leave the whole "God" part out. And well... Christianity isn't actually incompatible with either secularism or humanism, as THWOTH pointed out to me on another thread. One can be all three at once - indeed I aspire to be all three at once.

Sophie T wrote:Just out of curiosity, when you use the word "God," how are you defining God? Specifically, are you defining "God" as a divine being that exists outside of people's minds or are you using the word "God" as a symbol for something else?

I think of God as a being that exists independently of people's minds, and indeed independently of the physical universe. Certainly not as a symbol for something else.

tytalus wrote:Oh, I see, you have no problem with three-days-dead corpses getting up and going walkabout but toddlers owing money, oh no, that's ludicrous. Sure.

Day-and-a-half. I've toasted bagels with more mold on them than that. The day-old counter! Such a deal!

Oy! Oy!

Ragwortshire wrote:
I think of God as a being that exists independently of people's minds, and indeed independently of the physical universe.

IOW, you make this shit up as you go along. It's a great combination, though, independence of people's minds (like a bagel) and independent of the physical universe as well. I don't see why you need the independence of people's minds, though, except to fend off the suggestion that you are promoting a work of imagination as something else.

Electrical engineers call that an "impedance mismatch".

tytalus wrote:

tytalus wrote:Edit: I suppose it's best to address what you would 'doubtless remember.' Do you remember everything that happens to you? Do you remember everything you owe to everyone?

Indeed it is best to address it, since otherwise your analysis has a large hole in it - much like the hole that would exist in my memory, if I really did owe you $10,000!

Of course I do not remember everything I owe everyone - but I remember every instance in which I have borrowed $10,000 from someone! This would be like someone forgetting that they had ever received a student loan - or like Bertie Ahern (the former Irish Taoiseach) forgetting from whom he received donations of tens of thousands of pounds. It was incredible when Bertie Ahern said it, and it is equally incredible in this instance.

You do realize that by offering an example of this very thing happening, you've verified that it is more than possible. We now have a greater evidential standard than for immortal souls. Awesome.

[sarcasm]Yes. Sure. Because of course, if someone who has a huge ulterior motivation for saying something says it, and practically everyone who does not have a motive for believing him regardless, disbelieves him... then that must mean what he said was true, right? That's how evidence works, right?[/sarcasm]

tytalus wrote:Well, I think the argument demonstrates it's on a par with typical theistic arguments and apologetics, and you finding the one ridiculous shows how the other is, too. Of course, the idea of doubting all knowledge is yet another believer's apologetic. Hopefully this exercise in the reductio ad absurdum makes its point.

Frankly, I really do not care how ridiculous or otherwise "typical theistic arguments" are. It might surprise you to learn that I don't accept most theistic arguments as being valid. Attacking someone else's argument, attacking my personal beliefs, or attacking anything else other than my refutation of your argument does not make your argument one bit less fallacious. You have criticised me for believing anything I like that is consistent with reality, and as rhetoric you bring forward... an example not consistent with reality. I thoroughly fail to see how this is relevant in any way.

Ragwortshire wrote:Hmmm. Is "observational reality" supposed to refer to something like the weak anthropic principle? Or are you rather saying that we observe natural laws to exist and therefore the universe is not in fact arbitrary in nature?

I mean - look out of your window and tell me whether what you described (everything acting in a completely random fashion altogether that permits no description whatsoever) matches what you see.

It doesn't! The possibility of the universe being this way is ruled out because we can observe that it isn't this way.

Ragwortshire wrote:In either case, I should point out that this is not just an isolated example - the universe could be partially determined by natural laws, and partially arbitrary. Indeed, partly following on from your own logic, a partially arbitrary universe seems to be the only possible alternative to a universe governed by natural laws, regardless of whether or not God exists! After all, if a God exists and intervenes in the world, then either those interventions follow some sort of natural law, or they are themselves arbitrary.

True, if the possibility is arbitrary or non arbitrary then it's either all of one or all of the other or a mixture.

Our universe is as far as we can tell is a mixture, although the arbitrariness is indiscernable from randomness.

Ragwortshire wrote:I do think this is rather a fascinating topic by the way - quite apart from questions of theism or atheism.

Yes, although not one that should be taken too seriously in my opinion!

Ragwortshire wrote:I apologise that I do not have time to respond to all of the points you have raised so far - I will of course do so as and when I am able. For now, I just want to return briefly to the point about omnipotence (and omniscience), and the language in which these concepts ought to be expressed.

So far I have the following: We might start with first-order logic, using function-symbols and relation-symbols as our structure. We could also bring set theory - ZF, I guess. Then all we need is a set of agents (who can do things), a set of actions, and a relation between the two, say C(a, b) which says "a is able to do b". The omnipotence of x is simply the statement "For all y, C(x, y)".

Does this seem to make sense so far? If so, then my main problem is how to define the set of actions. At this point I am quite unsure of how to proceed, so if you have actually gone through this same process before (I got the impression from your posts that you have), I would appreciate knowing how you approached this problem.

I have discussed it before, but never to any immensely satisfying conclusions. If you wanted to make such a construction and have it consistent with your theology, then you'd have to be careful how you defined actions - naive definition may allow recursive calling of actions and allow for the classic "create a rock so heavy you can't lift it" type situation.

I can't say I'm greatly compelled to actually go further though, because even if one did manage to complete the exercise all one would have is a description of ones belief, it wouldn't disprove that there aren't alternative descriptions which result in the existence of an omnipotent being generating contradictions. Nor would it speak of the actual existence of such a being, so it's purely an intellectual exercise for a theist and of no real interest to me as an atheist.

Ragwortshire wrote:
Frankly, I really do not care how ridiculous or otherwise "typical theistic arguments" are. It might surprise you to learn that I don't accept most theistic arguments as being valid.

And? Is that supposed to make you a clever boy in the eyes of skeptics who merely suggest you not believe everything you read? It's not surprising that you don't believe the Quran, but you can't give a very articulate account of how it is you do not, except that you were not born in a Muslim society.

What's significant here is that your arguments against the validity of those theistic arguments are no better than the arguments you bring to bear in favor of the beliefs you still maintain. This is because your belief system has taught you a mode of testing which is not reliable. The reliable method is to use evidence.

Philosophy is useless, theology is worse. -- Mark Knopfler

Well, since Ragwortshire deleted my defense of the $10,000 argument and instead declared it fallacious I guess we're done. Cito di Pense adequately summed up the problem Ragwortshire is faced with already, so I am beaten to the punch. That's ok. I was distracted by hails of derisive laughter after the DBZ comparison, anyway. I never thought I would get to do that. Skepticism can be fun!

Thommo wrote:

Ragwortshire wrote:Hmmm. Is "observational reality" supposed to refer to something like the weak anthropic principle? Or are you rather saying that we observe natural laws to exist and therefore the universe is not in fact arbitrary in nature?

I mean - look out of your window and tell me whether what you described (everything acting in a completely random fashion altogether that permits no description whatsoever) matches what you see.

It doesn't! The possibility of the universe being this way is ruled out because we can observe that it isn't this way.

But - well, surely you can see the problem here. As soon as one looks out the window, it is obvious that natural laws exist - regardless of whether or not God exists! As I said, I accept that part.

So in order to establish natural laws as soft evidence for the non-existence of God, one needs to show that there being no gods implies the existence of natural laws even before, so to speak, one looks at the evidence which establishes that natural laws exist. For example, as you wrote earlier, if there were no other logical possibilities apart from God and natural laws, then your argument would hold. But (and we even seem to be in agreement on this!) there is in fact another logical possibility - namely a totally or partially arbitrary universe.

I do realise this means the idea of soft evidence only really makes sense in a given context - one needs to specify what evidence is taken as "background" evidence (for demonstrating that A implies B) and the "complete" available evidence (for demonstrating B). But I think we should be able to get around this by simply allowing these conditions to be chosen arbitrarily in each case - that is as long as one can find background evidence establishing that A implies B, but not that ¬A implies B, and establish B by using all available evidence, then B is soft evidence for A. This leaves open the theoretical danger that one could tailor the background evidence to suit the claim, but I can't think of any situation where that would actually happen.

Thommo wrote:

Ragwortshire wrote:So far I have the following: We might start with first-order logic, using function-symbols and relation-symbols as our structure. We could also bring set theory - ZF, I guess. Then all we need is a set of agents (who can do things), a set of actions, and a relation between the two, say C(a, b) which says "a is able to do b". The omnipotence of x is simply the statement "For all y, C(x, y)".

Does this seem to make sense so far? If so, then my main problem is how to define the set of actions. At this point I am quite unsure of how to proceed, so if you have actually gone through this same process before (I got the impression from your posts that you have), I would appreciate knowing how you approached this problem.

I have discussed it before, but never to any immensely satisfying conclusions. If you wanted to make such a construction and have it consistent with your theology, then you'd have to be careful how you defined actions - naive definition may allow recursive calling of actions and allow for the classic "create a rock so heavy you can't lift it" type situation.

This is also what I first thought - but of course if we simply ban reference to agents in the definition of actions, then one can't say, for example, "Person X has repented of all their sins". Since of course we want this system to be powerful enough to talk about all of religion (and ideally things like science and morality as well!), this is no good.

However, even without such a crude and obvious tweak, I think first-order logic and ZF actually protect against the usual paradoxes quite naturally. For example, suppose we wanted to emulate the paradox of the stone. We'd have to define a set "Stones" containing every possible stone - this could be done first by defining a set of possible particles, and on top of that a set of possible agglomerations of particles, and the selecting the subset of those which satisfy certain physical or chemical properties making them stones. Let "Actions" be the set of actions. Then we'd have two functions; Lift: Stones -> Actions, which takes a stone and returns the action of lifting that stone, and Create: Stones -> Actions, which returns the action of creating that stone.

Let x be our supposed omnipotent agent. Now we can happily define a set T to be the set of all stones which x cannot lift - i.e., T = {s in Stones | ¬C(X, Lift(s))}. Then the paradox of the stone reads: For any t in T, [C(x, Create(t)) implies ¬C(x, Lift(t))]...

Except it's no longer a paradox. Since X can lift every stone, T is the empty set, and we know that the statement "For any t in the empty set, P" holds for any proposition P, true or false. Thus the statement is no longer a contradiction, merely an illustration of this peculiar property of the empty set.

tytalus wrote:Well, since Ragwortshire deleted my defense of the $10,000 argument and instead declared it fallacious I guess we're done.

I'm sorry, but going through your response it seemed like you had countered every single one of my points simply by saying, "Well my argument may not be valid, but here's another argument, the conclusions of which I think you agree with, which is just as invalid." I apologise if that's not the case, and if I've missed an instance where you tried to constructively make your case. I'm also sorry for calling your argument fallacious, but to be honest I cannot see any single point to be made in its favour.

It does strike me, not from your argument but from the various comments you've made, that you might just be trying to demonstrate how frustrated you feel when confronted by a "traditional theistic argument".

Ragwortshire wrote:It does strike me, not from your argument but from the various comments you've made, that you might just be trying to demonstrate how frustrated you feel when confronted by a "traditional theistic argument".

Dunning-Kruger.

Thommo wrote:

Ragwortshire wrote:

Thommo wrote:Fortunately, we have that more. If resurrection is not impossible, then it's possible. This means that for each person X who dies there is some finite probability p such that X is resurrected.

This is quite a subtle statement, but in fact I am quite convinced that it must be false. For example, suppose we were to discover a method of resurrection which relied explicitly on a knowledge of say, quantum mechanics. Then resurrection would not be impossible, but for anyone born before the year 1700 or so, the probability of that person being resurrected would be zero. Alternatively, if the method required eating dodo eggs before dying, then the probability after 1900 would be zero.

I addressed this point by defining resurrection, when chairman bill brought it to my attention that I hadn't. This objection doesn't apply.

Ragwortshire wrote:Now this is not to say that the probability of resurrection being impossible does not rise with each successive instance of a person failing to rise from the dead - it does, if I have my maths correct - but this is also equally true (again assuming correct maths) of any sort of soft evidence for anything, assuming certain discreteness conditions.

You're going to need to demonstrate those discreteness conditions apply to the case of infinitely many gods (I rather suspect they don't).

I think I am going to have to eat my words on this one. The condition I need is actually that in addition to ¬A not implying B, P(B given ¬A) != 1. Which is in the case of resurrections is... exactly what you stated about people being raised with some positive probability. So my distinction was actually rubbish.

Still, I do think the cases where P(B given ¬A) = 1, but ¬A does not imply B, ought to be quite rare.

So. I agree that a priori, if one does not assume that resurrections are impossible, then each person is raised with some positive probability. And while I can think of ways in which that could be altered... well, at the end of the day, both of us would agree with a statement like "Resurrection is impossible in the absence of a miracle" anyway, so any such way would be purely hypothetical.

Ragwortshire wrote:So. I agree that a priori, if one does not assume that resurrections are impossible, then each person is raised with some positive probability. And while I can think of ways in which that could be altered... well, at the end of the day, both of us would agree with a statement like "Resurrection is impossible in the absence of a miracle" anyway, so any such way would be purely hypothetical.

But if miracles are possible, then it is better evidence for the hypothesis "Resurrection is impossible" than it is for the hypothesis "Resurrection is impossible in the absence of a miracle" - i.e. it raises the relative probability of "Resurrection is impossible" and it's still soft evidence in favour of that hypothesis and against yours.

Thommo wrote:

Ragwortshire wrote:So. I agree that a priori, if one does not assume that resurrections are impossible, then each person is raised with some positive probability. And while I can think of ways in which that could be altered... well, at the end of the day, both of us would agree with a statement like "Resurrection is impossible in the absence of a miracle" anyway, so any such way would be purely hypothetical.

But if miracles are possible, then it is better evidence for the hypothesis "Resurrection is impossible" than it is for the hypothesis "Resurrection is impossible in the absence of a miracle" - i.e. it raises the relative probability of "Resurrection is impossible" and it's still soft evidence in favour of that hypothesis and against yours.

A priori, again, you are correct. The problem here, as I see it, is that miracles only make sense in the first place if one is arguing in the context of a God.

Let me step back for a moment. Logic aside, the intuitive reason, I would guess, that I find the resurrection believable and that you do not is because I believe that miracles are possible, whereas (I assume!) you do not. And the reason I believe miracles are possible is because I believe in a God who has the power to work miracles, whereas you do not. In other words, even though I listed my belief in the resurrection of Jesus among my fundamental beliefs, it is not as fundamental as my belief in God - because it rests entirely on my belief in God.

So in the context of my beliefs, an argument such as the following simplistic example makes sense:

1. If God exists and Jesus was raised from the dead, then God would not raise anyone else from the dead, because that would be a false sign that they had the same authority as Jesus.
2. Therefore nobody except Jesus was or will be raised by miracle. (Okay Lazarus, and the stuff about the end of the world, but this was a simplistic argument to start with.)
3. Resurrections are impossible except by miracle.
4. Therefore nobody except Jesus was or will be raised from the dead.

1) and 2) follow from more fundamental beliefs, and 4) follows from 1), 2) and 3). So in the context of my beliefs, 3) implies 4), we observe 4), and thus 4) is soft evidence for 3). Further this is just as much soft evidence as there is for the belief "Resurrections are impossible", because we can't say, without first asserting that resurrections are impossible, whether or not Jesus was actually raised from the dead.

Now the above argument is almost certainly not sound. Hopefully I could make a much better one with time and effort, and a professional theologian could doubtless give an even better one (that is after all what theologians are supposed to be good at). However, what would be the point? Regardless of the soundness of the deductions, neither you nor most of the people reading this believe that either 1) or 2) are actually true, possibly not even that they are coherent. In other words, we end up talking completely at cross purposes.

Exactly the same thing happens if I try to establish soft evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. A certain amount can be done without a belief in God - for example, if Jesus were raised from the dead as part of a revelation, then people would have witnessed him after his resurrection. Such a thing would certainly have survived as part of the oral tradition (oral traditions are not known for forgetting spectacular events!) and hence been recorded in the New Testament. We do in fact find consistent references to Jesus being seen after the Resurrection in the New Testament; this is soft evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. Similarly I could argue that an event such as the resurrection would have inspired vigour and enthusiasm in his followers, which would have resulted in Christianity spreading rapidly after Jesus' death - which, as we know it did.

But after that, if I wish to establish any more soft evidence for the resurrection, then I must necessarily end up relying on there being a God - and not just any God, but a certain kind of God - about whom revelations are being made. I am not even sure these arguments could avoid being significantly subjective - but even if they were objective and deductively valid, who would be convinced?

So in a way I am much happier arguing for the existence of God (in a way that does not, of course, rely on Jesus being resurrected - that would be circular reasoning), than I am arguing for the resurrection. At the same time, I hope this post at least partially explains why Christians might not be fazed when it is pointed out to them that they believe in the resurrection, even though to many non-Christians it seems ridiculous. Indeed worse than ridiculous - Hitchens (who I hope makes a speedy recovery soon!) seems to have used it in the past as an excuse to discontinue debates with Christians entirely.

Well, that's an admission that your argument is circular and unevidenced. Whereas mine isn't.

But, you said that soft evidence would factor into both sides, yet now you're in a position where soft evidence exists for one side only and you take the other view... So your earlier statements are incorrect.

Thommo wrote:Well, that's an admission that your argument is circular and unevidenced. Whereas mine isn't.

But, you said that soft evidence would factor into both sides, yet now you're in a position where soft evidence exists for one side only and you take the other view... So your earlier statements are incorrect.

If you like, I can try and argue that there is soft evidence for the existence of a loving God, without any reliance on the Resurrection whatsover. That would remove any whiff of circularity, and it would also mean my beliefs as a whole ceased to be unevidenced in the soft sense, no?

Ragwortshire wrote:

Thommo wrote:Well, that's an admission that your argument is circular and unevidenced. Whereas mine isn't.

But, you said that soft evidence would factor into both sides, yet now you're in a position where soft evidence exists for one side only and you take the other view... So your earlier statements are incorrect.

If you like, I can try and argue that there is soft evidence for the existence of a loving God, without any reliance on the Resurrection whatsover. That would remove any whiff of circularity, and it would also mean my beliefs as a whole ceased to be unevidenced in the soft sense, no?

I think it would work better, if you'd like to do it sure!

Ragwortshire wrote:I can try and argue that there is soft evidence for the existence of a loving God

Don't fall for Thommo's nefarious* ploy, Rags. There is a great deal of countervailing evidence that God, if conceivable at all, is conceivable as a sadistic c-sucker. Hard evidence, one might say.

The other kind of conceivability is called "wishful thinking".

Who seeks hard things, to him is the way hard.



* You see, I like the "good cop, bad cop" scenario.

Ragwortshire wrote:

tytalus wrote:Well, since Ragwortshire deleted my defense of the $10,000 argument and instead declared it fallacious I guess we're done.

I'm sorry, but going through your response it seemed like you had countered every single one of my points simply by saying, "Well my argument may not be valid, but here's another argument, the conclusions of which I think you agree with, which is just as invalid." I apologise if that's not the case, and if I've missed an instance where you tried to constructively make your case. I'm also sorry for calling your argument fallacious, but to be honest I cannot see any single point to be made in its favour.

It does strike me, not from your argument but from the various comments you've made, that you might just be trying to demonstrate how frustrated you feel when confronted by a "traditional theistic argument".

Unfortunately, your claim of fallacy sans evidence is rightly dismissed, Ragwortshire. I understand believers here often like to pick up the trappings of reasoned argument without doing any of the work. Why should I find this frustrating? On the contrary, my amusement at being able to craft such clearly absurd arguments that precisely mirror yours is delightful. You have done nothing to outright dismiss the possibilities of the $10,000 argument. However unlikely, but not impossible; by your standard ('soft' evidence, 'consistent' i.e. not explicitly disproven) the argument wins.

You have no one to blame, sir, but your own poor standards of evidence, which is the whole point of the exercise.