I notice that there are quite a few religious apologists (especially Christian) out there who challenge atheists with philosophy by the likes of Descartes, Kant, Aquinas, etc, while mixing in accusations of using numerous logical fallacies, not conforming to formal logic, etc. I'm the first to admit, I am not well-equipped to debate this type of apologist. Is a thorough knowledge of philosophy, logical fallacies, formal logic, etc required in order to reject positive claims of god's existence?

It seems like a lot of these guys are really attempting to shift the burden of proof by obfuscating with seemingly complicated philosophical arguments, however, I don't really know how to properly respond to these people. I tend to just use simple logic to attempt simplify and deconstruct their arguments, but they always seem to come back at me with some philosophical challenge I am not equipped to answer. For an example, how would you counter someone like this without a solid background in philosophy?





Is the notion that philosophy is necessary to reject positive claims of god's existence and/or to defend atheism simply a faulty presupposition?

-When it comes to Christianity, it wasn't meant for the intellectual elite - quite the contrary, you might say. Jesus is said to have mostly chosen people who were of low stature in society, and probably then of low literacy.

One verse that highlights this, is 1. Corinthians 1:17-31 (ESV):

For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. | For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. | For it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart." | Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? | For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. | For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, | but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, | but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. | For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. | For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. | But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; | God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, | so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. | And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, | so that, as it is written, "Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord."

People were supposed to be drawn to this faith by the power of the message, and the power of Christ - those who weren't, weren't given a lecture on philosophical reasons to believe.

Now - since 'sophisticated' Christians don't really care what the Bible says because they'll agree that it was written by fallible men, they may just shrug at this passage, but I think that too comes back to bite them in the butt.

John P. M. wrote:-When it comes to Christianity, it wasn't meant for the intellectual elite - quite the contrary, you might say. Jesus is said to have mostly chosen people who were of low stature in society, and probably then of low literacy.

One verse that highlights this, is 1. Corinthians 1:17-31 (ESV):

For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. | For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. | For it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart." | Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? | For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. | For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, | but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, | but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. | For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. | For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. | But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; | God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, | so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. | And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, | so that, as it is written, "Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord."

People were supposed to be drawn to this faith by the power of the message, and the power of Christ - those who weren't, weren't given a lecture on philosophical reasons to believe.

Now - since 'sophisticated' Christians don't really care what the Bible says because they'll agree that it was written by fallible men, they may just shrug at this passage, but I think that too comes back to bite them in the butt.

Ha, I wasn't aware of that passage, but it certainly seems it would be difficult for them to counter. One apologist I was arguing with recently kept on asking me what my position was on the origins of the Universe. I told him I didn't have a set belief, as science entertains many possibilities. I kept asking him to give me his best evidence for god and he told me it would be better if I told him my position on the Universe's origin so he could "narrow the field of possible responses" (in other words, copy and paste his answer) based on whatever given "excuse" I had for non-belief. It was evident he was trying to bait me into WLC's Kalam Cosmological Argument, so after calling him out on several of his illogical presuppositions, I asked him this: "What is your position on benthic macro-invertebrate habitat preferences?" Didn't hear back.

You need to be aware that most of this philosophical apologetic stuff is a mess. Namechecking Kant, Aquinas etc is usually just an appeal to authority and the issues and arguments are simplistically misrepresented. Quotemining abounds. Don't be put off by these guys because most of them don't have any more philosophical training than you do.

Example from the first video. At 4.00 he says "we are well within our wpistemic rights to accept what appears self evident and obvious to us unless there are overriding reasons to dismiss it." If you had to define philosophy as an enterprise it would probably be exactly the opposite of that - questioning what is normally taken to be obvious.

Another example from the first video. He's brave in mentioning the Euthyphro dilemma but treats it so badly. The question is: is something good because God commands it or does he command it because it's good. If it's the former then morals aren't absolute. If you belive that in the Old Testament God commanded the murder of women and children who were prisoners of war and you believe that whatever he commands is by definition good then you can't say that such murders are also wrong. If it's the latter then there's a moral standard other than God so the theist has no answers not available to the atheist.

What's this dude's answer? God's commands stem from his good nature and the two can't be separated i.e. God commands good things because he's good. Good by what standard. This is option 2 thinly disguised. You see what a poor excuse for an argument this is?

Mostly you don't need a philosophical grounding. Reading comprehension and simple logic should see you right.

That said, it's a sad fact that crap arguments soundbite nicely for an audience that doesn't know philosophy. Craig's Kalam nonsense is a prime example. You can hear it once and thaink "yeah, I get that" whereas the reasons it's full of fail are a little more subtle and take more than 2 minutes to talk through, plus a little more intelligence. I suspect that's something Craig knowingly cashes in on since he can't possibly really believe Kalam is valid. If I was asked to teach a beginners course in philosophy I'd start with Kalam because it's like a one stop shop for the standard fallacies.

Also: who's a Christian because they were persuaded by a philosophical argument? WLC has his testimony in which a pretty girl smiled at him and told him God loved him. If the cosmological argument failed to persuade him why should he expect us to buy it? It's all justification after the fact. Whereas, assuming you're intellectually honest, you'd change your mind if presented with a compelling argument. These guys aren't meeting you on a level playing field.

I see the "you need to have a significant background in theology and/or philosophy and know all the arguments ever mentioned" as often a god of the gaps argument, or at least obfuscation with intent to stifle debate. "You can't tell me the fourth platonic form proposed by Plato and how that relates to Aquinias's dialogue on <insert topic here>, therefore god".

As an example consider the recent thread here asking theists to define the Abrahamic god, to which a particular poster responded with something like "which of the 4 types of definition would you like and in what context would you like it?".

That said I also regularly see "go and get an education" used in regards evolution, chemistry, physics etc. (am guilty myself) and in many cases this seems appropriate when people obviously have no idea or are pushing strawmen of accepted concepts. Maybe the difference is in intent, though it does get fuzzy.

logical bob wrote:Also: who's a Christian because they were persuaded by a philosophical argument? WLC has his testimony in which a pretty girl smiled at him and told him God loved him. If the cosmological argument failed to persuade him why should he expect us to buy it? It's all justification after the fact. Whereas, assuming you're intellectually honest, you'd change your mind if presented with a compelling argument. These guys aren't meeting you on a level playing field.

Yeah, you're right. Lots of times I've told these guys that any argument they are going to present is sabotaged before they begin by the absurd presuppositions they repeatedly assert, such as one needing to have a definitive belief in cosmic origins in order to reject god, or that an excuse for 'unbelief' is required.

Hi Macroinvertebrate,

It seems like a lot of these guys are really attempting to shift the burden of proof by obfuscating with seemingly complicated philosophical arguments, however, I don't really know how to properly respond to these people. I tend to just use simple logic to attempt simplify and deconstruct their arguments, but they always seem to come back at me with some philosophical challenge I am not equipped to answer. For an example, how would you counter someone like this without a solid background in philosophy?

Some of them are no more trained in philosophy than you are, and are basically bluffing or repeating stuff parrot-fashion. But the situation is a lot more complicated than that. Some of the arguments are very subtle, and not easily dismissed.

You could think of the history of philosophy as being like a compendium of chess openings, except this is chess with words. It's also not merely a game, because the purpose of game is not to win for the sake of winning. The purpose is to find out which of the players has the better argument, and ultimately for both players to learn more about the philosophical territory they are playing for. The different branches of philosophy (philosophy of religion, philosophy of science, etc...) could be thought of as different classes of chess opening (sicilian defence, Ruy Lopez...) If you want to debate somebody who is trained in philosophy of religion, and you have no training, then it is very much like trying to play chess against somebody who knows all the twists and turns of the sicilian defence. If you end up playing that opening against him, then you are likely to lose unless you are SO good at general chess-playing that your on-the-hoof reasoning can outweigh his learned knowledge of the different ways the opening can develop.

Short answer: if the person you are debating actually knows their stuff, then don't expect to be able to refute them easily if you don't also know your stuff. It's not always easy.

byofrcs wrote:a good analogy - chess with Words. That suggests that in time machines will win such debates as much as they win Chess or Jeopardy today.

But will the computer-philosopher be conscious of its victory?

Ultimately materialism will laugh at the theists because even if the machine sided with "theism" this is reducible to the settings of memory in the machine.

If the machine advanced metaphysical materialism, it would surely suffer a defeat for trying to prove too much. Metaphysics, on what basis?

UndercoverElephant wrote:Hi Macroinvertebrate,

It seems like a lot of these guys are really attempting to shift the burden of proof by obfuscating with seemingly complicated philosophical arguments, however, I don't really know how to properly respond to these people. I tend to just use simple logic to attempt simplify and deconstruct their arguments, but they always seem to come back at me with some philosophical challenge I am not equipped to answer. For an example, how would you counter someone like this without a solid background in philosophy?

Some of them are no more trained in philosophy than you are, and are basically bluffing or repeating stuff parrot-fashion. But the situation is a lot more complicated than that. Some of the arguments are very subtle, and not easily dismissed.

You could think of the history of philosophy as being like a compendium of chess openings, except this is chess with words. It's also not merely a game, because the purpose of game is not to win for the sake of winning. The purpose is to find out which of the players has the better argument, and ultimately for both players to learn more about the philosophical territory they are playing for.

That would be great if that was the clear objective every time in these debates and arguments, but it seems like the apologist philosophers (the ones I've encountered, anyways) are more interested in being right, showing off in a public forum, and stroking their ego than helping you to learn from them.

You need to ask who the intended audience is. Atheists who will be converted by the argument or theists who want to be reassured that they don't have to think about the difficult questions because someone's doing it for them.

Macro,

Are you asking if there are theologians or theistic philosophers who put forth interesting work, or are you just looking for debate tactics? If the first, I think definitely yes even if one is an atheist. A thinker as powerful as Aquinas forces us to rethink what is meant by "god" -- and so it seems to me that the brutish "does it exist or not" question becomes secondary, even unimportant in some sense.

But I don't see the point in the latter; if you seek merely to obtain an advantage in a public debate, such advantages are almost never due to having the "better" argument. To win debates, you should study a lot of rhetoric rather than a little philosophy. Philosophy will probably make you horrible at debate. I like logical bob's comment above -- rhetorical moves like this win debates:

logical bob wrote:You need to ask who the intended audience is. Atheists who will be converted by the argument or theists who want to be reassured that they don't have to think about the difficult questions because someone's doing it for them.

logical bob wrote:You need to ask who the intended audience is. Atheists who will be converted by the argument or theists who want to be reassured that they don't have to think about the difficult questions because someone's doing it for them.

The message would be the same for both.
The same argument which persuades and converts also reassures.

...and atheists DO listen to what is being said so they are hardly DISINTERESTED.

Lion IRC wrote:

logical bob wrote:You need to ask who the intended audience is. Atheists who will be converted by the argument or theists who want to be reassured that they don't have to think about the difficult questions because someone's doing it for them.

The message would be the same for both.
The same argument which persuades and converts also reassures.

I'm not sure if this is true. We were just having a discussion in a thread that featured a video which I argued is ineffective for converting, but could be quite good for reassuring. You can't persuade/convert someone by speaking your own language, you need to understand the language of the other person's perspective to properly show them what you mean.

...and atheists DO listen to what is being said so they are hardly DISINTERESTED.

Sure, I'd like to try to be aware of what my opponent's arguments are and try to understand them.

SafeAsMilk wrote:

Lion IRC wrote:

logical bob wrote:You need to ask who the intended audience is. Atheists who will be converted by the argument or theists who want to be reassured that they don't have to think about the difficult questions because someone's doing it for them.

The message would be the same for both.
The same argument which persuades and converts also reassures.

I'm not sure if this is true. We were just having a discussion in a thread that featured a video which I argued is ineffective for converting, but could be quite good for reassuring. You can't persuade/convert someone by speaking your own language, you need to understand the language of the other person's perspective to properly show them what you mean.

...and atheists DO listen to what is being said so they are hardly DISINTERESTED.

Sure, I'd like to try to be aware of what my opponent's arguments are and try to understand them.

I agree, it would be hard to convert/persuade someone if you didnt speak their language.

Did you know the bible has been published in over 2000 different languages and is available (online PDF/MP3 etc) in simplified and traditional Chinese , in Pinyin (Romanized Chinese) and English , Portuguese , French , Spanish , Italian , Russian , German , Hindi , Romanized Hindi, Thai , Vietnamese , Indonesian , Tagalog , Tamil , Swahili , Amharic , Arabic , Afrikaans , Turkish , Greek , Hebrew , Persian-Farsi , Albanian and Zulu

Lion IRC wrote:

SafeAsMilk wrote:

Lion IRC wrote:

logical bob wrote:You need to ask who the intended audience is. Atheists who will be converted by the argument or theists who want to be reassured that they don't have to think about the difficult questions because someone's doing it for them.

The message would be the same for both.
The same argument which persuades and converts also reassures.

I'm not sure if this is true. We were just having a discussion in a thread that featured a video which I argued is ineffective for converting, but could be quite good for reassuring. You can't persuade/convert someone by speaking your own language, you need to understand the language of the other person's perspective to properly show them what you mean.

...and atheists DO listen to what is being said so they are hardly DISINTERESTED.

Sure, I'd like to try to be aware of what my opponent's arguments are and try to understand them.

I agree, it would be hard to convert/persuade someone if you didnt speak their language.

Did you know the bible has been published in over 2000 different languages and is available (online PDF/MP3 etc) in simplified and traditional Chinese , in Pinyin (Romanized Chinese) and English , Portuguese , French , Spanish , Italian , Russian , German , Hindi , Romanized Hindi, Thai , Vietnamese , Indonesian , Tagalog , Tamil , Swahili , Amharic , Arabic , Afrikaans , Turkish , Greek , Hebrew , Persian-Farsi , Albanian and Zulu

Let me know when it comes in Atheist

SafeAsMilk wrote:

Lion IRC wrote:

SafeAsMilk wrote:

Lion IRC wrote:

The message would be the same for both.
The same argument which persuades and converts also reassures.

I'm not sure if this is true. We were just having a discussion in a thread that featured a video which I argued is ineffective for converting, but could be quite good for reassuring. You can't persuade/convert someone by speaking your own language, you need to understand the language of the other person's perspective to properly show them what you mean.

...and atheists DO listen to what is being said so they are hardly DISINTERESTED.

Sure, I'd like to try to be aware of what my opponent's arguments are and try to understand them.

I agree, it would be hard to convert/persuade someone if you didnt speak their language.

Did you know the bible has been published in over 2000 different languages and is available (online PDF/MP3 etc) in simplified and traditional Chinese , in Pinyin (Romanized Chinese) and English , Portuguese , French , Spanish , Italian , Russian , German , Hindi , Romanized Hindi, Thai , Vietnamese , Indonesian , Tagalog , Tamil , Swahili , Amharic , Arabic , Afrikaans , Turkish , Greek , Hebrew , Persian-Farsi , Albanian and Zulu

Let me know when it comes in Atheist

Here you go:

http://www.rationalskepticism.org/chris ... he%20bible