If moral intuitions are built into humanity by God,then why do I not feel guilty of things which are frowned upon by religion?

Cituke · 2012-05-24T12:54:30.255173+00:00

It seems to clog it in a rather convenient way. I only feel bad about actions which harm people and don't care much about any harm to God or purely religious law.

Cituke · 2012-05-24T05:02:18.916672+00:00

I think churches teach that worshiping god is something that you should not feel bad about, so I'm a bit confused by your first point.

Editted to be in the negative,

Anyways, what I've gathered is that religions often say that faith is virtuous partly because it goes against your intuitions or instincts, so somehow god will "value" you more if you "keep the faith" despite whatever problems you have with it.

Perhaps, but this raises a larger contradiction of supposing that some of our intuitions are divinely inspired while others are quite opposed to the divine.

dVnt · 2012-05-24T01:07:05.985082+00:00

Actually I've come to disagree with this rebuttal (I liked it quite a bit at first) due to issues of timing.

That is to say that when we discuss "everything" in the first premise, we're dealing not just with everything at time = 0 but at all later times as well. So we're saying that all things that begin to exist at time = 0 and later need a cause.

Your rebuttal might be considered technically correct given the already stated rebuttal of how the base components of our universe are always the same, but only after that.

dVnt · 2012-05-24T00:43:03.610717+00:00

Quoting from article

First and foremost, the causal premiss is rooted in the metaphysical intuition that something cannot come into being from nothing. To suggest that things could just pop into being uncaused out of nothing is to quit doing serious metaphysics and to resort to magic.

Appealing to intuition is not strong to begin with, but worse here for both possibilities lend us to absurd and contra-intuitive claims.

Let's say that we're at my house enjoying a cup of coffee and we hear a loud "MOOOOOOOO" come from the attic. We go to investigate and find that there is nothing in the attic. I claim "Well that moo was uncaused and without explanation, it just happened" well obviously that's absurd, but it's precisely what I'm defending as plausible.

Comparatively, we're at your house and we once again hear this "MOOOOO" coming from the attic. Upon investigation, we find a cow in the attic. I ask "From where did this cow come from?" and you respond "Oh, well it's just been there since time immemorial. It exists out of its own necessity and does not need an explanation or cause"

Obviously, in both anecdotes, we're describing something well against our intuitions, but we're lefting with pretty much either option when discussing cosmology. One doesn't seem more against our intuitions than the other to any meaningful degree.

then it becomes inexplicable why just anything and everything do not come into existence uncaused from nothing.

An event can happen once and only once even without cause. There are factors that may make it impossible for said event to happen more than once (say existence already being there) or it could be a brute fact of the universe that this only happens once.

Finally, the first premiss is constantly confirmed in our experience, which provides atheists who are scientific naturalists with the strongest of motivations to accept it.

It's not confirmed by experience because all of our experience has to do with creation ex materia, not creation ex nihilo.

The rest he reads is reiteration, but suffice it to say that we're solving a mystery with an equally absurd mystery here.

Also, I'm only a materialist in the sense of that I believe only material and the properties which describe that material exist. i'm not sure I can conceive of anything else in a meaningful sense.

dVnt · 2012-05-23T23:04:17.849279+00:00

I'm aware of the idea of the four causes but don't agree with that framework. There is nothing that makes sense as an efficient cause that isn't actually material.

If we look at an artist who paints a picture, both the paint/paintbrush and the artist are material causes of it.

Cituke · 2012-05-23T21:58:49.149028+00:00

This is a bit of a misconception. Faith, in the Christian sense, is not superior to reason. It is, however, prior. This is actually true in all of our experience. For instance, the first time you learned that 1+1=2 you took it on faith that your teacher was telling you the truth. Then, after you examined it your experience played out that it was so. Everything we know is in some sense based on the faith that we had in our teachers and parents when they taught us the foundations of knowledge.

I've been discussing this quite a bit lately, and for the most part your characterization is accurate in that we often rely on authorities prior to our own investigation of the facts. I don't see anything wrong there. But why prefer reliance on authority be prior to investigation of the fact?

You will never, however, get to the same level as God, and to think that you should be able to reject God on the basis of "not enough evidence" is really quite presumptive on your part. This is because the existence of God is so obvious that you take the evidence as given, but suppress the possibility that it could actually be evidence for God.

You can really only go off of what you have to work with. An easy example is that we don't trouble 5 year olds to design the blue prints for suspension bridges and then fault them when their design is a failure.

In the same way, if I need some superhuman comprehension to understand the evidence for God, then I can't be held responsible for it, much less be expected to arrive at a positive conclusion.

Just to take one example: you live your life assuming that events that happened in the past can be used to determine how events will play out in the future. Like the fact that when you turn your faucet on water will come out. This observation is so blindingly obvious that it seems silly to even question it, indeed, if water didn't come out you would immediately think of a rational explanation to determine why, such as the water having been shut off. But why, in a universe without purpose and characterized by the disorder of entropy, would we expect to see that kind of order? Of course we do, but the Christian believes that is because God has ordered existence in that manner. Why do you believe that we can reason inductively?

I'm not really sure how the problem of induction relates to any of this, but suffice it to say that I've got a reasonable enough answer. I measure that which is true by that which yield testable predictions (for the most part). I realize that my memory of one moment ago yielded perfect predictions for this exact moment, hence "memory" seems to coincide positively with determining what is true and is therefore good for determining the truth.

dVnt · 2012-05-23T21:49:04.998954+00:00

What is it that you mean by "brings about"?

dVnt · 2012-05-23T21:44:39.393517+00:00

It doesn't specify.

Exactly the problem, because the word has two definitions. That's pretty much the entire idea behind equivocation.

Policeman must have snouts because they're called "pigs" and pigs have snouts right?

EDIT: don't care if I get downvotes, it's bullshit for you guys downvote hammie here. He's got the most defensible form of theism around (to my knowledge) and it may be that I bring a sufficient defeater to the table, but opposition demands a degree of respect less we find ourselves in violent agreement over atheistic propositions.

dVnt · 2012-05-23T21:33:11.852900+00:00

The creation of material is a separate category from the rearranging of material. Simple as that. You can't look at kids building lego castles to try and figure out how individual lego blocks are made.

dVnt · 2012-05-23T21:23:11.615232+00:00

"William Lane Craig is a this." "William Lane Craig is a that." "Kalam begs the question." "There is nothing before the Big Bang." "Kalam doesn't prove God." And so on.

I don't think you've been listening. The most common reponse I've seen is to point out that the first premise equivocates creation ex nihilo with creation ex materia.

DumDumDog · 2012-05-23T14:12:54.798750-07:00

Well tell them about it =P

DumDumDog · 2012-05-23T15:14:45.557292+00:00

To the religious this is evidence, and is repeatable (which is why there are orders that spring up around the teachings of this mystic or that mystic)

The difference is demonstrable. You can't demonstrate a feeling you have to something else. You can communicate it, but that's it. You could be the same token say that people who take acid are "experiencing true reality" and that you too can experience it, but the difference comes down to that it's purely a personal experience.

You've looked for evidence of God; have you looked for it as the religious have recommended? A course of meditation with Buddhists or Hindus, for example

yep

This, to me, is faith,

Then you and I have different definitions. There's nothing wrong with relying on authorities where you can reasonably expect that they have good evidence, but the point would be that you can't expect good evidence when relying on religious authorities.

DumDumDog · 1 day

Look, everyone accepts things on faith. EVERYONE. Are you a high-level particle physicist? No? Then you lack the skills or equipment to verify claims made by them. But you accept them.

That's more relying on authority. That's a necessary function of living, but the difference is that you can expect that if you follow the trail long enough, you'll get to the evidence. I've been trying to find the evidence for God and it's been found lacking.

Another example--thousands of malpractice suits are filed against physicians every year. Does this prevent you from taking medicines a doctor tells you is needed? Of course not. You take on faith that he knows what he's talking about, is competent, and won't kill you.

That's just playing the odds and working with a safety net. Not only do those case represent a vast minority of visits to the doctor, but you're also compensated if you become a victim of malpractive.

DumDumDog · 1 day

Reasons I'm downvoting:

Poor formatting
Pretty trolly hating of the sub reddit that you're in
Unproductive/obnoxious straw manning

I haven't run into anybody here who says I should just believe. I haven't run into anybody that expects belief without evidence and certainly nobody that "attacks" you for expecting evidence. They tend to actually offer at least philosophical arguments for God.

ForeverSolus · 1 day

sure.

ForeverSolus · 1 day

Checkmate strong atheists

You can make positive or negative truth claims and either must be substantiated. It's only the position of accepting neither that doesn't have a burden of proof.

Ex. "I believe this rock weighs less than 3 lbs" vs "I believe this rock does not weigh 3 lbs or more" You've got a positive and negative version of the same claim.

Hence, if you are making a negative claim that God doesn't exist, then you need sufficient reason to say so.

collectivecorona · 1 day

Let's see if I can rephrase this accurately:

"The probability of something increases if what would normally cause it increases, such that an item 2 is more likely to happen if the necessary item 1 (the causal agent) is probable."

I think an easy defense would be to say that this only applies to contingent beings. A necessary being would operate under 100% necessity by nature. It doesn't make sense to consider something necessary if it's less than 100%.

ForeverSolus · 1 day

1) Pragmatic epistemology. Sure I might be a brain in a vat, but so what? If this is all an illusion I just do what works within the illusion

2) Lack of evidence for my perceptions to be an illusion. So that lands me at "weak solipsism" if you like, but you may as well call it "weak realism"

arapiles · 2 days

It's hard to say as "theism" is rather general. I'm sure I'd be completely different were I a devout buddhist or sunni muslim.

jkt0z · 2 days

There is neither sufficient evidence to suggest that the tunings are improbable, nor that they are meaningfully precise

For probabilities, you need a great sample size than one.

For a margin of error, you need more than a sample size of one.

We only have one set of tunings to deal with and hence not enough information.

Cituke · 2 days

so what is your conclusion here? that i'm just a freakish outlier and garden-variety psychiatry is still good medicine for the majority of people?

I'm saying it's on par with plenty of other medicine out there. Chemotherapy kills some people, but if I get the right kind of cancer, you better put me in front of that radiation gun.

what's more, how can you trust peer review when it's often funded by highly corrupt institutions looking to gain "scientific" support for their own shit?

Just look out for any efforts at peer review that have that kind of obvious bias. Most credible institutions won't take funding that might affect their objectivity anyways.

Cituke · 3 days

Personal experience is always a sample size of one. Sorry that didn't work out for you, but that doesn't do a lot to discredit peer review.

Cituke · 3 days

That was oddly candid. Much appreciated though.

What do you make of the folks that claim to have had one?

Cituke

TROPHY CASE

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