Pat Says:

Rob,

“Is this the right room for an argument?“ (Michael Palin)

Let’s discuss the structure of the submitted argument . . .

The argument seems weak to me. It smells of “argumentum ad populum” or at least a classical example of “ipsedixitism.” Then there is a “proof by analogy” or “association fallacy” . . .

It appears that you used examples of things that you assume that the general populace probably doesn’t believe in. For example, “reincarnation of Elvis.” By context it seems that you believe that most people don’t have enough evidence to believe in this; you argue from a point of view that assumes this is an absurd belief (like your example of divine elephants circling Pluto). Consider that if most people believed in reincarnations of Elvis, the argument would be severely weakened. This is “argumentum ad populum.” This part of the argument relies on the appeal of the assumption that a belief (or non-belief in the case of reincarnation of Elvis) held by the majority can be assumed to be true.

Then via “proof by analogy” it seems that you indicate that the same applies to religion. In other words the argument makes the supposition that belief in reincarnations of Elvis and existence of god are equally absurd because they both lack evidence. But no evidence is submitted to indicate that the two beliefs are on equal footing. While I agree that the “burden of proof” is on those that support existence of an entity, the implied assertion that non-belief in Elvis incarnates is a “proper belief” because most people share that viewpoint is classic “argumentum ad populum.” And the argument then says if you believe in the “argumentum ad populum” with regard to Elvis reincarnations and believe in the “association fallacy” that belief in the reincarnated Elvis and existence of god are on equal footing, then you must transitively believe that the “argumentum ad populum” applies to belief in god. This simply doesn’t hold water. There is no evidence submitted for the non-belief in Elvis reincarnations and no evidence given to indicate that belief in god and belief in Elvis reincarnations are substitutable. Note that I realize that the root cause of both the “argumentum ad populum” and “association fallacy” could be “ipsedixitism.” But I would expect better of a card carrying atheist J . . . If logic and evidence rule your soul, then by-god use it!

This doesn’t mean that the conclusion is untrue, but an argument that relies on a commonly accepted belief without stating evidence to support a position is no more valid than an argument for the existence of god that assumes that if most people believe in a god then a god must exist (a very common ad populum argument).

In other words, as submitted the argument has similar credibility to the most common of philosophical tautologies.

Let’s explore one more statement. It seems “ad hominem” and in my opinion fails to be evidentiary because the contrary is also likely to be true. Quoted, “You are atheistic against thousands of stances you could not prove were false (such as Big Foot or Hinduism) — this does not make you arrogant just like non-belief in God is arrogant until shown a reason for believing.”

I also “believe in” thousands of stances I cannot prove are false. In my personal life these assumptions keep me safe and help me categorize new information.

If you see a sleek, sporty model of car on the highway that you have never seen before do you not assume that can go very fast? If you have never seen this model before, you have no “proof” of this. But you may choose to “believe in” your assumption. When I cross the street near a blind corner, I assume that cars coming around the blind corner will be traveling at or about the speed limit. From this conclusion I make assumptions about how fast I have to cross the street. However, I have no “proof” of this. In other words, I (like many others) believe in thousands of stances that I cannot “prove” are true, and I submit that you may make similar assumptions in your everyday life. In other words I fail to see how believing in or being atheistic to “thousands of stances that you could not prove are false” is at all evidentiary in this context.

To better respond to other content of the argument could you define some of the terms and concepts that you have submitted . . .

I assume that the argument was made without delineating the difference between belief and knowledge. You begin with, “I would first love to know the good reasons for believing in God.” But then make a statement about “burden of proof.” This is a mixed argument. You ask for reasons to “believe” in God, but then argue from a position that includes a “burden of proof.” How big is this “burden of proof?” I feel that surmounting a “burden of proof” would lead to knowledge of the existence of God. One can reduce many atheistic arguments down to a postulate that assumes that evidence required for knowledge and belief are the same. Is this what you are implying? Could you differentiate your personal threshold of evidence sufficient for belief and evidence sufficient for knowledge? And then could you clarify whether you are arguing about knowledge of the existence of god or belief in the existence of god? This will ensure that the thread does not degrade into a battle of semantics.

This evidentiary burden for belief/knowledge is the same problem that David Hume wrestled with centuries ago. Hume writes that even if he did have evidence of the existence of god (through the observation of “miracles” i.e. observation of events that defied natural law) he couldn’t assume that this evidence to be true. If he did, he might make the same mistake that the Greeks made when they assumed lightning bolts were evidence of the existence of Zeus. They weren’t aware of natural law that explained these events and assumed that the events were the work of a god. This was later proven false by scientific inquiry. We now know that natural law does explain lightening bolts. Lightening is not miraculous and not evidence of the existence of god. According to Hume if we are not aware of all the natural laws of science, we cannot assume that any unexplainable phenomena is a miracle. Thus even events commonly accepted as “miracles” are not solid evidence for the existence of god.

In this world of special effects, fancy computers, nanotech robotics, genetic engineering, etc. evidence for belief in God may require a very high “burden of proof.” Without absolute knowledge of all natural law, what evidence for the existence of god would be required as a minimum threshold to meet your “burden of proof” that god may actually exist? In other words I am asking for your personal “burden of proof threshold” to better understand what evidence you would consider relevant in this context.

Pat Heinrich

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Mathew Says:

Shalom Tim,

Its good to hear from you. Allow me to start by saying “Thank you” for the link to the Dennet speech. Though I wasn’t very convinced by what he had to say, but he has his points, I’ll give him that. But what impressed me however was the flood of intellectual and critically well thought out responses from your mates. Beautiful, to be a apart of that, I am privileged. As you know I studied religions, and the more I studied the further I strayed from Christianity. My answer to “Do you believe in God” was always “Do you believe in Martians”? When the quick answer of “NO!” came back, I used to ask “Why not”? People would say that it was ridiculous to believe in men from out of space, but I always answered, “well, if u believed that over 2000 years ago, a long haired hippy like figure walked the earth curing people of diseases and turning water into wine claiming to be immaculatedly conceived whilst being the son of god” than my believe in Martians is not so ridiculous anymore. Since then I have changed, because the very people who believed in stuff like that went on to be successful and thru their successes have helped shape this world into a better place. I still don’t succumb to their believes, but believing in something is still better than believing in nothing, why not if it moves you to a better place. End of the day, believing is the most important, be it any form of religion or in this context “GOD”….. I could turn a Christian, Catholic, Hindu, Muslim……. away from his religious, because I had the facts…… but I realised and asked myself “What good will that do….. taking away a person’s belief….. what can I replace it with which is more profound?

Thanks bro for sharing…..

Matthew

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Aram says:

There’s fallacy in arguing for or against religion as much as there is fallacy in arguing “my god is better than your god.” I can respect when someone feels strongly against religion because I have seen people of many religions beat children or hurt others willfully. I can also respect someone who argues for religion or God or some greater force because I have felt tears down on my cheek because something was beautiful or awesome in my life.

I fail to understand why arguing about religion is a “fallacy.” Personally I believe that such exploration, discussion and debate can increase and refine one’s own understanding of one’s own personal views on the subject. To preclude healthy debate on religion is to preclude substantial analytical rigor in the exploration of religious beliefs. Personally I believe that this would lead to ignorance and intolerance. I would prefer to argue ideas in a civil manner to develop understanding rather than silo religious beliefs in a vacuum of frank and fruitful discussion. It is my belief that religious silos absent of arguments for or against religion or the merits and liabilities of various religions may foster a lack of understanding, empathy, and shared experience among practitioners of different religions. And this may cause stagnation in the growth of cultural spirituality as people do not have the information to compare and contrast religious ideas and contextualize them within the bounds of our ever-changing social structures and society. This may lead to misunderstanding between different religious groups that may infect human relationships with the disease of religious misunderstanding and religious intolerance. One can hold a civil argument on merits and liabilities of different religions without disrespecting them. Respect and argument are not mutually exclusive.

Off the top of my head, I think of Scientology . . . a group that as far I can tell does not want a healthy public debate and argument of its merits and liabilities. This has led to intolerance among some of its critics and increasingly secretive practices among it followers. Personally, I don’t think that this is a very good model for other religions to follow.

First, I’m going to have to agree with you passionately, Pat. The following is a video from a scientology protest. I think I make a point against a religion when it is a false religion. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-XMS0kPHNo

On the other hand, you won’t see me go to an anti-Tibetan Buddhism protest.

I am for religion and for “right” science. There is fallacy in arguing for or against religion. What we are going to find in that there is absolutely no correlation between one’s ideas about presence of diety and what is good. The fallacy I’m alluring is to the false dichotomy lain in the philosophical debate of atheism vs. god-isms - which for the most part is still within a science vs. religion debate framework.

I use Occam’s razor when I’m trying to figure out why a patient is sick. However, to demystify our lives and see things simply straight is to rely too much on simple truth which do not add up to the greater understanding of life. I’ll give you a good example where simple (and we might agree false) application of Occam’s razor fails my colleagues: when a patient comes into the clinic, the medical students teach the patients how horrible it is for them to smoke and how it will kill them eventually. What the students are telling the patient is true to the point. However, the knowledge has not helped the students and patients at all because most patients know how bad it is for their health to begin with. Often, these patients feel really burdened to come to the clinic because they know they are going to hear a lecture over which they feel they have no control over. Science has failed these people in trying to find freedom from cigarette.

I smoke cigarette occasionally myself and understand what it is the patient go through. And I can relate to them. I don’t tell them something they already know. I tell them not to feel bad. I just let them know that if they wanted to quit that I’m there to help. This approach is not something that I feel that I couldn’t have learned without humanities and, to an extent, religion.

Instead of reinventing the wheel, I’m going to simply refer you to Leo Tolstoy’s “A Letter to a Hindu” which was written in 1908 - exactly a century ago. In it, he makes an arguement against religion AND science with regards to how both can be used to destroy what is good and sacred in our lives:

“New justifications have now appeared in place of the antiquated, obsolete, religious ones. These new justifications are just as inadequate as the old ones, but as they are new their futility cannot immediately be recognized by the majority of men. Besides this, those who enjoy power propagate these new sophistries and support them so skilfully that they seem irrefutable even to many of those who suffer from the oppression these theories seek to justify. These new justifications are termed “scientific”. But by the term “scientific” is understood just what was formerly understood by the term “religious”: just as formerly everything called “religious” was held to be unquestionable simply because it was called religious, so now all that is called “scientific” is held to be unquestionable. In the present case the obsolete religious justification of violence which consisted in the recognition of the supernatural personality of the God-ordained ruler (”there is no power but of God”) has been superseded by the “scientific” justification which puts forward, first, the assertion that because the coercion of man by man has existed in all ages, it follows that such coercion must continue to exist. This assertion that people should continue to live as they have done throughout past ages rather than as their reason and conscience indicate, is what “science” calls “the historic law”. A further “scientific” justification lies in the statement that as among plants and wild beasts there is a constant struggle for existence which always results in the survival of the fittest, a similar struggle should be carried on among human ­beings, that is, who are gifted with intelligence and love; faculties lacking in the creatures subject to the struggle for existence and survival of the fittest. Such is the second “scientific” justification. The third, most important, and unfortunately most widespread justification is, at bottom, the age-old religious one just a little altered: that in public life the suppression of some for the protection of the majority cannot be avoided - so that coercion is unavoidable however desirable reliance on love alone might be in human intercourse. The only difference in this justification by pseudo-science consists in the fact that, to the question why such and such people and not others have the right to decide against whom violence may and must be used, pseudo-science now gives a different reply to that given by religion - which declared that the right to decide was valid because it was pronounced by persons possessed of divine power. “Science” says that these decisions represent the will of the people, which under a constitutional form of government is supposed to find expression in all the decisions and actions of those who are at the helm at the moment. Such are the scientific justifications of the principle of coercion. They are not merely weak but absolutely invalid, yet they are so much needed by those who occupy privileged positions that they believe in them as blindly as they formerly believed in the immaculate conception, and propagate them just as confidently. And the unfortunate majority of men bound to toil is so dazzled by the pomp with which these “scientific truths” are presented, that under this new influence it accepts these scientific stupidities for holy truth, just as it formerly accepted the pseudo-religious justifications; and it continues to submit to the present holders of power who are just as hard-hearted but rather more numerous than before.” (Letter, Chapter IV).

Now I don’t think I can quiet satisfy those who feel strongly one way or another about this topic except to reiterate simply a few fundamental truth for our benefit:

1. There is good and evil in every dogma and every creed.
2. What we think, feel, believe and do should reflect of good and against evil.