hell’s handmaiden

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1. 1 On March 17th, 2007, Null said:

   So the evidence of belief itself, amongst intelligent people is evidence for the existence of God, or at least that there are people who believe in God for intelligent reasons. The evidence of many intelligent people *coming* to a belief in God as adults demonstrates that belief in God is fundamentally different from belief in mythical creatures.

   I’m sorry, but Stephen’s made a common mistake here. Evidence of a believe in a god is not evidence of that god’s existence, it’s just evidence that the belief in that god exists.

   Stephen’s correct in saying that a belief in a god is different to a belief in other mythical creatures, but not for the right reason: most other mythical creatures are well defined, their particular attributes are known and fixed, they can be easily mentally visualised; gods in general (and especially those of the Abrahamic traditions) aren’t anywhere near so well defined.

   Saying that intelligent people believe in a god, Stephen jumps to the conclusion that there must be intelligent reasons for doing so. As well as being a non sequitur, this is just bogus. Has he never heard of compartmentalisation?

   If this was the case, there would be relatively simple arguments (not all intelligent people have the same intellectual expertise) that could be used to otherwise prove the existence of a god to other so-called intelligent people. Instead, we see emotional appeals, philosophic arguments irrelevant to scriptures, appeals to scripture as history with no possibility of confirmation, a complete lack of tangible evidence, appeals to gaps in knowlege, appeals to fear and, the one that Stephen’s used here, an appeal to authority.

   No matter how these people came to believe the things they believe, I’ll bet there’s no ‘intelligent’ reasons behind any of them.

2. 2 On March 17th, 2007, themaiden said:

   Hi Null. Always a pleasure.

   Stephen, you’ve got me slightly wrong. I claim that there is no reason to believe in God, and in the absense of reasons it makes no sense to believe in God. As for giving reasons “why” God exists…

   I cannot give any good reason why *anything* exists. Why is there something rather than nothing? But I don’t assert that the world and everything within it does not exist.

   Granted, in English the question can be phrased using the word “why”, but “why” is slippery word. Do you really think that using it in the way you did accurately reflects your opponent’s position? In my case it doesn’t– and I suspect you know this. And I’d be willing to gamble that it doesn’t reflect the position of very many non-believers, though you’d have to quiz each and every one to find out for sure.

   My position is a lot easier to understand if you substitute the word “that” for “why”, then the point becomes, “No one can give any good reasons that God exists”. I may not know why a rock exists, but if it hits me in the head I can assume that it exists, at least insofar as my senses go, which is all I’ve got. Playing with the meaning of “why” as you did is a red herring, or equivocation.

   As for the “analogy between belief in God and Winnie the Pooh and Darth Vader” being somehow improper…

   Part of your position is nothing more than “lots of people believe therefore there is something to the belief”. This is pure fallacy– appeal to popular opinion.

   The Appeal to Popularity has the following form:

   1. Most people approve of X (have favorable emotions towards X).
   2. Therefore X is true.

   The basic idea is that a claim is accepted as being true simply because most people are favorably inclined towards the claim. More formally, the fact that most people have favorable emotions associated with the claim is substituted in place of actual evidence for the claim. A person falls prey to this fallacy if he accepts a claim as being true simply because most other people approve of the claim.

   Appeal to Popularity

   It is a little mind boggling that you’d assert such a thing so unabashedly.

   Secondly, step back into time a thousand years and you’d find that most people believed in “mythological” creatures. Step back another few thousand and you’d find the same thing. Go to Africa and you’ll find many, many people living today who believe in “mythological” creatures. Go to India and you’ll find people who believe in thousand armed blue people and elephant headed “myths”. Read your local New Age publication and you’ll be forced to realize that a significant number of people do in fact believe in sprites, faeries, little people and such like. By your reasoning, since lots of people believe in them, then these things are all reasonable beliefs and are presumably all true. Of course, these people do not call their mythological creatures, “mythological”. They call them Gods and spirits and such. The point being twofold, 1) argument by “what people believe” is nonsense and 2) there is a fundamental difference between belief in God and belief in mythical creatures. What you call myth is, or was, someone else’s God. This last bit leads to a further complication, by the way. Your argument– the appeal to popular belief– “proves” contradictory truths. That is a no-no. It means the argument is flawed.

   Third, what about Winnie-the-Pooh and Darth Vader? The critical element isn’t who believes or who doesn’t believe. We’ve seen that that appeal in seriously flawed. The critical element is evidence. If two assertions both lack evidence, then they are entirely equivalent as to truth value, no matter how absurd the assertions may be. No one has ever produced evidence for the existence of God, and the faithful have had a very long time to try. That means that belief in God is entirely equivalent to belief in anything ridiculous I happen to make up. Sorry, but that is the way it works. Take Pooh and Vader. No one can produce any tolerably reasonable evidence for the existence of either outside the books in which they appear as characters. Thus, the two are comparable on that score. The faithful do not like to admit it, but God fits perfectly into that formula. No one can provide any tolerably reasonable evidence for his/her/its existence outside of the books in which he/she/it appears, thus making God comparable on that relevant score of evidence or lack or it, to these fictional characters.

   Your turn, Stephen.

3. 3 On March 17th, 2007, Stephen Kingston said:

   Let’s get quite clear what I am not going to do.

   1. I am not going to try and prove that God exists (I believe no such proofs are valid. All logical proofs of God’s existence or non existence are fallacies).

   2. I am not going to spend much time on this thread, as I only have time for one thread at a time, and this one lis largely pointless.

   I was aware when I made the point about people’s belief being an evidence for God, or rather (as I corrected myself) that people believe in God for intelligent reasons, that this is similar to argumentum ad populum, which is why I limited my comments to the scope of “evidence” rather than proof. By evidence, I mean something akin to “the fact that people believed in Napoleon Bonaparte for good reasons is evidence of his existence, or at least that people believed in his existence for good reasons”.

   This is to point to the difference between belief in mythical figures such as Santa Claus or whatever, and belief in God. The point being that the origina analogy is hopelessly flawed.

   If I wished to construct an argument for why *I* believe in God, I would not start there, nor would I end there. And I have already said that I believe that *no* proof of God’s existence nor non existence is valid.

   So if you think I am defending *faith* based on the fact that people have faith, then I hope I have disabused you of that.

   What I *am* saying is that there is no comparison between belief in God and belief in mythical figures, and I demonstrate this point by:

   a) People lose their belief in mythical creatures, but many intelligent people continue to believe in God throughout their lives, and:

   b) People often *come* to a belief in God in later life, whereas I have never heard of anyone coming to belief in either Winnie the Pooh or Santa Claus.

   The analogy is wholly flawed.

   You can argue about compartmentalisation, para-consistent belief sets, viral memes and whatever else takes your fancy. The fact that such an argument is required demonstrates the validity of my point.

   I notice that “Null” says:

   “Stephen’s correct in saying that a belief in a god is different to a belief in other mythical creatures”

   We almost agree. Except that “Null” has no warrant to introduce the word “other”.

4. 4 On March 17th, 2007, themaiden said:

   Stephen,

   1. I am not going to try and prove that God exists (I believe no such proofs are valid. All logical proofs of God’s existence or non existence are fallacies).

   End of discussion then. If it is impossible to demonstrate the existence, or non-existence, of God then you can’t possibly object to my comparing said zero-truth value idea with any other zero-truth value idea. Ideas with zero evidence are all equivalent. Zero equals zero in this, just as in math.

   What I *am* saying is that there is no comparison between belief in God and belief in mythical figures…

   You can’t really have it both ways. Either you can make some kind of case for the existence of God– and you claim that this is impossible– or you can accept that God, for whom we have no evidence, is entirely comparable to anything else for which we have no evidence. You can’t make distinctions between things if none of those things offer evidence.

   And please don’t quibble over ‘evidence’ vs. ‘proof’. If you’ve got evidence, you’ve got a kind of proof. “Such and such evidence, therefore such and such conclusion.” It may be a weak argument, or a weak proof, but it is a proof. Evidence in favor of something is a de facto proof of– in the sense of being an argument for– that something.

   a) People lose their belief in mythical creatures, but many intelligent people continue to believe in God throughout their lives…

   So what? People loose their belief in God as well. I did. Furthermore, many intelligent people continue to believe in astrology their whole lives, or ghosts, or bigfoot, or any number of things. This is not evidence.

   b) People often *come* to a belief in God in later life, whereas I have never heard of anyone coming to belief in either Winnie the Pooh or Santa Claus.

   Nor is this evidence. People come to believe things late in life. This is no reason to argue that such things are true. People come to believe, for example, in the weird ideology of Scientology. Some come to believe in the divinity of such people as David Koresh. Some come to believe late in life. Some are intelligent. None of this means that these beliefs are in any way a reflection of reality.

   More interesting is that the arguments you use can also be used to build cases for contradictory beliefs– like the belief in Allah, and in Baron Samedi. Both beliefs can’t be true, at least from the point of view of Islam. I’m not sure if Vodun would allow such coexistence. If the same argument generates contradictory conclusion there is something wrong with the argument. Basic stuff, that.

5. 5 On March 17th, 2007, Chris Bradley said:

   Am I the only person who feels that Christians defending their religion are nihilistically post-modern? He can’t prove anything, so obviously there’s a god . . . ? And how, suddenly, all proof is equal in value. What a bizarre argument. While, perhaps, philosophically interesting (I don’t think so, but, hey, some people disagree), is there anyone in the world who behaves as tho’ all proof is the same?

   Even Christians, when injured, call the doctor before praying.

6. 6 On March 17th, 2007, themaiden said:

   Chris,

   Isn’t that the strangest position? That we can’t make either a proof or a disproof of God but somehow God is special and we can’t compare him to other very similar things?

7. 7 On March 17th, 2007, Chris Bradley said:

   themaiden,

   It is strange. And more than a trifle hypocritical. It is my experience that when trying to witness to a person that no Christian voices the slightest doubt about the reality of Jesus or the Christian god. They say they’re absolutely certain of the reality of their god.

   Yet, when talking to you or I, the position they take is one of near total nihilism. I suspect saying to an emotionally vulnerable person, “Hey, since nothing can be really proven, god is as likely as anything else, so you might as well believe” isn’t a rhetorically strong as, “God absolutely exists and will send you to hell if you don’t worship him.”

8. 8 On March 18th, 2007, Stephen Kingston said:

   It is my experience that when trying to witness to a person that no Christian …

   Can we say straw man?

   No proof of God’s existence nor non existence is logically valid. No proof of the existence of anything is logically valid.

   But that says nothing about evidence and reasons for belief. It is up to you what you do with the evidence, but please stop putting words in my mouth.

   My point was to demonstrate that belief in the existence of God is different from belief in the existence of Winnie the Pooh. You want to take that beyond what I said to an argument that says X is true because people come to believe in it. You are in error, because you want me to argue something I have not argued. There are three new posts here, and none of them actually defend the original assertion.

   As you don’t seem to have offered a refutation of my point, I shall stop there.

9. 9 On March 18th, 2007, themaiden said:

   Stephen,

   I can say “straw man”, but you must stop reconstructing logic to fit your agenda. The phrase “In my experience…” almost by definition precludes Chris’s statements being a straw man. His experience is not something you are qualified to rate as ’straw’ or othewise. It is anecdote, yes, but calling it a straw man is ridiculous. I’m sorry to be so harsh, sincerely, but I feel like I’m watching a child use words he’s heard but doesn’t understand. Please stop it.

   As you don’t seem to have offered a refutation of my point, I shall stop there.

   Actually, Stephen, I have offered a refutation of your point. Really, you offered it for me– “No proof of God’s existence nor non existence is logically valid. No proof of the existence of anything is logically valid.” By taking this stance you have absolutely leveled the playing field. You have placed everything on the same footing. I can’t imagine a better refutation of your position.

   This position absolutely does say something “about evidence and reasons for belief.” You can’t have evidence for belief… you can’t have reasons for belief without also having some kind of argument, some kind of proof, as well. You can hold a red ball in you hand but it isn’t evidence of, nor is it a reason for, anything unless connected to some explicit or implicit chain of reasoning– a proof. “This red ball indicates… ” or “The red ball leads me to… ” And proofs are all invalid according to you.

   You have backed yourself into an amazingly tight corner. Address that. While you are at it, address the several other points I made which have thus far been ignored.

10. 10 On March 18th, 2007, Stephen Kingston said:

    but you must stop reconstructing logic to fit your agenda

    Or you could just stop the fallacious reasoning.

    Look, here is the first paragraph of the quote in full:

    It is my experience that when trying to witness to a person that no Christian voices the slightest doubt about the reality of Jesus or the Christian god. They say they’re absolutely certain of the reality of their god.

    Spotted the straw man yet?

    As to your assertion that you have offered a refutation, I remind you that the point you think you are refuting never was the point I was making. Please pay attention at the back.

11. 11 On March 18th, 2007, themaiden said:

    Stephen,

    “In my experience…” What part of “In my experience…” do you not get? His experience may be very different from yours, or mine, or anyone else’s. You can’t label a man’s description of his experience as a straw man. That is blatantly transparent nonsense. You can call it anecdotal, which it is. You can argue that it is unrepresentative, which would be difficult, but not impossible. You have to admit that not many Christians are willing to express doubt in their God. You can argue that he is just plain wrong. What you cannot do is argue that it is a straw man. It is not a false construction of anyone’s position. It is a expression of Chris’s personal experience. You are in no position to argue his experience.

    As to your assertion that you have offered a refutation, I remind you that the point you think you are refuting never was the point I was making.

    What point is that, Stephen? That I “want to take that beyond what I said to an argument that says X is true because people come to believe in it”? You are awfully stuck on the idea that this is the only point in contention. Actually, I’m pretty sure– not completely sure, but close– it hasn’t been mentioned in this thread since your first comment. This is most definitely not the point I care about, nor is it the one to which I’ve responded. Perhaps, though, focusing on this point allows you to blind yourself to the fact that you have backed yourself into a corner.

    Your point, Stephen, is… well, why don’t you say it for me?

    My point was to demonstrate that belief in the existence of God is different from belief in the existence of Winnie the Pooh.

    My point, for several comments now, has been that you can’t make this statement and remain consistent with your other statement that no proofs or disproofs of the existence of ‘things’ are valid. You’ve undercut yourself. Pointing out that fact is all the refutation I need to do. Even so, I addressed your points from a different angle in comment #4. You’ve not so much as mentioned those arguments, much less addressed them. Very funny, by the way, that you criticize me for your crime.

12. 12 On March 18th, 2007, Chris Bradley said:

    Oh, please, the straw man argument? That’s one of the ones that folks in the Internet use when they want to sound like they’ve studied logic but haven’t.

    It would have been a straw man if I’d said that it is the case that people who witness use powerful declarations of god’s existence. But I said it was my experience.

    Also, even if I had said that it was people who witness use declarations, to disprove my so-called straw man you’d need to demonstrate that isn’t the case. Instead, you merely assert it. Big deal. I assert one thing (except I merely say my experience) and you get it wrong what a straw man is and don’t even do anything to demonstrate that it’s an actual straw man.

13. 13 On March 18th, 2007, Chris Bradley said:

    Tho’ it appears that themaiden made all the points in a much more robust fashion that I can to do, now, hehe.

    Also note that the conversation is now about straw men and not attempting to argue the points you made, themaiden. In post 4 on this thread, themaiden said several things to Stephen but now he’s only talking about the purported straw man.

    Can you say “changing the topic”?

    In my experience — which is, as themaiden said, anecdotal which is different from being a straw man — this is the primary function of the straw man argument online. When some folks are getting your ass kicked, they use any example they can find (note, for instance, Stephen didn’t say anything about his arguments being nihilistically post-modern, which was my actual point, but picked out an example — examples are also not straw men, except on the Internet) and call it a straw man. Then they act upset and use that as a justification to stop talking about any point at all!

    So, not is Stephen no longer talking about that — to many atheists — there isn’t a big difference between the character of Winnie the Pooh and Jesus of Nazareth (they’re both fictional characters with wide followings that purport to teach morality through analogy, f’rex) or that his arguments are nihilistic he’s talking solely about invented straw men. He has used the justification of “straw men” to avoid any point.

    This is classic obfuscation of an argument of a type found pretty much only on the Internet in my opinion. (I suspect that’s because in real conversation a person would go, immediately, “Dude, it was just an example” and either talk about their point or offer more examples. But on the Internet, he can post at great length about things being a straw man without being interrupted — but that is just a guess and were I not saying it was just a guess might actually be a straw man.)

14. 14 On March 18th, 2007, themaiden said:

    … and were I not saying it was just a guess might actually be a straw man.

    Oh, no, Chris… I’m sure it is somehow still a straw man… somehow…

15. 15 On March 18th, 2007, Stephen Kingston said:

    First, one of you complains I have not addressed the points in comment 4. I did not bother, because they do not refute what I said, which I remind you is:

    [you] suggest a hasty analogy between belief in God and Winnie the Pooh and Darth Vader. However, no-one over the age of about 5 believes in Winnie the Pooh and Darth Vader. The same is true of analogies with the tooth fairy and santa claus. This fact alone should show that the analogy is flawed. There is a fundamental difference between belief in God and belief in mythical creatures.

    One of you thought this was a refutation:

    a) People lose their belief in mythical creatures, but many intelligent people continue to believe in God throughout their lives…

    So what? People loose their belief in God as well. I did. Furthermore, many intelligent people continue to believe in astrology their whole lives, or ghosts, or bigfoot, or any number of things. This is not evidence.

    Som people lose their belief, many do not. But all (as far as I know) lose any belief they have in Winnie the Pooh. So there is a fundamental difference.

    You add in some other belief systems (astrology etc.), and you are quite right. There is more in common with a belief in some of these other things than a belief in mythical creatures. But it is still not a refutation of my point.

    Rather it is a tacit acknowledgement that there are alternative belief sets that are more suitable analogies than the one originally posited.

    b) People often *come* to a belief in God in later life, whereas I have never heard of anyone coming to belief in either Winnie the Pooh or Santa Claus.

    Nor is this evidence. People come to believe things late in life. This is no reason to argue that such things are true.

    But, of course, I was not suggesting that this is an argument that this is a proof of the actual existence of God. Only that there is a difference between belief in God and belief in mythical creatures.

    Thus my point:

    So the evidence of belief itself, amongst intelligent people is evidence for the existence of God, or at least that there are people who believe in God for intelligent reasons. The evidence of many intelligent people *coming* to a belief in God as adults demonstrates that belief in God is fundamentally different from belief in mythical creatures.

    I realise that the phrasing is a little loose here when I say “So the evidence of belief itself, amongst intelligent people is evidence for the existence of God, or at least that there are people who believe in God for intelligent reasons”. You want to make that “the evidence of belief is proof of the existence of God”, but I clearly spoke of evidence, and made quite plain that the evidence only really demonstrates that people believe in God for intelligent reasons. Anything beyond that is your own invention.

    *

    Second point: For every message I write, I am seeing three or more replies in a thread that I have already stated I do not have time for. I would not have botherd with it had it not been good enough to link to my own site. Don’t therefore expect point by point answers to your messages. I don’t have the time. I don’t expect to convince any of you of anything beyond the limited point that analogy between God and mythical figures is flawed, and the way you are going, you don’t have a hope of convincing me of anything other than the inadvisability of commenting on sites that have been kind enough to link to your own (unless the connecting site is an “in-group” site of course. Basic psychology there).

    *

    Third, on straw men:

    Oh, please, the straw man argument? That’s one of the ones that folks in the Internet use when they want to sound like they’ve studied logic but haven’t.

    Undoubtedly. But suppose we say that X is an argument used by Y, where Y is the set of people who have not studied logic but want to make it sound as though they do. Members of Y therefore will use argument X, but it does not follow that if Z uses argument X then he is a member of the set Y.

    That would be the fallacy of affirming the consequent.

    So really, the question is not whether in saying “straw man” I have identified with a certain type of Internet user (a point which, in any case, is ad hominem), but whether the argument I have said is a straw man is indeed an example of that less formal fallacy.

    It is no defence to say “I only said ‘in my experience’” if the position you are placing in the hands of the other party is not the position they would take. If the argument is different from and weaker than the argument I would make, then it is a straw man.

    So what is the argument?

    It is strange. And more than a trifle hypocritical. It is my experience that when trying to witness to a person that no Christian voices the slightest doubt about the reality of Jesus or the Christian god. They say they’re absolutely certain of the reality of their god.

    Yet, when talking to you or I, the position they take is one of near total nihilism.

    You have accused me of hypocrisy because (in your experience - and thus imputed to me) no Christian voices the slightest doubt about the reality of Jesus and the Christian God, and they say that they are certain of the reality of God, and yet take a position of total nihilism (which is definitely aimed at me).

    But notice that whilst you say I and others take a position of nihilism, that is certainly not the position I nor any Christian I know takes. Nihilism is diametrically opposed to the position of any Christian I know. I would not defend a nihilistic philosophy, and the fact that you have attributed nihilism to me suggests a rather lazy attempt at categorising those with whom you disagree.

    And the fact that you argue from your experience that Christians hold to a certain view on doubt that there is hypocrisy here is equally lazy. Rather than ask my position on such things, your conceit is that you can know what my position is based on your own experience.

    You may try and backtrack, and say that you did not mean to include me in this group, but I would make two points: (1) There are no other Christians responding here, and (2) I am equally suspicious that you have adequately described the position of the Christians you actually have experience of. Certainly nothing in this exchange has led me to the belief that you would be able to properly discern someones position on matters of evidence and doubt.

    So this is a straw man. It is a straw man because it mistates the view of Christians per se. It is a straw man because it is aimed at me and mistates my position. And it is a straw man because it suggests that a Christian’s view might be nihilistic.

    “Ah, but you cannot argue with my experience”. You will say.

    Which makes an argument from experience an interesting rhetorical device that is designed to be irrefutable.

    But the positions you put in the mouths of Chritsians are not the position of the only Christian responding. It is a straw man argument, plain and simple.

    Clear?

16. 16 On March 18th, 2007, themaiden said:

    Stephen,

    This is becoming ridiculous.

    First, one of you complains I have not addressed the points in comment 4. I did not bother, because they do not refute what I said…

    What you said was… “There is a fundamental difference between belief in God and belief in mythical creatures.”

    Mythical creatures, Stephen. We both know that the really critical issue is the comparison between God and mythical creatures. This is why you closed the paragraph with the line you did. This is why you use the term in other places as well. I addressed this issue head on. You are now back-pedaling and latching onto distinction, to specifics, which your own language suggests you know to be superfluous. The real issue is not about Winnie-the-Pooh, of Santa Claus, or Darth Vader, in particular. And you know that. They real issue is, as you yourself wrote, about God vs. mythological creatures. I honestly don’t care– because it doesn’t make any difference– what mythological creature gets put in the blank.

    But, of course, I was not suggesting that this is an argument that this is a proof of the actual existence of God. Only that there is a difference between belief in God and belief in mythical creatures.

    Again, you can’t have this and also keep you position that no proofs are valid. The two are contradictory.

    But notice that whilst you say I and others take a position of nihilism, that is certainly not the position I nor any Christian I know takes.

    What exactly do you think that “All proofs about the existence of God or anything else” leads to? This is about as hard a statement of nihilism as I’ve seen. I have no doubt that you do not take a nihilistic positon in practice, but the position you have argued in several places is certainly very nihilistic. If you can neither prove nor disprove God, neither prove nor disprove Allah, neither prove nor disprove some diety from West Africa, and so on, then what you have is ultimately all Gods on a level field and, well, just pick a God who tells you do the stuff you like to do. You like killing? Go with Kali. You like sex? Go with Aphrodite. You like wine? Go with Bacchus. That is profoundly nihilistic. If you don’t want that association, perhaps you ought not argue the point about proofs and disproofs. And again, please bear in mind that I do not, and I suspect that Chris does not, believe that you are actually a nihilist. We, well ‘I’ anyway, are just pointing out that this argument looks terribly nihilistic.

    “Ah, but you cannot argue with my experience”. You will say.

    Which makes an argument from experience an interesting rhetorical device that is designed to be irrefutable.

    Far from being irrefutable, all you have to do is say, “No, actually, I don’t do/say/believe that.” The end. It isn’t very hard.

17. 17 On March 18th, 2007, themaiden said:

    Stephen,

    One more thing before I go to bed.

    I made it quite clear that I don’t really care which mythological creature you put into the blank. I don’t care because it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because the critical element is not who believes, or when they come to believe, or whether people stop believing, or what the source of the myth is in the first place. The critical element is not, in effect, all the things with which you’d have us distracted. The critical element is evidence. And this was addressed way back in comment #2.

    Third, what about Winnie-the-Pooh and Darth Vader? The critical element isn’t who believes or who doesn’t believe. We’ve seen that that appeal in seriously flawed. The critical element is evidence. If two assertions both lack evidence, then they are entirely equivalent as to truth value, no matter how absurd the assertions may be. No one has ever produced evidence for the existence of God, and the faithful have had a very long time to try. That means that belief in God is entirely equivalent to belief in anything ridiculous I happen to make up. Sorry, but that is the way it works. Take Pooh and Vader. No one can produce any tolerably reasonable evidence for the existence of either outside the books in which they appear as characters. Thus, the two are comparable on that score. The faithful do not like to admit it, but God fits perfectly into that formula. No one can provide any tolerably reasonable evidence for his/her/its existence outside of the books in which he/she/it appears, thus making God comparable on that relevant score of evidence or lack or it, to these fictional characters.

    It has subsequently been ignored.

    Let me say this again. The key element is not what people believe, come to believe, or stop believing. All of these really boil down to, and I say this over your objections, “people believe it so there must be something to it”. Even you agree that this is flawed. The key element is evidence. You claim that we can’t have evidence– All proofs or disproofs of God or anything else are invalid. Thus everything is equal– God, Vader, Tiamat, Ronald McDonald. But please, fill in any mythological creature you want. It doesn’t ultimately matter.

18. 18 On March 19th, 2007, Chris Bradley said:

    You have accused me of hypocrisy because (in your experience - and thus imputed to me) no Christian voices the slightest doubt about the reality of Jesus and the Christian God, and they say that they are certain of the reality of God, and yet take a position of total nihilism (which is definitely aimed at me).

    But notice that whilst you say I and others take a position of nihilism, that is certainly not the position I nor any Christian I know takes. Nihilism is diametrically opposed to the position of any Christian I know. I would not defend a nihilistic philosophy, and the fact that you have attributed nihilism to me suggests a rather lazy attempt at categorising those with whom you disagree.

    I didn’t say that, for what it is worth. I said that when Christians are ministering that they are utterly confident about the existence of god. But when they talk about the reasons for belief they frequently take the extremely deconstructed and post-modern view that nothing actually constitutes proof. Such as when you said:

    I cannot give any good reason why *anything* exists. Why is there something rather than nothing?

    The reason why this is hypocrisy — hell, it’s not even hypocrisy! It’s a lie. You very well know that you know why something exists — you think your god made it! You think there’s something other than nothing because your god decided it! C’mon, man.

    Then you go on to say that even tho’ you can’t give a good reason why anything exists (a lie), you say that you don’t doubt existence. Which is where, I think, the real nihilism comes in — because now you’ve just stopped making any kind of sense (ignoring the fact you’re lying, which is where sense can then be parsed; you think the world exists because the Bible told you so). What you’re doing is just talking out your backside, saying that you don’t have any reason to believe anything exists, but you do, anyway, which makes no sense until you start factoring in the fact you’re lying when you say this. To me, that’s nihilism in communications, when a person doesn’t make sense from the beginning of a paragraph to the end, particularly when it’s filled with a bunch of pomo garbage (not that I think that pomo is garbage, just how you’re using it, to muddy the waters of communication).

    But the positions you put in the mouths of Chritsians are not the position of the only Christian responding. It is a straw man argument, plain and simple.

    This also makes no sense. You are the only Christian responding. The only one. The one. So, you’re saying that your views are representative of all Christians, or the average Christian, or even a large group of Christians? That doesn’t disprove my point, it just says you disagree with my point. So what?

19. 19 On March 20th, 2007, Stephen Kingston said:

    Mythical creatures, Stephen. We both know that the really critical issue is the comparison between God and mythical creatures. This is why you closed the paragraph with the line you did. This is why you use the term in other places as well. I addressed this issue head on. You are now back-pedaling and latching onto distinction, to specifics, which your own language suggests you know to be superfluous. The real issue is not about Winnie-the-Pooh, of Santa Claus, or Darth Vader, in particular. And you know that. They real issue is, as you yourself wrote, about God vs. mythological creatures. I honestly don’t care– because it doesn’t make any difference– what mythological creature gets put in the blank.

    That is right. It does not matter whether you put Winnie the Pooh, Tigger too, Santa Claus, Darth Vader, Ambassador G’kar, the great spaghetti monster, Puck, Mother Goose nor any of these other examples that people occasionally throw up. They all suffer from the same fundamental failure.

    People do not come to believe in these figures. People are not converted to belief in Santa Claus. Indeed, no-one beyond a certain age believes in Santa Claus.

    Time and again atheists fail to make this distinction. That belief in God is fundamentally different from belief in mythical creatures.

    This should point you to the fallacy of this statement: “No one has ever produced evidence for the existence of God, and the faithful have had a very long time to try.”

    Atheists such as Richard Dawkins tell us “faith means blind trust, in the absence of evidence, even in the teeth of evidence”

    But Dawkins et al. fail to realise that this has never been a Christian definition of faith. A A Hodge (an important Christian theologian from the reformed tradition) wrote:

    “Faith must have adequate evidence, else it is mere superstition”.

    He was neither the first nor the last to make this statement. Christianity is an evidence based religion. The fact that you believe that “no one has ever produced evidence for the existence of God” tells us only that you have either (a) not encountered or considered the evidence or (b) have encountered some or all of the evidence and rejected it.

    In either case, you do not take seriously the fact that belief in God is different from belief in mythical creatures because it is evidence based. This is why people can consider the evidence and *come to* a belief in the existence of God. This is why millions of people retain a faith in God, despite acquiring critical reasoning skills that allow them to evaluate evidence.

    But even if you disagree about the reasoning of those Christians, and you come up with concepts such as memes, compartmentalisation, para consistent belief sets etc., you are tacitly saying that there is something different about belief in God than belief in mythical creatures. There is some reason why intelligent people posit intelligent reasons for belief - and this is not true of mythical creatures. Faith is not belief in the teeth of evidence. It is not superstion, because the faithful look to adequate evidence for their faith.

    When you say “this is becoming ridiculous”, you seem to have forgotten that it was the very comparison that you proposed that was designed to be ridiculous. Your motive was to ridicule belief in God as we might ridicule an adult who honestly believed that there is a small teddy bear living wild in the Ashdown Forest (AKA Hundred Akre Wood).

    My point was to bring you to a realisation that this ad hominem line is flawed, because your assumptions blind you to the evidence that intelligent people believe in God for reasonable reasons.

    Stephen Gould made a similar observation about the compatibility of Christianity and evolutionary biology. The evidence of Christian evolutionary biologists led him to the realisation that evolutionary biology and Christianity must be compatible. He did not believe Christianity himself. he did not have to be a Christian to come to the realisation that such belief might be reasonable and that the faithful might have evidence for their beliefs.

    Again, you can’t have this and also keep you position that no proofs are valid. The two are contradictory.

    You seem to have a problem with the distinction between evidence (which is empirical in nature, can be interpreted and analysed, but is in fact *never* entirely conclusive (as Hume ably demonstrated)), and proof, which is an inferred conclusion from a set of premises.

    So I can prove that x^n+y^n=z^n has no non zero integer solutions for all x,y and z where n>2. (Obviously I can only prove this if I have Andrew Wiles to help me, as the mathematics is well beyond my ability).

    I can prove that ExAy(P(x,y)) [there exists some x such that for all y the proposition P(x,y) is satisfied].

    I cannot prove the existence of God. I cannot do it with mathematics, nor logic nor any philosophy or method that yields proof. And the same is true of everything else (except existence, of course. Descarte’s remarkable “I reason/experience, therefore I am”, “cogito ergo sum”, finds an a priori proof of existence, but unfortunately comes to a crashing halt thereafter. Descartes then takes a presuppositional leap that many people intuitively take - that the seeds of knowledge are within us. But as we cannot prove that leap, further progress with respect to a priori proof is impossible).

    But the fact that I cannot prove God exists does not mean that I do not *believe* He exists, in the same way that the fact that I cannot prove *you* exist does not mean that I do not *believe* you exist.

    You could be lots of people collaborating but claiming to be you. You could be an artificial intelligence. You could even be a figment of my imagination. I cannot prove your existence, but I choose to believe it, based on what is - to me - a reasonable interpretation of the evidence.

    So that is the fundamental difference between proof and evidence.

    What exactly do you think that “All proofs about the existence of God or anything else” leads to?

    Many more philosophies than you seem to be aware. For instance, all kinds of empiricism, the existentialism of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche [can never spell that name], or the presuppositionalism of Van Til and especially Clark. Also critical realism, naive realism (realism with the sophistry taken out - what Chesterton would have called “reason and enlightenment”), and a presuppositional realism as well as a presuppositional objectivism.

20. 20 On March 20th, 2007, Stephen Kingston said:

    Chris,

    It’s a lie. You very well know that you know why something exists — you think your god made it!

    I *know* why. I *think* God made it.

    You accuse me of lying because *you* believe that I am absolutely certain of something, and yet when you express what that certainty is, you use the language of uncertainty. Why is that?

    Now let me rephrase the point in the words that *I* would actually use, rather than the ones you think I *should* use:

    Or in other words, I *believe* I know why. I *believe* God made it.

    See the difference?

    Can I give a reasonable proof of God’s existence? The answer to that remains no. I can no more prove God exists than I can ultimately prove this universe exists. But I accept it does. I believe in an objective reality beyond the mere reporting of my sense data. I don’t assert that the world and everything in it does not exist, nor do I speak of individual realities and other such things. I *believe* in an objective reality that exists quite apart from my ability to sense and experience it.

    And I am aware of the assumptions I make when I do this. The manner in which I choose to interpret the evidence and data of my senses.

    I have met and debated with many a person who does *not* share that belief. And the fact of the matter is that I cannot convince them otherwise. I can point them to evidence, but they interpret evidence in a different manner from me. I can say that some kind of realism is the philosophy of common sense, but they might simply argue that this is merely my interpretation of common sense. Perhaps you see the problem?

    You may apologise at your convenience for your assumption of dishonesty (which you repeat again three times), which I find most disingenuous. If you have any interest in persuading someone that your view is correct (although I am not really sure what your view is yet, except it seems to exclude God), it does not do to start throwing around such baseless accusations.

21. 21 On March 21st, 2007, themaiden said:

    Stephen,

    “Ambassador G’kar”… I love B5. Best epic saga since the Illiad.

    It is utterly irrelevant what or when or whether people come to believe something. Nor is it relevant what or when or whether people come to disbelieve something. These are all appeals to popularity. They all rest upon the idea that “people believe it therefore…” This is simply fallacious. You claim that “people come to believe in God therefore that belief is ‘different’”. This is marginally more subtle that claiming that “people believe it therefore it is true” but it is still an appeal to “people believe it”. It doesn’t matter whether you say, “therefore it is true” or “therefore it there is something more to it” or “therefore it is red” or “therefore flies land in my soup”. No matter what you put after the “therefore”, the fact that it rests upon “people believe it” makes the argument an appeal to popularity. The distinction upon your position depends is fundamentally flawed.

    Now, leaving the issue of the appeal to popularity, you quite frequently make statements of the type, “That belief in God is fundamentally different from belief in mythical creatures”, yet what you have consistently failed to do is address my objections when creatures from genuine mythology are involved. In other words, you make blanket pronouncements about God being different from myth, yet you refuse to deal with examples concerning actual myths and stubbornly stick to creatures from fiction. You are saying one thing, refuting something else, and you seem to believe that you’ve addressed the thing you stated– about mythological creatures– though what you actually addressed concerns modern fictional characters.

    Something of an aside… I don’t want to leave the impression that I think characters from fiction are fundamentally different from mythological characters. Both are essentially folk tales, more or less elaborated. The only difference between the two is that some group of people decided to take the stories seriously. That could conceivably happen with any work of fiction much as it did with the Illiad or with L. Ron Hubbard’s bad sci-fi that became Scientology.

    Now here is the point, let’s assume that comparisons between God and things like Darth Vader are flawed, as you insist. You are still left with having to justify your repeated assertions that belief in God is somehow different from belief in mythological creatures. This you’ve avoided admirably. Assuming that your arguments about comparisons between God and TV characters (and the like) work when applied to TV characters, they don’t work with mythological creatures from other religions. Those arguments don’t work when you consider Ganesh or any of the thousands of Gods in which people still genuinely believe, still come to believe, and still come to disbelieve. If you are going to repeatedly use that terminology you can’t equivocate on it by claiming that there is something different about the whole class– about comparisons between God and mythological creatures– but restricting your arguments to a subset of that class, and ignoring or dismissing arguments that address the whole class and not just those selected subclasses to which your arguments might be applicable. Some people might even argue that TV characters aren’t even a subclass of mythological creatures, but I don’t think that is worth going into.

    Either you address the issue of ‘mythology’ in general, or you drop the rhetoric about it and stick to “Comparisons between God and television and film characters is flawed”. This latter leads to interesting results, as I have pointed out before. Your line of reasoning about people “coming to believe” justifies contradictory results. It justifies Allah as the one true God on the one hand, and Jesus as the son of God/part of God/human being on the other. Those mythologies are not compatible. Leading to contradictory conclusions is about the most fatal flaw an argument can have.

    This should point you to the fallacy of this statement: “No one has ever produced evidence for the existence of God, and the faithful have had a very long time to try.”

    There is no fallacy to that statement, even if it were incorrect. Your attempts, though, to demonstrate that there is in fact evidence in favor of the existence of God are riddled with fallacious reasoning, as, for example, in the following paragraph:

    In either case, you do not take seriously the fact that belief in God is different from belief in mythical creatures because it is evidence based. This is why people can consider the evidence and *come to* a belief in the existence of God. This is why millions of people retain a faith in God, despite acquiring critical reasoning skills that allow them to evaluate evidence.

    Again, your appeal is wholy to what people believe. This is blatantly an appeal to popularity.

    And again:

    There is some reason why intelligent people posit intelligent reasons for belief - and this is not true of mythical creatures. Faith is not belief in the teeth of evidence. It is not superstion, because the faithful look to adequate evidence for their faith.

    And again:

    My point was to bring you to a realisation that this ad hominem line is flawed, because your assumptions blind you to the evidence that intelligent people believe in God for reasonable reasons.

    It makes no difference what people come to believe, or how many come to believe it. What matters is that evidence you keep mentioning and the reasons that go along with it. You’ve not provided any of that evidence. In fact, you’ve said you can’t– “1. I am not going to try and prove that God exists (I believe no such proofs are valid. All logical proofs of God’s existence or non existence are fallacies).”

    What you’ve done instead of providing evidence is say that people with “critical reasoning skills that allow them to evaluate evidence” have in fact evalutated this never-presented evidence and “come to believe”. This is an obvious appeal to popularity and buried inside it is a contradiction– none of that ‘critical evaluation’ is valid anyway, as per your own statements.

    You seem to have a problem with the distinction between evidence (which is empirical in nature, can be interpreted and analysed, but is in fact *never* entirely conclusive (as Hume ably demonstrated)), and proof, which is an inferred conclusion from a set of premises.

    No, there is no confusion on my part. You, however, are confusing a ‘fact’– what Hume would call an “impression” if we must go about citing famous philosophers– with ‘evidence’. The two are not the same. I open my eyes and I see ‘red’ filling my field of vision. In this case, ‘red’ is a fact, an impression. That is what I see. For this to be evidence for or against anything, there has to be a ‘then’ clause attached. “I see red, therefore I’m looking at my beach ball”, or something of the sort. That ‘then’ clause, makes it an argument… aka, a proof– perhaps valid, sound, and all that; perhaps not, but still a proof. I don’t know what you’d consider evidence for God but grant my the right to pick something for illustrative purposes. Many people like to cite miracles as evidence for the existence of God. Okay, “miracles” or “that is a miracle”. This is not evidence of anything. It is just a statement. To be evidence it has to be associated with some kind of argument, even if only implied. “Miracles demonstrate that God exists” or more formally, “If miracles, then God exists”. Any time you do something– anything at all– with raw data, you are making an argument, even if it is a simple single premise then conclusion argument.

    We seem to be using the word ‘proof’ to mean different things, though. There are two common uses of the word. One just refers to an argument intended to demonstrate something, as in “Descartes proof of …” or “Aquinas’s teleological proof of…” and such like. The other use is ‘proof’ as in ‘formal proof’ of the validity of those arguments. I’ve used the term in the former sense, because that is how anyone but a logician talking formal logic would use it. I don’t see what difference it makes, though, because with either sense of the term you’ve got people evaluating evidence for the existence of God and coming to some conclusions– none of which are valid. And this makes believing in God somehow reasonable, exactly how? No, I’ll ask a different question, this makes believing in God different from believing in any other thing for which I can construct an invalid argument, exactly how? I can construct invalid arguments for any silly examples I might wish. You can’t argue that one invalid argument is any better or any worse than any other invalid argument. Invalid is invalid is invalid. Nor can you argue that because a bunch of people believe in invalid arguments, those invalid arguments are ’special’, which is exactly what you seem to be trying to do. It doesn’t make sense. Perhaps you cannot prove, or disprove, that I exist. Perhaps you cannot prove, or disprove, that God exists. But you also cannot prove, or disprove, that Winnie-the-Pooh exists. Once you’ve leveled the playing field like you have, you can’t really complain about unflattering comparisons, no matter how many people believe or disbelieve those particular examples.

    What you need to do is provide some of the evidence that people have been evaluating so that we can see how good it is, but this is exactly what you refused to do in your very first comment. What I ask for doesn’t have to be any more of a proof than would convince me that a bear is standing in front of me, which in some very abstracts ways isn’t strictly provable, but it does have to be at least that good and it can’t prove multiple contradictory conclusions. What I want is evidence for the proposition under discussion, not evidence that (nebulous) other people have evaluated the (nebulous) never-quite-disclosed evidence and have come to a conclusion so I go with that, which is an absurd proposition and is rather insulting to boot.

22. 22 On March 22nd, 2007, themaiden said:

    Stephen,

    An addendum to the preceeding post…

    I think you must be well aware that most people, when asking for proof of the existence of God, are not asking for strict, hard, formal logical proof. They are asking for the same kind of proof that operates in science, mostly, and which operates in the work-a-day world except where religion is involved– people make radical exceptions in that area. This consideration leads me to suggest a kind of equivocation on your part. By playing on the difference in meanings of the word ‘proof’, you can shift the topic from a question asking for “any factual evidence that helps to establish the truth of something” and pretend the question is about the much more difficult and perhaps impossible task of creating “a formal series of statements showing that if one thing is true something else necessarily follows from it”. (Both from Google.) The two are very different questions. I am quite sure you are aware of that difference, which leads me to the conclusion that what you’ve got here, Stephen, is a shell game.

    Maybe it is just me, but I thought logic was a tool to help us come to some kind of meaningful conclusions, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe it is just about who plays the best three-card Monty.

23. 23 On March 23rd, 2007, sarah said:

    I JUST WANTED TO ASK,DOES ANYONE OVER THE AGE OF FIVE KNOW HOW WINNIE THE POOH GOT STARTED?WELL I’D LIKLE TO ADD,I DO AND I’M WELL OVER THE AGE OF 5.I HOPE THE SCHOOL LOSES THE LAWSUIT AS WELL….

24. 24 On March 23rd, 2007, themaiden said:

    sarah,

    What in the hell are you talking about?

    And don’t write in all caps.

25. 25 On March 24th, 2007, Stephen Kingston said:

    “Ambassador G’kar”… I love B5. Best epic saga since the Illiad.

    Possibly longer.

    … You claim that “people come to believe in God therefore that belief is ‘different’”. This is marginally more subtle that claiming that “people believe it therefore it is true” but it is still an appeal to “people believe it”.

    It is an appeal, of course. Only in this context it is not a fallacy. It is a demonstration that belief in God differs from belief in these mythical figures. Just as belief in superstrings differs from belief in mythical figures. Not because superstrings are necessarily true, but because they cannot so easily be dismissed as false. We must understand why people believe in them and evaluate the claims. And if we reject string theory, we nevertheless realise that there were more reasons for believing in superstrings than there were for believing in Darth Vader.

    Now, leaving the issue of the appeal to popularity, you quite frequently make statements of the type, “That belief in God is fundamentally different from belief in mythical creatures”, yet what you have consistently failed to do is address my objections when creatures from genuine mythology are involved.

    Well, of course, the mythical figures in your original piece were Winnie the Pooh and Darth Vader. Santa Claus is also often cited, but usually the only figure from actual myth that is mentioned is Thor (as this is one of Dawkins’ favourites). This is in the same category as the others.

    But what about deities that people *do* believe in. You mention Ganesh and other gods in which people actually believe. Quite right, these must be treated differently too. What is true for one genuine belief is true for another, so if people genuinely believe in something, then we treat that belief differently to a postulate that no-one genuinely believes.

    And this is the essence of the difference. It cannot be the case that all religions are true, but if people believe for rational reasons, then neither can we simply dismiss any one of these religions in the same way we dismiss belief in Winnie the Pooh. They are fundamentally different.

    If people are persuaded to a belief by the evidence of that belief, it is illegitimate to simply discard that belief as mythological. We may be unconvinced, but someone clearly *was* convinced. Why is that? Unless we can answer that question of “why”, and unless that answer precludes the truth of that belief, then we have no right to equate that belief with one which no-one believes.

    Now consider: People believe things for complex reasons, and are often rather poor at being truly rational. For instance, there is much evidence that people often choose a belief for reasons that are more to do with preference - perhaps for the person who is pushing the belief, or perhaps for the consequences, or perhaps for egotistical reasons, or who knows what else. Having chosen the belief for some irrational reason, we then become very good at post hoc rational justifications of the belief. We then have a natural tendency to favour arguments for our belief, and reject those that oppose it. We are fairly poor at critically appraising arguments, and that is human nature.

    Now you may be nodding at this, and saying “ah, yes. That explains why people believe in God.” And there must be some truth in that. It must be the case that people uncritically hold to a set of beliefs in God, and then rationalise that belief after the fact, simply failing to listen to arguments against that belief. Fair enough, because that is human nature.

    But the reverse is true. People who are arguing that God is just a mythical creature have also chosen a belief. May we assume that the reasons for choosing that belief were any more rational than the reasons for choosing a belief in God? The answer is no. Human nature is human nature, and atheists are just as prone to ignore arguments against their position and favour arguments for them.

    Our defense against this lies in thinking into the beliefs of those we disagree with. Rather than assume that they have no valid reasons for their belief, we make the assumption that there *are* good reasons for that belief, and we explore those reasons. As we understand their position, we can consider why we still disagree with it (or else perhaps be persuaded by it). It is not a perfect defense because we will still unconsciously prefer our chosen worldview, but it also keeps us humble.

    Your line of reasoning about people “coming to believe” justifies contradictory results. It justifies Allah as the one true God on the one hand, and Jesus as the son of God/part of God/human being on the other.

    Except I have at no point thus far made an argument that God or Allah are the one true God (although in this case, of course, I might simply evade the point and say that Allah is the one true God and Jesus is his son… but that is not a generalised answer).

    The point I have made is that comparison with mythical creatures is invalid. It is the only point I have been answering.

    You want to make the question larger. Indeed, you complain:

    It makes no difference what people come to believe, or how many come to believe it. What matters is that evidence you keep mentioning and the reasons that go along with it. You’ve not provided any of that evidence.

    You are right. I have not. Because the point of contention has not been “Is Jesus Lord?” It has been “Is comparison between God and Winnie the Pooh valid”? Can we simply say that God is a mythical being that does not exist?

    No, we can’t.

    In fact, you’ve said you can’t– “1. I am not going to try and prove that God exists (I believe no such proofs are valid. All logical proofs of God’s existence or non existence are fallacies).”

    Which, of course, is not the same thing at all as saying that there is no evidence for God (or for other postulates such as “Jesus Christ is Lord”).

    Now look at my statement carefully and you will see that I said *exactly* what I meant to say. All *logical* proofs of God’s existence or non existence are fallacies. You complain that I am using the word proof in a certain way (as a logician), but I find that complaint odd when I specifically said that it is *logical* proofs that are fallacies.

    What you’ve done instead of providing evidence is say that people with “critical reasoning skills that allow them to evaluate evidence” have in fact evalutated this never-presented evidence and “come to believe”. This is an obvious appeal to popularity and buried inside it is a contradiction– none of that ‘critical evaluation’ is valid anyway, as per your own statements.

    So I trust you now see why that reasoning is flawed.

    “You seem to have a problem with the distinction between evidence (which is empirical in nature, can be interpreted and analysed, but is in fact *never* entirely conclusive (as Hume ably demonstrated)), and proof, which is an inferred conclusion from a set of premises.”
    No, there is no confusion on my part. You, however, are confusing a ‘fact’– what Hume would call an “impression”

    Actually I was speaking about his radical scepticism, and his critique of inductive reasoning. He wrote in his treatise of human nature:

    “But tho’ I acknowledge this to be a true principle of association among ideas, I assert it to be the very same with that betwixt the ideas of cause and effects and to be an essential part in all our reasonings from that relation. We have no other notion of cause and effect, but that of certain objects, which have been always conjoin’d together, and which in all past instances have been found inseparable. We cannot penetrate into the reason of the conjunction. We only observe the thing itself, and always find that from the constant conjunction the objects acquire an union in the imagination. When the impression of one becomes present to us, we immediately form an idea of its usual attendant; and consequently we may establish this as one part of the definition of an opinion or belief, that ’tis an idea related to or associated with a present impression.”

    He has a devastating critique of notions of cause and effect. We recognise that from a purely empirical perspective there is no *necessity* that because effect has always followed cause, that it will do so in the future. Russell follows Hume and goes further, equating notions of effect following cause as being mere superstition. Of course, neither man really proposed that we should just jettison all common sense and act as though certain effects do not follow causes. If we put a hand in a flame, our expectation is - of course - that we will be burned, even if there is no *necessity* that this be the case. Hume spoke of constantly conjoined causes and effects.

    But the problem of causation is what I was referring to when I said that Hume ably demonstrated that *ultimately* it can never be *entirely* conclusive.

    Each day the sun rises in the morning, but just because this is something I and my ancestors have observed day after day since the dawn of history, it does not mean that it is *necessary* that the sun rises tomorrow. Empirical observations have their limits.

    That does not mean we do not use them, but sometimes the limits of empiricism preclude final answers, either because the thing being studied is irreducibly complex (at least within our current limitations), or else because the act of observation imposes its own limits, or else because the observation is simply impossible.

    Some examples: the IPCC draft summary report on climate change comes up with a probability that man made emissions of CO2 are warming our climate. But the system is hugely complicated, and so no-one is absolutely certain that this is the cause, however foolish it may be to bet against the probabilities. Quantum physics tells us that we can only observe an electron’s position if we stop it - that we *cannot* observe speed and location. Finally, no observation is possible of what happened prior to the formation of this universe.

    None of which are quite what Hume had in mind, of course. His objection is more fundamental. There is a fundamental assumption that the universe is sane. And frankly that is not an assumption we can really prove. Could the laws of physics change tonight? They probably won’t, but it does not mean that they cannot. There is nothing that really necessitates that the universe continue to be in some sense reasonable. There is nothing, either, that necessitates that the universe is in any respect as we comprehend it (back to Cartesian doubt again). Indeed, all we really know is that it is turtles all the way down.

    if we must go about citing famous philosophers– with ‘evidence’. The two are not the same. I open my eyes and I see ‘red’ filling my field of vision. In this case, ‘red’ is a fact, an impression. That is what I see. For this to be evidence for or against anything, there has to be a ‘then’ clause attached. “I see red, therefore I’m looking at my beach ball”, or something of the sort. That ‘then’ clause, makes it an argument… aka, a proof– perhaps valid, sound, and all that; perhaps not, but still a proof.

    If P then Q is clearly the cornerstone of a propositional logic. However, you are misunderstanding what constitutes proof. A proof of an argument of the form if P then Q is derived by reduction of that argument through logical operations to something that can be shown to be a theorem of the system.

    An argument is not a proof. Consider your own example: “If I see red, then I’m looking at my beach ball”. This is a non sequitur. If I see red, I could be looking at a box of maltesers, or a setting sun or thousands of things other than a beach ball.

    Even if we are much more specific, it becomes very hard to prove that it is *your* beach ball and not an identical beach ball that we are looking at.

    Logical proofs are possible of course. If I have a class of vehicles, each travelling at a constant speed, then I can prove that a vehicle exists where no other vehicle is travelling faster than it is travelling.

    That is a proof in terms of logic.

    Of course, you suggest that “proof” is in some sense synonymous with “evidence”. That only a logician would speak of proof in the terms above. I disagree, although I would agree that this type of formal proof is not the only meaning for the word proof. Consider Hume again, writing in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding:

    “Mr. Locke divides all arguments into demonstrative and probable.
    In this view, we must say, that it is only probable all men must die, or
    that the sun will rise to-morrow. But to conform our language more to
    common use, we ought to divide arguments into demonstrations, proofs,
    and probabilities. By proofs meaning such arguments from experience as
    leave no room for doubt or opposition”

    Or again in his treatise of Human Nature:

    “For this reason it would perhaps be more convenient, in order at once to
    preserve the common signification of words, and mark the several de-
    grees of evidence, to distinguish human reason into three kinds, viz.that
    from knowledge, from proofs, and from probabilities. By knowledge, I mean
    the assurance arising from the comparison of ideas. By proofs, those
    arguments which are derived from the relation of cause and effect, and
    which are entirely free from doubt and uncertainty. By probability, that
    evidence which is still attended with uncertainty. It is this last species
    of reasoning I proceed to examine”

    Proofs then, for Hume are (unlike in Locke) something a little less than knowledge, and yet they are things that are entirely free from doubt and uncertainty.

    His examples include fire, which burns. Water that suffocates, the inevitability of death (all men are mortal), the rising of the sun each day and so forth.

    This deals with the uncertainty of his radical scepticism by ignoring it. We allow that effects of causes that are as certain as to, in our mind, be entirely free from any doubt or uncertainty - that these effects can be said to be proven.

    But proof is very different from evidence. (Okay Hume’s language does not help here, but I don’t think you will find a definition of evidence that says it leads to a conclusion without doubt or uncertainty. Certainly most evidence leaves much room for doubt. This is what Hume calls probabilities).

    There is a great deal of evidence for global warming caused by human emissions of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. There is scientific evidence relating to the nature of the gas. There is observational evidence, and the evidence of our own world which is much warmer than it should be at this distance from the sun. There is evidence of relationships between CO2 in the atmosphere and the global temperature anomalies. There is a huge amount of evidence, in multiple spheres of life. And what are we left with?

    A probability. Currently considered to be 90%. That will almost certainly increase, but we may never be able to get to the point where we know that we will not suddenly slap our collective foreheads and say “ah but we forgot the effects of quasi-dark sub-space matter!” or somesuch.

    Evidence. Probabilities.

    We seem to be using the word ‘proof’ to mean different things, though. There are two common uses of the word. One just refers to an argument intended to demonstrate something, as in “Descartes proof of …” or “Aquinas’s teleological proof of…” and such like. The other use is ‘proof’ as in ‘formal proof’ of the validity of those arguments. I’ve used the term in the former sense, because that is how anyone but a logician talking formal logic would use it.

    But Aquinas’s teleological proof is exactly an example of the kind of logical argument that I said was fallacious. Aquinas, Anselm et al. - all the proofs are fallacious. As are the arguments for the non existence of God. They are usually very good examples of begging the question (petito principii - an assumption from the beginning).

    Arguments for or against God’s existence all rely on unprovable axioms, and are ultimately unprovable. With the exception of Descartes’ cogito, there are no a priori proofs of existence whatsoever, and no empirical proof is valid, being a subjective proof of an objective reality that transcends that which is observable. Logic is unable to tell us anything about the qualities of existence of anything beyond ourselves.

    So what you call proof, and have distinguished from formal proof is an excellent example of just the kind of proof I believe to be impossible.

    It is not that we are using different understandings of “proof” necessarily. It is that these proofs are all fallacious.

    That does not mean we do not investigate the question. I have the same difficulty in proving the existence of *you* (or anyone beyond myself). So what? I can posit certain axioms. Most people simply take it for granted that there is an objective reality that corresponds to their perception of the same. They are, de facto, realists. Even if we think on these issues, the world simply makes more sense if we treat it through the lens of realism.

    So I cannot prove you exist. I take it on faith, based on the evidence of my senses. But ultimately that evidence is about probabilities. My only interface with you is through an easily forged electronic medium. I have determined that you are, in all likelihood a real person, and that you alone are writing your posts (i.e. you are not a group of people conspiring). On the other hand, I am fairly unconvinced that you are female. You call yourself “the maiden”, but that could just be a reference to your blog’s title. I would not want to bet on whether you are male or female.

    So you see, I don’t rely on proof. I simply take a leap of faith and trust the evidence for your existence, such as I have it.

    … Perhaps you cannot prove, or disprove, that I exist. Perhaps you cannot prove, or disprove, that God exists. But you also cannot prove, or disprove, that Winnie-the-Pooh exists. Once you’ve leveled the playing field like you have, you can’t really complain about unflattering comparisons, no matter how many people believe or disbelieve those particular examples.

    So now this is the difference. Proofs relating to existence are quite impossible, but evidence - that is another issue.

    What you need to do is provide some of the evidence that people have been evaluating so that we can see how good it is, but this is exactly what you refused to do in your very first comment.

    Because, of course, this thread was never about proving the existence of God (nor even explaining why I believe in the existence of God). My original comment to you was to demonstrate that (a) your argument was ad hominem, and (b) that the comparison was fundamentally flawed.

    Had you wanted to know about the evidence, I am sure you would have asked for it. But all the evidence is that you wanted to simply persist in a fallacious belief that belief in the existence of God is like belief in the existence of Winnie the Pooh.

    However, I note with some approval, the words of the Archbishop of Canterbury in a radio interview, who - when it was put to him that he cannot be certain about his belief, said:

    “I can be confident enough to say this is where my life must be, this is what I hope I want to take risks for. This is as clear, as certain, as it gets, and the relationship that I hope and trust I develop day by day in prayer deepens that confidence. I can’t either by argument or by magic just transfer that history and that confidence into another person’s mind. In other words I can’t make someone else know that.”

    There is evidence enough for those who want to look for it, but what you make of it - that is up to you.

    … By playing on the difference in meanings of the word ‘proof’, you can shift the topic from a question asking for “any factual evidence that helps to establish the truth of something” and pretend the question is about the much more difficult and perhaps impossible task of creating “a formal series of statements showing that if one thing is true something else necessarily follows from it”.

    Your mistake is in thinking I wished to do either. I pointed to a bad analogy being used as an ad hominem, and demonstrated why the analogy fails.

    In the demonstration lay the point that people believe in God for rational reasons. (They may also believe for irrational reasons, but it is simply preposterously disingenuous to argue this is true in every case). It is up to you what you make of the evidence for Christianity, but if you will not accept that Christians believe based on evidence, then you are frankly not ready to here the evidence in any case.

26. 26 On April 2nd, 2007, themaiden said:

    Hi Stephen,

    Sorry about the delay.

    I am under no illusions about what you are arguing. Your point is, as you have so often repeated, to show “belief in God differs from belief in these mythical figures.” The intent of that demonstration is to show that my comparison of God and Winnie the Pooh is flawed, that my analogy is faulty. The meat of that demonstration is the idea that people “come to believe” in God but not in Winnie.

    Okay.

    To demonstrate that an analogy is flawed it is not sufficient to show that the two things compared are different. With analogies, the things compared are always different. If it were sufficient to show a mere difference then any analogy could be easily defused. Showing that the two things compared are different is fortunately not sufficient, though. To prove a false analogy you’ve got to show that relevant aspects of the items compared are different. I’ve made this point before– several times. It makes no difference what people come to believe or don’t come to believe. The world is full of examples of people coming to believe complete nonsense. The difference upon which your position depends is simply irrelevant. It doesn’t matter. If it is truly your only point that my analogy is flawed because people come to believe one but not the other, then you’ve got to drop the objection. The difference you cite just doesn’t make any difference. The relevant factor is evidence.

    I don’t, though, really believe that that is the whole of your position– an opinion based upon passages like the following where you very much seem to go from “people believe” to “there is therefore something rational about that belief”. That is nothing but an appeal to popular opinion, despite your protests.

    … if people believe for rational reasons, then neither can we simply dismiss any one of these religions in the same way we dismiss belief in Winnie the Pooh. They are fundamentally different.

    If people are persuaded to a belief by the evidence of that belief, it is illegitimate to simply discard that belief as mythological. We may be unconvinced, but someone clearly *was* convinced. Why is that? Unless we can answer that question of “why”, and unless that answer precludes the truth of that belief, then we have no right to equate that belief with one which no-one believes.

    Alternately, for the idea that “people come to believe, so there is something different” to have any bite, one has to assume that there is something significant about “people coming to believe” and as soon as that assumption is made you are committing an appeal to popular opinion.

27. 27 On April 2nd, 2007, melior said:

    c.f. Fallacy: Appeal to Common Belief.

    Yawn. Smarter fundies please.

28. 28 On April 2nd, 2007, melior said:

    Or more humorously, recall The Onion’s parody USA Today issue, which included a pie graph of poll results: “Lead Now The Heaviest Element, Survey Shows”.

29. 29 On April 3rd, 2007, themaiden said:

    melior,

    Stephen is one of the smart ones, but it still boils down to the fallacy you cite.

30. 30 On April 8th, 2007, Stephen Kingston said:

    To demonstrate that an analogy is flawed it is not sufficient to show that the two things compared are different. With analogies, the things compared are always different. If it were sufficient to show a mere difference then any analogy could be easily defused. Showing that the two things compared are different is fortunately not sufficient, though. To prove a false analogy you’ve got to show that relevant aspects of the items compared are different.

    Which I have done. Change the paradigm and consider two scientific theories: the theory of the ether and the theory of superstrings. We now know that the theory of the ether was fundamentally flawed. Michelson/Morley’s experiment demonstrated that we were not moving relative to any ether, and Einstein explained the results in terms of a theory - later tested.

    Nowadays no one believes in the ether. The ether was a scientific myth.

    But superstring theory is a different proposition. Here we have a theory that *cannot* be tested with our current level of technology. We can add to the theory, and postulate 15 dimensional universes wrapped up and intertwined in Calabi-Yau spaces. We can explain things in terms of string theory, or we can explain things without it. But is it true?

    It may be as much a wrong direction as the ether. It may be that string theory is a wonderful explanation that is just plain wrong, in the same way that the ether provides the medium for light waves - but is wrong.

    It may be that people will come to dismiss superstring theory as another myth of modern physics.

    But we cannot dismiss it as a myth now. People believe this theory. They have good reasons why they should believe the theory, and if we are to dismiss the theory we must understand why they believe.

    So your analogy is wrong. And it is wrong also for the reason that anyone would find it objectionable: because it is designed to be inflammatory.

    I don’t, though, really believe that that is the whole of your position– an opinion based upon passages like the following where you very much seem to go from “people believe” to “there is therefore something rational about that belief”. That is nothing but an appeal to popular opinion, despite your protests.

    You can re-assert this as many times as you wish. The question is whether an appeal of this kind is fallacious in the context it is given.

    If I say “people believe the world is round, therefore the world is round” then this is clearly fallacious (just as “people believe that Columbus proved the world is round, therfore C