tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5074683.post4725652813383987597..comments2024-03-23T07:33:30.972+00:00Comments on Quodlibeta: Proof PositiveJameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01594220073836613367noreply@blogger.comBlogger41125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5074683.post-7506535854793418772013-09-16T23:45:33.857+01:002013-09-16T23:45:33.857+01:00This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09763431557523874960noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5074683.post-65083512085129715192013-09-04T17:56:42.878+01:002013-09-04T17:56:42.878+01:00This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09213760388806784980noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5074683.post-43086206122829762972012-07-11T15:04:44.799+01:002012-07-11T15:04:44.799+01:00By defining "Santa" in a contrived way t...<i>By defining "Santa" in a contrived way that deliberately and artificially made the analogy invalid. Ridiculous.</i><br /><br />Defining Santa as living at the North Pole is not contrived Tim, it's part of the basic concept. That was my objection: if he redefined the concept in an ad hoc way then you had some space to object, but he didn't, and it's <i>obvious</i> he didn't. You chose a bad analogy. Own it.<br /><br /><i>This is pointless. I've had less braindead exchanges with the half-wit atheists on reddit.com. I'm out of here.</i><br /><br />Why am I a half-wit? I pointed out that your analogy was flawed and explained why. I said your epistemology was flawed and explained why. I said your concept of "soft atheism" was flawed and explained why. You, in turn, have not been willing to explain your positions and seem chronically incapable of admitting that you made a minor error. I challenged you several times to explain what "lacking a belief" means and the closest you came to an explanation was saying that it's similar to withholding a belief -- which is the philosophical definition of agnosticism.<br /><br />You're not explaining Tim, you're obfuscating and deflecting.Jim S.https://www.blogger.com/profile/15538540873375357030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5074683.post-62986519829218627782012-07-10T10:06:52.664+01:002012-07-10T10:06:52.664+01:00The fact is that you are not convinced by the argu...<i>The fact is that you are not convinced by the arguments that any of these beings exist, yet you can't definitively know or prove they don't. So you are without a belief in them.</i><br /><br />It seems to me that you define "believe" = "know" or "being able to prove". I know a lot of people who believe in God, yet do not know he exists, neither can they prove it. Obviously.Henrikhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15411684406014318227noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5074683.post-85862899219091979062012-07-10T09:32:21.673+01:002012-07-10T09:32:21.673+01:00Henrik demonstrated that belief in Santa is not an...<i>Henrik demonstrated that belief in Santa is not analogous to belief in God.</i><br /><br />By defining "Santa" in a contrived way that deliberately and artificially <b>made</b> the analogy invalid. Ridiculous.<br /><br />This is pointless. I've had less braindead exchanges with the half-wit atheists on reddit.com. I'm out of here.Tim O'Neillhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00292944444808847980noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5074683.post-60481120000356398212012-07-10T09:15:26.247+01:002012-07-10T09:15:26.247+01:00But Tim, you chose to compare belief in God to bel...But Tim, <i>you</i> chose to compare belief in God to belief in Santa Claus. Before we move on to address the claim that belief in God is like belief in fairies or leprechauns we have to establish that your first comparison was invalid. If you wanted to compare it to belief in leprechauns that aren't subject to the same refutation as Santa Claus then you should have done it from the outset. And you haven't <i>explained</i> it three times, you just backhandedly admitted that Henrik demonstrated that belief in Santa is not analogous to belief in God. He refuted your claim.Jim S.https://www.blogger.com/profile/15538540873375357030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5074683.post-27540538175836344212012-07-09T21:09:32.912+01:002012-07-09T21:09:32.912+01:00I do have to say: of course withholding belief is ...<i><br />I do have to say: of course withholding belief is agnosticism. </i><br /><br />Not according to Huxley. Why you guys ignore the actual definition of the word as defined by the man who coined it and cling to one of several sloppy colloquial misuses of it I have no idea. It seems connected to this weird obsession to pretend there aren't many thousands of atheists out there who use "soft atheism" as the more accurate and precise definition of "witholding belief" and to force all atheists into the confined box of "hard atheism". Why? Beats me.<br /><br /><i>As for defining Santa: his location at the North Pole is part of the standard image of Santa Claus. </i><br /><br />Your santological claims are turning into something as abstruse and silly as most theology. Okay, if you are so fundamentalist about Santa then substitute "leprechauns" or "the Tooth Fairy" or "Odin" or "Quetzalcoatl". The fact is that you are not convinced by the arguments that any of these beings exist, yet you can't definitively know or prove they don't. So you are without a belief in them. This is a very reasonable position that we all share.<br /><br />You might say "I don't believe leprechauns exist" or even "leprechauns don't exist" but this is simply shorthand for "while I can't prove they don't exist, the evidence for them is so unconvincing that I have no belief in them". Substitute "God" for "leprechauns" in there and you have what the overwhelming majority of atheists belief about your "God" and all the other "gods".<br /><br />I've now explained this ... what? ... three times? I've also explained why the sloppy, colloquial misuse of Huxley's term is useless at least twice. I'm getting bored with repeating myself. Unless one of you people has something new to say other repeating the same weak crap I'm sick of this stupid conversation.Tim O'Neillhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00292944444808847980noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5074683.post-79898385143450837092012-07-09T19:02:42.368+01:002012-07-09T19:02:42.368+01:00If you went over it before I missed it Tim. I wrot...If you went over it before I missed it Tim. I wrote a post on the issue a couple of years ago and was surprised that you never commented on it. So if you could explain what it is, or point me to where you explained it already, I'd appreciate it.<br /><br />I do have to say: <i>of course</i> withholding belief is agnosticism. You don't know if it's true and you don't know if it's false, so you simply withhold judgment. Your claim about how to define agnosticism warrants its own post which is percolating in my brain for the moment.<br /><br />As for defining Santa: his location at the North Pole is part of the standard image of Santa Claus. Henrik didn't carefully define Santa in order to prove a point, he took the standard concept and showed it's not analogous. You can define Santa differently from everyone else if you want, but then you lose your point about how <i>other people's</i> concept of Santa is analogous to the concept of God.Jim S.https://www.blogger.com/profile/15538540873375357030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5074683.post-89424199229567789232012-07-09T14:05:52.424+01:002012-07-09T14:05:52.424+01:00And I've already been over what lacking belief...<i>And I've already been over what lacking belief means many times.</i><br /><br />Do it again, then.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5074683.post-52516930854850100822012-07-09T10:38:19.132+01:002012-07-09T10:38:19.132+01:00No, I'm not.
Henrik pointed out that they are...No, I'm not.<br /><br /><i>Henrik pointed out that they are not analogous</i><br /><br />He carefully set up a definition of "Santa" that was deliberately not analogous and then pointed out that it was not analogous. Not very impressive stuff.<br /><br /><i>not to beat a dead horse</i><br /><br />Too late. And I've already been over what lacking belief means many times. Exactly why you have such a problem with such a simple concept I have no idea. It seems to be closest to your b) as far as I can tell. Now please don't tell me that your b) is "agnosticism" or we'll have to go over the way the rubbery colloquial uses of that word are too broad and varied to be useful in defining anything and how the original definition is something else entirely. Again.<br /><br />I still can't work out why you guys get so worked up over the <b>fact</b> that we differentiate soft atheism from hard atheism. Why does this bother you so much?Tim O'Neillhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00292944444808847980noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5074683.post-26907264131806579692012-07-09T08:18:44.315+01:002012-07-09T08:18:44.315+01:00I suspect Tim would answer Henrik by saying that S...I suspect Tim would answer Henrik by saying that Santa is not expected by his adult believers to be discoverable at the North Pole any more than ancient Greeks expected to routinely find Zeus on top of Mt Olympus. If disappointed by a lack of dry land at the North Pole, we must move to a more nuanced belief system (perhaps dropping a trust in scriptural inerrancy). <br /><br />Similarly, with Popperian falsificationism, I believe there is no good rule for deciding when a theory cannot be further defended by modification: that is, there is often no clearcut knockout demonstration.David Duffyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12142997170025811780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5074683.post-34649012357332306032012-07-08T13:59:36.619+01:002012-07-08T13:59:36.619+01:00Did you miss the post Tim? I addressed universal n...Did you miss the post Tim? I addressed universal negatives. But in your last few comments you seem to be equating being able to <i>prove</i> something with being able to <i>know</i> it. That's not only refuted by experience but by Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems. "Knowable" and "provable" are not synonyms; we can know something without being able to prove it. Which is one of the reasons epistemologists reject your standard that "No-one can definitively know if something exists or not, unless they are omniscient." That's false, and I'm unaware of any expert in the theory of knowledge who would agree with it (except maybe Peter Unger).<br /><br />Also, if I may intrude into your discussion with Henrik, you claimed that belief in Santa was analogous to belief in God since we can't disprove either one. Henrik pointed out that they are <i>not</i> analogous since we can disprove the existence of Santa, and we couldn't similarly disprove the existence of God. You object to this, but I don't see what your objection is. He didn't define Santa in an ad hoc way. You claimed the two beliefs are analogous, he showed that they are not.<br /><br />Finally, not to beat a dead horse, but are you able and willing to define what lacking a belief means and explain how it differs from a) disbelief, b) withholding belief, and c) not having any conception of something?Jim S.https://www.blogger.com/profile/15538540873375357030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5074683.post-22000310095334387592012-07-07T23:38:56.262+01:002012-07-07T23:38:56.262+01:00If you search the North Pole quite thouroughly, wi...<i>If you search the North Pole quite thouroughly, without finding any such man, would you still find it unsustainable to believe that no such man exists? </i><br /><br />I can't believe I'm bothering with this, but ...<br /><br />You just defined Sanata in a way that makes it able to definitively rule on his existence ("living at the north pole") and so have been careful to define him in a way that God is not defined. So you've framed him in a way that makes him not analogous to God and then tried to argue he's not analogous. Congratulations.<br /><br />If your "God" was defined in the same way - eg "living on Mount Sinai" - this would be relevant. But he isn't. Nice try though.<br /><br /><i><br />I don't think any epistemologist would agree with that.</i><br /><br />So you can prove a universal negative? Terrific - please show me how.<br /><br />The weird efforts some here are going to so that they can force me into their tiny "atheist" (actually, hard atheist) box is bizarre. What the hell is wrong with us defining ourselves as soft atheists? Why does that bother you people so much? Get a grip.Tim O'Neillhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00292944444808847980noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5074683.post-91296592604410165072012-07-07T20:20:13.563+01:002012-07-07T20:20:13.563+01:00No-one can definitively know if something exists o...<i>No-one can definitively know if something exists or not, unless they are omniscient.</i><br /><br />I don't think any epistemologist would agree with that. Even infallibilists don't require such a high standard for something to qualify as knowledge, and infallibilism is not as common today as fallibilism.Jim S.https://www.blogger.com/profile/15538540873375357030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5074683.post-90890168422935963002012-07-07T13:35:22.158+01:002012-07-07T13:35:22.158+01:00So you're omniscient then? Congratulations. If...<i>So you're omniscient then? Congratulations. If you aren't, however, then you can't prove a universal negative and so maintaining a positive belief in the non-existence of something is unsustainable.</i><br /><br />OK, so let's define "Santa" by "Man wearing red clothes, living on the North Pole and delivering presents each Christmas". If you search the North Pole quite thouroughly, without finding any such man, would you still find it unsustainable to believe that no such man exists?Henrikhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15411684406014318227noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5074683.post-15737840824974685222012-07-06T22:55:33.592+01:002012-07-06T22:55:33.592+01:00How is this qualitatively different from not knowi...<i>How is this qualitatively different from not knowing if there is a Santa or not?</i><br /><br />No-one can definitively <i>know</i> if something exists or not, unless they are omniscient. That's why the colloquial misuse of "agnostic" is so useless - it tells us nothing. So of course I don't "know" one way or the other. All we can do is use a term that makes a statement about whether we think the existence of something is likely enough to sustain a belief. A theist is someone who says they can. An atheist is someone who says they can't.<br /><br /><i>I believe that there is no Santa, there is no Tooth Fairy, there is no leprechauns, and there is no Thor.</i><br /><br />So you're omniscient then? Congratulations. If you aren't, however, then you can't prove a universal negative and so maintaining a positive belief in the <b>non</b>-existence of something is unsustainable. "I believe there is no God/Santa/the ToothFairy etc" only works as a colloquial shorthand for "I am unconvinced by the evidence for God/Santa/the ToothFairy etc and so am without a belief in him/them". Which is my position on God/Santa/ToothFairy etc and yours on two of the above.Tim O'Neillhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00292944444808847980noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5074683.post-24244554522860419552012-07-06T22:08:39.379+01:002012-07-06T22:08:39.379+01:00Try this: you have no belief in Santa. But you don...<i>Try this: you have no belief in Santa. But you don't actively deny the very existence of Santa, because you know you can't prove a universal negative. You've considered the arguments for the existence of Santa (eg the evidence of presents found by the chimney on Dec 25), but you find them unconvincing.</i><br /><br />How is this qualitatively different from not knowing if there is a Santa or not?<br /><br /><i>You can keep tying yourself in knots trying to pretend that this entirely valid and perfectly reasonable position that you share when it comes to most mythic beings somehow involves some kind of "disingenuous shift" or is otherwise unreasonable if you like.</i><br /><br />I don't lack a belief in Santa, Tooth Fairy, leprechauns, or Thor. I believe that there is no Santa, there is no Tooth Fairy, there is no leprechauns, and there is no Thor.<br /><br />And I'm not sure who is here tying himself in knots.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5074683.post-18428550661756766832012-07-06T20:15:23.143+01:002012-07-06T20:15:23.143+01:00Then it follows that this alleged "soft athei...<i>Then it follows that this alleged "soft atheism" is also lack of belief in the nonexistence of god as much as it is lack of belief in the existence of god, right?</i><br /><br />Er, wrong.<br /><br />Try this: you have no belief in Santa. But you don't actively deny the very existence of Santa, because you know you can't prove a universal negative. You've considered the arguments for the existence of Santa (eg the evidence of presents found by the chimney on Dec 25), but you find them unconvincing.<br /><br />As a result, you are (quite reasonably) without a belief in Santa, while not holding the unsustainable belief that there definitely is no Santa (because you can't prove a negative). And we could substitute "leprechauns", "the tooth fairy", "Thor" or any number of other beings in which you have no belief for "Santa" in the sentence above.<br /><br />Well, for me, we can also substitute "God" as well. You can keep tying yourself in knots trying to pretend that this entirely valid and perfectly reasonable position that <i>you share</i> when it comes to most mythic beings somehow involves some kind of "disingenuous shift" or is otherwise unreasonable if you like. But unless you can make that also work for your lack of belief in Santa, I'm really not very interested in your hysteria.Tim O'Neillhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00292944444808847980noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5074683.post-21285986315506481372012-07-06T16:57:10.845+01:002012-07-06T16:57:10.845+01:00Some of them. Why?
Then it follows that this alle...<i>Some of them. Why?</i><br /><br />Then it follows that this alleged "soft atheism" is also lack of belief in the nonexistence of god as much as it is lack of belief in the existence of god, right?<br /><br />I'm bringing this up because you're doing a disingenuous shift from talking about positions to describing a psychological state such as lack of belief to befuddle that this "soft atheism" is actually agnosticism when properly understood. <br /><br />I can only lack a belief both in the truth and the falsity of a proposition if I don't understand the proposition, which isn't the case here, or I simply don't know the truth value of the proposition. So soft atheism, properly understood, is not knowing whether God exist or not. So it's all about the knowability of God; exactly what agnosticism is. <br /><br />You also appeal to Flew, but in his article he also says:<br /><br /><i>The word 'atheism', however, has in this contention to be construed unusually. Whereas nowadays the usual meaning of 'atheist' in English is 'someone who asserts that there is no such being as God', I want the word to be understood not positively but negatively.(...) The introduction of this new interpretation of the word 'atheism' may appear to be a piece of perverse Humpty-Dumptyism, going arbitrarily against established common usage. 'Whyever', it could be asked, 'don't you make it not the presumption of atheism but the presumption of agnosticism?</i>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5074683.post-27279185829171533312012-07-06T12:10:34.005+01:002012-07-06T12:10:34.005+01:00First: it would be a root fallacy if I simply asse...<i>First: it would be a root fallacy if I simply asserted that the etymology always invariably defines the meaning of a word.</i><br /><br />That's not how fallacies work. We don't get to say, "Well I don't <i>always</i> reason this way, only on occasion, so it's not a fallacy." It doesn't matter if we do it "always invariably" or only on this one occasion. It's a fallacy.<br /><br /><i>What I'm doing instead is to suggest that we try to refer back to the etymology and morphology where we can't seem to agree who has the right to define the meaning.</i><br /><br />But philosophers <i>do</i> agree on the meaning. Atheism is the denial of the existence of God. The logical positivists tried to redefine it in the mid-20th century to mean the absence of belief, and this attempt survived the rejection of logical positivism for a while. But it was eventually abandoned by philosophers because no one could define what the absence of belief meant in a way that distinguishes it from agnosticism or atheism.<br /><br /><i>I wonder why you bring up "theo-pisteuism" as something that differs from the content of theism in any interesting way.</i><br /><br />Because theos refers to God, theo-pisteuo or theo-gnosis would refer to us, whether we believe or know God exists.<br /><br /><i>But what I find really baffling is that you would slip the "not" at that place instead of where it belongs. Clearly A-theism negates theism and not "theos".</i><br /><br />I'm sorry, but this is bizarre. There are atheological arguments, arguments against the existence of God, such as the argument from evil. Are they negating the theos or the logica? Clearly, they're arguing against the existence of God -- the a- negates theos. Yet you want the a- in atheism to negate the ism rather than the theos. <br /><br />Let me put it this way: if the a- doesn't negate theos then how <i>would</i> you negate the theos? There's nothing left, since <i>ex hypothesi</i> the a- is negating the ism.Jim S.https://www.blogger.com/profile/15538540873375357030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5074683.post-2629390701638064512012-07-04T01:26:43.404+01:002012-07-04T01:26:43.404+01:00If we can define atheism as a 'lack of belief&...If we can define atheism as a 'lack of belief' in God, then we can define theism as a 'lack of belief' in metaphysical naturalism.<br /><br />Then how would 'soft' or 'weak' atheism differ from 'soft' or 'weak' theism?!Andrewnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5074683.post-63454207685931189632012-07-03T21:15:53.384+01:002012-07-03T21:15:53.384+01:00I respectfully disagree, Jim. First: it would be a...I respectfully disagree, Jim. First: it would be a root fallacy if I simply asserted that the etymology always invariably defines the meaning of a word. What I'm doing instead is to suggest that we try to refer back to the etymology and morphology where we can't seem to agree who has the right to define the meaning.<br />Second: I can live with your wish to have "theism" refer to the claim that God exists, although I wonder why you bring up "theo-pisteuism" as something that differs from the content of theism in any interesting way. But what I find really baffling is that you would slip the "not" at that place instead of where it belongs. Clearly A-theism negates theism and not "theos".<br />So by adding the prefix we go from:<br />"Claim that God exists" to (not)"Claim that God exists". <br />An atheist hence does not claim that God exists.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5074683.post-63037972383677725222012-07-03T12:56:27.714+01:002012-07-03T12:56:27.714+01:00Jim, why don't we settle this by looking at th...<i>Jim, why don't we settle this by looking at the morphological and etymological evidence for a-the-ism?</i><br /><br />1. The prefix a- is just a negation. To have no belief would be a-pisteuism from pisteuo, belief. A-gnosis is to have no knowledge. Perhaps you could construct A-theo-gnosis or a-theo-pisteuo, to have no knowledge of or belief in God. But by your standards, you can't import the concept of knowledge into the term "theos". Theism is the claim that God exists, atheism is the claim that God does not exist.<br /><br />2. Regardless, this is all pointless because it's a linguistic fallacy known as the root fallacy.Jim S.https://www.blogger.com/profile/15538540873375357030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5074683.post-75884595591418102872012-07-03T12:44:31.307+01:002012-07-03T12:44:31.307+01:00Good grief. If you seriously can’t see the differe...<i>Good grief. If you seriously can’t see the difference between conceiving of something and actually having a belief it really exists then I despair of having any kind of sensible discussion with you.</i><br /><br />Try. Explain what lacking a belief means and how it differs from disbelief, withholding belief, and not having any conception of something. I promise to do my utmost in having a sensible discussion.Jim S.https://www.blogger.com/profile/15538540873375357030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5074683.post-13448965003709583722012-07-03T11:47:59.154+01:002012-07-03T11:47:59.154+01:00Hehe, just noticed I misread you there, Tim:
It&#...Hehe, just noticed I misread you there, Tim:<br /><br /><i>It's ridiculous that theists keep trying to tell me what I, as an atheist, believe.</i><br /><br />I read a <i>that</i> instead of your <i>what</i>. So I thought you were just another of those atheists who claim that they don't believe anything, when in fact they do believe that no god exists. Sorry for that, please just forget I ever posted my comment.Henrikhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15411684406014318227noreply@blogger.com