Quote:
Originally Posted by Alawen
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Presidents, scientists, philosophers, and scholars have gone through their lives believing in a god.
Therefore, giant daddy in the sky.
Perfectly rational.
Except for fallacious appeal to authority and argument ad populum.
I'm going to try to explain fallacious appeal to authority to you, because it's a serious stumbling block in your debate style. Consider this argument:
Oprah is a successful businesswoman and world-renown personality.
Oprah says my car trouble is a dead battery.
Therefore, I should have my battery checked.
Do you see the problem there? Despite her well-known intelligence and skills, Oprah is not an expert in car repair. Let's continue with a fuzzier case.
I'm not feeling well.
Dr. Oz says I should eat more superfoods.
Therefore, improving my diet will cure my feelings of malaise.
Dr. Oz is a real M.D. and he might even be able to diagnose what ails me, but he hasn't examined me. He's just giving generalized advice on a television program. His expertise has not been applied to my situation.
You like to imply that there is a host of impressive people who are devout Christians. You gloss over listing them by name, of course, which makes that argument hearsay. However, even if you were to list them by name, they are not experts on the existence or non-existence of one or more deities.
This brings us to the real crux of the matter here. Can we safely agree that it is impossible to prove the existence of a Judeo-Christian-Muslim supreme being given the evidence at hand? Can we also safely agree to extend that beyond those limits and say that it is impossible to prove the existence of any deity given the evidence at hand? I do hope so, but there are plenty of whackadoos who love this argument:
The human eye is complex.
Therefore, giant daddy in the sky.
If, however, we can agree that no one can prove the existence of a deity, I'd like to continue. It is a tenet of both science and law that a negative cannot be proven. Indeed; attempting to assert the truth of a statement based on failure to disprove it is the logical fallacy of argumentum ad ignorantium.
Still with me? Great. So here's where we're at:
It is not possible to prove the existence of God.
It is not possible to disprove the existence of God.
With these two premises, pray tell me: what field of study qualifies one as an expert on the existence of non-existence of God? You can continue to trot out your implied lists of such experts using life accomplishments in science or politics or academics, but it will continue to be a flawed statistical syllogism. Perhaps that's how you choose to make decisions, by basing your life decisions on the opinions of people you respect. That might even be effective depending on your own cognitive abilities. Unfortunately for your entire argument about reasoning and rational decisions, following others is not logic.
To be logical, to be rational, one must be capable of individually observing and considering evidence, forming and connecting coherent concepts, and reaching independent conclusions. Following the crowd is exactly the fundamental behavior that I scoff at in religion and politics, among other things. It reduces the magnificence of human potential to that of the notorious rodent, the lemming, or the more contemporary colloquialism, sheeple. Yes, I am essentially a humanist.
On a final note, it is also important for a rational mind to accept new evidence, even if such evidence disproves earlier conclusions. Of course I can be wrong about things; I'm human, too. I am constantly learning and thinking about things I have limited knowledge in. I am wrong about things every day. It's not my job to tell you that I could be wrong. That's a given, and self-confidence in my own knowledge and intellect is not a character flaw.
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Now we're having fun. The above represents a reasoned argument. The majority of your posts in this thread have been intentionally inflammatory and dismissive.
Now allow me to explain the point you're missing.
We have agreed that proving or disproving the existence of god is impossible at present. Thus, we have agreed that there are no experts on the subject -- not theists, not atheists, not scientists, nobody. But again, we are NOT discussing the existence of a god. This discussion is NOT about whether a god does or does not exist. You seem to be moving the goal posts. We haven't been discussing the existence of god, and we certainly have not been limiting ourselves to a god in the Judeo-Christian-Muslim image. And when I discuss intelligent people that believe in a god, I have never once limited the matter to Christians, or even members of any organized religion. You seem to assume I'm a Christian -- I am not.
This discussion is and has been about whether or not it meets the basic threshold of rationality to believe that a god -- essentially, a creator of any kind -- exists. If I were citing scientists and mega-minds in order to prove that a god exists, your Oprah comparison would fit well. We can agree that most of the smartest theists in the world have no more specific knowledge regarding a deity than most of the smartest atheists. But that's not what I'm doing.
The appeal to authority is meant to demonstrate rationality -- not validity. It is not fallacious. You can erase the notion of god entirely. There are a vast number of extremely intelligent, highly rational people that believe in the same concept. The concept itself is immaterial. You need not accept them as experts on god -- simply on rational thought. I contend that these experts on rational thought, spread over time, culture, and geographic location, are not united en masse in irrational delusions when it comes to god or religion. They may certainly be wrong, but they haven't all abandoned the rational thought that has marked their careers in coming to their conclusions.
And again, I have made my own arguments regarding the rationality of belief in a god. I have explained that even mankind, in our extraordinarily limited scientific capacity, could rather easily set in motion the process for evolution on other planets. I have explained that we have not been able to demonstrate organic life forming from inorganic material. It stands to reason that, at some point, there must have been an initial organic life form. Whether that life form be infinitely simple, infinitely complex, or somewhere in between, we have no explanation for how it came to be. In the absence of evidence, I wouldn't dare to call any reasonable explanation 'irrational'. It is rational to believe that there is some yet undiscovered process that could convert inorganic material to organic polymer life. It is rational to believe that in "the beginning", extraordinarily basic life forms existed and slowly spread throughout the universe and evolved. It is rational to believe that an infinite life form -- sentient or otherwise -- served as the source of organic matter which spread throughout the universe and evolved. You don't have to believe any of this, but that doesn't make it preposterous.
10-20-2012, 09:30 AM
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