Bible Thumping Wingnut Program

Originally posted by sonship
Suzianne, I at least understand what you are saying. You can converse with me about your point if you wish.

You'll notice that the atheist Matt Dillahunty so jury rigged the discussion as to assure himself that God CANNOT enter into any explanation.

Matt Dillahunty states that "God has no explanatory power". So if he jury rigs the whole debate that ...[text shortened]... e" anyone into the subjective encounter with God.

Some apologist might not agree completely.

If I try to explain to you why the sky is blue and I say that it is caused by
"rigmould heffalumps of the Scywind round-drops" would I have explained it
to you?

No, of course not.

You have no idea [and no possible way of knowing] what "rigmould heffalumps"
or "Scywind round-drops" are or mean.

All I have done is replaced the mystery of "why the sky is blue" with the mystery
of what those two phrases mean. We haven't advanced.

Even if I were to say that "the sky is blue because of Rayleigh scattering" I still
haven't explained it because you don't know or understand what "Rayleigh scattering"
is.

Explanations MUST be in terms of things we already understand.


ALL Matt Dillahunty was saying is that because we do not and indeed likely cannot
'understand' god, that god cannot be an explanation of anything.

Even if your god existed, it's a mystery to us, and is therefore by definition not
something we understand and thus doesn't explain anything.


There are other more rigours reasons why "god did it" isn't an explanation which
I have gone into before at length [as have other people]. But this reason is sufficient
and it's the one Matt himself usually gives.

I've just had a look at the Wikipedia page on the Transcendental Argument [1]. Apparently this is due to Kant, so its pedigree is better than I initially thought it would be. According to the Wikipedia page it goes as follows:

1) No human knowledge or experience is possible if there is no God.
2) Knowledge is possible.
3) Therefore God exists.

So it is essentially a reductio ad absurdum proof, at a formal level it is fine. Any fallacy would be informal, in other words a false premise. Although I can think of ways of whittling away at it [2], the second premise, that knowledge is possible, is clearly true and justified on empirical grounds. So rather than arguing that there is no such thing as knowledge, let us look at statement 1. Can someone please explain to me why a supreme entity should be a necessary condition [3] for knowledge to be possible? I'm prepared to believe that it is a sufficient condition but that is not enough to make the proof work. Further can someone also explain why this argument does not apply to God himself. Since there is no more supreme entity available to allow his knowledge to exist? [4]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendental_argument_for_the_existence_of_God
[2] I'd try something along the lines of: If knowledge is justified belief that is true, how are we to know with complete certainty that a given justified belief is true?
[3] I've emphasised necessary for a good reason, there should be no possible world where knowledge is possible without God.
[4] No I'm not going to watch the video on YouTube, I want a short summary of the argument.

Originally posted by DeepThought
I've just had a look at the Wikipedia page on the Transcendental Argument [1]. Apparently this is due to Kant, so its pedigree is better than I initially thought it would be. According to the Wikipedia page it goes as follows:

1) No human knowledge or experience is possible if there is no God.
2) Knowledge is possible.
3) Therefore God exists.

...[text shortened]... od.
[4] No I'm not going to watch the video on YouTube, I want a short summary of the argument.

Some further [reading] references for anyone wanting to check out the originals.


The full text version of Matt Slick's variant is here in case you wanted to check that out.

https://carm.org/transcendental-argument


And this is the full text of Kant's work... although there might be a better version somewhere.

http://users.clas.ufl.edu/burt/spaceshotsairheads/KantargumentGod.pdf


And Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy page discussing it:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-religion/


I'm not going to try to defend the argument because I think it's indefensible. 😉

Originally posted by DeepThought
I've just had a look at the Wikipedia page on the Transcendental Argument [1]. Apparently this is due to Kant, so its pedigree is better than I initially thought it would be. According to the Wikipedia page it goes as follows:

1) No human knowledge or experience is possible if there is no God.
2) Knowledge is possible.
3) Therefore God exists.

...[text shortened]... od.
[4] No I'm not going to watch the video on YouTube, I want a short summary of the argument.

bah ... substitute "no no God" for "no God", and "knowledge of good and evil" for "knowledge or experience" in the argument you mentioned to get ...

1) No human knowledge of good and evil is possible if there is a God Reveal Hidden Content **
2) Knowledge of good and evil is possible
3) Therefore no God exists.

QED




----------------------------
** God, if it exists is too powerful to be outsmarted by a talking snake ... no humans will be eating from any trees of knowledge on *His* watch!

Originally posted by Agerg
bah ... substitute "no no God" for "no God", and "knowledge of good and evil" for "knowledge or experience" in the argument you mentioned to get ...

1) No human knowledge of good and evil is possible if there is a God [hidden](since "no no God" can be written "a God" )[/hidden] **
2) Knowledge of good and evil is possible
[b]3) Therefore no God exists.[/b ...[text shortened]... rted by a talking snake ... no humans will be eating from any trees of knowledge on *His* watch!

You will never get an advocate of intuitionist logic, these are serious mathematicians - Gödel's incompleteness theorem uses it, to accept the double negative axiom, namely that ¬¬A ⊢A. Although this example is imperfect it is similar to the notion that not unhappy is not the same as happy. But yes, if we change the first premise we can produce a formally valid, though not necessarily sound, argument against the existence of God. I tend to agree with Hume and find that metaphysics is an exercise in playing with words.

Originally posted by googlefudge
Some further [reading] references for anyone wanting to check out the originals.


The full text version of Matt Slick's variant is here in case you wanted to check that out.

https://carm.org/transcendental-argument


And this is the full text of Kant's work... although there might be a better version somewhere.

http://users.clas.ufl.edu/bur ...[text shortened]... religion/


I'm not going to try to defend the argument because I think it's indefensible. 😉

Thanks for the links, I'll take a look at them, although I find Kant quite painful to read, he's horribly verbose and really difficult to follow.

Originally posted by DeepThought
Thanks for the links, I'll take a look at them, although I find Kant quite painful to read, he's horribly verbose and really difficult to follow.

Yeah. I got that from my brief perusal of the 100 pages of text in the PDF.

Which is why I also went for the Stanford review of it.

Originally posted by googlefudge

Explanations MUST be in terms of things we already understand.

We do understand at least something about God. If you insist you don't, not every human on earth would agree with you by far. And many claim to have communion and fellowship with God even though some things of God we do not understand.

It seems to me that exhaustive understanding is not required.

A child of six years old comes down from the bedroom to the breakfast table. A bowl of Cornflakes and a piece of toast await the child for food. The child understands that a mother perhaps has provided these things.

Exhaustive understanding of the adult mother is not necessary for an explanation of where the meal came from.

ALL Matt Dillahunty was saying is that because we do not and indeed likely cannot 'understand' god, that god cannot be an explanation of anything.

Well, I am not formal philosopher but this explanation seems ridiculous.
The best explanation to something may leave some things still not understood.

Say we have a locked room. There are coins scattered randomly all over a table. There is no order at all. We have a guard outside the door and as far as he is concerned no one entered or came out of the room.

The next morning we find the coins all stacked in rows - pennies staked, nickels stacked, dimes stacked, quarters stacked, half dollars stacked, and silver dollars stacked.

No one knows HOW on earth this happened. Yet the BEST explanation of what we CAN understand is that some intelligence that understands the denominations of coins has arranged them appropriately out of the confusion.

There is some explanatory power there though not all things can be explained. It may not be a PROOF that somehow someone entered the room. But it can be had as the best explanation or that we are on the right track to understand it so.

Saying that God has no explanatory power presupposes that NO ONE understands an Ultimate, self-existent, all-powerful, all-knowing, uncreated, transcendent, Authority and Power. And man HAS understood this, at least, in part.

Shortage of exhaustive understanding does not mean that God has no explanatory power.

Even if your god existed, it's a mystery to us, and is therefore by definition not something we understand and thus doesn't explain anything.

You at least understand something about God enough to decide you do not want this One to exist and exercise very much energy to deny God.

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" assumes rightly that God has explanatory power. And especially so as the disclosure of God's character is gradually more and more unfolded in the rest of the Bible.

If God is infinite or eternal and SOME things of Him are just unknowable, then that may be a bother to some proud egos. But to others it is cause of love and a reaction of worship and trust.

I take "God has no explanatory power" to be more an emotional matter of dislike. "I don't WANT God to be the answer for anything."

The Jesus Christ was the kind of Person He was has God as explanatory power. He repeated that He was "the Son of God".

That God was His Father has explanatory power concerning the impact of the words, deeds, character of Jesus Christ. If not mathematical like PROOF of God's existence, it is strong evidence that we are on the right track to lean towards this explanation.

There are other more rigours reasons why "god did it" isn't an explanation which

It depends here on what the "it" is your generalizing about.

When I hear of the resurrection of Christ, I have no problem with "God did it." Before that when I see the universe exists instead of nothing existing I have no problem with "God did it."

As a matter of fact even our ability to reason here and argue is a "God did it" in terms of bestowing that ability upon us.

That we are made in the image of God has explanatory power as to why we can reason and moralize and decide and choose and think.

If this is not proof of God it is a good explanation to indicate we are on the right track. You have no alternative, I think, as to how immaterial matter developed the capacity of self awareness and self consciousness.

Saw it last night, interesting how both the theists carried on after the debate was over. Obviously to " clarify " some points that their audience might not have been sure about 😉