The fine-tuning argument for God's existence

[warpus]

Yeah, when I was 5 years old my parents sat me down and said: "Child.. we have a revelation for you. Hold on to your socks. WE ARE YOUR PARENTS."

That's when I chose to believe that my parents are my parents.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Yeah, when I was 5 years old my parents sat me down and said: "Child.. we have a revelation for you. Hold on to your socks. WE ARE YOUR PARENTS."

That's when I chose to believe that my parents are my parents.

Ok enough fun...On a (slightly) more serious note, did your parents tell you about Santa Claus? I was thinking today about how/whether a child is introduced to Santa, and how exactly they become disabused of the concept of Santa as a "real" person, might have a profound influence on how their attitudes about God develop.

But of course an opinion based just on my own family/friends is not based on a very good info sample.

 

[Borachio]

Yeah, when I was 5 years old my parents sat me down and said: "Child.. we have a revelation for you. Hold on to your socks. WE ARE YOUR PARENTS."

That's when I chose to believe that my parents are my parents.

My parents never did that. To this day, I don't know for sure - though all the evidence points out that they were.

I remember, when I was about 7, asking my mother whether I wasn't in fact adopted. I had it in my head that maybe I was a foundling or possibly the lost child of someone really rich and powerful. She just laughed at me. In that derisory, though not unkind, way that people do, which I've had to become accustomed to ever since.

It could still turn out that I'm a rich Nigerian prince. Why, only the other day I had an e-mail to this effect.

 

[warpus]

Ok enough fun...On a (slightly) more serious note, did your parents tell you about Santa Claus? I was thinking today about how/whether a child is introduced to Santa, and how exactly they become disabused of the concept of Santa as a "real" person, might have a profound influence on how their attitudes about God develop.

It's the same thing with santa - there was never a choice to choose to believe.. or to not believe. You believe what you think is true and do not believe what you think isn't.. You don't sit down and contemplate "Do I believe that this thing exists or not?" You either do or you don't.

 

[Sommerswerd]

It's the same thing with santa - there was never a choice to choose to believe.. or to not believe. You believe what you think is true and do not believe what you think isn't.. You don't sit down and contemplate "Do I believe that this thing exists or not?" You either do or you don't.

I'm not talking about that (I never was... Not seriously anyway I thought you knew I was kidding around)

I'm asking about you personally. Do you think that allowing kids to believe in Santa has an impact on how they interpret God? I have young kids and I find myself thinking about this recently... I have always rejected religion but I am only recently skeptical about God... I luvs me sum Christmas though! So I think about the whole Santa thing a lot nowadays...

In some ways I think that a person who (like me) believed Santa was a literal person, and then figured out what was going on my own... is more likely to do the same with God. Whereas a person who is told Santa is not literal by parents might only accept their parents (or a similarly respected person) telling them about God. Or maybe a person who is always taught that- God is real-Santa is not, might not have any mental foundation to make the jump on their own.

 

[warpus]

I'm asking about you personally. Do you think that allowing kids to believe in Santa has an impact on how they interpret God?

Probably, because it was the whole Santa debacle that made it easier for me to understand that a lot of the other things adults were selling to me as "the truth" were actually not true at all either.. It made me more skeptical and willing to ask questions - to poke around. "Turns out adults don't really know that much either - huh interesting" - made me wonder what else isn't true.

Of course that's just my own personal experience.

 

[El_Machinae]

Because as you have already been told...There is no "evidence" but revelation

Spoiler :

I know you're teasing, but people's testimony is better thought of as evidence. So, Paul's writings are evidence of revelation. They're not revelation themselves. You then compile the various levels of evidence in order to determine if you'll believe whether it was evidence or not.

So, we're not choosing to trust revelation. We're choosing to balance the evidence suggesting there was revelation. Paul was incorrect about too many things, and that's why we don't trust his source of information.

 

[Sommerswerd]

I know you're teasing, but people's testimony is better thought of as evidence. So, Paul's writings are evidence of revelation. They're not revelation themselves. You then compile the various levels of evidence in order to determine if you'll believe whether it was evidence or not.

So, we're not choosing to trust revelation. We're choosing to balance the evidence suggesting there was revelation. Paul was incorrect about too many things, and that's why we don't trust his source of information.

I get that. I try to remain as objective and receptive as possible to all perspectives whether I personally buy them/agree with them or not. I find I learn more from discussions that way.

In fact if you really wanted to, you could look back in this thread and see a point where I was arguing (to Warpus IIRC) that prayer was a legitimate source of evidence for religious people. I really enjoy arguing all sides of an issue based on things I see as reasonable, logical, plausible, whatever.

 

[El_Machinae]

Oh! Prayer is a legitimate source of evidence. It just needs to be weighted properly

 

[Plotinus]

Do you choose to love another or it just happens? So you have no autonomy? The issue I see perpetually is people debate about God, fully knowing it's a concept that cannot be proven, so it's a pointless exercise.

The problem here is that you're confusing two things. You're confusing believing that something exists and putting trust in something. These are not the same thing. Putting one's trust in something may well be a matter of choice. However, it's psychologically impossible to put one's trust in something that you think doesn't exist. And whether or not one thinks it exists isn't a matter of choice.

That means that I, right now, am literally incapable of putting my trust in God, because I don't think God exists. I don't choose to think that God doesn't exist. I would quite like him to exist, but it seems to me that he doesn't, whether I like it or not. How, then, could I put my trust in him? It would be like trusting in my brother. I don't have a brother. I have a sister, so I could choose to trust her with something if I wanted to, but I don't see how I could choose to trust my brother when as far as I can tell I don't have one.

You're also making the mistake of assuming (a) that God's existence definitely can't be proven (how could anyone know this?) and (b) that if it can't be proven there's no point discussing it rationally. This is a mistake because even if something can't be proven, one can still look for evidence for or against it. For example, the theory of evolution by natural selection can't be proven like a mathematical theorem, but there's enough evidence to be sure, to all intents and purposes, that it's true.

Even if we can't prove that God exists, it's still reasonable to look for evidence for or against his existence and consider arguments that may suggest he does or does not exist.

We chose to believe all manner of things for we have affinity for them. That's for ideas and for relationships.

I'd like to see an example of someone choosing to believe that something is true (or false). This isn't the same thing as putting your trust in something.

There's no juice in engaging in a pointless unprovable exercise on an Internet forum, but to engage with someone, contend as Jacob wrestles with the angel, that's a noble human endeavor to hone our intellect. It's a mistake to transform that into something like belief, which is really a relational and not logical process. You don't love your wife out of logic. It's a choice to relationally enter into a covenant, just as friendship is a similar model. Belief in God, or deciding the god doesn't exist is precisely the same thing. It's about afinity and what the heart says, not the mind.

No, because here again you're confusing the two things. Do I choose to love my wife? Perhaps, although I think love is rather more complicated than that. But I'm capable of making that choice only because I think my wife exists. If I didn't think she existed, I couldn't choose to have any attitude towards her!

God is not like my wife, at least from my point of view, because I think my wife exists but I don't think he exists. That means that I can't choose to love him or reject him or to adopt any attitude to him at all. This is the case even if in fact he does exist. I don't "decide" that he doesn't exist. It's not a matter of volition at all. He simply seems to me not to exist.

Say you take the tack that you're powerless to enter into a relationship with God, for to you it's nothing more than the Easter Bunny or flying spagetti monster. That's actually nonsensical and an abuse of the rule of debate by invoking the Appeal to Ridicule. It's a sign of a defeat to make such appeals. It's also ignoring the topic by converting it from a discussion of God to a discussion of god. It's rather like instead of discussing Ethics you switch the topic to a reality tv show. In addition, you're violating the argumentum ad lapidem, the appeal to the stone, by assuming an idea is absurd without proving it's absurd. Honestly, why can't atheists do more in a debate than make a whole series of fallacies?

When I said that I didn't mean to ridicule the idea of God. I don't think God is as absurd as Father Christmas. I merely meant that, like Father Christmas, God seems to me not to exist. Perhaps a better example is my brother. I can say, pretty reliably, that my brother doesn't exist. I only have a sister. Now I can imagine all kinds of scenarios in which I do have a brother after all; perhaps my parents had another child but hid him away for some weird reason; perhaps there's some shocking family secret I don't know about. I can imagine all that kind of thing but I can't choose to believe it's true, and I challenge anyone here to make themselves believe anything of that kind. It's not psychologically possible.

And that means that it's not within my power to trust my brother, or to love him, or to reject him, or anything of that kind. Even if in fact I do have a brother I don't know about, I can't take any attitude towards him until I find out about him.

It's exactly the same with God. I don't choose not to believe in him, any more than I choose not to believe in my brother; I simply make sense of the world as it appears to me to be, and it appears to me not to contain a brother, and not to contain God. I can't do anything to change either of these appearances. I can, perhaps, choose to investigate the matter more carefully; I can listen to the testimonies of those who claim to have encountered God and look at other evidence, but I can't decide to be swayed by them if they don't seem to me to be compelling. And if it seems to me that God doesn't exist, I can't possibly decide to enter into a relationship with him, any more than I can decide to enter into a relationship with my brother.

 

[Crackerbox]

It's interesting how Plotinus the Philosopher is playing with language in defiance of actual definitions for faith i.e.
"noun
1. confidence or trust in a person or thing:
"faith in another's ability."

2. belief that is not based on proof:
"He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact."

3. belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion:
"the firm faith of the Pilgrims."

4. belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit, etc.: "to be of the same faith with someone concerning honesty."

5. a system of religious belief:
"the Christian faith; the Jewish faith."

6. the obligation of loyalty or fidelity to a person, promise, engagement, etc.:
"Failure to appear would be breaking faith." [my notes...it's relational not intellectual]

7. the observance of this obligation; fidelity to one's promise, oath, allegiance, etc.:
"He was the only one who proved his faith during our recent troubles."

8. Christian Theology. the trust in God and in His promises as made through Christ and the Scriptures by which humans are justified or saved. "
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/faith

My responses are absolutely in linguistic agreement to the definition of Faith. An atheist often lacks faith in God, but they have faith in atheism strictly by definition of the term...and without evidence.

So you need no evidence for atheism, but you do need it for a belief in God? Interesting quandry isn't it?

Since faith is defined as belief without proof, then to ask for proof and suppose that proof exists, the very cornerstone principles of faith are negated. Why doesn't that compute to a theologian?

And again another fallacy within your post, a classic argumentum ad ignorantiam (Appeal to Ignorance). You can't imagine that God is real, so hence God cannot be real any more than an imaginary brother, which in of itself is an Appeal to Ridicule..yet again!

If God can exist in theory within your mind as the embodiment of Being (to paraphrase St. Anselm), then God can exist merely from this very quaint ontological argument. It's as basic a theology as possible.
"Anselm's argument in Chapter 2 can be summarized as follows:[20]
1.It is a conceptual truth (or, so to speak, true by definition) that God is a being than which none greater can be imagined (that is, the greatest possible being that can be imagined).
2.God exists as an idea in the mind.
3.A being that exists as an idea in the mind and in reality is, other things being equal, greater than a being that exists only as an idea in the mind.
4.Thus, if God exists only as an idea in the mind, then we can imagine something that is greater than God (that is, a greatest possible being that does exist).
5.But we cannot imagine something that is greater than God (for it is a contradiction to suppose that we can imagine a being greater than the greatest possible being that can be imagined.)
6.Therefore, God exists.

In Chapter 3, Anselm presented a further argument in the same vein:
1.By definition, God is a being than which none greater can be imagined.
2.A being that necessarily exists in reality is greater than a being that does not necessarily exist.
3.Thus, by definition, if God exists as an idea in the mind but does not necessarily exist in reality, then we can imagine something that is greater than God.
4.But we cannot imagine something that is greater than God.
5.Thus, if God exists in the mind as an idea, then God necessarily exists in reality.
6.God exists in the mind as an idea.
7.Therefore, God necessarily exists in reality.[20]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontological_argument#Anselm
At the very least, the desire to encounter God is there, if not the faith in it, and yet Anselm demonstrates that merely considering the idea of this level of divine BEING translates to a proof of God.

 

[Flying Pig]

Atheism isn't necessarily a matter of positive belief - it can be simply a lack of belief in gods. Most people say that they need positive evidence to assert something, but not to not-assert something. Asserting not-something would be different, granted.

 

[Sommerswerd]

I'd like to see an example of someone choosing to believe that something is true (or false). This isn't the same thing as putting your trust in something.

I have a challenge for you on this point. I would be very interested to hear your interpretation.

When I was young I believed in Hulk Hogan. I simultaneously knew good and well that there was no such thing as Hulk Hogan, and that he was merely an imaginary character being played by an actor (Terry Bolea). But that didn't matter, I still believed in him. I talked about him to my friends as if he was real. I cried when he lost and I cheered when he won. I got irrationally excited watching his matches beyond what anyone could possibly feel for something they didn't think existed. But at the same time, I was fully aware that wrestling was fake and staged and that there was not really any Hulk Hogan.

How would you define this? Did I choose to believe? Was this temporary/Situational suspension of disbelief? Something else?

 

[Plotinus]

It's interesting how Plotinus the Philosopher is playing with language in defiance of actual definitions for faith i.e.
noun
1. confidence or trust in a person or thing:
"faith in another's ability."

2. belief that is not based on proof:
"He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact."

3. belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion:
"the firm faith of the Pilgrims."

4. belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit, etc.: "to be of the same faith with someone concerning honesty."

5. a system of religious belief:
"the Christian faith; the Jewish faith."

6. the obligation of loyalty or fidelity to a person, promise, engagement, etc.:
"Failure to appear would be breaking faith." [my notes...it's relational not intellectual]

7. the observance of this obligation; fidelity to one's promise, oath, allegiance, etc.:
"He was the only one who proved his faith during our recent troubles."

8. Christian Theology. the trust in God and in His promises as made through Christ and the Scriptures by which humans are justified or saved.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/faith

My responses are absolutely in linguistic agreement to the definition of Faith. An atheist often lacks faith in God, but they have faith in atheism strictly by definition of the term...and without evidence.

You can define "belief" and "faith" in that way if you want to. It doesn't change the point that I can't put my trust in something that seems to me not to exist. If you like, I won't use the word "believe" to refer to thinking that something exists. I'll just call it "thinking that something exists". And, if you like, we'll use the word "believe" to mean "place trust in".

Then the problem becomes: I can't "believe" in something (in your sense) if I don't think that that thing exists. But I can't simply decide to think that something exists. That's not within my power. Is it within yours? If so, can you give us a demonstration?

This is the substantial point I'm trying to make here, and it's not affected by playing around with the definitions of words.

So you need no evidence for atheism, but you do need it for a belief in God? Interesting quandry isn't it?

Certainly I need evidence for atheism. But while I wouldn't say that atheism is definitely true, the evidence seems to me to favour atheism rather than theism. I don't have "faith" in atheism at all - it just seems to me that God probably doesn't exist. And I have reasons for thinking this, not just guesswork or preference. As I said, my preference would probably be for him to exist, but wishful thinking doesn't achieve much, no matter what Bärbel Mohr might have thought.

Since faith is defined as belief without proof, then to ask for proof and suppose that proof exists, the very cornerstone principles of faith are negated. Why doesn't that compute to a theologian?

Maybe because I know something about the very complex and varied ways in which both "faith" and "belief" have been understood that go well beyond the naive fideism you're claiming to be the only meaning of these terms. The bulk of Christian tradition before the eighteenth century would not recognise your definitions.

But more substantially, I don't "ask for proof" at all. I merely say that the world is as it seems to me to be. It's fair to ask for a reason to think that something exists, isn't it? And isn't this thread supposed to be about the attempt to provide such a reason? Indeed, doesn't Unicorny present it as something very close to a proof when he casts such scorn on those who disagree with his conclusions? Isn't your argument with him more than it is with me?

I have a challenge for you on this point. I would be very interested to hear your interpretation.

When I was young I believed in Hulk Hogan. I simultaneously knew good and well that there was no such thing as Hulk Hogan, and that he was merely an imaginary character being played by an actor (Terry Bolea). But that didn't matter, I still believed in him. I talked about him to my friends as if he was real. I cried when he lost and I cheered when he won. I got irrationally excited watching his matches beyond what anyone could possibly feel for something they didn't think existed. But at the same time, I was fully aware that wrestling was fake and staged and that there was not really any Hulk Hogan.

How would you define this? Did I choose to believe? Was this temporary/Situational suspension of disbelief? Something else?

I think you've said it yourself: that's willing suspension of disbelief. Just as we can discuss at enormous length whether the Hulk is strong enough to lift Thor's hammer, or whether the Flash is faster than Superman, without actually believing that any of this is real. You cared about Hulk Hogan as a concept but you didn't really believe he was real, just as people got so angry about The Phantom Menace because they cared about Star Wars without actually thinking it was real (although I had a housemate who was pretty borderline). If you were fully aware that Hulk Hogan wasn't real, then you didn't think he was real.

 

[Crackerbox]

You can define "belief" and "faith" in that way if you want to. It doesn't change the point that I can't put my trust in something that seems to me not to exist. If you like, I won't use the word "believe" to refer to thinking that something exists. I'll just call it "thinking that something exists". And, if you like, we'll use the word "believe" to mean "place trust in".

Then the problem becomes: I can't "believe" in something (in your sense) if I don't think that that thing exists. But I can't simply decide to think that something exists. That's not within my power. Is it within yours? If so, can you give us a demonstration?
This is the substantial point I'm trying to make here, and it's not affected by playing around with the definitions of words.

This is a FALLACY. It's a classic Appeal to Ignorance and I'm surprised to see you make that kind of blunder in a debate. It's not logical.

Certainly I need evidence for atheism. But while I wouldn't say that atheism is definitely true, the evidence seems to me to favour atheism rather than theism. I don't have "faith" in atheism at all - it just seems to me that God probably doesn't exist. And I have reasons for thinking this, not just guesswork or preference. As I said, my preference would probably be for him to exist, but wishful thinking doesn't achieve much, no matter what Bärbel Mohr might have thought.

This is a FALLACY. It's the classic definition of an Appeal to Probability. Just because it seems to you that this is more probable than that doesn't mean this is more likely to be true.

Maybe because I know something about the very complex and varied ways in which both "faith" and "belief" have been understood that go well beyond the naive fideism you're claiming to be the only meaning of these terms. The bulk of Christian tradition before the eighteenth century would not recognise your definitions.

But more substantially, I don't "ask for proof" at all. I merely say that the world is as it seems to me to be. It's fair to ask for a reason to think that something exists, isn't it? And isn't this thread supposed to be about the attempt to provide such a reason? Indeed, doesn't Unicorny present it as something very close to a proof when he casts such scorn on those who disagree with his conclusions? Isn't your argument with him more than it is with me?

This is a fallacy. It's an ad hominem attack that presumes I am naive because of all things I use a dictionary definition that is ABSOLUTELY consistent with philosophy as well as my assertions. Interesting!

And I made it quite clear that I criticized BOTH the devout believer who supposes logical debate is a valid means of conversion as well as the fallacies of atheists. But you're doing a superb job of proving my points!

I think you've said it yourself: that's willing suspension of disbelief. Just as we can discuss at enormous length whether the Hulk is strong enough to lift Thor's hammer, or whether the Flash is faster than Superman, without actually believing that any of this is real. You cared about Hulk Hogan as a concept but you didn't really believe he was real, just as people got so angry about The Phantom Menace because they cared about Star Wars without actually thinking it was real (although I had a housemate who was pretty borderline). If you were fully aware that Hulk Hogan wasn't real, then you didn't think he was real.

This is a FALLACY. It's an Appeal to Ridicule by comparing the definition for God who is BEING itself with fictious literary figures! At the very least it's a non sequiteur because it doesn't follow that belief in comic book character's abilities has ANYTHING to do with a Supreme Being.

Surely you've won the contest for making the MOST number of logical fallacies in any debate, I've ever been in.

 

[El_Machinae]

You can call it a fallacy, but I think the question you made blue is a good one. What am I missing?

 

[Crackerbox]

You can call it a fallacy, but I think the question you made blue is a good one. What am I missing?

Plotinus said, "Then the problem becomes: I can't "believe" in something (in your sense) if I don't think that that thing exists. But I can't simply decide to think that something exists. That's not within my power. Is it within yours? If so, can you give us a demonstration?"

This is an appeal to ignorance. Plotinus can't believe in something so he thinks it isn't true. It's the very definition of an appeal to ignorance.

He makes an appeal to probability prior when he believes that atheism is more probable to be true than a belief in God. There is evidence for neither. Atheism is a belief system just as much as any spiritual system. It's definitely NOT an absence of belief which is undefined in philosophy and theology. One can only have disbelief and belief, and these are a matter of choosing some system like atheism (a disbelief in God) versus something like theism (a belief in God).

His entire posts in this topic are riddled with logical fallacies by definition. I've just pointed them out, but anyone is free to look up ad hominems, non sequieurs, appeals to ridicule, appeals to ignorance, appeals to probability, and the like.

What's more, we consider some supposition in philosophy all the time regardless of whether we think it's valid. Just because we don't think something exists or is valid, which are two different attributes, doesn't mean the supposition isn't true. That's the appeal to ignorance. How could one claim any sense of being lettered without considering all manner of suppositions made by some intellectual regardless of whether we believed them to be true?

 

[Sommerswerd]

You can call it a fallacy, but I think the question you made blue is a good one. What am I missing?

This is why I groan when people bring up Logical fallacies. We just end up arguing for pages and pages about whether someone committed a logical fallacy or not.

But I do remember many years ago, when I first learned about logical fallacies, I felt very clever always accusing people of them in every statement they made... eventually it got boring, once I learned about argumentum ad logicam ... It just made the whole logical fallacy argument seem circular and pointless.

 

[Crackerbox]

This is why I groan when people bring up Logical fallacies. We just end up arguing for pages and pages about whether someone committed a logical fallacy or not.

But I do remember many years ago, when I first learned about logical fallacies, I felt very clever always accusing people of them in every statement they made... eventually it got boring, once I learned about argumentum ad logicam ... It just made the whole logical fallacy argument seem circular and pointless.

Have you ever been on a debate team? It's a standard aspect of debating when clear demonstrations of logical fallacies are stated. It's a withering attack on the posts of others for the whole point of debate is to try to free yourself from making logical fallacies in order to have a rational debate of ideas.

Everything else is just opinion. What would be the point of labeling this [RD] and then not dealing with logical fallacies?

 

[Tigranes]

I would like to suggest that perhaps faith in existence of brother and sister is not the best analogy to bring forward while talking about faith in God. In principle it is possible to take DNA sample from all the males in the world 14 years younger than person's father to identify the brother or his absence. In addition it puts opponents in "rude" corner in case they ask: "How can you positively assert you don't have a brother? What if someone is your biological brother, but this fact was concealed from you". Let's talk aliens instead. Do the esteemed skeptics believe in aliens? Most specifically, if any intelligent alien life already visited our planet? Yes or no, and why? Carl Sagan did not believe in God but he sure did believe in aliens, and he makes very strong case in that regard. But for some reason $2.5 mil for SETI becomes an issue. Why?