September 12, 2011
You can download the four letters that comprise Round One as a single PDF file, here [131KB]. If you don’t want to download it, simply copy the URL and paste it into your address bar. Or go check it out at VoxWorld. Be forewarned: Dominic’s piece is a bit sloppy grammatically, making comprehension a challenging at times. Vox, on the other hand, is at least articulate enough that intelligibility is not an issue.
August 28, 2011
An evidential POE argument from Peter Hurford of Greatplay.net:
1. Needless suffering, by definition, is any suffering that doesn’t exist because of a higher good.
2. Needless suffering, by definition, could be eliminated with no consequences.
3. Any all-good entity desires to eliminate all needless suffering.
4. Any all-knowing entity would know of all needless suffering, if any needless suffering exists.
5. Any all-powerful entity would be capable of eliminating all needless suffering.
6. Our world contains needless suffering.
7. Therefore from 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, and 6, an all-good, all-powerful, and all-knowing entity cannot exist.
8. God, as described by the major religions is all-good, all-powerful, and all-knowing.
9. Therefore from 7 and 8, God as described by the major religions does not exist.
I recently said that all the POE arguments I’ve heard reduce to arguments from incredulity, and this argument is no different. Inability to conceive of a higher good is the only thing grounding the claim that any given instance of suffering is needless. 6 is a naked assertion sustained only by incredulity. That alone invalidates the argument in my opinion, but I can make a stronger case.
July 25, 2011
Along the lines of what we’ve been talking about, I’d like to highlight a selection from the blogosphere that I think is typical of the atheist position. To a commenter who challenged the Muehlhauserian use of emotional imagery to score rhetorical points in the POE, an atheist blogger who’s name is not worth repeating recently wrote,
The problem with your logic is that you fail to acknowledge the assumed premise. In this case, the assumed premise is that God is good. No. Better than good. He’s perfect. He is goodness exemplified. He is omni-benevolent. He is who all goodness tries to emulate. A good god insures that there is only goodness in the world. etc. etc. blather blather, etc. IOW, with a benevolent god there should be no evil.
July 22, 2011
Would you accept the presence of evil as evidence of an evil, but not necessarily omnipotent god? Why or why not?
July 17, 2011
While I’ll still gladly engage anybody on the issue, these days, I’m leaning towards the conclusion that the atheist’s problem of evil arguments are fatally flawed. In the end, all variants I’ve encountered reduce to incredulity: reasoning from premises derived at via conceptual analysis and intuition, the atheist disbelieves that a morally sufficient reason can exist: “There’s no way a good God would allow this much evil in the world.” That’s it. I’ve not seen a single POE argument that doesn’t reduce thus, and I’ll leave it to you to decide whether disbelief is sufficient to warrant skepticism in this regard. I say no. I mean, people said the same thing about QM and all sorts of other stuff: “There’s no way light can act as both particle and wave!” “There’s no way an airplane can fly!” “There’s no way man will walk on the moon!” Etc. This is why I like what they attribute to Archimedes: with a long enough lever, one could move the Earth.
Is anybody aware of a POE argument that doesn’t reduce thus?
March 22, 2011
(Formerly: Does Phil Stilwell Promote Irrationality?)
P1 Any source that promotes binary and absolute belief/disbelief for human epistemic agents is promoting irrationality [Phil Stilwell, bold mine]
P2 Phil Stilwell promotes binary and absolute disbelief for human epistemic agents: “If you argue that the square triangle in your pocket is made of gold, and produce genuine gold flakes as evidence, we still know with absolute certainty that you do not have a golden square triangle in your pocket.” [Phil Stilwell, bold mine]
C Phil Stilwell promotes irrationality
It seems to me his only out would be to argue that the proposition, “you do not have a golden square triangle in your pocket” is tautological. Of course, this assumes Phil merely forgot to add the qualifier “in a non-tautological proposition” to P1 [which is really P5 as delineated here].
What sayest thou?
So, right about here, atheist agnostic blogger Phil Stilwell popped up and claimed that “Christianity refutes Christianity,” offering, among others, the following argument:
P1 Jesus considered those who believe with less confirmatory evidence more blessed that those who believed with more evidence. (John 20:19-31)
P2 Falsehoods are more likely to have less confirmatory evidence at their disposal than have truths.
P3 Those who believe with less confirmatory evidence are more likely to believe falsehoods.
C Jesus considered those who are more likely to believe falsehoods more blessed. (P1 – P3)
My initial response was that P2 is mere assertion. Phil asked me to state what I believe about evidence and justification, and I answered. I later explained that even if I accept P2 for the sake of argument, Phil’s syllogism remains unsound on account of P1. In between his insults, Phil kept asking me to repeat myself, which I did here, here, here, and here. Now, Phil’s offered a new argument, and I’d like to address it separately from Faith’s Failure 1.0, which–I believe–we are still discussing.
September 30, 2010
I’ve ranted about campaign commercials before, and I don’t really have anything new to say about them, but I saw one today that contained a perfect example of a bad argument.
A Meg Whitman commercial begins by comparing Sacramento and Silicon Valley, claiming the former is unorganized and the latter organized. In support of that statement, the narrator goes on to namedrop:
Apple. Intel. Ebay…
What’s wrong with this picture? Meg Whitman is certainly responsible for some success at Ebay, but what does she have to do with Apple? Intel? I know she’s been at the helms of prominent companies like Proctor & Gamble, Hasbro, Disney and others, but – as far as I know – Meg Whitman has nothing to do with Apple or Intel. So why does her commercial subtly imply a link where none apparently exists?
June 16, 2010
Is there anybody out there who hasn't heard some debater quip, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence?"
I'm betting not.
How many people actually stop and consider the rhetorical device they're using?
I'm betting not that many, else we'd hear it much less!
At any rate, I've got a very simple and straight-forward example of an instance where the claim, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" can easily be shown false.
April 19, 2010
We discussed the method and some preliminary objections here. I think the best way to illustrate the method’s strengths and weaknesses would be to just dive in and play around with it.
It is my opinion that any moral theory worthy of being considered “the best” should be able to guide both isolated individuals and interactive groups towards the “moral good” at any given time. So, I’ll begin by considering the effects of any particular desire on the affected desires of an isolated individual, in order to specifically determine whether or not the particular desire tends to fulfill or thwart other desires. My hypothesis was that if desirism’s definition of good is sufficient, the numbers should line up with our moral intuitions most of the time.
