tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3984202664584017781.post3675237437959020306..comments2021-02-19T20:57:34.578-08:00Comments on Skepsis: The Most Powerful Evidential Argument Against God?Yorgohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12187464991519635169noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3984202664584017781.post-30263053507197024212014-06-04T13:54:35.280-07:002014-06-04T13:54:35.280-07:00The 2 URLs (links) above are not active. If you wa...The 2 URLs (links) above are not active. If you want to check them out, you have to copy them and paste them into the address bar at the top of your web browser.<br /><br />Here they are again:<br /><br />http://www.iep.utm.edu/evil-evi/#SH2a<br /><br />http://philosophy.acadiau.ca/tl_files/sites/philosophy/resources/documents/Maitzen_MSO.pdf<br /><br />Plus, regarding Rowe's evidential argument from evil and skeptical theism, Google is your friend!Yorgohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12187464991519635169noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3984202664584017781.post-73927799670401528282014-06-04T13:49:14.707-07:002014-06-04T13:49:14.707-07:00I could stop here. But I won’t.
Christian theism ...I could stop here. But I won’t.<br /><br />Christian theism does entail that there will be a vast epistemic chasm between God and us so the Lord should indeed appear to work in mysterious ways. I warn you, though, that there are significant consequences that flow from that state of affairs that are as or even more problematic with respect to Christian theism than the problems that this response seems to address. I encourage you to become familiar with the can of worms known as “skeptical theism”. You may not want to resort to opening it during these interlocutions. <br /><br />http://philosophy.acadiau.ca/tl_files/sites/philosophy/resources/documents/Maitzen_MSO.pdf<br /><br />Let’s consider this notion of God wanting us to freely enter into a loving relationship with him without a gun to our heads. It strikes me as the most foul double standard to argue that God remains hidden for fear of interfering with our free will while the doctrine in his highly implausible book indicates eternal hellfire for failing to believe on insufficient evidence. I’m afraid that Christian doctrine places the mother of all guns to our heads, Johnston, and I will remind you that we entered into this conversation on FB as you were defending the Catholic doctrine of indulgences which wave around a flame-thrower spewing searing purgatorial heat. <br /><br />But there is an even deeper problem with this reasoning. The type of free will you are no doubt referring to – contra-causal or libertarian free will – it seems we do not possess. Even worse, it may not even be a coherent notion. I don’t wish to go off on this tangent, but surely you must be aware that bringing free will into the conversation hinges the defense of God’s hiddenness and the problem of non-belief on a subject that may not even be real or make any sense.<br /><br />You used the analogy of God as a parent. Is the parent-child relationship tarnished or diminished because the unconditional love parents show children unduly influences them? Should children not be interfered with in this way, that is, not loved, so that they can “freely choose” whether to love their parents or not? A good parent wants his children to love him, so he does not abandon them. He makes them aware of his existence and more. He makes them aware of his love. God, if he exists, has left billions needlessly bewildered.<br /><br />But a deeper question is whether anybody ever is free to choose what to believe or even what loving relationship to enter into. Are you free to choose to believe that Santa Claus is vacationing in Maui at the moment?<br /><br />Even if I grant you that we are free to choose chocolate or vanilla, it seems to me that we are compelled to believe what we believe for a variety of reasons including indoctrination, peer pressure, praise, ridicule, condemnation, and evidence. Does evidence interfere with our free will? Bad question. Free will has nothing to do with what we believe. I doubt it has anything to do with whom we fall in love or when. Where is someone’s freedom when they experience love at first sight, or when they realize after a few years that they have come to romantically love their best friend? So I challenge the entire foundation of your defense of God’s hiddenness and the problem of widespread nonbelief.Yorgohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12187464991519635169noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3984202664584017781.post-92134291829886451772014-06-04T13:48:53.499-07:002014-06-04T13:48:53.499-07:00Thanks for your interest, Johnston. It’s always a...Thanks for your interest, Johnston. It’s always a pleasure to share thoughts with you.<br /><br />You seem to be objecting to premise 1 of the ANB. Secondly, you’re objecting to premise 1 of Rowe’s evidential argument from evil (http://www.iep.utm.edu/evil-evi/#SH2a). When I write about that, I’ll address your concern there. <br /><br />Regarding (1), you’re suggesting that my limited, human epistemic perspective prevents me from understanding why God doesn’t provide causally sufficient evidence of his existence or a convincing religious experience to everybody. Then you propose an explanation for that state of affairs, namely that while God wants us to freely choose to love him, “if we encountered the fullness of God in our bodies, our free will would be obliterated.”<br /><br />Where to begin?<br /><br />The argument from non-belief (and the evidential argument from evil) is not aimed at showing that the existence of God is logically impossible. Rather, the available evidence is meant to show that, all else equal, the existence of God is less probable. The vast evidence for nonbelief throughout space and time make the existence of God much less probable, but the conclusion is always probabilistic.<br /><br />Accordingly, a defense that suggests that it’s merely possible that God has some good explanation for the evidence we observe just doesn’t cut it. I might argue that it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, but your retort that it could possibly be a robot that looks like a duck has little influence on my conclusion that it is a duck. So do not mistake what is merely possible for what is actually probable. You must plausibly argue that the following conjunction is probable: that (1) God can make his existence known to people but (2) that would rob them of their freedom to enter into a loving relationship with him. How could you do such a thing without it seeming completely ad hoc?<br /><br />Isn’t it rather clear that God doesn’t have to “expose our bodies to his fullness” in order to convince us of his existence? He is omnipotent, after all! Surely he could convince us of his existence with some lesser type of religious experience, the kind that people regularly describe and with which scripture is replete. He could appear to people (as a talking flame, say, or in the corporeal form in which he allegedly appeared to the disciples post mortem) and perform miracles as he has allegedly done before. He could have provided within scripture information that no living human author could have known (like the germ theory of disease, say, or heliocentrism, that E=MC2, how heredity & DNA works, etc.). He could appeal to individuals with information about their lives that nobody else could know. It’s not hard to come up with examples that he has apparently used in the past to make his existence known that would not overwhelm a human being in the way that you postulateYorgohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12187464991519635169noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3984202664584017781.post-59420043522379950322014-06-02T07:29:18.240-07:002014-06-02T07:29:18.240-07:00I compliment you, Yorgo, on rooting out a couple o... I compliment you, Yorgo, on rooting out a couple of arguments with which I have had no previous experience. The argument about distribution of believers is a fresh one. But for now, rather than operating at the empirical level, I'd like to spend some time at the epistemological level.<br /> "Omnipotent God could easily provide causally sufficient evidence or a convincing religious experience so that everybody would know the truth of the gospel message." <br /> I suspect that part of the problem here is that God is construed as being human-like in how he is, particularly in how he loves and how he exercises his omnipotence. So, we humans implicitly say, "Well, if I were God, then I would make myself obvious to people and I would abolish all suffering." Perhaps the chimp in your posted picture equally might say, "If I were human, well there'd be no meat eaten, just bananas." Hence, I suggest that there is an epistemological flaw in assuming that God must exercises his innate qualities in the same way which I might exercises them were I God.<br /> In the Hebrew scriptures one frequently encounters statements from Yahweh like, "My ways are not your ways." Indeed, in the tradition of the biblical Hebrews to see God was to die. My interpretation of this is that were we to encounter in our bodies the fullness of God, our free will would be obliterated. I believe that God wants us to love him...and who can love with a gun to his head?<br /> One of your persistent arguments concerns the theodicy problem. And it is a credit to anyone's humanity that he hates to see others suffering and, even better, he strives to ameliorate the causes of others' suffering. So, the atheist, like Prometheus, refuses to acknowledge a god who permits suffering to continue. <br /> But look at yourself as a parent. Of course you do all you can to make your children's lives good and to prevent harm from coming to them. But do you cosset them in a crib? One of the current concerns in the medical community is that North American children have become obese and unfit because parents are confining them to strict supervision for fear of predators or who knows what. Yes, I suppose that if kids "go out to play" some will break limbs but I am with Baden Powell who commented, "Better a broken arm than a broken spirit."<br /> Or look at the times you have to discipline your children for their own good. Oh, I know parents say, "This hurts me more than it hurts you." I know mine did. But what child accepted this statement? And what child would choose the discipline, had s/he the choice?<br /> Is it not possible that God is like this parent? That God does love us fully and passionately but that because of God's bigger picture in his loving care he permits things which to our limited perspective seem unjust or even callous? <br /> Anyhow, Yorgo, the bell just rang and I must attend to the instruction of young minds!<br />And so addressing your distribution argument will have to wait.<br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com