From: posting-system@google.com Sent: Monday, January 07, 2002 3:21 PM To: brian@holtz.org Subject: Re: How to answer "it provides comfort etc" From: brian@holtz.org (Brian Holtz) Newsgroups: alt.atheism.moderated Subject: Re: How to answer "it provides comfort etc" References: <3C1419C4.4D758CA5@jamtoday.com> <7dc30e65.0112131110.32307cac@posting.google.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 12.236.1.8 Message-ID: <29c16047.0201071521.26d8e1d@posting.google.com> "Gurnemanz" wrote > > > > False hopes cause wasted lives > > Not necessarily. I didn't say necessarily. > Suppose someone hopes to make as much money as Bill Gates [..] > a doctor hopes to eliminate a particular disease [..] These analogies fail, as they admit of partial success. If there is no afterlife, hoping for one cannot help achieve a partial afterlife. > > the primary hopes offered > > by all major religions -- of afterlife, or communion with a a > > consequential ultimate reality -- are, as far as I can tell, false. > > > others may have good grounds for disagreeing with your view. Let's hear those grounds then. Are they anything other than the grounds summarized and rejected in section 1.1.2. (Philosophy / Metaphysics / Theology) of my book? > > the argument that these hopes are false is reasonably > > compelling. Its primary component is the absence of a compelling > > argument that these hopes are true. > > "Reasonably compelling" seems to me to be oxymoronic. In what sense? Cannot an empirical argument (as opposed to a formal proof) be only somewhat compelling/convincing/persuasive? > The absence of a compelling argument for the truths of > religion does not entitle you to infer that those claims > are false. I'm of course not saying that the absence of a decisive, dispositive argument for the existence of X itself constitutes a decisive, dispositive argument against X's existence. However, that absence is a prima facie good argument against X's existence, especially when the evidence cited has other more-plausible explanations. > In fact you are simply making a fallacious appeal > to ignorance. No, I'm appealing to parsimony. > > I wouldn't regret such > > an occasional daydream, though I would of course regret predicating > > my retirement on a lottery. Similarly, one would (or at least should) > > regret structuring one's life to win an afterlife reward that does > > not exist. > > > The analogy is obviously unsuccessful- one can cannot calculate > the probability that the claims of religion are false in the manner > that one can with the lottery example. The analogy succeeds in demonstrating that false hopes of a lottery win might not waste one's life in the same way as false hopes of an afterlife. Or do you claim that (by hypothesis) false religious hopes are less likely to influence one's life in regrettable ways than are idle daydreams of a lottery win? > > the hoped-for circumstances are so demonstrably unlikely > > that the hoper behaves in ways she would regret if she better > > understood that unlikelihood. > > > That implies that you have an argument with which you > can demonstrate that the hopes of the believer are > unlikely. Could you present it? A summary of such an argument is in my book. And I was winning such an argument with you when you disappeared last June. :-) So instead of stopping by every few months and simply stating that atheistic arguments aren't convincing and that good theistic arguments exist, why don't you stick around and debate these arguments? When you disappeared last June, my questions on the table for you were as follows: --------------------------------------------------------------- > I don't accept that the claim that we are finding less and less > design in the world is sustainable. Plainly dances, computer > programs, paintings etc are the products of design. In the context of the Teleological Argument, what counts is original design, not derivative design. Are you seriously claiming that every line of Java code I write increases the evidence for a cosmic designer? [..] Is your belief in theism independent of all possible empirical evidence? Is there no observable difference between a possible world in which theism is true and one in which it is false? Do you claim that it would not be possible for an actual god to produce empirical evidence that would make me a theist by tomorrow? Is there no possible pattern of empirical evidence that could dissuade you from theism? Do you have any beliefs based on revelation and exempt from doubt? > it would always be arguable that the > highest level laws were the product of design. Ah, so I was right: there is *no* possible pattern of empirical evidence that could dissuade you from theism. It seems that your teleological argument in fact reduces to one or both of the ontological and cosmological arguments. This perhaps explains why, in a thread devoted to your argument from design, you've talked so much about metaphysics, and so little about empirical evidence of design. :-) > An argument for theism > such as the one I refer to above utilizes the notion of > a maximally perfect reality- that concept isn't open to the atheist. > When have more time I will present the argument to make this clearer. Still waiting... -- brian@holtz.org http://humanknowledge.net