Darwin,Atheism and Religion

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Originally Posted by Climacus

And how will you prove that it is unreasonable? With something other than logic?

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None have ever been found. Unicorns don't fit with the current biological data. You can call that logic if you like. Someone says something that strikes me as odd and I experience an immediate gut reaction that screams "say what?!"

Is the scientific method synonymous with logic? Do scientists train in logic? Maybe, I don't really know.

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Originally Posted by Climacus

There are no formal arguments here. You seem to be having trouble understanding what a logical argument is, and that's OK. Again, most people haven't studied logic. Arguments, either deductive or inductive, move step by step, from propositions called premises, to a proposition called a conclusion. Here's an example of a syllogistic argument against God: "All that which exists is empirically verifiable. But God is not empirically verifiable. Therefore God doesn't exist." The conclusion follows deductively from the premises, so that if the premises are true then the conclusion must be true as well. This is the sort of thing I'm asking for. If you're having trouble articulating it, post it anyway and I'll formulate it to your satisfaction, if I can.

That's a topic for another discussion. You said that you're an atheist. I've made no such metaphysical truth-claims. You don't know what I am. :wink5:

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You have no argument? What about intention? Is it to give me lessons on how to speak according to sixth grade standard formats? I'm not some dunce. I know what I'm doing, kid. Please yourself.

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Originally Posted by Darcy88

None have ever been found. Unicorns don't fit with the current biological data. You can call that logic if you like. Someone says something that strikes me as odd and I experience an immediate gut reaction that screams "say what?!"

Is the scientific method synonymous with logic? Do scientists train in logic? Maybe, I don't really know.

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Science presupposes logic. A priori logical truths are not accessible to the scientific method, but the scientific method wouldn't work without them. You can't run from logic, Darcy.

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Originally Posted by Varenne Rodin

I'm not some dunce. I know what I'm doing, kid. Please yourself.

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I know you're not a dunce, and I didn't mean to imply that you were. But if you tell me that you've studied formal logic, you'd be lying (or else, you've forgetton all that you learned). You don't know how to formulate an argument. That's OK.

I think of our ape ancestors, picking berries, climbing trees. A weak branch or poisonous berry meant death. They had to be sure. Instinct was their compass.

A priori, logic, formal arguments, ect. These are not necessary when figuring out what is true or false. We don't deal with absolute certainties. We deal with likelihoods. Even with science.

In theory the scientific method deals with logic, but in its actual implementation its about observing and theorizing. You seem to make sense of the world through the lens of logic and to me this is backwards.

And you shouldn't fault someone for not studying formal logic. There are people far more intelligent that you or I who have never studied it. Its ridiculous to require someone be familiar with formal logic for them to be taken seriously.

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Originally Posted by billl

If you want to use modus ponens, you can't just go changing what the p's and q's stand for. Your "reductio ad absurdum" was a mis-direction, ignoring that the discussion is about belief, and would rightly include only those with the capacity for belief. Varenne was, of course, saying that atheists are people who have no belief in god(s).

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There's nothing wrong with my ad absurdum, Bill. I didn't alter the propositions. (I did misname it though; I meant to say modus tollens, sorry.)

Here it is again: If (p) atheism is merely a lack of belief, then (q) rocks and trees are atheists. But (not-q) rocks and trees are not atheists. Therefore, etc (not-p).

I thought the omitted (not-p) at the end was obvious.

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Originally Posted by Climacus

There's nothing wrong with my ad absurdum, Bill. I didn't alter the propositions. (I did misname it though; I meant to say modus tollens.)

Here it is again: If (p) atheism is merely a lack of belief, then (q) rocks and trees are atheists. But (not-q) rocks and trees are not atheists. Therefore, etc (not-p).

I thought the omitted (not-p) at the end was obvious.

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Rocks and trees are atheistic, people with a lack of belief are atheist. You can't use these arguments to demonstrate something about semantics because of how semantics functions. The implicit definition of atheist by its conception only incorporates people, as Bill pointed out. Your conclusion also isn't even absurd, rocks are implicitly atheistic, since they have no capacity for belief in anything. The conclusion is banal, not absurd.

This is the debate between implicit and explicit atheism, it's all a matter of definition.

Thanks, Darcy. :)

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Originally Posted by Climacus

There's nothing wrong with my ad absurdum, Bill. I didn't alter the propositions. (I did misname it though; I meant to say modus tollens, sorry.)

Here it is again: If (p) atheism is merely a lack of belief, then (q) rocks and trees are atheists. But (not-q) rocks and trees are not atheists. Therefore, etc (not-p).

I thought the omitted (not-p) at the end was obvious.

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Well, I did get Calidore and Varenne mixed up, I can now see.

Anyhow, if anyone jumped to the conclusion that the element p (an atheist) was anything other than a person who subscribes to the proposition that they have no belief in gods, it was you alone. I don't see the utility of the move, except to drag things out. Changing it to simply "lack of belief" and then pointing to rocks and trees is a low rhetorical trick, and it'd get you laughed out of your logic class.

Calidore is making an argument for the position that Negative Atheists make. Again, it's a very common definition of atheism.

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Originally Posted by Darcy88

A priori, logic, formal arguments, ect. These are not necessary when figuring out what is true or false. We don't deal with absolute certainties. We deal with likelihoods. Even with science.

In theory the scientific method deals with logic, but in its actual implementation its about observing and theorizing. You seem to make sense of the world through the lens of logic and to me this is backwards.

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You're wrong on every front here. Logic is prior to science. If it weren't for logic, science wouldn't work. If you deny logic, you cut the branch out from under science. And, yes, a priori truths are necessary for ascertaining truth. The world would be a madhouse without them. If we woke up tomorrow and modus tollens no longer held, we'd be in serious trouble.

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And you shouldn't fault someone for not studying formal logic. There are people far more intelligent that you or I who have never studied it. Its ridiculous to require someone be familiar with formal logic for them to be taken seriously.

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Now, now Darcy. Don't straw-man me. Of course, there are extremely intelligent people who've never studied logic formally. And I never said I didn't take anybody seriously. But logic used to be part of our curriculum. From the time of Aristotle up to the later nineteenth century. It's now a specialist course in universities. And that is lamentable.

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Originally Posted by Darcy88

We don't deal with absolute certainties. We deal with likelihoods. Even with science.

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Regardless Climacus, this statement of mine still stands. I don't need final irrefutable logical proof to claim that belief in God is unreasonable. I need it to say that there is no possible way God exists, but that's not what I or most atheists believe. We simply believe that there is no good reason to believe that He does exist. You have no logical certainty behind your lack of belief in unicorns, centaurs, lizard people, ect. Its about likelihood.

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Originally Posted by billl

Anyhow, if anyone jumped to the conclusion that the element p (an atheist) was anything other than a person who subscribes to the proposition that they have no belief in gods, it was you alone. I don't see the utility of the move, except to drag things out. Changing it to simply "lack of belief" and then pointing to rocks and trees is a low rhetorical trick, and it'd get you laughed out of your logic class.

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You don't refute an argument with ad hominem attacks, Bill. (And I would hope people laugh at it. It's supposed to be funny.) Arguments can fail in one of three ways: (1) ambiguous terms, (2) false premises, and (3) invalid reasoning.

Here it is again: "If atheism is merely a lack of belief, then rocks and trees are atheists. But rocks and trees are not atheists. Therefore, atheism is not merely a lack of belief."

The terms are unambiguous, the reasoning is valid. So, is one of the premises false? Which one? You seem to be suggest that the following conditional is false: "If atheism is merely a lack of belief, then rocks and trees are atheists." But rocks and trees do lack belief. So if atheism is merely a lack of belief, then rocks and trees are atheists.

Now, it's just a silly little thought experiment. I don't care about it either way. But nobody's refuted it as such.

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Originally Posted by Climacus

Now, it's just a silly little thought experiment. I don't care about it either way. But nobody's refuted it as such.

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I'll agree with this. Now, can you show where I was wrong about the mis-application of your modus ponens example/thought-experiment to the discussion?

All this argument about whether an argument is really a proper argument is getting dangerously close to a Monty Python sketch brought into real life.

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Originally Posted by billl

I'll agree with this. Now, can you show where I was wrong about the mis-application of your modus ponens example/thought-experiment to the discussion?

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Are you asking why I talked about the re-definition of atheism as a lack of belief? If so, because Varenne hinted at in an earlier post (#15), and because most of these debates are plagued by equivocation, so it's good to tackle definitions first-off.