...Continued

But in general and on the whole, it is theism that is making the original claim and atheism is simply the response to that claim. Atheism does not necessitate the assertion that no gods exist. That is simply an additional step that some atheists will take.

I realise this is slightly different to the reasoning I gave before, but that response was hammered out within minutes while I was at work, which is also the reason why I accepted your ’court of law’ reasoning when I now reject it as completely wrong since, in some cases, the best thing for the defence to do is nothing and call no witnesses to the stand if the prosecution hasn’t even got a good case to begin with.

Why make claims that you're going to have to back if you don't yet have anything to prove?

<<Of course even if the burden of proof fell on theists...>>

Which we have now well and truly demonstrated that it does.

<<...it doesn’t mean that athests can rationally have a belief that there is no God or other divine reality without evidence.>>

Yes, it does.

In a court of law, the default position is ‘not guilty’. But not guilty doesn’t necessarily mean 'innocent', it just means that there is insufficient evidence to say “guilty” and if the prosecution cannot prove guilt, then it is rational for the jury to vote ‘not guilty’.

The same goes for atheism and theism - with atheism obviously being the ‘not guilty’.

I suspect the only reason for your confusion here and your inability to draw the parallels, is because jurors in a court of law don’t have a label like atheism (unfortunately) does. They don’t refer to themselves as the “Not-guilyists”.

With all the above having been said, and in all fairness to yourself, I can actually see why you thought you still had a point (I’ll try to take more care in responding in the future and not bang responses out so quickly at work), I trust that you now realise that you don’t.

Still no evidence though.

Just some additional thoughts, mjpb.

Firstly, your claim that you were responding in a manner that would keep things sequential is discredited by the fact that there was never any need to respond in the first place considering I had already pointed out that your entire argument was a mere fallacy to begin with.

On another note, I just thought I’d point out the fact that my arguments last night actually also disprove your asinine claim that atheists have faith. According to your logic, a juror’s initial presumption of innocence is a “faith”.

Let’s face it, mjpb, despite holding it, you have no idea what faith is. Either that or your application of it to atheism is pure dishonesty. And my claim that Philo was simply making it up as he went applies to you and CS Lewis too since your definitions of faith are much more far-removed from the Bible’s definition than mine.

At least my definition is more objective.

Speaking of dishonestly applying faith to atheism, let’s weigh-up and examine your claim that you “didn’t have enough faith to remain an atheist”, shall we?

What you’ve essentially claimed is that you went through life, day-by-day, with this constantly niggling question in the back of your mind:

Why does the universe appear so finely tuned?

Then one day, it hit you!

“Yes, that’s it!” you screamed as you jumped out of your chair. “God must’ve done it!”

You’d gone through your whole life consumed by this one question and were subsequently faced with two options:

1. Continue to marvel at the mysteries of the universe and ponder the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’, or;
2. Give up, be lazy and plonk god into this unknown to ease your discomfort of not knowing everything.

On that fateful day, not only did you take the easy way out by choosing option ‘2’, but this realisation somehow lead you to believe that, not only was the god of the predominant religion in your culture the real god (What a co-incidence!), but that he was most satisfied with worship of the Catholic variety.

Continued...

...Continued

And you have the audacity to wonder how I could possibly consider the belief in god ‘irrational’.

Unbelievable!

Who knows where the “faith” part comes into it though, but the above scenario demonstrates the shear dishonesty of your claim.

I’d say it’s about time you coughed-up those retractions now.

Wouldn’t you?

A J Phillips,

”As for this fine tuning argument, your god hypothesis is even more speculative than a multiverse (since a multiverse would at least adhere to the natural/physical realm - a realm we actually know exists - and not some unproven supernatural realm), and speculation is not evidence.’

The facts are the evidence. I listed ten of them. What they evidence is necessarily speculative. Evidence does not equate to a conclusion. It is just helpful in forming the conclusion in the context of other evidence. As I’ve said the same evidence could be speculated to point to two opposing arguments. Generally evidence gets put together with other evidence and with reasoning to work out what is more likely. If a burden of proof rule applies then whether the burden of proof is met is what gets worked out. In this type of situation (ours) the Socratic approach of follow where the evidence leads seems preferable to deciding in advance that God and the multiverse are too speculative so we should ignore the evidence.

’Perhaps one of the most important points here though, and possibly the one most fatal to your argument, is the simple fact that ‘unlikely’ does not mean ‘impossible’ - no matter how unlikely. Even if a naturalistic explanation were found to be impossible, you would still have to demonstrate that anything like what you’re proposing exists.’

Yes and that is where the evidence and reasoning comes in.

’122, 1022, it doesn’t matter. Your god does not become anymore likely than some other unthought-of phenomena.’

God unthought of? That’s a first. Every bit of evidence adds weight to a possibility.

I haven’t finalized number 13 of your 14 arguments against fine tuning (although you don’t seem to think I should have addressed them in the first place). With regard to 13 I have solved part of the schoolboy riddle. If God created space and time then He must be outside time so He couldn’t expire in our time.

‘<<It has been reasonably argued that theism is the default position.>>

No, it hasn’t.”

Yes it has. That was the position taken by Alvin Plantinga in a debate between Platinga, William Alston, George Mavrodes, and Ralph McInterny against Antony Flew, Wallace Matson, Kai Nielsen and Paul Kurtz.

’Sure, I may have been a theist before now, but I was still an atheist before my parents indoctrinated me.’

So you didn’t convert independently of your family and then reconvert. You grew up in a religious family then became an atheist. I grew up in an atheist family and converted.

<<Belief in God is properly basic and is entitled to the default position but I mention that in passing.>>

”If someone tells you the Lochness monster exists, do you believe them until it’s proven that it doesn’t exist?

No.’

I wouldn’t but some do and some don’t. However the point is not whether or not I or anyone else would believe it. The point is that if someone asserted that the Lochness monster exists if that someone wanted to argue the toss and wanted the Lochness monster believer to take them seriously they would need to argue it. They share the burden. This is different to a courtroom situation where procedural rules dictate the burden of proof.

”If I was to start a thread in the here, where I brazenly got up and saidomething along the lines of, “Look here Christians. Your god doesn’t exist, okay!”, then yes, it could be argued that in that particular case, on that particular occasion, I would have the burden of proof.”

What if in the course of an existing thread you said that theism doesn’t deserve respect and adopted statements such as theism is like reading chicken entrails?

‘But in general and on the whole, it is theism that is making the original claim and atheism is simply the response to that claim. Atheism does not necessitate the assertion that no gods exist. That is simply an additional step that some atheists will take.’

In reality it is typically out there and whether one gets exposed to claims of theism or atheism first all depends. By definition atheism can be a mere absence of belief either way and you seem to be attempting to get close to that there. But those who assert that definition typically seem to be the ones who take the additional step.

My argument regarding burden of proof does not depend on Platinga’s position. I just threw it in to show that you can’t necessarily take it for granted that atheism is default and counterargument has happened. I apologise if that created the misimpression that I was arguing that atheism is the positive assertion and thus (by your reckoning) it attracts the burden of proof.

Rather I am trying to shake the idea that as a matter of logic the positive assertion automatically attracts the burden of proof. In a court of law the burden of proof results from procedural rules. Levels of burden of proof and who has them can be quite nuanced but generally the party asserting something gets the burden of proof. I am arguing that those procedural rules do not apply to social debates as a matter of logic.

’I realise this is slightly different to the reasoning I gave before, but that response was hammered out within minutes while I was at work, which is also the reason why I accepted your ’court of law’ reasoning when I now reject it as completely wrong since, in some cases, the best thing for the defence to do is nothing and call no witnesses to the stand if the prosecution hasn’t even got a good case to begin with.”