(By the way, I've been unable to find a precise name for the cognitive fallacy wherein if you observe that all things which achieve goal Z have attribute X, then you come to think that attribute X is a good predictor of achieving goal Z. It's not the same as the "post hoc fallacy" or the mistaken belief that "correlation equals causation," because both of those are about the illusion of causation. I'm talking about the correlation being an illusion in the first place â" where people come to believe that attribute X is a good predictor of achieving result Z, ignoring the fact that there may be enormous numbers of cases where attribute X is true, but which never go on to achieve result Z. If you know the exact name of that fallacy, shoot me an email and submit a comment below.)
Well, ok. I promise this is my last post. I understand its not very fair to you to just wave my hands and tell you how stupid this argument is, if you've never had it. Its the theological equivalent of talking to a intro to physics student about the absolute speed of light. They always propose hypothetical situations, which you already know they are going to be wrong without them asking. I just thought I'd head you off at the pas and give you some time to reflect on the flaw before getting into a heated debate. But given the way our discussion has already gone, you don't seem to be picking it up, or understanding 80 % of my posts. If you don't understand Calculus, its tough to teach ODE, no? So consider this the physics for poets digest.
I'll ignore the condescension, since you actually follow it up by talking about the argument itself.
Me: #2 fails because I believe an All knowing, All loving God can have reasonable people who do not believe in him. A principle in many denominations of Christianity is that of God granting us free will. If we have free will, we can choose or not choose to believe in God.
We can choose our beliefs? Even with a libertarian view of free will, it isn't simply a given that we are capable of choosing our beliefs. You need some kind of doxastic voluntarism to be true, for this to be an objection to the argument. Do you have any evidence that this is the case?
Additionally, he has given us testimonials form other credible sources, but prefers to let other humans do the Evangelization. It does not logically follow that an all Loving Creator God must directly communicate with his creation.
Nothing in the argument entails that a perfectly loving God must directly communicate with his creation. This is nothing more than a red herring.
You: An All loving God would want everyone to know he exists, so they could love him too!
Not quite. A perfectly loving God would want everyone to believe that he exists, because such a belief is required for a mutually explicit, meaningful love relationship to exist between God and his creations. I don't know what else "perfectly loving" could mean, other than the desire to participate in such a relationship with everyone who was willing.
Well, that's fine with me, I suppose. I just think it is curious that you keep repeating how "pointless" and "circular" this argument is, yet you don't actually bother to point out how it is so. As it doesn't seem like you're interested in an actual exchange, I'm done now.
I'm not sure at all what to make of your "warnings". Do you not think it important to understand the meanings of the words we use, or to aim for precision in that understanding? If your understanding of "unsurpassable" (note: not simply "unsurpassed") or "perfectly loving" differs from mine, that's fine. But to suggest that there's some harm in being exacting when talking about these issues seems a little odd.
Well, honestly you failed on step #2. We could argue about it, but it would really just you arguing that a God you don't believe exists must display a certain property in a certain way, in order for you to prove that he doesn't exist. It gets circular, and really just ends up with you defining a God you don't want to exist, and I certainly wouldn't want to exist ( believer that I am). its stupid and a waste of time, as all proofs and disproofs of God are.
Well, sure. This argument only "works" if you understand "God" to be a perfect or unsurpassable being. If you don't think God is such a thing, then it probably doesn't apply to whatever that thing is. But that's very different than the enterprise of natural theology/atheology being a waste of time.
Disprove the existence of God. It's OK. I'll wait.
Well, I'm not the person you asked. But I'll give it a go.
1) If there is a God, he is perfectly loving. 2) If a perfectly loving God exists, reasonable non-belief in the existence of God does not occur. 3) Reasonable non-belief in the existence of God does occur. 4) No perfectly loving God exists. 5) There is no God. (Schellenberg 1993: 83)
1) Time cannot have started an infinite amount of time ago, because adding a finite amount of time to a negative inifnity will never result in the present day. 2) Therefore the universe cannot be infinitely old 3) Therefore it had a starting moment 4) Therefore it is more likely it was created than not.
Sadly, this isn't even valid. At least the modern, three-premise version of the argument (as defended by William Lane Craig) has that going for it. However, something like this is appropriated by Craig as justification for his second premise. Unfortunately, his arguments for the impossibility of an "actual infinite" fail just as badly.
If you mean to say that "God does not exist," cannot possibly be the conclusion of a sound argument, you're simply wrong. Indeed there are many valid arguments which would serve as candidates (evil, hiddenness, etc.).
People should only be taxed for what they use, when I buy an online good for physical money what service of the government am I using? I use paypal which is a private company to use my private credit card on a private site to get something online which go through the privately owned internet lines which I pay for out of my own pocket, to another privately owned server where I play my game.
That's all well and good, I suppose. But when you pay money for an online good and the seller reneges on the deal to deliver, just don't come crying to the government-run courts or police, okay?
Remember also that every trade on the market which is not directly linked to the true value of a stock actively destroys information because it introduces noise into the market, polluting the use of that stock's trading symbol as a measure of real wealth (rather than imaginary fantasy wealth).
(Emphasis mine)
What exactly is the "true value of the stock"? If your answer has anything to do with the future (future revenue, future earnings, etc.), please explain how you're able to know the "true value" of anything which has yet to happen.
atheism is simply the assertion of a universal negative. such an assertion is both unproven and unprovable. therefore, atheism is a religion ( http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/religion - see #2 and #4).
I'm afraid you're mistaken. I am quite confident when asserting the universal negative, "God does not exist". I am also confident, for exactly the same reasons, when asserting, "There are no married bachelors", or "Five sided squares do not exist".
Far from being "logically indefensible", or "unproven and unprovable", logic requires that we affirm these truths.
They have Chipotle and Culver's on every street corner instead. We all know that burritos the size of your head, and "double butter burgers" are staples of a healthy diet.
You mean Double Butter Burgers aren't healthy? Next thing you'll tell me is that the fried cheese curds and custard aren't healthy either.
I guess I'll have to switch to the onion rings; they're a vegetable.
Shit, now I've got to go to Culver's (best thing to come out of WI since Leinenkugel's).
On the other hand, they could also use the machines themselves (no-one else could, they have the rights) to make energy for free and sell it to you and me for the prices we pay now and stay in business forever.
Not forever, just until their patent runs out. Or, if unpatented, until rediscovered by someone else (which would probably be a shorter time than a patent's length).
Of course free-energy machines would sell, bigtime even! But *what i am afraid will happen* (that is NOT the same as 'I tell you this will happen!') is that other, bigger businesses which would loss energy sales and thus profit, will buy (things like) this and hold it back to protect their interests.
That's what I'm saying. If Exxon (the biggest of the big) came up with, or bought the rights to, a free-energy machine, do you really think they would just hold on to it? Or, would they try to sell the shit out of it, and crush their competitors in the process?
I just don't see how holding it back would make any sense at all, provided Exxon gives it even a moment's thought.
Bingo. Intelligence is one of those corporate feelgood words, like state-of-the-art, or user-friendly. They are completely impossible to quantify.
Exactly. That's how we ended up with things like the Turing Test. I can't define intelligence, but I know it when I see it.
But, that leads to the problem of a human-centric view of intelligence. We have such a hard time defining human intelligence, defining non-human intelligence will be almost impossible.
Anyhow, Microsoft themselves could supply web browser, email client, IM program, complete office suite, media player, which covers most people's uses of netbooks.
This kind of proves my point. If the people who buy these netbooks have all their needs met by MS products, those people aren't really much of a market for third party developers.
Well, if your aim is to develop artificial intelligence, intelligence is probably a pretty good metric to determine how well you've performed the task you set out.
Well, that seems a little too easy. Now all we need is a definition of "intelligence" we can all agree on...
It's the exchange's job to provide liquidity, not Goldman Sachs'.
What?
Who's going to be on the other side of all those trades, if not speculators? A transaction requires two people: a buyer and a seller. The exchange cannot fill the role of either.
The transaction tax will be low enough that occasional trades to shuffle money between investments won't be affected. The fees are aimed at front-running leeches [nytimes.com] who use algorithmic trading to skim the market hurt everyone else.
So... You just want to eliminate liquidity from the market. You don't think that will hurt those "occasional trades to shuffle money between investments" far more than the tax itself?
Slashdot Mirror
(By the way, I've been unable to find a precise name for the cognitive fallacy wherein if you observe that all things which achieve goal Z have attribute X, then you come to think that attribute X is a good predictor of achieving goal Z. It's not the same as the "post hoc fallacy" or the mistaken belief that "correlation equals causation," because both of those are about the illusion of causation. I'm talking about the correlation being an illusion in the first place â" where people come to believe that attribute X is a good predictor of achieving result Z, ignoring the fact that there may be enormous numbers of cases where attribute X is true, but which never go on to achieve result Z. If you know the exact name of that fallacy, shoot me an email and submit a comment below.)
Sounds kinda like the base rate fallacy to me.
Well, ok. I promise this is my last post. I understand its not very fair to you to just wave my hands and tell you how stupid this argument is, if you've never had it. Its the theological equivalent of talking to a intro to physics student about the absolute speed of light. They always propose hypothetical situations, which you already know they are going to be wrong without them asking. I just thought I'd head you off at the pas and give you some time to reflect on the flaw before getting into a heated debate. But given the way our discussion has already gone, you don't seem to be picking it up, or understanding 80 % of my posts. If you don't understand Calculus, its tough to teach ODE, no? So consider this the physics for poets digest.
I'll ignore the condescension, since you actually follow it up by talking about the argument itself.
Me: #2 fails because I believe an All knowing, All loving God can have reasonable people who do not believe in him. A principle in many denominations of Christianity is that of God granting us free will. If we have free will, we can choose or not choose to believe in God.
We can choose our beliefs? Even with a libertarian view of free will, it isn't simply a given that we are capable of choosing our beliefs. You need some kind of doxastic voluntarism to be true, for this to be an objection to the argument. Do you have any evidence that this is the case?
Additionally, he has given us testimonials form other credible sources, but prefers to let other humans do the Evangelization. It does not logically follow that an all Loving Creator God must directly communicate with his creation.
Nothing in the argument entails that a perfectly loving God must directly communicate with his creation. This is nothing more than a red herring.
You: An All loving God would want everyone to know he exists, so they could love him too!
Not quite. A perfectly loving God would want everyone to believe that he exists, because such a belief is required for a mutually explicit, meaningful love relationship to exist between God and his creations. I don't know what else "perfectly loving" could mean, other than the desire to participate in such a relationship with everyone who was willing.
[more red herrings and straw men]
Not much else to respond to here.
Well, that's fine with me, I suppose. I just think it is curious that you keep repeating how "pointless" and "circular" this argument is, yet you don't actually bother to point out how it is so. As it doesn't seem like you're interested in an actual exchange, I'm done now.
I'm not sure at all what to make of your "warnings". Do you not think it important to understand the meanings of the words we use, or to aim for precision in that understanding? If your understanding of "unsurpassable" (note: not simply "unsurpassed") or "perfectly loving" differs from mine, that's fine. But to suggest that there's some harm in being exacting when talking about these issues seems a little odd.
Well, honestly you failed on step #2. We could argue about it, but it would really just you arguing that a God you don't believe exists must display a certain property in a certain way, in order for you to prove that he doesn't exist. It gets circular, and really just ends up with you defining a God you don't want to exist, and I certainly wouldn't want to exist ( believer that I am). its stupid and a waste of time, as all proofs and disproofs of God are.
Well, sure. This argument only "works" if you understand "God" to be a perfect or unsurpassable being. If you don't think God is such a thing, then it probably doesn't apply to whatever that thing is. But that's very different than the enterprise of natural theology/atheology being a waste of time.
Nah. If it is going to be formalized, it will look something more like:
1. A -> B
2. B -> ~C
3. C
4. ~B
5. ~A
And that's how the argument should be understood.
Disprove the existence of God. It's OK. I'll wait.
Well, I'm not the person you asked. But I'll give it a go.
1) If there is a God, he is perfectly loving.
2) If a perfectly loving God exists, reasonable non-belief in the existence of God does not occur.
3) Reasonable non-belief in the existence of God does occur.
4) No perfectly loving God exists.
5) There is no God. (Schellenberg 1993: 83)
1) Time cannot have started an infinite amount of time ago, because adding a finite amount of time to a negative inifnity will never result in the present day.
2) Therefore the universe cannot be infinitely old
3) Therefore it had a starting moment
4) Therefore it is more likely it was created than not.
Sadly, this isn't even valid. At least the modern, three-premise version of the argument (as defended by William Lane Craig) has that going for it. However, something like this is appropriated by Craig as justification for his second premise. Unfortunately, his arguments for the impossibility of an "actual infinite" fail just as badly.
Atheism cannot be proven.
If you mean to say that "God does not exist," cannot possibly be the conclusion of a sound argument, you're simply wrong. Indeed there are many valid arguments which would serve as candidates (evil, hiddenness, etc.).
People should only be taxed for what they use, when I buy an online good for physical money what service of the government am I using? I use paypal which is a private company to use my private credit card on a private site to get something online which go through the privately owned internet lines which I pay for out of my own pocket, to another privately owned server where I play my game.
That's all well and good, I suppose. But when you pay money for an online good and the seller reneges on the deal to deliver, just don't come crying to the government-run courts or police, okay?
Remember also that every trade on the market which is not directly linked to the true value of a stock actively destroys information because it introduces noise into the market, polluting the use of that stock's trading symbol as a measure of real wealth (rather than imaginary fantasy wealth).
(Emphasis mine)
What exactly is the "true value of the stock"? If your answer has anything to do with the future (future revenue, future earnings, etc.), please explain how you're able to know the "true value" of anything which has yet to happen.
atheism is simply the assertion of a universal negative. such an assertion is both unproven and unprovable. therefore, atheism is a religion ( http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/religion - see #2 and #4).
I'm afraid you're mistaken. I am quite confident when asserting the universal negative, "God does not exist". I am also confident, for exactly the same reasons, when asserting, "There are no married bachelors", or "Five sided squares do not exist".
Far from being "logically indefensible", or "unproven and unprovable", logic requires that we affirm these truths.
They have Chipotle and Culver's on every street corner instead. We all know that burritos the size of your head, and "double butter burgers" are staples of a healthy diet.
You mean Double Butter Burgers aren't healthy? Next thing you'll tell me is that the fried cheese curds and custard aren't healthy either.
I guess I'll have to switch to the onion rings; they're a vegetable.
Shit, now I've got to go to Culver's (best thing to come out of WI since Leinenkugel's).
On the other hand, they could also use the machines themselves (no-one else could, they have the rights) to make energy for free and sell it to you and me for the prices we pay now and stay in business forever.
Not forever, just until their patent runs out. Or, if unpatented, until rediscovered by someone else (which would probably be a shorter time than a patent's length).
Of course free-energy machines would sell, bigtime even! But *what i am afraid will happen* (that is NOT the same as 'I tell you this will happen!') is that other, bigger businesses which would loss energy sales and thus profit, will buy (things like) this and hold it back to protect their interests.
That's what I'm saying. If Exxon (the biggest of the big) came up with, or bought the rights to, a free-energy machine, do you really think they would just hold on to it? Or, would they try to sell the shit out of it, and crush their competitors in the process?
I just don't see how holding it back would make any sense at all, provided Exxon gives it even a moment's thought.
Yes, because no one could ever make any money selling a free-energy machine...
man hasn't "(re-)invented" it yet, and isn't likely to for a long time to come.
That "long time" will be forever, if we never research it. You've got to start somewhere.
Do you think we'll just magically come up with the answer, if we never think about the question?
That's what I said, right?
Bingo. Intelligence is one of those corporate feelgood words, like state-of-the-art, or user-friendly. They are completely impossible to quantify.
Exactly. That's how we ended up with things like the Turing Test. I can't define intelligence, but I know it when I see it.
But, that leads to the problem of a human-centric view of intelligence. We have such a hard time defining human intelligence, defining non-human intelligence will be almost impossible.
The banking system is another example of a system much better than human intelligence for survival and resilience. Oh wait...
It persuaded us to save its "life", didn't it?
Anyhow, Microsoft themselves could supply web browser, email client, IM program, complete office suite, media player, which covers most people's uses of netbooks.
This kind of proves my point. If the people who buy these netbooks have all their needs met by MS products, those people aren't really much of a market for third party developers.
Besides the conception, creation, and ongoing maintainance, very non-human.
The intelligent part is that those systems get us humans to do all that work for them.
Well, if your aim is to develop artificial intelligence, intelligence is probably a pretty good metric to determine how well you've performed the task you set out.
Well, that seems a little too easy. Now all we need is a definition of "intelligence" we can all agree on...
It's the exchange's job to provide liquidity, not Goldman Sachs'.
What?
Who's going to be on the other side of all those trades, if not speculators? A transaction requires two people: a buyer and a seller. The exchange cannot fill the role of either.
The transaction tax will be low enough that occasional trades to shuffle money between investments won't be affected. The fees are aimed at front-running leeches [nytimes.com] who use algorithmic trading to skim the market hurt everyone else.
So... You just want to eliminate liquidity from the market. You don't think that will hurt those "occasional trades to shuffle money between investments" far more than the tax itself?