Problems with the Problem of Evil

[Jarhyn]

What is decided happens milliseconds prior to your conscious thoughts and actions.

This process has nothing to do with 'free will' or even general will, the impulse we feel to act.

This thread was doing just fine without you bringing in your dubious "understanding" of cognitive processes.

Can we NOT have this argument in this thread?

It was not I who brought up the free will defense. Pull your head in.

Doesn't matter. It's not the place to debate "whether free will exists". At best, you ought accept temporarily the position here that it may, and ask whether that actually applies to the argument.

There are answers to the "free will" defense that don't require that rabbit hole.

 

[Jarhyn]

What is decided happens milliseconds prior to your conscious thoughts and actions.

Of course it's decided beforehand.
It would be cart before the horse otherwise.

I bet if you drill down you could probably observe/measure events along the way in the chain of causation happening nanoseconds...yoctoseconds before the eventual "conscious" actions.

The point is that it is not decided by what you call free will. It's not even decided by an act of will. It's not even decided consciously. It's the information processing activity of the brain that 'decides' and reports the action in conscious form, thoughts and feelings, for it to be acted out.

Your claim that free will is the driver of decision making not only puts the cart before the horse, but gets the agency of cognition completely wrong.

First, you must. know, from our previous discussions, that this is not completely or even substantively correct. The Libet experiments, for example, as we have pointed out, showed that the conscious mind has a veto power over subconscious decision-making — Libet called this “free won’t,” and, speaking of his own experiments, decided that they do NOT rule out free will. However, we’ve discussed this, and this has been repeatedly pointed out to you, and yet you continue to make the same erroneous assertions after multiple corrections.

Second, it doesn’t matter if most, or even all, of our decisions are made subconsciously via information processing, because it is still US making those decisions — our subconscious is not separate from US. Moreover, much of that subconscious processing occurs as a result of a feedback loop which processes conscious activity previously registered.

You seem to have the idea that in order for us to have some kind of free will, our decisions must always be made consciously, else we are puppets of our subconscious. But that would be absurd, because it would be saying we are puppets of ourselves — which is meaningless. I am a writer, and I am very familiar with the oft-described sensation, by many writers, of often feeling that when the words are flowing and everything is clicking into place, that one is taking dictation — not producing the words at all, but simply transcribing them. But the source of this phenomenon is simply that the writer’s subconscious has sorted through the options and has come up with the solution for the conscious mind then to consider. But the product still belongs to the writer, because the subconscious is PART OF the writer.

Guess we're having this argument in this thread...

I'm trying to focus on the theist claim that free will is the key to choosing good over evil or a belief in God over atheism. I don't don't want another free will debate. It's the last thing I need.

And you can do that without debating whether it exists.

There are plenty of ways to offer a rebuttal to the "free will defense of God" offered right in the contradiction of the "Omni". You could even offer a weaker (and commonly accepted) argument in fact as others here have (in fact other people who participated in some of those bitter debates) where the foreknowledge itself creates responsibility for the outcome (and it does).

There are plenty of good arguments that you can make that this proposed absolute foreknowledge means absolute manipulation and creates absolute and boundless responsibility for the creator.

You could even give Lion and Learner a push towards one of the threads where it is questioned whether free will exists and where the mechanics of will generation and freedom analytics are well explored.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

(My guess is no -- their reasoning is ever so elastic, and Biblegod commits frequent infanticide as it is.)

You might find it hard to believe but there are humans who think killing babies is justifiable.
Killing their OWN children.
Without anaesthetic.

It is fun to Mad Lib, isn't it... especially when on makes up meanings of words. Let me have a go.

Christians feel they are quite justified to sexually mutilate their male babies. <- And that isn't even taking anything out of context!

 

[pood]

What is decided happens milliseconds prior to your conscious thoughts and actions.

Of course it's decided beforehand.
It would be cart before the horse otherwise.

I bet if you drill down you could probably observe/measure events along the way in the chain of causation happening nanoseconds...yoctoseconds before the eventual "conscious" actions.

The point is that it is not decided by what you call free will. It's not even decided by an act of will. It's not even decided consciously. It's the information processing activity of the brain that 'decides' and reports the action in conscious form, thoughts and feelings, for it to be acted out.

Your claim that free will is the driver of decision making not only puts the cart before the horse, but gets the agency of cognition completely wrong.

First, you must. know, from our previous discussions, that this is not completely or even substantively correct. The Libet experiments, for example, as we have pointed out, showed that the conscious mind has a veto power over subconscious decision-making — Libet called this “free won’t,” and, speaking of his own experiments, decided that they do NOT rule out free will. However, we’ve discussed this, and this has been repeatedly pointed out to you, and yet you continue to make the same erroneous assertions after multiple corrections.

Second, it doesn’t matter if most, or even all, of our decisions are made subconsciously via information processing, because it is still US making those decisions — our subconscious is not separate from US. Moreover, much of that subconscious processing occurs as a result of a feedback loop which processes conscious activity previously registered.

You seem to have the idea that in order for us to have some kind of free will, our decisions must always be made consciously, else we are puppets of our subconscious. But that would be absurd, because it would be saying we are puppets of ourselves — which is meaningless. I am a writer, and I am very familiar with the oft-described sensation, by many writers, of often feeling that when the words are flowing and everything is clicking into place, that one is taking dictation — not producing the words at all, but simply transcribing them. But the source of this phenomenon is simply that the writer’s subconscious has sorted through the options and has come up with the solution for the conscious mind then to consider. But the product still belongs to the writer, because the subconscious is PART OF the writer.

Of course it's correct.

I assume this is in response to my very first sentence. So you just hand wave away, without comment, that Libet’s experiments do not show what you think they show, that Libet himself said they were no disproof of free will, and that the 2012 experiment with an improved protocol replicated Libet’s experiments and found that people made their decisions exactly when they said they did, and that the decisions were not made subconsciously prior to their conscious awareness. OK.

The evidence we have shows that the brain is the sole agency of cognition, conscious thought and action.
Where conscious will, feelings, thoughts and actions are generated through interactions of inputs and memory by means of neural networks processing information.

With some modifications perhaps, the above is OK and perfectly consistent with compatiblism.

Which is why the free will defense that theists tend to invoke fails, where it is implied that a belief in God is a matter of free will, as if you choose to believe God as a matter of free will.

That through an act of free will you can choose to believe in God.

The idea that God gave us free will so that we can choose good or evil, that we can choose to believe in God or not.

I don’t think the free will defense is that we can “choose” to believe in God. It’s that free will gives us basic desert, and hence we can be morally culpable in God’s eyes and therefore worthy of praise or blame for our actions.

As far as belief goes, while I think we can choose many things, I don’t actually think our beliefs are among those things we choose. We believe something not because we choose to, generally speaking, but because belief is forced upon us by the evidence. This is the problem with Pascal’s Water, and even Pascal recognized it because in his famous essay he dreamed up all sorts of ways that we can try to brainwash ourselves into believing in God.

I think most theists believe in God because they were raised to do so, and unfortunately most people don’t challenge the beliefs that they were inculcated with while growing up.

 

[Elixir]

I think most theists believe in God because they were raised to do so

I am gobsmacked that NONE of them seem to realize that.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Roseanne (bless her li'l heart) in her 2005 special:
"Do you hate religion, along with me? Religion fuckin' blows...Don't you think, at this point in the world's history, the world's great religions should be bringing us together, instead of dividing us? Because -- at their core -- don't they all say the same thing? Believe what we tell you or burn in hell forever!"

 

[DBT]

What is decided happens milliseconds prior to your conscious thoughts and actions.

Of course it's decided beforehand.
It would be cart before the horse otherwise.

I bet if you drill down you could probably observe/measure events along the way in the chain of causation happening nanoseconds...yoctoseconds before the eventual "conscious" actions.

The point is that it is not decided by what you call free will. It's not even decided by an act of will. It's not even decided consciously. It's the information processing activity of the brain that 'decides' and reports the action in conscious form, thoughts and feelings, for it to be acted out.

Your claim that free will is the driver of decision making not only puts the cart before the horse, but gets the agency of cognition completely wrong.

First, you must. know, from our previous discussions, that this is not completely or even substantively correct. The Libet experiments, for example, as we have pointed out, showed that the conscious mind has a veto power over subconscious decision-making — Libet called this “free won’t,” and, speaking of his own experiments, decided that they do NOT rule out free will. However, we’ve discussed this, and this has been repeatedly pointed out to you, and yet you continue to make the same erroneous assertions after multiple corrections.

Second, it doesn’t matter if most, or even all, of our decisions are made subconsciously via information processing, because it is still US making those decisions — our subconscious is not separate from US. Moreover, much of that subconscious processing occurs as a result of a feedback loop which processes conscious activity previously registered.

You seem to have the idea that in order for us to have some kind of free will, our decisions must always be made consciously, else we are puppets of our subconscious. But that would be absurd, because it would be saying we are puppets of ourselves — which is meaningless. I am a writer, and I am very familiar with the oft-described sensation, by many writers, of often feeling that when the words are flowing and everything is clicking into place, that one is taking dictation — not producing the words at all, but simply transcribing them. But the source of this phenomenon is simply that the writer’s subconscious has sorted through the options and has come up with the solution for the conscious mind then to consider. But the product still belongs to the writer, because the subconscious is PART OF the writer.

Of course it's correct.

I assume this is in response to my very first sentence.

It is indeed.

So you just hand wave away, without comment, that Libet’s experiments do not show what you think they show, that Libet himself said they were no disproof of free will, and that the 2012 experiment with an improved protocol replicated Libet’s experiments and found that people made their decisions exactly when they said they did, and that the decisions were not made subconsciously prior to their conscious awareness. OK.

I wave it away without comment because there has been an abundance of comments over the course of years of arguments on free will.

So I am reluctant to get caught up into another fruitless episode on the subject, and feel that there is no need to repeat things that have been explained ad nauseam

Plus, as I said, my reason to comment was the Christian claim that free will is the answer for the existence of evil and why some 'choose' not to believe in God.

Which is simplistic because we do not choose to believe or disbelieve in the existence of a God through an act of 'free will,' but a process of conviction, life experiences, social and religious background, etc

 

[pood]

Plus, as I said, my reason to comment was the Christian claim that free will is the answer for the existence of evil and why some 'choose' not to believe in God.

Which is simplistic because we do not choose to believe or disbelieve in the existence of a God through an act of 'free will,' but a process of conviction, life experiences, social and religious background, etc

I agree with this, as noted in my post above. I don’t think we choose any of our beliefs, in general — which, of course, does not mean we can’t choose many other things, because we obviously make free choices all the time. That’s what a brain is for.

 

[pood]

On an earlier topic ..,

Scientists find genes can raise obesity risk by “six times.”

 

[Lion IRC]

...we do not choose to believe or disbelieve in the existence of a God through an act of 'free will,' but a process of conviction, life experiences, social and religious background, etc

What do you think about the concept of epistemic pragmatism? ...the process of deliberately raising or lowering the epistemic bar - standard of proof - depending on one's pragmatic preferences.

Some examples;

...that's not evidence... yes it is... no it's not... yes it is... no it's not.

...you only believe in the afterlife because you want it to be true... oh yeah? Well you're a hedonist that's why you don't want to believe there's an afterlife.

 

[Jarhyn]

Plus, as I said, my reason to comment was the Christian claim that free will is the answer for the existence of evil and why some 'choose' not to believe in God.

Which is simplistic because we do not choose to believe or disbelieve in the existence of a God through an act of 'free will,' but a process of conviction, life experiences, social and religious background, etc

I agree with this, as noted in my post above. I don’t think we choose any of our beliefs, in general — which, of course, does not mean we can’t choose many other things, because we obviously make free choices all the time. That’s what a brain is for.

I will argue we do at times choose our beliefs.

What is decided happens milliseconds prior to your conscious thoughts and actions.

Of course it's decided beforehand.
It would be cart before the horse otherwise.

I bet if you drill down you could probably observe/measure events along the way in the chain of causation happening nanoseconds...yoctoseconds before the eventual "conscious" actions.

The point is that it is not decided by what you call free will. It's not even decided by an act of will. It's not even decided consciously. It's the information processing activity of the brain that 'decides' and reports the action in conscious form, thoughts and feelings, for it to be acted out.

Your claim that free will is the driver of decision making not only puts the cart before the horse, but gets the agency of cognition completely wrong.

First, you must. know, from our previous discussions, that this is not completely or even substantively correct. The Libet experiments, for example, as we have pointed out, showed that the conscious mind has a veto power over subconscious decision-making — Libet called this “free won’t,” and, speaking of his own experiments, decided that they do NOT rule out free will. However, we’ve discussed this, and this has been repeatedly pointed out to you, and yet you continue to make the same erroneous assertions after multiple corrections.

Second, it doesn’t matter if most, or even all, of our decisions are made subconsciously via information processing, because it is still US making those decisions — our subconscious is not separate from US. Moreover, much of that subconscious processing occurs as a result of a feedback loop which processes conscious activity previously registered.

You seem to have the idea that in order for us to have some kind of free will, our decisions must always be made consciously, else we are puppets of our subconscious. But that would be absurd, because it would be saying we are puppets of ourselves — which is meaningless. I am a writer, and I am very familiar with the oft-described sensation, by many writers, of often feeling that when the words are flowing and everything is clicking into place, that one is taking dictation — not producing the words at all, but simply transcribing them. But the source of this phenomenon is simply that the writer’s subconscious has sorted through the options and has come up with the solution for the conscious mind then to consider. But the product still belongs to the writer, because the subconscious is PART OF the writer.

Of course it's correct.

I assume this is in response to my very first sentence.

It is indeed.

So you just hand wave away, without comment, that Libet’s experiments do not show what you think they show, that Libet himself said they were no disproof of free will, and that the 2012 experiment with an improved protocol replicated Libet’s experiments and found that people made their decisions exactly when they said they did, and that the decisions were not made subconsciously prior to their conscious awareness. OK.

I wave it away without comment because there has been an abundance of comments over the course of years of arguments on free will.

So I am reluctant to get caught up into another fruitless episode on the subject, and feel that there is no need to repeat things that have been explained ad nauseam

Plus, as I said, my reason to comment was the Christian claim that free will is the answer for the existence of evil and why some 'choose' not to believe in God.

Which is simplistic because we do not choose to believe or disbelieve in the existence of a God through an act of 'free will,' but a process of conviction, life experiences, social and religious background, etc

No, this is false. I chose not to believe in God because I choose not to.

I accomplish this choice gnostically, insofar as I can "feel" when exactly I am feeling some manner of conviction, and I manually probe that conviction for its purposes, and if these amount to "mere belief rather than well founded understanding", I reject it even though doing so, in part, feels bad and makes me sad.

You might not choose what you will believe, but I will vigorously test anything I even feel the slightest bit of "belief" around so as to gnostically dispel said "mere belief". This is a choice I make, because of who I am. It is my choice and I am the one making it in this moment, not an absentee past, not a distant big bang, but me, now, in this moment.

This perplexes me that some people can somehow attest that they don't do this thing, that they have no participation in their beliefs.

 

[DBT]

...we do not choose to believe or disbelieve in the existence of a God through an act of 'free will,' but a process of conviction, life experiences, social and religious background, etc

What do you think about the concept of epistemic pragmatism? ...the process of deliberately raising or lowering the epistemic bar - standard of proof - depending on one's pragmatic preferences.

Some examples;

...that's not evidence... yes it is... no it's not... yes it is... no it's not.

...you only believe in the afterlife because you want it to be true... oh yeah? Well you're a hedonist that's why you don't want to believe there's an afterlife.

What brought you to a belief in God, the bible, Christianity? Did you just decide to believe as an act of will? One moment you were not convinced, the next you believed?

Of course not, conviction is a process brought about by many elements, family, culture, life experiences, needs, wants.

Had you been born in Arabia in a Muslim, you would be raised as a Muslim. Maybe travel or wider reading may have changed your thinking, but that is also a process of change, neither free will or a matter of will.

 

[DBT]

Plus, as I said, my reason to comment was the Christian claim that free will is the answer for the existence of evil and why some 'choose' not to believe in God.

Which is simplistic because we do not choose to believe or disbelieve in the existence of a God through an act of 'free will,' but a process of conviction, life experiences, social and religious background, etc

I agree with this, as noted in my post above. I don’t think we choose any of our beliefs, in general — which, of course, does not mean we can’t choose many other things, because we obviously make free choices all the time. That’s what a brain is for.

I will argue we do at times choose our beliefs.

What is decided happens milliseconds prior to your conscious thoughts and actions.

Of course it's decided beforehand.
It would be cart before the horse otherwise.

I bet if you drill down you could probably observe/measure events along the way in the chain of causation happening nanoseconds...yoctoseconds before the eventual "conscious" actions.

The point is that it is not decided by what you call free will. It's not even decided by an act of will. It's not even decided consciously. It's the information processing activity of the brain that 'decides' and reports the action in conscious form, thoughts and feelings, for it to be acted out.

Your claim that free will is the driver of decision making not only puts the cart before the horse, but gets the agency of cognition completely wrong.

First, you must. know, from our previous discussions, that this is not completely or even substantively correct. The Libet experiments, for example, as we have pointed out, showed that the conscious mind has a veto power over subconscious decision-making — Libet called this “free won’t,” and, speaking of his own experiments, decided that they do NOT rule out free will. However, we’ve discussed this, and this has been repeatedly pointed out to you, and yet you continue to make the same erroneous assertions after multiple corrections.

Second, it doesn’t matter if most, or even all, of our decisions are made subconsciously via information processing, because it is still US making those decisions — our subconscious is not separate from US. Moreover, much of that subconscious processing occurs as a result of a feedback loop which processes conscious activity previously registered.

You seem to have the idea that in order for us to have some kind of free will, our decisions must always be made consciously, else we are puppets of our subconscious. But that would be absurd, because it would be saying we are puppets of ourselves — which is meaningless. I am a writer, and I am very familiar with the oft-described sensation, by many writers, of often feeling that when the words are flowing and everything is clicking into place, that one is taking dictation — not producing the words at all, but simply transcribing them. But the source of this phenomenon is simply that the writer’s subconscious has sorted through the options and has come up with the solution for the conscious mind then to consider. But the product still belongs to the writer, because the subconscious is PART OF the writer.

Of course it's correct.

I assume this is in response to my very first sentence.

It is indeed.

So you just hand wave away, without comment, that Libet’s experiments do not show what you think they show, that Libet himself said they were no disproof of free will, and that the 2012 experiment with an improved protocol replicated Libet’s experiments and found that people made their decisions exactly when they said they did, and that the decisions were not made subconsciously prior to their conscious awareness. OK.

I wave it away without comment because there has been an abundance of comments over the course of years of arguments on free will.

So I am reluctant to get caught up into another fruitless episode on the subject, and feel that there is no need to repeat things that have been explained ad nauseam

Plus, as I said, my reason to comment was the Christian claim that free will is the answer for the existence of evil and why some 'choose' not to believe in God.

Which is simplistic because we do not choose to believe or disbelieve in the existence of a God through an act of 'free will,' but a process of conviction, life experiences, social and religious background, etc

No, this is false. I chose not to believe in God because I choose not to.

Can you choose to believe in God? Are you able to will yourself to be convinced in the existence of God? That one moment you do not believe in the existence of a God and the next you have decided that you do believe in God?

If not, your lack of belief is not a matter of free will but a process of conviction. Your character, personality and life experiences have brought you to the point where you don't believe in the existence of a God, and that is not likely to change unless something extraordinary happens to alter your position.

 

[Jarhyn]

Can you choose to believe in God

You can't choose what "seems plausible" from some background, however we do choose to reject plausible things to dig, to keep going until the belief falls apart.

Or at least usually.

We don't choose to feel good or bad about someone, but attacking is a choice.

Belief comes in two parts DBT, a feeling, and an acceptance or rejection of that feeling: a choice about it.

Do you somehow not have any experience of having a feeling, and standing on a precipice of decision wherein you know pushing one way will cause the feeling to transform one way, and pushing the other will cause the feeling to transform differently?

Do you deny that someone can look at their feelings and decide to feel them as they are or decide those feelings are not deserved and do something else with them?

Like there's this whole song in Avenue Q about a rather unhealthy perversion of this act!

Then, maybe you have gone your entire life without that experience, or you mistakenly assumed it was unimportant.

As it is, yes, I can in a moment decide to believe something. Generally because of how belief works for me, this is "temporary" or "contextual" belief. I can decide even in the face of massive doubts, for the sake of a thought. I recognize that when I do this, my head feels distinctly similar to when, as a Christian, I used to get feelings of cognitive dissonance starting to ring until the contradiction resolved.

I can see how it would be difficult to understand or accept for people who never actually made decisions about when and why and for how long they will believe something.

 

[southernhybrid]

I think I might be the bad girl who brought up the topic of free will, and using it as an argument against people who think they choose to believe or not believe. I may not be a hardcore determinist, but I do believe that we are all products or as I usually put it, victims or benefactors of our genetic and environmental influences. Get it? I didn't mean for this discussion to become one about free will. I was just trying to use a little reasoning, because to me, the idea that we have total free will over our beliefs and our actions is absurd. I've read enough books on the topic to justify my belief that we don't have absolute free will. Knowing that we don't have free will even made it easier for me not to judge people too harshly because they can't help who they are unless some new strong influences come into their lives to change their behavior. So, you could say reading and understanding what makes us who we are, influenced me in a positive way.

I am unable to believe there is a god or an afterlife. I was raised to be an evangelical Christian and at least until I was about 18, I tried to believe or thought I believed. But the OT Bible god always seemed like such an evil, mentally deranged character, so it was hard to cling to such a belief. The idea that my Catholic friends were doomed for all eternity was also an evil idea. Why not base punishment on character, if a god must punish people. It was spending one semester in a conservative Christian college that was the biggest environmental influence that led me away from religion. It was reading and thinking about other religions that made me an atheist. It was not a choice.

And, Learner, if you're still reading this thread, I don't think you understand, based on comments you made much earlier in this thread, that sisters don't have the exact same DNA inherited from their ancestors. That is why two of my sisters suffered with obesity, which probably came from our grandmother, while I am thin, probably from the genetic influences on my grandfather and mother. My two sisters both had blond hair as children. Mine was auburn until it turned blond with age. My sisters are/were very tall like my father was, while I am short, like my grandfather. Point being, siblings inherit different traits from their ancestors.

Only one sister remained a Christian and to this day, she's not sure which version of Christianity is the right one. My late sister held onto some kind of woo, that was similar to paganism. My late sister was almost like a clone of our late grandmother, when it came to their personalities, especially the way they cut friends and family members out of their lives over trivial things. Obviously, my late sister couldn't help her behavior, when it was so obviously inherited from our grandmother.

I once asked my Christian sister if she thought I was going to hell. She told me she didn't know. The idea of an afterlife is silly to me, but I understand how it gives hope and comfort to many people. I prefer the idea that we are star dust and after we die, and our corpses deteriorate, or are cremated, we will be like star dust again. That makes more sense to me, than the concept that we will somehow be magically living in some kind of afterlife. Now people even believe that their pets will be there with them, since they will cross the so called Rainbow Bridge. Heaven would certainly be hell without dogs and other animals. Whatever floats your boat.

The Christian god was obviously created by humans, just like other gods. He shares all of the human traits, including sometimes being very evil and sometimes being very kind and generous. He just has supernatural powers according to believers in such mythology. The NT god is certainly nicer than the OT god, other than the threats of eternal damnation, the belief in the 2nd coming, the end times etc. if you take that literally and not some type of metaphor. Humans have always been drawn to mythology, so perhaps religion will always be around. I just hope it will be kinder, and less divisive, like Unitarianism, for example.


Conservative Christianity is very sexist, supporting the concept of a patrilineal society. That in itself is evil enough for me, as a woman.

 

[steve_bank]

What do you think about the concept of epistemic pragmatism? ...the process of deliberately raising or lowering the epistemic bar - standard of proof - depending on one's pragmatic preferences.

Lion

If you are accusing us if being shifty using a more common term you are defining what I think we see as Christianity.

It is stock and trade for politicians. Had to look it up to be honest. Where did you fid the trem?

Along with epistemic pragmatism do you understand situational ethics? One quote mines the bible for a passage that fits your position on an issue. Another Christian finds a counter quote.

For me that defines a moving goal post.

 

[Politesse]

One quote mines the bible for a passage that fits your position on an issue. Another Christian finds a counter quote. For me that defines a moving goal post.

Your definition of a "moving goal post" is when one person argues for one philosophical perspective, and then a different person argues for a different philosophical perspective? So, basically whenever anyone argues for any philosophical perspective, they are "moving a goalpost", since someone somewhere disagrees with them yet broadly speaking belongs to the same group as them?

 

[Elixir]

So, basically whenever anyone argues for any philosophical perspective, they are "moving a goalpost"?

When a person or group argues for multiple philosophical perspectives, the goalpost are moving.

 

[Politesse]

So, basically whenever anyone argues for any philosophical perspective, they are "moving a goalpost"?

When a person or group argues for multiple philosophical perspectives, the goalpost are moving.

It's the "or group" part that makes this an incorrect definition of goalpost moving as normally defined. We are both, arguably, atheists. Yet you and I currently disagree about the definition of "moving a goalpost". That doesn't mean I have moved the goalpost that you have defined, nor vice versa. It just means we happen to share an imposed label, and also happen to disagree on this point. I note that Steve is also misunderstanding slightly what goalpost shifting is meant to refer to. Just stating a position is not usually an example of this fallacy. Rather, it is specifically the situation where one debater introduces a standard of proof or evidence that would support their view, another provides that proof, and the original debater then introduces a more strenuous standard of evidence and insists that this new standard was always the real one.

Example:

Person A: Until the 20th century, no culture ever saw the need for more than two gender categories.

Person B: Actually there have been quite a few, have a look at these Wikipedia entries.

Person A. Yes, but there have never been any that didn't use male and female pronouns.

Person B. Actually there have been quite a few, have a look at these Wikipedia entries.

Person A. Yes, but there have never been any cultures that have never heard of "men" and "women" at all, that's really my point here...

Where the standard of proof or evidence, in other words, gets raised every time the previous proposed standard of evidence has been met in a way that neither party can refute but one party does not wish to acknowledge. Lion is applying it correctly, if indeed that is what "epistemic pragmatism" is meant to be code for, but Steve is not.

 

[Lion IRC]

What brought you to a belief in God, the bible, Christianity? Did you just decide to believe as an act of will? One moment you were not convinced, the next you believed?

I never started to believe God exists.
I never had a choice.

Of course not, conviction is a process brought about by many elements, family, culture, life experiences, needs, wants.

Nope. Not everyone acquires their conviction about God gradually.

Had you been born in Arabia in a Muslim, you would be raised as a Muslim. Maybe travel or wider reading may have changed your thinking, but that is also a process of change, neither free will or a matter of will.

I was born into a hedonistic, scientistic, materialistic, secular, liberal, Western culture.

My religion? The God of Abraham - Bronze age, Mesopotamia...

What went wrong?