They aren't actually "trick" questions, you know.

[Cheerful Charlie]

https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/popular-writings/existence-nature-of-god/does-god-exist1/

Hence we may argue:

1. Objective moral values and duties exist.

2. But if God did not exist, objective moral values and duties would not exist.

3. Therefore, God exists.



- William Craig Lane

 

[remez]

https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/popular-writings/existence-nature-of-god/does-god-exist1/

Hence we may argue:

1. Objective moral values and duties exist.

2. But if God did not exist, objective moral values and duties would not exist.

3. Therefore, God exists.



- William Craig Lane

What is your point? I know that is the argument. I gave it to you years ago and you denied it was.
Here post 31 from thread “The Explanatory Impotence of Goddidit”

A very common such argument is the argument from morality. Evolution cannot explain human morality, therefore God.

Here is the Moral Argument.......

1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
2. Objective moral values and duties do exist.
3. Therefore, God exists.

It speaks nothing of a gap whatsoever.
Defend your position that this is gofg.

----

No. That is a completely different argument.

http://www.str.org/articles/evolution-can-t-explain-morality
Yesterday I had a very interesting conversation about morality and whether evolution is an adequate explanation for morality. Many of you know that I have argued for a long time that morality -- the existence of moral things, "oughts", the notion of moral actions and moral motives, the reality of morality -- is a very powerful evidence for the existence of a moral God, whose character is the moral standard of the universe. I won't suggest that this is without problems, but I think it best answers the existence of morality.


-----

Lots of apologists explicitly claim evolution cannot account for our morality, therefore God must be the explanation.
Google is your friend.

Again your logic and scrutiny are failing. You are now providing evidence for my case and somehow reason it proves your case. WOW!

Observe you asserted that the MA was ......."Lots of apologists explicitly claim evolution cannot account for our morality, therefore God must be the explanation." Now you are correctly quoting the argument. So how does that prove that you don't have a history of creating straw men?

I bumped the other thread in the forum for your easy access. The EoG.

 

[remez]

According to Lion, logic doesn't even matter. Which makes you wonder why the concept of God is necessary to begin with.

Why would you premise the concept of God on Lion's alleged comment on logic?

It's not alleged. He believes in a God who can walk on water among other things, like feeding 5,000 people with five loaves of bread and three fish.That's logically impossible and it's meaningless to talk about logic if you believe in those things. Same thing as saying a square/circle can exist. It makes logic completely meaningless.

Ok, you reason that Lion's logic is unreasonable because miracles are impossible in your epistemology. That is another debate altogether. My question was your logic of "Why does God's existence depend on what Lion thinks?"

 

[GenesisNemesis]

It's not alleged. He believes in a God who can walk on water among other things, like feeding 5,000 people with five loaves of bread and three fish.That's logically impossible and it's meaningless to talk about logic if you believe in those things. Same thing as saying a square/circle can exist. It makes logic completely meaningless.

Ok, you reason that Lion's logic is unreasonable because miracles are impossible in your epistemology. That is another debate altogether. My question was your logic of "Why does God's existence depend on what Lion thinks?"

It doesn't. Don't know why you think I was arguing that.

 

[remez]

It's not alleged. He believes in a God who can walk on water among other things, like feeding 5,000 people with five loaves of bread and three fish.That's logically impossible and it's meaningless to talk about logic if you believe in those things. Same thing as saying a square/circle can exist. It makes logic completely meaningless.

Ok, you reason that Lion's logic is unreasonable because miracles are impossible in your epistemology. That is another debate altogether. My question was your logic of "Why does God's existence depend on what Lion thinks?"

It doesn't. Don't know why you think I was arguing that.

This.....

According to Lion, logic doesn't even matter. Which makes you wonder why the concept of God is necessary to begin with.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

It doesn't. Don't know why you think I was arguing that.

This.....

According to Lion, logic doesn't even matter. Which makes you wonder why the concept of God is necessary to begin with.

In this case "according to Lion" means practically the same thing as "if we grant the premise..." Read more carefully.

 

[Rhea]

Remez, you appear to have mixed up what thread you’re posting on.

 

[laughing dog]

Dont worry remez, this is just the butt hurt thread by the type of person who starts a 'sincere' game of chess then knocks all the pieces off the board declaring stuff like;

Chess is a dumb game
That's not a real castle
These rules suck
Oh, I didn't know you wanted to play a serious game

There's no "trick questions". There's just insincerity and disingenuousness.
And there's no refusal to answer "trick questions". I just prefer to play chess with folks who actually want to play chess.

Why are you so butthurt about people who wish to have sincere dialogue about your beliefs?

It's like atrib calling me a liar then acting like he wants to have sincere dialogue with a liar.

It is entirely possible to have a sincere dialogue with a liar when that liar is not lying.

 

[remez]

Remez, you appear to have mixed up what thread you’re posting on.

???

 

[remez]

This.....

In this case "according to Lion" means practically the same thing as "if we grant the premise..." Read more carefully.

Write more carefully.

 

[Rhea]

I guess this is addressed to Rhea, but all of those who have posted are blind to their experience as well. So in regards to Yahzi's quote.... How do you know Christians learn this way? Are any of you cognizant of the genetic fallacy?

Sorry, let me be more clear.
Yahzi doesn’t post here. That quote is from 14 years ago, but has been relevant in all the intervening years to fairly accurately predict how christians will react. I find it to be an interesting description because it is so predictive.

How do I ”know” christians learn this way?
Through observation. It’s what they say and how they ask questions. Obviously #notallchristians, of course, that is clear to the most casual observer in these conversations. But in general, it explains a lot of behaviors.

BTW a small side point to Yazhi’s polemic…… an argument constructed to SHOW what you KNOW, it is not constructed to bring one who presents the argument to knowledge. It is in the defense of the argument where the presenter defends what he knows.

Yes, you got it! The christians typically (#NotAllChristians, for those who only speak in absolutes, that’s what ‘typically’ usually means) present arguments constructed to show what they know. They do not tend to present arguments that are intended to be evaluated and collaborated and grown to discover. They think they already know everything there is to know. They don’t present arguments with questions and exploraions. They are merely declarations, as you realized.

I have been on this board for over a decade defending my beliefs.

Yes, exactly. Christians defend heir beliefs, they don’t explore them. You’ve got it!

So how does any of my experience match the discourse of Yahzi”s delusion which you folks have blindly accepted as some kind of authority in this area of epistemology?

This is rather comical that you should say “you folks have blindly accepted” when likely no one had read this but me. As if you read somewhere that anyone thinks he is “some kind of authority” beyond being some dude on a message boad who said something that resonated. I am curious how you think you “know” this. How you feel it becomes certain enough to make the statements you just made.

Fascinating!

……I agree somewhat with Yahzi. It is all about epistemology. But that is where I diverge from his irrationality………..

You have a quaint tendency to toss out insults instead of just discussing topics. Why?

But note the conclusion sentence….. “One thinks truth derives from the world, and the other thinks the world derives from truth.” Are you all blind to the fact that one can derive truth from the world and reasonably conclude that the world must be derived from something beyond this world?

Why do you call that a fact? It seems unsupported for you to use the word “reasonably” in there. Can you expand on why it is reasonable to conclude otherworldly untestable things are responsible for the world?

Apparently many of you have blindly bought into the self-refuting epistemology of materialism. As Yahzi confesses to. Are you blind to your own appeal to authority?

What? What appeal to authority? Who appealed to authority? What authority?
Are you trying to claim that I think some dude on the internet is an authority? No, oh goodness. LOL, no, I just thought he made a concise desciption. I don’t even know him.

Apparently so many of you have bought into the genetic fallacy here. It very well may be the case that many Christians are raised to believe without question. And I completely agree with you that is wrong. But that in no way leads to the conclusion the Christianity itself is wrong.

“So many” of us, he says, on a thread with nine posts at the time you say this. That may not be what others consider empirical, logical, inductive, deductive, abductive. It may not add up to be a claim you can make and call “reasonable.”

Yet so many of you point to the fallacy as proof that Christianity is wrong. Open your eyes to the genetic fallacy.

Is this a form of the NoTrueScotsman argument? “You can’t say Christianity is false because you haven’t heard about Christianity from a True Christian.”

One who argues to declare a truth, not to discover one.

Interesting responses. Thanks.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

This.....

In this case "according to Lion" means practically the same thing as "if we grant the premise..." Read more carefully.

Write more carefully.

Pretty sure only you misunderstood what I was saying.

 

[Rhea]

Dont worry remez, this is just the butt hurt thread by the type of person

You misunderstand. Utterly. “Butt hurt,” aside from ... well, no, that’s not what is going on. You made some claims. I offered clarification. In good faith.

who starts a 'sincere' game of chess then knocks all the pieces off the board declaring stuff like;

Chess is a dumb game
That's not a real castle
These rules suck
Oh, I didn't know you wanted to play a serious game

What? This does not make sense. This is not what happened.

There's no "trick questions". There's just insincerity and disingenuousness.

Ah. Well, never mind then.

And there's no refusal to answer "trick questions". I just prefer to play chess with folks who actually want to play chess.

It's like atrib calling me a liar then acting like he wants to have sincere dialogue with a liar.

?? We often see people lying and still want to have dialogue.

You seem very angry and lashing out. Are you okay?

 

[Keith&Co.]

Pretty sure only you misunderstood what I was saying.

Remez does spend a lot of time advancing his argument by misstating the other side's message. You lose a lot of ground in trying to fix what he fucked up, and he further misstates your attempt to to explain what you actually said.

 

[Learner]

The Torah makes claims that have been disproven. The many cities Joshua was said to have destroyed were uninhabited long before any Israelites could have been in the area. There was no Egyptian captivity. No wandering in the desert. This is the verdict of a century of hard work by expert archaeologists. Israel Finkelstein. Nadav Na'aman, William Dever, Donald Redford and many others. The book of Joshua is contradicted by the Book of Judges. The earliest Israelites were Canaanites with no signs of Egyptian culture to be found among them, despite the fact that supposedly they were in Egypt for some 430 years, starting with 75 illiterate herdsmen.

These are the facts. Again, the whole exodus tall tale is just faux history. Again, if that is so (and it is), then claiming God commanded massacres and genocides is also false. So if in fact there is a God, the Bible slanders God by making these false claims.

As previously mentioned: one can't really make final conclusions prematurely, despite new archeological findings and a need for regular reviewing. For example, Prof.Finklestien had got his dating wrong as exampled from an excerpt originally published from the Australian Institue of Archeology shown below (it happens).

During his presentation, Israel Finkelstein revised his dating, and stated that he was now dating the transition from Iron Age I to IIA to about 950 BC. This was momentous. Based on their experiences in the Philistine areas and sites such as Lachish, Ussishkin and Finkelstein have been dating the start of Iron Age II to 920–900 BC and they, along with many others, have used this dating to argue that David and Solomon did not exist.

There seems to be a bit of reviewing of the archeology to the credit of these archeologist at least when comparing the two quotes below:

Conclusion as in your quote was made perhaps 15 years ago by Finklestien.

1. The earliest Israelites were Canaanites with no signs of Egyptian culture to be found among them, despite the fact that supposedly they were in Egypt for some 430 years, starting with 75 illiterate

Now Egypt ruled Israel as concluded around 2016 (assuming from the date of the publication).

2. Prof. Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University, an internationally renowned expert in biblical archaeology, explained the historical background of the biblical Exodus story as revealed from archaeological excavations: "In the Late Bronze Age, from the 15th century to the 12th century BCE, Egypt dominated the Land of Israel. Of course, after 350 or 400 years of Egyptian rule in Israel, influences of Egyptian culture entered the Land of Israel in various areas of everyday life. Then two things happened that are related to that same issue: there was a complete collapse of urban centers and of kingdoms and empires in the ancient Middle East, and Egypt withdrew from Israel!"

https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4795318,00.html

This should be an "interesting" on-going process to see, no doubt.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

About all the influences of Egyptian culture that are to be found in Israel are weights and measures. Which is what you would expect because Egypt was a major trade partner with Israel. Wine and Olive oil, especially. There are almost no Egyptianisms in early Hebrew. Not what we would expect from the claims of the exodus tale. Pottery shows absolutely no trace of Egyptian influence. It is Canaanitic. Egyptian sources demonstrate many foreign names of various cultures around them living in Egypt. But no typical Israelite names. Despite the claims that the Israelites outnumbered the Egyptians causing fear among the Egyptians. The Egyptians were present in the area of Canaan in force for centuries, which in the Exodus tale the Egyptians are totally absent. The last Egyptian garrisons were withdrawn during the reign of Rameses VI who reigned about the time the hill top settlements that became Israel were being established.

The Pentateuch shows no signs of belief in a soul, or an afterlife. Egyptian religion was steeped in such a belief. For such reasons, archaeology has given up the exodus fantasy. The Pentateuch is full of anachronisms. God leads them through the wilderness to avoid the Philistines. Cities are mentioned that did not exist until the 26th dynasty of Egypt.

By the time the Pentateuch was written, the Israelites had forgotten all of any true history of Israel so made it up to have a history at all. What history they did create was contradictory, Judges vs. Joshua.

 

[Politesse]

Your posts are disingenuous not because they are "tricks", but because you have no intention of having an honest conversation about the topics you raise, nor admitting to any change in whatever your original point was. Starting a thread titled "Biologists! Are penguins really nocturnal?" is disingenuous if you believe the answer is "yes" and refuse to entertain any thoughts to the contrary.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

About all the influences of Egyptian culture that are to be found in Israel are weights and measures. Which is what you would expect because Egypt was a major trade partner with Israel. Wine and Olive oil, especially. There are almost no Egyptianisms in early Hebrew. Not what we would expect from the claims of the exodus tale. Pottery shows absolutely no trace of Egyptian influence. It is Canaanitic. Egyptian sources demonstrate many foreign names of various cultures around them living in Egypt. But no typical Israelite names. Despite the claims that the Israelites outnumbered the Egyptians causing fear among the Egyptians. The Egyptians were present in the area of Canaan in force for centuries, which in the Exodus tale the Egyptians are totally absent. The last Egyptian garrisons were withdrawn during the reign of Rameses VI who reigned about the time the hill top settlements that became Israel were being established.

The Pentateuch shows no signs of belief in a soul, or an afterlife. Egyptian religion was steeped in such a belief. For such reasons, archaeology has given up the exodus fantasy. The Pentateuch is full of anachronisms. God leads them through the wilderness to avoid the Philistines. Cities are mentioned that did not exist until the 26th dynasty of Egypt.

By the time the Pentateuch was written, the Israelites had forgotten all of any true history of Israel so made it up to have a history at all. What history they did create was contradictory, Judges vs. Joshua.

We know today that there were no hanging gardens of Babylon. We do know, however, that there were indeed hanging gardens of Nineveh. Undoubtedly the Nineveh Gardens somehow became associated with Babylon and history continued with the mistake until modern methods of investigation demonstrated otherwise.

Sometimes I think that the Babylonians and Egyptians were similarly confused in the process of historicizing the Jewish experience.

 

[Rhea]

Your posts are disingenuous not because they are "tricks", but because you have no intention of having an honest conversation about the topics you raise, nor admitting to any change in whatever your original point was.

Who is the “you” in this? Assuming it’s me as the OP, may I ask how you think you have a certain knowledge of my intent?

I have every intention of an honest conversation always. I resent your accusation that I don’t.
I don’t need to “admit” changes, I embrace them when they are warranted. Are you suggesting that I know I’m “wrong” about the topic but for some reason am “refusing” to “admit” it?

What does that even mean? Is that what you think of other people? (Of me?)

dis·in·gen·u·ous
/ˌdisənˈjenyo͞oəs/Submit
adjective
not candid or sincere, typically by pretending that one knows less about something than one really does.

synonyms: insincere, dishonest, untruthful, false, deceitful, duplicitous, lying, mendacious; hypocritical
"that innocent, teary-eyed look is just part of a disingenuous act"

Let me tell you a little bit about me. I have no need or desire to be insincere, dishonest, untruthful, false, deceitful, duplicitous, lying, mendacious; and I certainly have no reason to INTEND to be any of those. (Nor do I feel a need to report you for a “personal attack” because I am fine with finding out you think this way and talking to you about whether it is warranted.)

Some folks sort of reflexively accuse anyone who questions their religion of having those motives.

They just can’t fathom that someone is inspecting this idea of religion as a genuine curiosity of human behavior, and that if these people ever once offered actual evidence we would change our opinion as fast as we accepted relativity when we were shown evidence for that (Cosmic lensing, anyone?), and in the meantime, in the face of endlessly repeated non-convincing religious arguments, we reasonably treat it as a curiosity of human behavior.

They aren’t tricks. It’s not disingenuous. It’s someone questioning the stated premises of a topic that is daily brought up to us by Christians as a topic for discussion. And we are therefore put in a position to be wondering, daily, “why do they think that? How do they think that?”

If Christians don’t want their religion questioned, they might want to stop trying to force people to address it. But since they do, my mind will GENUINELY continue to wonder, “wait, what?” And I will talk about it here, where there is an on-purpose forum to do so, while taking the high road with my friends and family and allow them to not know that I’m hearing their weird assertions and wondering WTAF.

Starting a thread titled "Biologists! Are penguins really nocturnal?" is disingenuous if you believe the answer is "yes" and refuse to entertain any thoughts to the contrary.

Really. What better way would there be to find out if there is new information about the circadian rhythms of penguins? If I think they are diurnal, but someone has said they are nocturnal, I could start such a post to solicit this new evidence.

Your accusation that I am unwilling to change my mind, that I “refuse to entertain any thoughts to the contrary” is unfounded (it is a lie). I change my mind based on new information all the time. And this is the correct forum to ask exactly these questions whenever I have them.

Now. How many of the Christians here are willing to entertain thoughts to the contrary? Are you?
If so, don’t you benefit from the discussion?
Amusingly, this is the thought process discussed in the OP’s quotes. You are so sure that no one can genuinely ask questions that you appear to find it hard to imagine a genuine discussion.

Interesting.

 

[remez]

Pretty sure only you misunderstood what I was saying.

Remez does spend a lot of time advancing his argument by misstating the other side's message. You lose a lot of ground in trying to fix what he fucked up, and he further misstates your attempt to to explain what you actually said.

Careful KC. I chose not to challenge GN’s overt distortion any further because it indeed would be a useless diversion and would amount to nothing more than a “I-meant-to-say” waste of time. To which I could reasonably predict I would have no support surrounded by atheists. I was simply letting it go with my comment “Write more carefully.” Following his instruction to read his mess more carefully. That’s all. I, in no way, concede to his revisionism there.

Addressing your baseless opinion of me would be yet another useless “he-said-she-said” distraction as well.
But....
Let me point out this…..which is in line with my assertion here on this thread.

You, GN and CC believe that just because you can reason Christianity into absurdity that your reasoning must be correct. Read the arrogance in CC’s post ….

The "game" is to look at the propositions of supposed revelations of the Bible et al, the claims of theologians and believers, and then to examine them logically, taking them to their logical conclusions and noting how none of it really withstands careful scrutiny. For us skeptics, in the final analysis, Christianity doesn't make the grade. Carefully examined it isn't coherent and does not withstand careful scrutiny. Sorry if that is not to your liking.

CC has repeatedly misrepresented the Christian position to meet his arrogance. I provided evidence for that assertion in his own words. Thus I was not distorting his position as you baselessly asserted.
Therefore…………
If the logic/scrutiny he uses and you didn’t object to, is fallacious and flawed then why shouldn’t it be called out?

Challenges to my reasoning are welcome. But if the reasoning is fallacious and flawed I will point it out with evidence.
Reasonable?