atrib
Veteran Member
I said nothing of the sort.Then you feel it is atrib's position?It's the position of those who express that the universe is unlikely to exist unless a transcendent being or entity (a "god") intentionally made it. And, no, that's not my position.
It's not my analogy, but I find it interesting that neither of you have been able to exercise consistency with it. It's supposed to be explaining why it should be obvious why the universe simply exists without any need to explain how or why, but both of you instinctively applied agency to the question of the appearing and disappearing cookie, seemingly without even meaning to or thinking about what you were doing.
That is not true. Not once did I compare the two or refer to them as being analogous, or ascribe any special qualities to the cookie itself or its origin - that was you trying to put words in my mouth in an attempt to avoid the point I was making. In the second paragraph of my first post I went on to explain my position further, and this you completely ignored. For the third fucking time, this is I said:
If we don't know how the universe came to exist, then we can't say anything meaningful about how the universe came to exist. It is not reasonable to accept a claim that some supernatural entity outside the universe deliberately made it happen, when such a claim is not backed by sufficient evidence.
You made an argument from ignorance and got called out on it by multiple posters. You asserted that we should not question theistic claims because we don't know how the universe originated. This is an argument from ignorance. Now you are trying to misrepresent my position and argue irrelevant nonsense to divert our attention from this fact.
You're very quick to invent positions for me, for someone so supposedly offended by my many misinterpretations of your clever metaphor that you cannot explain or defend.
I would, if coming upon a cookie, absolutely assume that someone made it. And if I then found the cookie missing, I would absolutely assume that someone had taken it. So what does that imply for a universe, which is the analogue to the cookie in this situation?
As I have explained already, the cookie is not an analogue of anything. The hypothetical scenario I made up is meant to illustrate how arguments from ignorance work. It is not intended to be a metaphor for the universe or its origin.
We don't know how the universe came to exist, then we can't say anything meaningful about how the universe came to exist.
This, I wholeheartedly agree with. Indeed, I've said the exact same thing multiple times in the thread! I do not claim to know anything about how the universe came into being. But, I do think that it did. And so do you.
You continue to miss the point. This is the part of your post I disagreed with (in bold):
Politesse:
But since no one has any rational means to describe the origin of the universe, it seems a bit silly for one group to go after another group's story.
I disagree that theistic claims regarding the origins of the universe should not be questioned, as you seem to imply in the part I quoted and highlighted. And your reasoning behind why such claims should not be questioned is based on "But since no one has any rational means to describe the origin of the universe". It appears to be an argument from ignorance, as several posters have pointed out. Do you understand now?