If there was a god...
And that god wanted people to believe certain things...
Then that god would communicate clearly to ensure that the beliefs passed the Outsider Test for Faith (or faith would not be a necessary requirement as the evidence would suffice). This would at least necessarily be true of any god worthy of worship. So, there is either a god that doesn't care what people believe... a god that cares and is incompetent (and thus not worthy of worship) --or no god at all. The most likely scenarios is no god at all because we know that humans invent gods and other beings to explain that which they don't understand, --but we have no evidence that consciousness of any sort can exist without a brain.
Each of David Marshall’s arguments against the OTF fail. His next tactic, regardless of how illogical it may be, is to argue that Christianity has passed the OTF “billions of times.” (59) If an argument is by its nature “flawed,” as Marshall contends, how then, can he possibly believe arguing that “billions” allegedly passing this flawed test is proof that Christians have come to their faith in a rational manner? See more here.
It all depends on your priors. I think an argument can be good even when it isn't strong enough such that it ought to convince any unbiased person. An argument might provide some evidence for its conclusion, which might be sufficient or insufficient given someone's personal prior probabilities....The trouble with "unbiased persons" is that you have to go through town with a lantern in broad daylight to find one. Unless, of course, you find the ones who agree with me! :) LINK.In one sense I agree with Vic. We all have priors, that is, background knowledge, the information we have accumulated prior to encountering a new argument. We also have biases. We are prone to so many cognitive biases it's astounding. We don't reason that well because of them. When facing the fact of biases most people will even say they are not affected by them it's so bad. So I agree there are arguments that are good ones even though they cannot convince others. The problem is what Vic thinks this proves. The real problem unaddressed by him is how we can best solve this problem when it comes to debates about his evangelical faith.
I don't know enough about the leading defenders of other religious faiths, but I suspect in their universities they teach critical thinking classes from textbooks they have written too. And I expect we would all agree with what they teach and write, except for some of the examples they use to illustrate a particular logical rule.
There are newer, more expensive editions of this book than the one I linked to. But look inside this one then choose which edition at which price you can afford. But get it. You will see what I mean when I say there is no distinction between critical thinking and thinking skeptically. They are one and the same. That's why I argue faith is an irrational leap over the probabilities. I say believers operate by double standards. They do not think critically, in the sense I just wrote about and which this book could help show them. When we say the party of agnosticism and atheism is one of reason and science we mean it. We invite believers to the adult table, where an adult conversation can be had.
I now report there is progress. The most ignorant criticisms of the OTF come from Christian scholars Matthew Flannagan and Mark Hanna. They are so bad, so delusional I only recommend them in so far as they show us how intelligent people with a delusion cannot even read with comprehension. The less ignorant criticisms of the OTF come from Victor Reppert, Randal Rauser and Thomas Talbot (all of whom were instructional to me in many ways). Maybe I'm going soft, but I think rather than taking a hard-line approach against Marshall it would be counter-productive for me to do so, since he embraces the OTF (with some caveats). I adjure my critics to read Marshall's chapter even though he is still wrong to claim Christianity passes the OTF. All I'm saying is that this is progress. I'll comment later on where he's wrong, but for now I recommend his chapter to my critics. Hopefully they will listen to him.You can't have miracles unless you have an order of nature for them to stand out from. A Presidential pardon is only possible because there is a stable system of laws that require punishments for certain crimes, yet our system of laws allows the President to alter the penalty and release someone from those penalties. There is no inconsistency in a system of laws that permits Presidential discretionary pardons.My response:
Many of the things that it is supposed that God could have done to make his existence perfectly evident could be passed off as the work of powerful (but evolved) aliens. And no matter how much evidence God provides, there is some additional piece of evidence that an atheist could say God didn't provide, and if God really cared for us, he would have provided. The amount of evidence God could have provided has no intrinsic maximum.Vic made this comment in this discussion. Like other apologists who have an invested stake in being apologists he won't be convinced otherwise, but since there are Christians who want to be honest with their faith I'll respond.
But let’s say the Christian faith is true and Jesus did arise from the dead. Let’s say that even though Christianity must punt to mystery and retreat into the realm of mere possibilities to explain itself that it is still true, contrary to what my (God given?) mind leads me to believe. Then what would it take to convince me?
I would need sufficient reasons to overcome my objections, and I would need sufficient evidence to lead me to believe. By “sufficient” here, I mean reasons and evidence that would overcome my skepticism.
In an article on his Website, Debunking Christianity, the well-known skeptic and former preacher John Loftus, M.A., M.Div., author of Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity, defends the possibility of scientific knowledge along the following lines:"There are several things wrong with this argument," Torley writes.
“If there is no God then we don’t know anything.” False. If so, chimps don’t know anything either. They don’t know how to get food, or mate or even where to live. Without knowing anything they should’ve died off a long time ago. And yet here they are. They don’t need a god to know these things. Why do we need a god for knowledge? We learn through a process of trial and error. Since we’ve survived as a human species, we have acquired reliable knowledge about our world. Period.
[By the way, that is a damned good book even if I say so myself]. Victor is defending the "truth" but also the ridiculousness of the three-tiered world that is required in order to believe Jesus ascended into heaven (i.e. the sky). How does he do it? He rhetorically asks: "And if God is going to show first-century people that he went to heaven, how would you suggest he go about doing it?" My response: Vic, this is easy. Jesus could have predicted he will disappear into the spiritual realm from whence he came. He could have said he will disappear at high noon the next day from off Mt. Olives. Then the next day when the crowd arrived, he would say goodbye and then *poof* he's gone.Again, you can't make this shit up. No wonder we reserve the right to ridicule his beliefs along with how he defends them. His brain is made stupid by his faith, I'm sorry to say.
I can listen to someone mock my beliefs, in fact I can even mock them myself, and not find any reason whatsoever in the mockery for rejecting that belief. I enjoy this kind of mockery. In fact, I hold that there are certain beliefs that are on the one hand completely ridiculous, and on the other hand, completely true. Ridiculousness and truth are not incompatible.The definition of Ridiculousness: "Deserving or inspiring ridicule; absurd, preposterous, or silly. See Synonyms at foolish." I would never say that of the things I think are probably true, since probabilities are all that matter here. Faith makes you say stupid things Vic. Your Brain is Made Stupid By Faith. I'm serious folks. You can't make this shit up!
Here’s how astronomers breakout the visible universe within 14 billion light years:With this as a backdrop I want to discuss Jeff Lowder's criticisms of my argument that the size of the universe leads to atheism. I have looked in vain to see if Lowder has any educational credentials at all, so I look forward to him sharing them with us if he responds.
Superclusters in the visible universe = 10 million
Galaxy groups in the visible universe = 25 billion
Large galaxies in the visible universe = 350 billion
Dwarf galaxies in the visible universe = 7 trillion
Stars in the visible universe = 30 billion trillion (3×10²²)
A new study suggests that 90% of the most distant (and therefore oldest) galaxies in the universe could be unseen, hidden by clouds of dust. That would mean that – assuming the same number of stars in each galaxy, and that older galaxies don’t deviate from this rule – that the number of stars in the visible universe would be 270 billion trillion or 2.7 x 10 to the power of 24).