37 replies to this topic

[Pascal]

Guys, again, this isn't really the purpose of the thread, especially when you're not presenting the arguments on both sides on your own. There is literally almost every other thread out there where you can argue with someone if you want to but i'd really prefer it if you did it somewhere else (already quickly going off the rails here haha, still haven't given up trying though).

Edited by kingpomba, 28 June 2012 - 03:08 AM.

[Muhammed Ali]

kingpomba, on 17 June 2012 - 05:50 AM, said:

if God is all loving, all powerful and all knowing (i prefer to replace all with maximally or infinitely), why does evil exist?

That sentence highlights a major flaw in the argument.

In my opinion one of the strongest arguments for God is the existence of evil / imperfections because somethings only become manifest through things that reciprocate them. Beauty can only be appreciated through ugliness.

It's amazing, isn't it? This thing that so strongly proves the existence of God is almost always used to disprove His existence because people have failed to understand its benefits.

[Pascal]

Muhammed Ali, on 06 July 2012 - 09:06 PM, said:

That sentence highlights a major flaw in the argument.

In my opinion one of the strongest arguments for God is the existence of evil / imperfections because somethings only become manifest through things that reciprocate them. Beauty can only be appreciated through ugliness.

It's amazing, isn't it? This thing that so strongly proves the existence of God is almost always used to disprove His existence because people have failed to understand its benefits.

The title my friend, best arguments on both sides, i only see one

It's apparent my efforts to maintain order are in vain though. Your argument is one i haven't heard before (well the first half but bonus points none the less!) and trust me, after reading all these philosophy books and papers, theres nothing quite as refreshing as a new argument, so i'll respond here.

God is a perfect being, therefore, it is impossible for him to create something imperfect or flawed. Every action he takes is perfect. Imagine a perfect blacksmith or baker, totally perfect. He never makes mistakes, its impossible for him to make mistakes. The way he mixes the dough, the way he spices the loaf, all these actions are perfect because they spring from a perfect baker. It comes as no surprise that the end result of these products is always a perfect loaf. So, i dont think arguing that things are imperfect or poorly designed goes any further to proving a God. I hope you can see from my position (its hard, i know) why this would just disprove a God even more.

It doesn't make sense to me that we need evil to exist so that good can exist, if thats what you're implying.

If you're saying something different, that we need evil to exist to somehow appreciate good even more, then maybe, i need to think about this. I dont think its true though. You appreciate having legs even though they've never been broken. If God allows evil to exist, simply so we can appreciate good just a little more, i dont think thats a great defense. Since, if you go through it semi mathematically, this just ends up lowering the total good of everything else.

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I was going to think to the threadbut its a mess so i'll just repaste it here to make it easier for us all, the same general principals apply really:


Here's the thing though, if you analyse the argument carefully, you'll see that the reward(heaven) is only an excuse if the rape is the only way this greater good could be actualised. Clearly, you don't need to be raped to gain entry into heaven. So, the fact that she gets rewarded for it is no excuse since she could of gotten to heaven without being raped.

Lets look at it this way:

R = Reward (my mathematician friends tell me we can call this an arbitararilly large number, x)

S = Suffering

T = Total Reward/Total Good Obtained

R - S = T

Rape and getting murdered is really one of the worst things that can happen to a person, so, the suffering is high. On a 10 point scale, we'd call it about a 9.

R - S = T

T = R - S

T = (x) - (9) < ---- So, in this case, as a result of the suffering, the total good obtained is x (an abitarially large number), minus 9, the suffering. So, in this case the total good is x - 9

However, what if there was less suffering, she had a hard life sure but at least she wasn't raped and brutally murdered. We'll assign this suffering a 6.

T = (x) - (6) <------ In this case, the total good is x - 6. So, there is more good in total because there is less suffering.

What if we didn't suffer at all?

T = (x) - (0)

T = (x) <------------ Even more total good.

My point is the good of going to heaven could of been gotten with much less suffering and much less evil. Therefore, a good God always acts to minimise suffering but why did he not stop sues rape?

Edited by kingpomba, 07 July 2012 - 03:45 PM.

[malikshtar87]

Here you go Kingpomba. just to get this thread back on track for you, I will give you my main argument for why I believe in the existence of God, and also the strongest argument, in my opinion, from the athiests point of view( although I do believe it does fail to prove its point).

For existence:
I begin with the belief that if God did exist, there must be some signs within this natural world which He has placed to lead us to Him, for if these clues did not exist and a god did, then that is no god worth worshipping because he has left his creations lost and blinded in this world. And that would just be cruel. So I go on examining this world. There are two options here that I can take, either the teleological argument (or argument from design) or the argument from scriptures and prophets. For conversation's sake I will dismiss the former and take the latter as my main argument for the existence of God.

Being born into a muslim family it was only natural for me to learn about the prophets and holy books. To narrow this argument down, it is the Quran, with its pure voice and perfect ideals that has led me to believe in the existance of a God. I truly believe that the verses of the Quran are the words of God. Those who disagree with this usually say that the Quran was authored by the Prophet Muhammad. But if we analyze this claim thru a historical reference, we see that first of all the prophet was an orphan with no educational background in terms of scholastics. He did not know how to read and more importantly he did not know how to write. So they could not have been his words. They also could not have been his words but written by someone else, because nowhere in the books of history do any pages even elude to this fact that he was aided by someone else. Another important point is when we compare the traditions of the prophet to the Quran, we find that the style, tone, type, etc of writinngs/sayings were completely different. There would atleast have been some similarities if they were attributed to the same man.
For this reason ( and many more historical reasons, for example the lives of the Imams after the prophet), I am certain that God exists. Atleast that's my argument.

For Non-existence:
I believe that the positivists have a strong argument for the non-existence of a soul which could then entail the non-existance of an Islamic-Judeo-Christain god. Neuroscience today has reached a point no human being in the past century would have ever imagined. When it comes to the beliefs, ideas, emotions, feelings, etc that any individual is subject to on a daily basis, theists have always attributed it to a non-material soul. But science has shown us that all it is, is the firing of neurons and the release of neurotransmitters within the brain. So, a non-material soul does not exist, therefore an Islamic-Judeo-Christain god does not exist.
This argument, I believe, is a formidable one but makes two fallacies which I woulds like to share:
1. Positivists aim at explaining everything in existence, but are limiting the tools available to help them. By saying we will only use science to explain the world's phenomena, we are disregarding the possibility that there may indeed be some phenomena that exists but cannot be comprehended by science. Science has a limited jurisdiction.
2. When positivists say that everything we feel or think is caused by the brain, I believe they are rushing in making a judgement that no soul exists. It is very easily conceivable for the brain to function in its current state while at the same time an immaterial soul exists within that human body.

[Ishraq]

Greetings.

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[…] what do people consider to be the best arguments (or most convincing) on both sides?

I’m going to state what I think is the best argument(s) for the existence of God and what I think is the worst argument against the existence of God. In doing this, I’m aware that I’m not conforming to what the OP asks and for that I apologize.

Anyway, as regards arguments for God’s existence, the best ones I think are (1) Avicenna’s burhan al-siddiqin, (2) Aristotle’s argument from motion, and (3) Aquinas’ teleological argument. As for the argument against God’s existence, it’s the argument from evil. I’ll say a bit about why I think that.

Take the words (with slight modifications) of the creator of the OP as representative of the line of thought involved in this sort of argument. Essentially, the argument amounts to something like the following:

God, as a being that is omnipotent and omnibenevolent (i.e., maximally good), would eliminate the existence of evil.
But He does not; this is simply a fact of experience.
Therefore, He does not exist.

Here are two problems with it: first, the conclusion strictly speaking does not follow; it ought to be ‘therefore, He is not omnibenevolent’, not that He does not exist. But ignore that flaw. Second, assume the argument is valid and grant the truth of the minor premise. The real problem is with the major. It’s simply false. That is to say, it assumes, wrongly, that a being that is unconditionally/maximally good could not possibly have a reason to allow, or not eliminate, evil. But there is no reason to think this whatsoever. It’s perfectly consistent to hold that God, being infinitely good, allows evil to exist so that He may produce out of it good. Think of, e.g., the standard accounts of the good that religions promise to the faithful in next life. What is the atheist objection to this though? That there couldn’t possibly be any good that can outweigh all the evil (i.e., rape, Auschwitz, etc) that we see in the world? Alright, fine. But how does he know this? Because, obviously he thinks, God does not exist to provide it. But in saying this, he assumes the very thing i.e., the nonexistence of God, he took the argument from evil to prove. And this is to commit the fallacy of begging the question.

So, it seems the argument it pretty worthless.

Edited by Ishraq, 10 July 2012 - 04:08 PM.

[Ugly Jinn]

^ C'mon now, you have to be brave and play along and state what you believe is the best argument against God's existence. Don't worry, you won't be sinned, it's only a discussion.

[Dante Alighieri]

Ishraq, that statement of the argument is awkward and not how most versions of the argument are stated.  Most logical versions of the POE go in the form of (1) if God exists, then suffering would not exist (2) suffering exists (3) hence, God doesn't exist. (1) is supported by various deductive arguments. In the evidential version, it goes along the lines of (1) if God exists, gratuitous suffering does not exist. (2) gratuitous suffering exists (3) hence, God doesn't exist. (2) is supported either inductively or abductively, so the conclusion is that either (a) it is likely that God doesn't exist or (b ) nontheism explains the data better than theism and hence ought be preferred. Also, the God by definition is taken to rigidly designate an omnipotent, omniscient, morally perfect being. Obviously, it has no bearing on conceptions of God with differing moral status. I'm not sure where you get the charge that the argument is somehow "question-begging."

In any case, I wanted to add a couple more arguments to the mix:

For theism

Swinburne's argument from temporal order. Perhaps one of the better presentations of the teleological argument I know of. The basic idea is that we can either treat the laws of nature as brute fact or appeal to a consiousness mind who created them as a brute fact. Swinburne argues that the latter is preferable. He argues from the ontological and explanatory simplicity of the latter hypothesis and charges the former hypothesis for having a multiplicity of brute facts.

Against theism

A version of van Inwagen's objection to show that a necessary being cannot account for contigency. Not so much an argument against theism proper as it is an argument against Anselimian theism. The basic idea is that a necessary being or cause has a necessary nature. Hence, it will have the same reasons for creating what it is does in every possible world - hence, it will create the same contingent cosmos in every possible world. But then, the cosmos is in fact necessary, contradicting that it is contingent. Hence, there cannot be a necessary being or necessary cause.

Edited by Dante Alighieri, 10 July 2012 - 07:27 PM.

[Ugly Jinn]

Both sides have arguments no doubt, in depth and in complexity, but you pretty much end up where you started. All those theories and arguments, which are mentally stimulating and interesting, really can't verify the truth.

I prefer to keep it simple, we exist, maybe a super Being created us or somehow we just evolved, at this point we just don't know.

At the end you basically have to make a gut decision, sometimes the decision can be "I don't know". That's the reality.

This doesn't answer the question of the thread, just thought I'll add it.

Edited by Ugly Jinn, 11 July 2012 - 08:50 AM.

[Ishraq]

Dante,

Quote

that statement of the argument is awkward and not how most versions of the argument are stated.

Well, I did say I was going to take the OP’s formulation as representative. In any case, the way you’ve presented it amounts, at bottom, to the same thing. See below.

Quote

Most logical versions of the POE go in the form of (1) if God exists, then suffering would not exist (2) suffering exists (3) hence, God doesn't exist. [...]

But there’s no proof for (1), because there is no proof for the existence of gratuitous suffering. All the so-called abductive and inductive evidence just amounts to nothing more than a kind of argumentum ad ignorantiam. That is, from an ignorance of a justification that God can have for permitting evil it is concluded that there is no such justification. But that's a non-sequitur.

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God by definition is taken to rigidly designate an omnipotent, omniscient, morally perfect being.

Just as an aside, I think the whole idea of rigid designators as well as the possible world semantics on which it depends, in dealing with these sorts of issues, is misguided. This is a question for another day though.

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I'm not sure where you get the charge that the argument is somehow "question-begging."

It’s question begging because the only possible way for justify the existence of gratuitous evil i.e., the proposition that 'there can’t be any greater good that outweighs (or comes out of) the suffering we see in the world', is if it’s already assumed that God does not exist. Otherwise, all attempts at justifying the premise just fall back on one’s inability to perceive said greater good.

Quote

C'mon now, you have to be brave and play along and state what you believe is the best argument against God's existence. Don't worry, you won't be sinned, it's only a discussion.

I just don’t think there are any good positive arguments against God’s existence. However, I do think that there are good criticisms of arguments for God’s existence. The interesting thing is that these good criticisms have come from theists themselves.

[Pascal]

Ishraq: It wasn't my intention to present actual arguments for debate. Indeed, as i've specified time and time again i just wanted to know the types of arguments people found convincing, rather than the current back and forth we find ourselves in, just like every other thread. I was hoping to escape this for once, guess not hey?

It was more an illustration for people who are not familiar with it. There are much better formulations in the problem of evil thread which is located in this very same section, which would be a good place to take any debate as well.

It was partially borne out of the suggestion of one of my professor’s books, that there are no absolutely dynamite arguments on either side. There exists no argument that would really convince large swathes of people to immediate see the truth. In his book, he looked at arguments from both sides and played the devil’s advocate. Therefore, he looked at creationism as proof for God and then wrote possible reasons why it might not be so. He then showed a particular formulation of the problem of evil and potential defences against this.

Many of these arguments are still around for a reason. I think people act psychologically much like my professor did in his book. Yes, the problem of evil is difficult but witnessing theists intelligent and educated as yourself (present company included of course) not having their faith destroyed by the problem of evil is of huge significance in my opinion. It speaks to the psychology; it speaks to the philosophy and the rest.

The cosmological argument could conceivably be true for instance, in the fact that i cannot prove it wrong. It's just that i have an alternative defense that is also possible. I think it works both ways; it is the same with the problem of evil. Each believer comes up with some kind of reason or defense that doesn't totally succeed in defeating it in my opinion but it creates a possibility and a comfortable avenue/buffer for them to continue believing. Much the same with the cosmological argument and myself.

Indeed, its things like the above that occasionally make me question why i persist in this...interest or passion shall i say. I then remember i do it for myself first of all, to help find the truth for myself, i never set out to win converts or something like that. It also raises the question if debates like this will ever go anywhere...ever. It seems no matter how weak (sometimes even objectively) the other persons argument is and no matter how strong (sometimes objectively too) my response is, they just keep going on, they just get on with their life and act like nothing happened. I guess this is why i write for the person i'm arguing with last of all. Indeed, i saw a statistic that said after something like the age of 25, the odds of someone converting to christianity decrease exponentially (allegedly anyway). By virtue of comming on a forum of this nature, everyone is fairly dedicated to their faith, everyone is fairly set in it. I learnt all i knew about islam mostly from books and places like this first of all then i met actual muslims at university and things like that. To say the least the versions didn't match up always and after knowing a decent amount, it would almost want my brain to scream out haram for the very things i indulge in myself. So, i don't think any of us (believers or non-believers) are a representative sample neccessarily.

I probably spend more time thinking about God than a lot of religious people. So, its obvious most of us aren't very pliable to move with the wind so to speak (not that i believe we can even really choose religion in the first place).

I was really just looking for everyones opinions and for the interesting contrast. As i mentioned in my first post, its easy to write for your position, its hard to defend the other one. I've dabbled with that occasionally lately here and i plan to do a little more.

Edited by kingpomba, 11 July 2012 - 02:00 PM.

[Dante Alighieri]

Ishraq, on 11 July 2012 - 01:27 PM, said:

But there’s no proof for (1), because there is no proof for the existence of gratuitous suffering. All the so-called abductive and inductive evidence just amounts to nothing more than a kind of argumentum ad ignorantiam. That is, from an ignorance of a justification that God can have for permitting evil it is concluded that there is no such justification. But that's a non-sequitur.

(1) is typically proven by showing that moral evil is incompatible with the existence of God. It isn't an appeal to ignorance - logical versions of the argument rule out morally sufficient reasons for moral evils as being possible at all. Your criticism here is bizarre since logical versions of the argument are not inductive or abductive. I think your criticism was actually intended towards the evidential version of the argument, where (2) is the crucial premise. In the logical version, (1) is what is contested i.e. appeal to a free will defense or the like.

(1) if God exists, gratuitous suffering does not exist. (2) gratuitous suffering exists (3) hence, God doesn't exist

(1) is true by definition, since gratuitous suffering is suffering for which there is no greater goods that are elicited by such suffering. (2) is the premise that is contested.

Quote

It’s question begging because the only possible way for justify the existence of gratuitous evil i.e., the proposition that 'there can’t be any greater good that outweighs (or comes out of) the suffering we see in the world', is if it’s already assumed that God does not exist. Otherwise, all attempts at justifying the premise just fall back on one’s inability to perceive said greater good.

With respect to evidential versions of the argument, (2) is shown by either comparing the explanatory power of theism vs nontheism on the data of apparent gratuitous suffering in abductive formulations of the argument. Alternatively, it makes the inference that, as far as we know, there are no justifying goods behind such and such instances of suffering. Hence, there such suffering is in fact gratuitous and hence incompatible with the existence of God. You rightly point out that such a noseeum inference (as it has come to be called) can be challenged by appeals to skeptical theism and what not - but that is far a cry from asserting that the argument is question-begging. If you have provided an actual argument to this conclusion, I have not seen it. Just about no defender of the evidential argument believes that morally sufficient reasons for suffering are impossible , (many take Plantinga to have defeated the LPoE on that regard), but that the existence of such reasons are improbable or that the data is better explained by nontheism over theism. Ergo, theism is either improbable or explanatorily deficient, per the inductive and abductive versions of the argument. Just how you come to the conclusion that this line of argumentation is question-begging is a little puzzling. To be sure, you can (as others have done) argue that the noseeum-type inferences are unjustified, probably by appeal to skeptical theism. But I'm really not seeing at all here how you could conclude that such an argument is circular.

Edited by Dante Alighieri, 11 July 2012 - 03:22 PM.

[Ishraq]

Dante,

Quote

(1)  is typically proven by showing that moral evil is incompatible with the existence of God. It isn't an appeal to ignorance - logical versions of the argument rule out morally sufficient reasons for moral evils as being possible at all. Your criticism here is bizarre since logical versions of the argument are not inductive or abductive.

I think I see the reason for the bizarreness. See, from the way you worded the post in which you initially said all this I thought you took the evidential argument as a support for the first premise of the LPoE. It seems I was wrong. But still, it seems there isn’t a way to justify the first premise of the LPoE without citing cases of gratuitous evil. Otherwise, it’s perfectly consistent to hold that God, being infinitely good, allows evil to exist so that He may produce out of it good. IOW, moral evil is not incompatible with the existence of God, unless you cite actual cases of gratuitous evil.

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I think your criticism was actually intended towards the evidential version of the argument, where (2) is the crucial premise.

Yes, it was. But it was also intended towards the logical version insofar as I thought (wrongly it seems) you took the evidential version as support for the first premise of the logical version.

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With respect to evidential versions of the argument, (2) is shown by either comparing the explanatory power of theism vs nontheism on the data of apparent gratuitous suffering in abductive formulations of the argument.

How are you supposed to determine which has better explanatory power when you don’t know whether or not a given instance of suffering is an instance of real gratuitous suffering? IOW, when what's in question is the existence of the data i.e., gratuitous evil, you're trying to explain.

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You rightly point out that such a noseeum inference (as it has come to be called) can be challenged by appeals to skeptical theism and what not - but that is far a cry from asserting that the argument is question-begging. If you have provided an actual argument to this conclusion, I have not seen it. Just about no defender of the evidential argument believes that morally sufficient reasons for suffering are impossible, but that the existence of such reasons are improbable […].

There isn’t a justification that they’re impossible, we both agree on that. So, what is the justification that they’re improbable? Again, all the abductive and inductive evidence that is adduced at this point falls back on ignorance.

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[…] or that the data is better explained by nontheism over theism.

What data though? The data of suffering or gratuitous suffering? If the former, we can both maintain God's existence. If the latter, there is no such data or, at least, a given instance of suffering has not been proven to be gratuitous. So, again, how can you determine it explains the data better when the very existence of the data it purports to explain has not been established yet so that it may explained? Or maybe, you may say, it’s not gratuitous suffering but apparent gratuitous suffering. But the same applies to this too. That is, you cannot establish an instance of apparent gratuitous suffering. The attempts just fall back on one’s ignorance.

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Just how you come to the conclusion that this line of argumentation is question-begging is a little puzzling. To be sure, you can (as others have done) argue that the noseeum-type inferences are unjustified, probably by appeal to skeptical theism. But I'm really not seeing at all here how you could conclude that such an argument is circular.

It’s question-begging because you can’t rule out the premise that God allows evil so that He may produce good out of it unless you already implicitly assume He does not exist. Otherwise, there is no justification for the first premise of the LPoE nor the second premise of the EPoE, regardless of whether or not it’s gratuitous evil or apparent gratuitous evil that you’re trying to justify. But if you do rule out that premise in such a way, then you're, obviously, begging the question.

[MysticKnight]

Here is my best argument:

. Morality to be objective, cannot be arbitrary.

2. Objective morality exists (assumption).

3. If a Creator can decide/create what is moral, then morality would be arbitrary. (For example, if it can decide rape is moral, then it would be arbitrary)

4. Therefore a Creator cannot create objective morality.

5. If a Creator cannot create objective morality, then nothing can, including evolution, as a Creator can create evolution, and anything that would be able to create morality.

6. Therefore objective morality is eternal.

7. Morality is not separate from consciousness.

8. Therefore consciousness is eternal.

9. Ultimate morality is included in definition of objective morality.

10. Therefore Ultimate morality exists eternally.

You can substitute "greatness" for "morality" and you will reach conclusion of "Ultimate greatness".

This is my best argument.