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The Argument From Biblical Confusion/Loftus' Argument: "What We Have Here Is A Failure To Communicate" Where He Blames God For All The Evils (Mostly Deaths) That Resulted From A Lack Of 'Clear' Communication With Respect To Various Doctrines

11/19/2011

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Objection 2:
(A) If the God of evangelical Christianity were to exist, then:
  1. He would love all Christians and want a personal relationship with them.
  2. People would need to have G-beliefs (among other things) in order to have the sort of relationship with God that he would want them to have.
(B) Therefore, if the God of evangelical Christianity were to exist, then he would want all Christians to have G-beliefs.

(C) Thus, if the God of evangelical Christianity were to exist, then he would probably prevent Christians from becoming confused or conflicted about matters that are the subject of G-beliefs.

(D) But some Christians are confused about such matters.

(E) And many Christians disagree with one another about such matters.

(F) Therefore [from D & E], Christians have not been prevented from becoming confused or conflicted about matters that are the subject of G-beliefs.

(G) Hence [from C & F], probably the God of evangelical Christianity does not exist.

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The Argument From Biblical Defects

11/9/2011

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(A) If the God of evangelical Christianity were to exist, then the Bible would be God's only written revelation.

(B) Thus, if that deity were to exist, then he would probably see to it that the Bible is perfectly clear and authoritative, and lack the appearance of merely human authorship.

(C) Some facts about the Bible are the following:

  1. It contains forgeries.
  2. It contradicts itself or is very unclear in many places.
  3. It contains factual errors, including unfulfilled prophecies.
  4. It contains ethical defects (such as God committing or ordering atrocities).
  5. It contains interpolations (later insertions to the text).
  6. Different copies of the same biblical manuscripts say conflicting things.
  7. The biblical canon involves disputes and is apparently arbitrary.
  8. There is no objective procedure for settling any of the various disputes, especially since the original manuscripts of the Bible have been lost and there has been no declaration from God that would help resolve any of the disputes.
(D) Therefore [from C], the Bible is not perfectly clear and authoritative, and has the appearance of merely human authorship.

(E) Hence [from B & D], probably the God of evangelical Christianity does not exist.

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Argument from Religious Diversity & Unreliable mechanisms

11/8/2011

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Objection 1: According to the argument from religious confusion, or problem of religious diversity, if God or some other supernatural being had the ability and desire to ensure that human beings understood the truth about such perennial matters, we would expect that being to reveal those truths widely and unequivocally. However, the existence of far-reaching religious confusion betrays the absence of any such revelation. Consequently, the existence of any such revelatory being--including God--is highly unlikely. (Note the related argument from reasonable nonbelief and similar argument from divine hiddenness.) When the focus of such an argument is widespread confusion about morality, it is occasionally called an argument from ethical confusion


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Naturalistic Induction / Replacing supernatural explanations with natural explanations.

11/8/2011

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Objection: Most problems which were unexplained by science in purely naturalistic terms have now been explained by science in purely naturalistic terms. So, by direct induction, any alleged evidence against naturalism has a scientific explanation in purely naturalistic terms.

Science has made and continues to make such great progress throughout history, gradually whittling away at the set of things that were previously not scientifically understood, that whatever it is that you are presently bringing forth as evidence against naturalism, I am sure that science will eventually get to that in time and explain it, as well, as entirely the product of natural causes.


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Response to God doesn't Have a Brain, so probably, He Doesn't Exist Argument.

6/14/2011

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First of all, all that the evidence shows is that being embodied is a common property of minds, but that doesn't show that it's an essential property of minds. To draw the conclusion that there can be no unembodied mind you'd have to show that this is an essential property.  Nobody seems to diasgree that unembodied minds are at least logically possible.

 What follows from the argument is not that there probably is no unembodied divine mind, but rather, that every human being that exists probably will not have a mind independently of a brain, or that everything which is biological and has a mind, that such a mind will be identical to, or causally dependent upon a central nervous system.  Or again, what follows is that everything in the universe that has a mind, will have a brain, but we can't say that probably, no unembodied mind can exist beyond the universe.  Thus, this argument would be trouble for someone who thought that God was an embodied person who existed in the universe, and who allegedly had a mind independent of his body.

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Response to Paradox for Soul-Building Theodicy

6/14/2011

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While there may be some merit to the Soul-Building Theodicy, it certainly isn't the only justification God must have for permitting the kinds of evils we see in the world.  In any case, the point of this response is not to solve the problem of evil, but to resolve the paradox inherent in the claim that God never acquired his virtue via suffering and temptation whereas according to Hick it is better to acquire virtue in exactly the way humans do.  But then, it seems that humans are more virtuous then God in some way.

Another article that brings up a similar issue:
http://stripe.colorado.edu/~morristo/whats-so-good-about-moral-freedom.pdf

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Christians aren't Morally Superior to Non-Belivers, but they should be if Christianity is true

6/13/2011

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RESPONSE 1:
is_saint-production_a_valid_test.pdf
File Size: 146 kb
File Type: pdf
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UPDATE:  I originally heard this argument in a debate between Paul Draper and William Lane Craig.  It turns out that Paul Draper no longer thinks that there is sufficient sociological data to support this argument according to his disciple Jeffery Jay Lowder: "Draper now believes that there is insufficient sociological evidence to prove that theists do not live more moral lives than naturalists. I have chosen to follow Draper's lead, so I do not include this argument in my cumulative case for naturalism." http://secularoutpost.infidels.org/2012/08/are-christians-best-argument-against.html

RESPONSE 2 SUMMARY: There is more to an apparent moral life than just habit, there are FOUR conditions that need to be satisfied for some act to be virtuous: 1-(you know that the action is virtuous) you need to do the action knowing that you are doing something virtuous; 2-(you choose it because it is a virtuous thing, you need to have the right motivation) you need to decide to do the action because doing so is virtuous 3-you need to decide to do the action from a firm and unchanging state (arising from a state of character you have that arises over time). 4-You have to do it with pleasure or enjoyment, it shouldn’t feel like an imposition or inconvenience to the person. 

Clearly, atheists and theists could be alike in habit and knowledge of right and wrong given our evolutionary inheritance, but the theist could be morally superior to the atheist in conditions 2-4 and not be empirically detectable in the studies that are used to make this case by the atheist.  This


RESPONSE 2 FULL: I would like to share what I take to be defeaters of this argument: 1) If Christianity is true, then Christians are committed to the belief that they have the supernatural assistance of God to fulfill the demands of morality whereas the non-believer does not have this supernatural assistance.

2) If Christians actually do have this kind of supernatural assistance, then it is probable that we should observe Christians as being morally better in some relevant sense than non-believers.

3)  We do not observe Christians as performing morally better than non-believers.

4) Therefore, Christianity is false.

Okay, let’s go to work on this argument.


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