So i make a point, you get the point 180 degrees wrong, I point it out to you, and you say it doesn't matter you got it wrong - and then ask me why I don't want to engage. — Rank Amateur

And you stop reading, don't understand the core conclusion of my counter-argument and use the missed point as your reason to ignore the counter-argument. That's called a fallacy fallacy.

p1. - people make no-seeum arguments
p2. - these arguments basically say " we know what we are looking for, we have looked in lots of places, and we don't see it, therefore it does not exist.
p3. - there are almost countless examples of things that people where unaware of, did not believe existed, but actually did exist.
p4. - all a no seeum argument shows is that there is something you can't see it

conclusion - all no seeum arguments fail as proof of either existence or non existence of anything.

If you want to directly answer this - happy to engage. — Rank Amateur

p2 is not really true. The criticism is not that it doesn't exist, it's that there's no reason to say that it exists if it cannot have observed correlation. This is the foundation of the Russel analogy. If you can make up whatever you want to exist and then "prove it" by saying that because no one can see it it must exist, you essentially just invent anything you want as existing, without any epistemic responsibility of any kind. You don't seem to understand the actual conclusion of Russel's analogy and instead, strawman it into a black and white "does not exist", which isn't the actual conclusion of the criticism through Russel's analogy.

p3 is a true premise but does not really support the conclusion, since things like viruses have a direct correlation that can be observed. I've countered this in the virus analogy I made, which essentially points to how religion continuously changed their view of the world and universe to fit the results of scientific theories. The only thing that your p3 points to is that there are things we don't know the reason for in the universe, but when we do they will be proven facts and in the meanwhile, people will slap "God" onto the reasons why without any real correlation between them.

What happens if I say that a teapot is responsible for those unexplained things? You cannot say that a teapot isn't responsible because throughout history there have been things that people didn't know about and therefore, before we know for sure, a teapot can be responsible for everything. This is the logic of your argument. Just replace the teapot with God.

conclusion - all no seeum arguments fail as proof of either existence or non existence of anything. — Rank Amateur

And how is what we don't know in any correlation with God and not a teapot?

Why do you even bother doing philosophy if that's your response to a counter-argument? I recommend that you look at your reasoning with the last thing I wrote in mind.

In order to make a valid hypothesis, you need to collect data that is in actual support of something, not in support of something vague that you can slap "God" onto in order to conclude it to be God. This is why no one has ever been able to prove the existence of God through reasoning because the reasoning is inherently flawed and ignores all methods needed to actually reach a truth as a scientific theory. And even if just a probability is proposed, that probability is as vague as the probability that a cat will pop into existence from non-existence, right before my eyes. The correlation isn't there, i.e causation ≠ correlation and jumping to conclusions. Using personal belief to change the actual conclusion of an argument. — Christoffer

It doesn't matter if your point was misinterpreted since you still talk about existing things not yet proven but do not see the difference with observable properties as basis for a hypothesis that can be tested, verified, falsified and concluded - and a causation ≠ correlation fallacy jumping to conclusions.

You are trying to argue that there are observable consequences in the universe that makes for a foundation to a hypothesis of a God and use the idea that viruses existed before observed and proven. However, as I pointed out, a virus exists with direct observable consequences that can be studied. To apply a hypothesis of God to whatever you like is like having a hypothesis about sickness being caused by saying "Hello" whenever someone walks by with a cow. There's no direct and rational correlation between "God" and something you observe, which leads to jumping to conclusion and a causation ≠ correlation fallacy, which is almost always present in any argument around God.

The analogy is simply like this. People back when viruses were unknown, attached to the idea of God's punishment through sickness. Much like the consequences, causality and unknowns of the universe are attached to God in those God-arguments. But scientists who make an actual hypothesis about what they observe do not jump to conclusions, they do not invent a correlation where they see fit, which is what Russel pointed out to with his critique against such ideas in science, calling them pseudoscience. Scientists and the scientific method, in order to actually explain something observed in nature and the universe, is about looking for actual causation. The ones who discovered viruses looked at how sickness spread and found that there are correlations between interactions between people, how water supplies were handled etc. by carefully going through these actual causations, they could draw actual correlations which informed that there's something invisible to the naked eye that caused these sicknesses. That's when they started observing things people interacted with and found microbes, viruses etc. Because of this observation, this data, they concluded a scientific theory about viruses and bacteria.

But to invent false hypotheses around flawed correlation ideas is what the people before the scientists did with their ideas about God punishing people with sickness. They jumped to conclusions and saw all kinds of correlations which they used to prove after the fact that God was responsible. Like he punished only the poor because they committed more crimes than others. It all cumulated into a long list in support of a conclusion that sickness related to God, not anything else. It's because of this flawed reasoning that the argument for God by looking at certain causations or complexities in nature always ends up fallacious. It's out of both a lack of knowledge into the actual science that exists and a failure of methods to correctly analyze what can be observed.

In order to make a valid hypothesis, you need to collect data that is in actual support of something, not in support of something vague that you can slap "God" onto in order to conclude it to be God. This is why no one has ever been able to prove the existence of God through reasoning because the reasoning is inherently flawed and ignores all methods needed to actually reach a truth as a scientific theory. And even if just a probability is proposed, that probability is as vague as the probability that a cat will pop into existence from non-existence, right before my eyes. The correlation isn't there, i.e causation ≠ correlation and jumping to conclusions. Using personal belief to change the actual conclusion of an argument.

you are missing the point ot the entire argument - read again please - — Rank Amateur

And you should read my whole post before directly answering.

Surprisingly almost none of this is true. Each of those things that did not exist, until they existed began as a thought, an idea, a concept. And without doubt all of those ideas where scoffed, and dismissed. The real start of the scientific method is the idea of something new that becomes the hypothesis. — Rank Amateur

A virus, atom and quark didn't exist until we named them? Really? So people didn't get sick with viruses before they were discovered and named? The atoms and quarks didn't exist before they were discovered, yet chemical reactions throughout history during warfare technology and similar worked, even though they didn't know it was atoms and quarks responsible for those reactions?

You are applying a causation ≠ correlation on the idea that consequences act like things not proven yet and therefore God. Then compare it to specific things that had very observable and specific existences before discovered and named. You don't see how backward this is and a jump to conclusions?

Why can't one believe God is? Is there some fact I should know that says there is no God, and my belief is outside fact? Is there some overwhelming reasoning that says God is not a reasonable concept? And my belief is in conflict with reason? Why do you feel such a need to challenge ideas of others not in conflict with fact or reason? It smacks of fundamentalism. — Rank Amateur

There's nothing to conclude consequences in the universe and world is related at all to any concept of a God. The whole idea is a big fat causation ≠ correlation fallacy and bias towards the belief in God. People didn't believe in viruses or didn't know about them. They got sick, there were many guesses, many of them, supernatural beliefs about why people got sick. But no one thought "there are these things called viruses and just because no one believes in them doesn't mean they don't exist" and later they proved they exist. They didn't know about them at all. Your argument even gets a bit meta, since people back then thought it was God that punished them through sickness.

Which leads to a great analogy to why your argument is so very flawed:

They believed it was a lack of faith or other nonsense ideas and then when they later proved it to be viruses, it proved the religious beliefs wrong. You used an example of when faith blinded people to the reasons why people got sick, later to be proven by science discovering something they hadn't seen before, which overturned and erased all religious explanations for why we get sick with viruses. So it's kind of what you are doing with God right now; seeing causality or whatever you choose as a sign of God and therefore he can be proved, when it's more likely the whole thing is exactly like the virus analogy, that we simply don't have enough data right now to explain everything and when we do, people will abandon a religious explanation since the evidence is indisputable.

The rational idea is that we are the sick with viruses right now, not knowing about viruses and it makes people, like you, to argue wild speculations of faith only because we don't have enough data to prove or observe something yet. This is why I am so strict about scientific methods and why I wrote my argument about irrational belief being unethical because it not only holds back epistemic progress, it can be harmful to people when putting a veil over the eyes looking for answers. Just like how people acted on the belief that sickness was caused by those people's lack of faith.

Russel's teapot is tactic, not argument. Russel desperately wanted a definitive argument that ended with, Therefore there is no God, he couldn't find one. — Rank Amateur

Russel's teapot analogy lead up to the use of falsification in science, one of the most powerful tools we have to reach actual scientific truth in theories. It's been such a foundational concept in scientific methods since then that our world would probably have been a lot different if we didn't have it. So, no, it's not a tactic, it's a tool to reach actual truth or actual rational reasoning. It was also an actual argument, it's called an argument from analogy and it was powerful since it spawned the concept of falsification.

Just like with the viruses, there has to be something observed that we cannot explain, then we need data to identify no link or causality with known properties or things we know about in order to search for data in support of a hypothesis related to the observed specifically. A hypothesis that we then can push through verification and falsification in order to call it a scientific theory and fact.

What you are doing is having no observed actual data in support of a hypothesis with properties that have no real relation to the conclusion and therefore is pure speculation and not even a hypothesis. It's pure faith, a belief. A hypothesis needs some observation or support for it and a causation ≠ correlation fallacy cannot exist within a valid hypothesis. And a hypothesis cannot be used as truth either, which is the biggest problem with any argument for God. They all jump to conclusion and then tries to create a truth around it by proving after the fact. Post hoc.

It just feels desperate, like desperation to prove that the belief is true or valid because of the existentialism of the 20th century which put a lot of hard questions on the rationality of belief. And I'm with existentialism on this, just as they questioned the driving force of believing irrational eugenics beliefs during Nazi Germany I see a clear connection between the dangers of clinging onto beliefs that don't have true support. It's the most fundamental reason we have bad things happening between people in the world. To justify belief without support is unethical and I see no reason to justify it with broken arguments.

Calcuating how many different possible games can be isn't the same thing as there being those games. You calculate how many different possible game there can be by mutiplying n number of possible opening moves by m number of possible second moves, etc. — Terrapin Station

Misread the OP, thought the computer calculated it by playing the moves. But, let's say that it does just this. Wouldn't that count as the games being played and therefore exist? So if they program a computer to play a new game that is always in a slight variance of the last game, but can never be the same game, it would eventually have played all games possible, i.e all games exist.

No. The only ones that exist in some form are the ones that people are currently playing, currently thinking about, or the past ones that are recorded in some manner where the record is still extant.

It must be possible to calculate all of the possible moves, though, since there would be a finite (but ridiculously huge) number of them. — Terrapin Station

But if the computer already calculated it to 10^80, it would have reached that end and therefore these exist, as they have been tested out? Or can they only exist if humans do the calculation?

A stickied list of logical fallacies probably wouldn't help... But maybe if we zoom out a bit, a stickied list of philosophical resources would probably be quite helpful. A link to logical fallacies could well be a part of that. — fdrake

This actually sounds like a better idea! :ok:

I'm often using this as a resource and way of reminding some things that might slip my memory from time to time. Could maybe be part of such a resource material.
https://www.iep.utm.edu/

EDIT: saw that it already was part of it :smile:

On the contrary -- if it were a slippery slope I would be substituting what the proposal is for some other proposal. So something along the lines of "If we post a list of tips, then this is just one step on the road to making them rules, which is surely just a way for the socialists to take over the forum" — Moliere

Sure, was just making a bit of a meta-joke :wink:

I think the misconception about this is that they should be rules, but they are tips. It's not about limiting people's ability to write philosophy, but focusing an argument when focusing is needed.

it's a common sophomoric mistake to dismiss arguments by quickly categorizing them into their respective domains of invalid inference. — Moliere

But can also be used to point out holes in an argument in a very clear and to the point way than incomprehensible counter-arguments that goes on for pages after pages.

The names are better served for self-criticism than as a list of do's and don'ts for others. — Moliere

Tips aren't do's and don'ts, rules are. These things should be tips on how to improve your way of creating arguments and participate in discussions. There are many who don't even seem to know what fallacies and biases are.

I think all it would accomplish would be to endorse the bad use of fallacies. So I voted no. — Moliere

That's a sound counter-point though, hard to know if it's gonna go down that road, but.... isn't that a slippery slope? :wink:

Yeah, it's good to know about those fallacies, but I don't think it's a case for pinning. — jamalrob

I think the general idea that was proposed earlier was to include them in the already pinned guidelines as "General tips on how to improve your writing" or something like that. So no new post pinned and clear point that they are tips and not rules that must be followed. Just like there are guidelines to include an actual argument in the first point, which can't be a rule since sometimes there's a question to be asked and discussed rather than making an argumentative point.

And among the bad posts and obnoxious posters, I suspect that fallacies and biases are far from being the biggest problems. In fact, the identification of fallacies can be part of a bad argumentative style, and a preoccupation with fallacies seems sometimes to indicate an interest in critical thinking at the expense of philosophy.

And there's just something so middlebrow about it, like a preoccupation with "correct" grammar.

So I say no way. — jamalrob

I only see fallacies used in arguments when the other one is actually brutally bad at making a point without totally bonkers reasoning or ad hominems. I don't see fallacies as part of a bad argument, they can be, as any language can be used in a bad way, but they can also be used in a good argument, especially counter-argument. If someone has fallacies and biases within their argument and it's pointed out, then the OP poster might have a very clear understanding of what is wrong with their argument.

This is part of a healthy dialectic in my opinion.

And it's not really about rules that must be followed, but tips for being a better participant in philosophical discussions and dialectics. If I want heated brawls and extreme focus on opinions there are thousands of other forums, FB and Twitter. Having tips on how to improve your argument and participation of discussions I can't see what's wrong with having such tips. It's also good for newcomers who are new to philosophy and get blasted by others for their way of reasoning and they have no idea how to really improve.

Tips aren't rules, they're just tips for those who want them. I never suggested them to be rules we must follow without exception, i.e you get banned if you don't use them, that's not it at all.

Baden mentioned that it's not correct to say valid premises and true arguments. Harry then countered by a quote that says just that, which made him counter himself. That was the point.

True premises and a valid argument guarantee a true conclusion. An argument which is valid and has true premises is said to be sound (adjective) or have the property of soundness (noun).
So in order to be true, your argument need to be valid. — Harry Hindu

Which is in line with what Baden said.

Having a sound logical structure is the bare minimum requirement for an argument — SophistiCat

...and these things are not only a tool in order to spot counter-arguments that doesn't work, but it can also be used to help someone who's interested in a dialectic to improve their own argument. An argument free from fallacies and biases helps the one who wrote the argument to communicate the idea. People treat it as a negative, but as I mentioned earlier, it's not limiting to the argument, it's focusing.

Hahahahaha, didn't see that :rofl:

Maybe just the wikis?

Biases
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

Fallacies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

We're not going to overwhelm the guidelines with a list of fallacies and their explanations, but we could possibly put a link to a list of fallacies in there. Although that may be a compromise that pleases no-one. — Baden

Sounds good! :ok:

Found these two, which are a nice and clear to some fallacies and biases, maybe these links?

Fallacies
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/

Biases
https://yourbias.is/

I happen to agree with Willow. Fallacies are so basic as to be entirely philosophically uninteresting. If one is arguing over fallacies, one has ceased to engage in any interesting discussion at all. — StreetlightX

They're foundational for philosophical arguments. I've seen way too many examples on this forum where arguments go nowhere since people just bash opinions and doesn't listen to the other side.

I'd be against because fallacies are a terrible way of relating to philosophy. At best the only describe some kind of logical error in abstract. It's not helpful to engaging with philosophical claims because doesn't really address them. In the face of a claim regarding what is true or not, fallacies only pick out some element of logical structure of an argument.

Pointing out a fallacy doesn't actually tell us about whether a philosophical claims is worthwhile. People argue poorly (or not at all sometimes), for true claims. If we are thinking about pointing out fallacies, we've lost sight of what we are interested in. We cease to be investigating what is true or which claims are worth accepting, and have insert became obsessed whether someone has said a word we think to be wrong.

The VR of fallacies holds no truths. All we see there are some rules we've grown to like playing in, a game of handing out jellybeans or not, depending on whether someone has said all the right words. Fallacies are for debaters, who are not interested in learning anything.
— TheWillowOfDarkness


We could pin this as an example of what not to do. — Terrapin Station

Yes, I think there's a lot of misunderstanding towards what a fallacy and bias really is. If we are interested in truth, we cannot arrive there if every post reads like personal opinions and facts mixed in with personal values around those facts.

Keeping fallacies and biases in mind while writing is not limiting, it's focusing.

3.3k
I believe the idea is that the less pinned, the better. There's only so much real estate, and we want to save it for discussion. Fallacies and biases would be nice and all, but a bit of a luxury that we don't really need. — StreetlightX

Maybe have it in the already pinned post as an addition to what's already pinned there?

My fear would be that pinned rules would not appear as helpful and educational, but they would be viewed as pedantic rules that must be adhered to or face the consequences of being chastised for failing to read and understand the fundamental rules of logic this board apparently is prioritizing. — Hanover

The suggestion wasn't really about "rules", but recommendations or a list to have in mind in order to not drift away too much when writing.

Perception of gender in terms of how we move our bodies, how we process perceptual information, how we perceive others in terms of sexual attraction, is not simple socially constructed. — Joshs

This is straw-manned. Of course not everything around sexuality is a social construct, but how you act on the biological impulses and emotions you have and what is creating those feelings externally is very much a construct. Everything around you, how you navigate the world is based on what you've learned and experienced so far.

If I were to take you in a time machine back to when you were still in the womb and flood your brain with certain sex hormones , your brain physiology would be altered in terms of gendered perceptual-affective processing(such studies have been done on lab animals). — Joshs

Yes, but you are missing the entire point. Did you read the previous posts with the of back and forth arguments? If you did that, it's exactly what I'm talking about. If you have emotions and biological drives that don't comply with the norms of society and that's why you lean towards another gender concept, you try to fit in within that social construct as there are no concepts in our social construction of a person that is balancing in between. People want to fit everyone else into boxes with labels, this is how we process the world around us. If someone doesn't fit in either box with labels "man" and "woman", people will behave like they're from outer space. Read my earlier posts.

I could steer you in more of a masculine or feminine direction. I'm not saying that the definition of masculinity and femininity is fixed, though. It changes throughout human history as a consequence of the interaction between biology and culture, but there is an underlying brain physiology basis that is independent of culture. — Joshs

It changes throughout human history as a consequence of the interaction between biology and culture

You counter-argued your own argument here since it's exactly what social construct is. The culture is the construct and the clash between biology and culture creates our gender identities. I don't know why it's difficult to juggle the two concepts at the same time? Gender identity is a construct as it relates to the perception of the biological gender, which is our biology.

The clash between the perception of our biology and our biological drives is the basic things we have tried to control ever since society was created in human history. And that is culture, which is a construct, we have constructed ideas about men and women, different in different cultures. Put any child with any type of hormonal makeup into a culture and they will grow up within the confines of that construct. It will affect how they act, process the world and process their own emotions. If you remove the construct and have two people: a man and a woman just existing together without any previous culture, they will spot the biological differences they have between them and then start constructing behavior around it. If you have three people as a starting point, one who in our culture would be unsure which gender they belong to, they wouldn't ask those questions in a tabula rasa culture, since there are no constructs to measure against. There would just be three people without any demand to put them in two boxes, they essentially exist in three boxes without labels. As that culture grows, it may be that such a culture then has three labeled boxes for their basic understanding of gender.

Everything around you is a social construct. From the time you wake up to when you go to bed, you navigate through societies construct. Built up through thousands of generations each changing small things about how we should handle our biological drives and impulses.

Think about this every time you have an impulse or a thought of doing something and you don't, why didn't you? Do you think that's biology? No that's how we've reasoned around our biology, that's the construct that programmed you not to act on that impulse; "oh, if I did that, people would think I'm crazy" or "I can't do that, it's stealing" ...or "I can't do that, it's not what a man should do". That is a construct.

Maybe tips on how to improve posts scare those away who just want to express opinions and not do philosophy at all.

It's not a threat. It's a fact which I am reporting. If you are a person of reason you will dismember your atheism yourself. — Jake

This is religious preaching and not tolerated on this forum. The rest is just an insult to my intellect and ad hominem that's directly out of line.

Yes, really. Anybody who claims atheism is "merely a lack of belief" doesn't understand atheism. I didn't say stupid, but would say immature, lacking experience, typically lacking a real interest in the subject. — Jake

You seriously aren't following forum guidelines now. This is evangelistic spamming.

Why are you an atheist? — Jake

Stop spamming

Ah, so your lack of belief in a God just magically sprang into existence out of nothing. It's a miracle!! — Jake

You have a belief that people are born into this world, growing up with a belief as a primary starting point and then move over to atheism. Without anyone imposing religion and religious belief onto you, you will not evolve a belief in God or the supernatural. Outside influences always determine your core values. You learn things, you do not learn no things. You learn to follow a religious belief, you do not learn not to follow a religious belief.

Once again the fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of something absent. You imply atheism as something, it is the absence of something.

You do not learn there is not a chair in your room, you either learn there's a chair in your room or you don't have a chair and it's not part of your room or your perception of the room.

The chair doesn't exist, it's absent from both your idea of there being one and your experience of it. You don't learn there's not a chair in your room. Just as you don't learn to have faith in supernatural stuff, that faith is that chair, it's not there and you don't have it. You come in contact with others who claim there to be a chair in your room and it's just irrational in your perspective that there would be a chair in there.

Then there are those, like you, who claim that someone made me not think there's a chair in my room. And also claim that not accepting there to be a chair in that room is responsible for evils in this world. It's absolute nonsense.

Not sure why people are against it? It's just some tips about how to improve an argument and handle a dialectic properly. Weird.

What is this lack of belief based on? What is it's source? How does the atheist arrive at this lack of belief? It didn't just magically pop in to existence out of nowhere, right? — Jake

This is why it seems so hard for theists to grasp the concept of atheism. There's no source, there's just no belief in God or the supernatural. Do you believe in unicorns? If not, what's the source? Why don't you believe in unicorns? Did that lack of belief just pop into your head out of nowhere? Do you see the irrationality of asking that question?

You try so hard to find evil in atheism and this is what at least I find scary about theists way of reasoning. Maybe that's why my argument is about making irrational belief unethical.

Not a threat, a fair warning. I'm alerting you to what is coming so you can avoid it if you wish. Should you choose to avoid the dismemberment of your atheist belief system, feel free to do so, with no complaint from here. It's possible that I'm three times your age and have been doing this since before you were born. If so, I don't wish to be a bully. Anyway, enough about that, you will continue or you won't, and I'm agreeable either way. — Jake

You keep doing it, warnings, threats of "dismembering my atheism". It's anti-intellectual theist preaching and by my understanding, it's against forum rules.

So "gender" is a cultural characteristic - something that is part of the identity of a culture, not an individual, and "gender identity" is one's perception of one's self relative to this cultural characteristic of a particular culture? So, in essence one isn't changing one's "gender" when moving to a culture with a different "gender". They are changing their "gender identity". — Harry Hindu

Yes, biological gender doesn't change, but their perception of their gender identity may change. However, it's more likely that the culture they grew up in become their definition of gender. If someone grows up in a place which has a strict idea about what it means to be a woman, they will view those ideas and characteristics about "woman" as the norm of what it means to be a woman. Even if they move to a new place, they will not be able to easily erase their "programming" and they will view women in the same way. Which is why people who moves to another country with a vastly different culture, will have a hard time mixing well into that culture, it might take years or never at all.

So when someone says that they feel like a woman, they are referring to their gender identity, not their gender. Gender is a social construction and gender identity is not. Gender identity is a personal view. Is this all correct? — Harry Hindu

The perception of gender is the social construct and that social construct informs how we view our gender identity. If a culture has an idea of how a man should be and you are a woman who feels like your identity fits more with the construct of a man in that culture, you might become confused as to why you biologically are a woman, but every aspect of your feelings and psyche points to the idea of a man. When you then come into contact with other people in that culture, they treat you like a woman because that's your biological gender, but you feel awkward like you don't belong in that category, that all the ideals of being a woman don't apply to you.

In that case, you might start thinking about things like a sex change and acting out like a man instead of a woman, because that is what you feel is right for you in that culture. The social construct of how genders should act and behave put your identity into a category that was in conflict with your real biological gender, so you either try to deny your gender identity or you go ahead and accept your own identity where you feel at home.

I think this is like anything really. We have something physical in front of us, but we experience it by perception. Our bodies apply to this as well, we have a perception of it and it has a physical existence. Perception and physical existence don't always play hand in hand.

I think mods should do it so that it's properly done, not users.
But it seems very few want such a pinned post. Don't know why though, seems people don't want to be reminded that their argument might be flawed :chin: :lol:

Atheism is the faith based belief that human reason is a tool of sufficient power to credibly analyze the very largest of questions about the most fundamental nature of everything everywhere (scope of most God claims). — Jake

What? Atheism is just not a belief in God or any supernatural things. That's the only thing it is, what you apply to it after that is your own invention, which is the problem.

If there are no doctrines or teachings within atheism, what in the world are you posting about?

The horrors of the atheist regimes were built upon the faith based belief that there is no higher power that we are accountable to, that is, we are free to make up our own rules. And so they made up a rule that it's ok to slaughter millions if we can claim some greater good down the line. — Jake

Atheism is just a denial of the existence of any supernatural elements or God/Gods. You cannot blame atheism for the ideas that people had which led to these things.

The fundamental difference here is that religion HAS TEACHINGS that becomes a basis for ideas, ATHEISM HAS NO TEACHINGS. This is fundamental.

You are making a causation does not mean correlation fallacy because you don't seem to understand the basic concept of what atheism is and what it is not.

Like most of the atheists I've met online, you have no idea what atheism really is, a faith based belief system. That is, an immature faith based belief system which typically doesn't even know it is a faith based belief system. — Jake

This is your own definition and you call out atheists as being stupid not to understand their own atheism. Really? Are your online encounters with atheists and your own ideas about atheism the definition that is true?

To dispute this, please provide the proof that human reason, the poorly implemented ability of a half insane semi-suicidal species only recently living in caves on one little planet in one of billions of galaxies, is capable of credibly claiming what doesn't exist in all of reality, a realm which we can't currently define in even the most basic manner such as size and shape etc. — Jake

What does this, what so ever, has to do with your attack on atheists and atheism? Atheism is just the absence of belief in any supernatural things or God/Gods. Nothing more, nothing less and what you do with that, if you are an atheist, is by your own responsibility.

This is the same kind of request for proof we would reasonably ask from those quoting Bible verses etc. That is, please prove the qualifications of your chosen authority for the task at hand. Anyone who can't provide proof of the qualifications of their chosen authority is a person of faith. — Jake

What are you talking about? It appears that you don't understand the basic concept of atheism.

This all falls apart when we notice that all 'rational' beliefs can be traced back to unprovable axioms that we take on faith, such as the Principle of Induction.

Religious beliefs can be as rational as non-religious ones. They just use a slightly different set of axioms.

If one insists on ranking beliefs in order of 'worthiness', one will have to do it by looking at the axioms. One way to do that is to observe that some axioms are accepted by all people. The Principle of Induction is one. We might then claim that the only reasonable beliefs are those that are derived from the minimal set of axioms that is believed by all humans. That would rule out religious belief, but it would also rule out many other beliefs that most people are very attached to - such as the belief that there are other consciousnesses (anti-solipsism).

That's why I think it's a doomed and unhelpful exercise to try to categorise beliefs based on 'rationality'.

There are other and better ways to oppose beliefs that one finds harmful (and only a minority of religious beliefs are harmful anyway). — andrewk

The basic point of the argument is to distinguish belief that we take for truth without evidence or support. What I mean is that this argument is primarily an inductive argument for the most moral way to act around the concept of belief. If irrational and unsupported belief eventually leads to a distortion that is harmful, directly or indirectly, it's not ethical to hold on to that type of belief. Type B and C are beliefs that we primarily know are beliefs.

The difference and the basic moral act is to always move away from type A beliefs and hold onto type B and c, since we then always treat them as beliefs, we know that we don't know they are true, we know that they might be, but we would never act on them as truths.

This applies to more than religion, like for anti-vaxxers beliefs which are supposed, in their eyes, to be for the greater good, but if they had treated their fears as unsupported and in need of verification before they acted on them, they would not be responsible for the return of almost eradicated diseases. They all act on a type A belief.

So in religion, there's nothing wrong with the belief specifically, but the risk is that they influence society with their religious belief; that the consequences, even after their death, is a distortion of truth and reality for other people who then act out with harm.

My point is about how we treat belief, that we don't have a good line drawn in our heads about what beliefs are unsupported and what have support or at least that we know are beliefs. If we always had in mind that it's immoral to keep unsupported belief unchecked and act out by such unsupported belief, we would treat beliefs much more rational and always know them to be beliefs instead of through bias distort our irrational belief into truths. The different types reflect this; type A as belief that we accept as truth without evidence or support and type B and C as a belief that we know is only belief and in need of further support.

Such statements always disqualify any commentator in my eyes. If Stalin and Mao had been ardent Catholics leading explicitly Catholic regimes (or Islamic regimes) I'm guessing you'd be more than happy to offer this as evidence of the evils of religion. Which you will now deny of course, further discrediting your analysis. Seen all such dodging a billion times, bored to tears by it. — Jake

But you treat atheism as something with doctrines and rules to live by, which is a fundamental misunderstanding of what atheism is. You compare it to religion in the way that these regimes took "ideas out of atheism and applied to the terrors they acted out", which is impossible because there are no doctrines or teachings within atheism, as it isn't based on anything like that.

It's such a misunderstanding of atheism that I see time after time. The idea that atheism is some religious doctrine to follow. Communism and Nazism have nothing to do with atheism, that's pure nonsense.

How can you attach atheism to these regimes? In what way did atheism cause them according to you? I'm genuinely interested in how you make that correlation without straw-manning the concept of atheism or applying attributes to atheism that does not exist.

beliefs , even irrational beliefs, are not inherently bad or good, the just are. Even specific ideological beliefs such as Christianity or communism are not inherently bad or good. — Rank Amateur

The argument is about beliefs you think is true, as per my A-C belief types. Type A is irrational belief which you think is true without anything to back it up. Type B and C are beliefs which you know is not proven, but you think they might be true. The difference is that with these beliefs you act with caution, you tell them with the disclaimer "it's only my speculation" or "it's only a hypothesis". Type A, however, is "This is the truth", without anything to back it up with. Such beliefs are not good or bad, but they influence and distort society over a long period of time.

My point is that you can have type B and C beliefs, but never type A, which should be considered unethical as it distorts people's ideas of truth.

Specific actions taken by individuals or groups can be evil, and often ideological beliefs are used as justification for such acts. Rarely on review are these justifications the unique, major or even the real motivation, they are just the best excuse. — Rank Amateur

All belief of type A should be considered unethical, regardless of origin or use.

Without even going into a premise by premise argument, it fails because

If a group of people jointly share a belief, And some of those people do good, and some do bad, it is illogical to assign the bad to the belief.

You point turns into many murderers like chocolate ice cream, therefore chocolate ice cream causes murder. — Rank Amateur

No, I think you misunderstand the conclusion of the argument. What my argument points out is that Type A beliefs should be considered unethical since they distort truth over a period of time. If people believe things and do not care to understand that they are beliefs, they become truths for them, just like with anti-vaxxers going into cognitive bias and claim truth in vaccines causing autism.

It doesn't matter if some do good and some do bad, all belief of type A eventually lead to distortion of truth and may result in bad things happening. There is no reason to have, act or live by type A beliefs.

I think you should read my argument in detail again, this feels a bit straw-manned.

In the 20th century it was explicitly atheist regimes that led the mass murder assault upon humanity. — Jake

No, they were based on irrational beliefs and a form of similar religious followings of their leaders that you can see within religious groups, there was nothing atheistic about any of it. If you look at how they close to deified their leaders and how they followed their irrational belief you will understand that it has nothing to do with atheism. My argument is also focusing on irrational belief as a whole, which means it also includes things like eugenics and fantasies about social structures without any insight into psychology or sociology.

My personal opinion about the idea that it was atheism that caused these mass murders is that its pure nonsense and without any real insight into how these regimes formed, what doctrines they built their society upon and the irrational ideas that they lived under and ruled by. It's often used to disparage atheism whenever someone brings up how religious beliefs has caused harm during thousands of years.

Irrational ideas without foundation in evidence or rational thought will always be the root of any mass murder. I recommend that you actually look into these events during the 20th century, they acted out far closer to religious forms than any atheistic ideas. Charles Manson and his followers are closer in form to how Hitler and the Nazis acted out than any atheistic groups of people.

So, in what way is your comment any counter-argument to my argument? What is irrational belief is irrational regardless of form.

They would have a different gender identity, not biological gender. But gender as it's used in language and culture rarely focus on the biological, except for within medicine and biological applications. So if we are talking about a cultural approach to gender, how it exists within a society, how it is referred to, how it affects social interactions etc. gender in that sense has nothing to do with biology and all about the construct society formed around the biology.

• Biology is empirical.
• How we relate to our own biology is perception.
• How we categorize that perception is an individual construct.
• Categorizing that perception into an individual construct is through comparing individual perception to social norms of perception.

Therefore, gender identity is a social construct.

I think it would be better to break down the actual premises, what is wrong with each etc. Not that you don't like, but actual problems, like what is unclear, is the validity of each in question and why. Inductive arguments do not need to have premises written in categorical statements, but they need to be true. Like as we have been talking about, the first premise is not about definitions of God, but that the concept of God, any definition of God is unsupported by evidence and arguments, therefore God is a belief, regardless of its subjective definition. This is true, it can only be false if God had actually been proven to exist. So, as inductive premises, what are the problems with them?

• No argument or evidence has ever been able to prove the existence of a God or Gods, regardless of definitions for what God is, since God as a concept always refers to a concept outside of conclusions or the evidence at hand. Religious belief is therefore based on pure belief in something that is unsupported by evidence or rational deduction.
  - Updated this with the new premise to include individual definition differences.
  
• Kierkegaard or Pascal presented reasons to believe in God not linked to the existence of God, but either through Pascal's wager, in which it's most logical to believe than not to. Or by Kierkegaard, to believe because of the belief itself is a way of life (in his case Christianity).
  - Are there any problems with how I frame their ideas? Are they not true to what they proposed?
  
• Russel's Teapot analogy points out the importance of burden of proof. If you make a claim or believe in something, you have the responsibility to prove it first. You must do this before claiming it to be true or demand others to disprove your belief or claim. If not, you could possibly invent any belief you want, like teapots in space and conclude it to be true since no one has the means to prove against it.
  - Is this not what Russel proposed?
  
• By Russel’s teapot analogy and according to premise 1-2; religion or other beliefs can be made into whatever people can think of. This opens the door for people with dark and twisted thoughts and ideas to make up any type of belief they want, which could consist of harmful ideas such as murder, rape, torture and other kinds of harm to other people and themselves.
  - Is this not true? If people can make up a belief about whatever they want, by human nature wouldn't someone be able to intentionally or unintentionally create a belief around harming others? As we have plenty of historical examples of?
  
• If there’s a possibility that hateful and dangerous belief-systems will be created, it has a high probability of happening over a long enough timeline.
  -This is a regular probability premise. If there's a possibility of it happening, it will eventually happen if the timeline is long enough.
  
• There is no such thing as personal belief since you do not exist in a vacuum, detached from the rest of society and other people. As long as you interact with other people and the world, you will project your personal belief into other people’s world-view and influence their choices. The only way to not affect other people is to isolate yourself, but as soon as you interact you are projecting your ideas into the world.
  - Based on basic conclusions in psychology, out of observations about human psychology and how people interact in social groups. That we influence and change other people's mind through what we believe can be seen all around us. If this premise wasn't true, we wouldn't, for example, be able to control people's consumption through commercials.
  
• Epistemic responsibility put a responsibility on the ones who make choices without sufficient evidence. To choose to believe in something that you have no rational reasoning behind or no evidence for, is to accept something as true, without evidence or rational reasoning behind. This, based on premise 6, can lead to you projecting beliefs into others world-view and influence other people's choices and ideas based on a belief that you have not falsified, hold to scrutiny, proved or rationally reasoned behind.
  - This is primarily just the definition of Epistemic responsibility and how it relates to the previous premises. It might be that this should be included in the conclusion than as a premise though?
  
• Belief can be categorized into three parts:
  A) Belief without rational cause, a belief that is without evidence, accepted as truth and acted upon by the believer.
  B) Belief with rational cause, a belief that has rational reasoning and logic and which has gone through falsifiable reasoning as much as possible, acted upon with caution because it is never considered to be true.
  C) Scientific belief, i.e Hypothesis, an educated guess based on observations, previous evidence, careful induction, partly researched, but never accepted or acted upon as true before proven into a scientific theory.
  - This is a breakdown of different belief types, I don't see how the definitions are wrong about each belief type?

They were categorical questions asked in the context of a piece of argumentation. — tim wood

I think you are avoiding the questions themselves. It feels like you focus too much on the semantics here and don't look linguistic pragmatic of the text. But let's rephrase them as an actual argument:

• Personal beliefs are unable to be contained as it influences both how you communicate and your behavior.
• During a lifetime, a person's beliefs will eventually influence others and/or even be communicated directly.
• Personal belief can be both rational or irrational, but follow the same pattern of an idea without full support in truth.

Therefore, regardless of the belief, it will eventually influence other people even if it wasn't intentional.

Psychology our measure of truth? That's a whole other discussion. — tim wood

Psychology is an empirical science and science is a better measurement for truth than anything else. The truth, in this case, is that the above argument is based on logic in behavior, it's basic psychology. You can pretty much take that argument and try and falsify it with as many scientists in the field as you can and I doubt it will break. But even so, you need to counter it with something more than just dismissal.

But you're missing my point - consistently. Argumentation is an exercise in both content and form, and there are rules. You're breaking them in a consistent manner in support of your conclusion. The kindest term for that is sophistry. As to any psychological insight that might be in your questions, sure. But that wasn't what you're asking. In short, I answered the questions you asked. If you want to ask different questions, fire away. — tim wood

You answered no to them and therefore you deny basic psychology. You are therefore essentially denying results in science and it would require much more than just "no". It seems you want to have a dialectic about my argument, but I cannot just go by a "no", should I just take your word for it when I have support for the claim? The premises of the above argument are true, with support in science. How is that sophistry?

In this topic, a care with language is preferred to a lack of care. As it happens - as you would know if you looked - there are a variety of definitions of God. — tim wood

You mention this, but my counter to that is that they don't, it's a normal counter to argue that God is so undefined it can't be used like this, but God is always a sentient creator at least, and further down the road it gets more attributes depending on the religion. Even in pantheons, there's always the first one, the creator. In some cases, there's an event, but no first cause arguments focus on those religions since they would imply an event as the first cause and therefore render the argument not usable (but probably more true) for trying to prove God. There are no real ways to define God in any other way that isn't a sentient being. If you remove that definition, it could just be a rock and it would be irrational to even name it God. God is pretty defined by everyone who uses the word, of course, different as well, but not in its prime definition, a sentient being, a creator. And even if a religion has Gods appearing after an event that was the creation, it has even less deductive arguments or proof for their existence. However you turn it , God is pretty defined as a sentient being, a creator.

But I get your point and it might need to be rephrased since the premise obviously stirred up confusion.

If you have any evidence that supports any one of them over any other, please refer to it. What I did notice in my brief survey is that none use the word "responsible." So then instead of your "which is responsible for the creation," I would substitute, "who is worshiped as the creator of the universe." Really the important word is "as." This concept of God is God "as." And the as-clause is just what is attributed as accident to the concept God. Inasmuch as the substance, or essence, of God is unthinkable, God accumulates accidents. But no being, real or otherwise is equal to, the same as, a partial listing of its accidents. If "God" could be considered as you consider him, then your argument might itself have more bite, more substance, but He can't be, and thus yours can't either. — tim wood

If definitions of God is anything other than a supernatural sentient being, why call it God? That opens up to calling anything God, my coffee cup is God. But the premise points to no evidence or argument in support of God, so even if your definition is different it is still valid since there are no arguments that can conclude with "God". All arguments or attempts at proving God ends up with a result where the one doing the argument slaps the word "God" on top of their conclusion, they are all flawed. Therefore however you define "God", the premise about there not being any argument or evidence for God still holds up. In order to prove that premise false, you need to actually prove that there is support for God and not that it's a coffee cup.

So, the premise is about evidence for God and there are none, why is that false? Since however you turn it, using God as a definition about something, whatever it is, is a belief that is unsupported. I.e the premise points to belief in God without proof. If this is not true as a premise, why is it false? Because people define God so differently? No, God is always a belief, there is nothing that supports God as real.

So would the premise work better if it's phrased like this:
Old
No argument has ever been able to prove the existence of God or gods through evidence. Religious belief is therefore based on belief in something that is unsupported by evidence or rational deduction.
New
No argument or evidence has ever been able to prove the existence of a God or Gods, regardless of definitions for what God is, since God as a concept always refers to a concept outside of conclusions or the evidence at hand. Religious belief is therefore based on pure belief in something that is unsupported by evidence or rational deduction.

What that might leave is a concept of God that works - is at the least self-consistent. I have that, and nothing in the least bit supernatural about it. And because there is no touchstone for the concept of God, mine, being functional - if not as satisfying; I never claimed it was globally satisfying - has fair claim to being correct, or no less correct than others. — tim wood

But here's the problem, calling something that actually exists, a dead object or just plain causality or whatever as God is distorting everything to such a degree that no one can ever talk about God in any way or form since everyone has their own definition of what God is. If I started using definitions that we have in language, to refer to other things, like calling a plane - a car, a chair - a plant, a person - a dog, I would distort communication because of personal preferences of language. Like Wittgenstein pointed out: the meaning of a word is out of its use in language. If you start calling God something else than a supernatural sentient being, you are breaking the definition as it's used in language. But it's also according to my new version of the premise a definition that doesn't have a correlation with what you apply it to. Let's say that you call causation or entropy God, that is unnecessary since causation is causation and entropy is entropy. Is my friend God if I call him God instead of Bob? Can I use that as a counter-argument to someone using God in an argument? You can't use God in the argument because I define Bob as God, therefore your premise is false? It ends up as an absurd critique of the actual point of the premise and I would assume that Wittgenstein would have agreed with me on this.

You're making categorical statements and arguments. And one problem with categorical statements is that they're either all right or all wrong, no "neither-nor." So while if you tempered your arguments to the probable or the existential or the "some" or the "sometimes" and worked with that, your arguments would merit consideration. But expressed in universal terms, the argument does not merit consideration because the premises are false. — tim wood

But you are still defining my argument as a deductive argument, when it is an ethical inductive argument about how we ought to act around the concept of beliefs.

Inductive arguments do not demand categorical statements in the same way as deductive arguments. They still need to have valid premises and from what I gather you don't think the first premise is valid because you have your own definition of God, which per Wittgenstein, breaks meaning out of language.
If textbook definitions, common definition, common use in language etc. define God as a supernatural sentient being, possibly a creator, that is the meaning and definition. Otherwise, Bob is God.

As to inductive argument, you might care to read the definition you provided. Inductive arguments are suggestive, deductive conclusive. I read you as arguing for conclusive conclusions. If you want to make a good substantive argument, then you have no choice but to do the work. If a problematic argument, then you have to change your language. — tim wood

But my conclusion is a "should" conclusion. It's an "ought to" conclusion. It doesn't say that people "must". I conclude a result of the premises in support of the actual inductive conclusion that was to prove reasons on why not to accept an irrational belief of any kind and instead focus on evidence and proving ideas and beliefs you have. The actual conclusion is suggestive:

Therefore, religious or other types of belief that are of type A, should be considered unethical and criticized. The moral obligation should be to always uphold epistemic responsibility (Premise 7) and prioritize belief type B and C as ethical while condemn type A as unethical. This applies to all people for any belief of type A; religious, personal and in institutions, research and politics. — Christoffer

Yeah, I've seen it. I wonder what the level of tolerance is for this? Discussions need a lot of room so that people dare to keep doing it, but how far?

Evangelists: Those who must convince everyone that their religion, ideology, political persuasion, or philosophical theory is the only one worth having.

Is a definition of what's not welcome on the forum, not sure if it applies and I don't want to be pushing in that direction, but some overview might be needed?

Downvotes weren't actually an option, just upvotes. The main issue was that there was a cumulative total on a user's profile and an option on the members list to list members by the total number of votes they received creating a hierarchy of users, and most people didn't want to live in my shadow. — Michael

Understandable, but what if you removed the ability to list by rank or see how many votes?
I mean that if the rank score is invisible to everyone, including yourself and then, let's say 10 votes, gives you a "sign" beside your name on posts that say something like "Reliable Poster", then at 15, it switches to "Respected Poster", then at 25 it says "Quality Poster" and at 50, "Platinum member" and at 100, "Gold member" and a star of approval.

And a post describing the different levels with an explanation about what it means.

That way there's no real hierarchy, only personal stats and it might even give the incentive to behave better in order to earn a better status. Instead of competition, it's about your own effort put into the posts you write.

(of course, we can have funnier levels, like "Sokrates Master" as the highest or something :grin: )

I'm not sure he will understand further. The argument is stuck for him and he doesn't falsify it with our counter-arguments. So instead spamming the same thing over and over ignoring certain parts. It's almost troll-level reasoning right now.

I've assumed that time exists in some form before the Big Bang. But if that assumption is false; time has a start anyway and my argument still holds. — Devans99

No, it doesn't hold because you assume a creator, God, which is pre-Big Bang. Your argument for such a creator falls flat if you start time at Big Bang since your conclusion refers to something before it.

But we are doing statistics and probability here so correlation maybe causation depending on how much correlation there is and there is a lot. — Devans99

I was talking about you slapping a sentient creator God on top of your numbers and Big bang, which has no correlation or causation at all. You cannot just end each sentence with "...and therefore God". It's as invalid as philosophical arguments come.

I'm a deist and that means I believe in science only; God has to be logically possible; not some magic invention of conventional religion. So God is not some mythical creature with the omnipotence, omnipresence etc... he is a real, viable being. So God is not in any way akin to a unicorn when it comes to calculation of probabilities. — Devans99

God does not have to be logically possible, because a sentient God is as magical as anything else you describe. It does not correlate with your argument at all. You basically just decide that God has to be logically possible, it's not, it's speculation, assumption, and fantasy, just as unicorns. You are also describing God as a "he" which means you are acting out pure belief here, you are far from someone who only believes in science. Your way of arguing and your claim to believe in science only is a big oxymoron.

Based on logic; if it happens naturally it will happen infinite times (given infinite time). — Devans99

You defined the unnatural. How can you define the unnatural when first you don't have a strong case for what and what isn't natural? Second, how can you define unnatural as only happening in singular?
You have nothing to back any of this up, it's basically gone into Deepak Chopra territory now.
It's not based on logic, you apply logic on top of a false premise and claim truth.

But if the constants were set during the big bang, they must of been set by something intelligent and that intelligent entity would require a fine tuned environment. That must of been fine tuned by someone else and so on it regresses until we find God. — Devans99

No, they don't have to be set by something intelligent. You cannot apply such assumption onto your argument.

You are just spamming the same thing over and over. Your arguments have been countered already. Go read the arguments from the list of names I provided, apply some effort to your argument because you are running in circles right now, you don't give any thought to the counter-arguments you get and you are speaking nonsense. Do some research, try and do some falsifications and read up on cognitive biases.

Your argument has been countered and is invalid, not just by me. Try again (for real instead)