ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
Totally understand. I had some very long and detailed posts disappear too (not on this thread). I'm really reluctant to redo it all, at least until the server migration is complete.
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According to my understanding the server migration is complete;
The migration is done
The migration to a new server is finished now. Hopefully everything will be back to normal from here on in. Still no word on whether or not the missing posts are going to return though.
www.religiousforums.com
ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
Good news. But I note there is no word on missing posts and if/when they may be restored...
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
I don't think the staff is going to bring back all the posts that were lost in the server migration, so I decided to answer this again. It probably won't be as good as what I had before but I'll do my best.
I agree that just because one can't prove or provide evidence that something is true does not stop it from being "something that actually exists; reality; truth" (according to the definition of fact previously cited).
Fact: something that actually exists; reality; truth:
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/fact
But below is what I said before:
Trailblazer said: There is no contradiction. Everything that exists in reality has not yet been proven to exist so it cannot be considered a fact yet.
When I said that I was thinking of a fact according to the definitions below.
Fact: something that is known to have happened or to exist, especially something for which proof exists, or about which there is information:
fact
Fact: a thing that is known or proved to be true.
what is a fact - Google Search
So just because one can't prove or provide evidence that something is true does not stop it from being "something that actually exists; reality; truth" but it cannot be considered a fact unless proof exists/it has been proven true.
Evidence *indicates* that something is true.
Evidence might contain facts but evidence does not have to be factual. Only proof has to be factual.
Evidence: anything that helps to prove that something is or is not true: EVIDENCE | definition in the Cambridge English Dictionary
Evidence: the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid: https://www.google.com/search
Evidence is anything that you see, experience, read, or are told that causes you to believe that something is true or has really happened.
Objective evidence definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary
So here is my perfectly valid circular argument.
It's impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion to be false.
Premise: Baha’u’llah was a Messenger of God
Conclusion: God exists
This argument is valid but not sound because I cannot prove that the premise is true no matter what I add to the argument before drawing the conclusion.
In short, since I cannot prove that Baha’u’llah was a Messenger of God is true, then I cannot conclude that God exists.
And that is why logical arguments cannot be used to try to prove that God exists.
I agree. Beliefs are not automatically false just because they have not been proven true. To say that would be an argument from ignorance.
Argument from ignorance asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false or proposition is false because it has not yet been proven true. This represents a type of false dichotomy in that it excludes a third option, which is that there may have been an insufficient investigation, and therefore there is insufficient information to prove the proposition be either true or false.
Argument from ignorance - Wikipedia
That is possible if you have your own definition of God, but if God is All-Knowing and Infallible that is not possible.
If God is All-Knowing and Infallible that means that whatever God did to communicate to humans had to be the 'best method' of communication.
Nothing is hidden. The latest messages from God can all be found in the Baha’i Reference Library:
Baha’i Reference Library (old version)
Baha’i Reference Library (new version, downloadable)
The fact that there are many false messengers does not mean there have been no true Messengers of God. To say that would be the fallacy of hasty generalization and the fallacy of jumping to conclusions.
Hasty generalization is an informal fallacy of faulty generalization by reaching an inductive generalization based on insufficient evidence—essentially making a hasty conclusion without considering all of the variables.
Hasty generalization - Wikipedia
Hasty generalization usually shows this pattern:
- messenger a was not a true messenger of God
- messenger b was not a true messenger of God
- messenger c was not a true messenger of God
- messenger d was not a true messenger of God
It is true that the world is full of men who claimed to speak for God, but logically speaking that does not mean that there were not one or more Messengers who did speak for God.
You said: "an omniscient and omnipotent god would know a perfect way and would be able to implement it. "
Of course that means that if such a God exists whatever had been implemented is 'the perfect way' to accomplish what God wants to accomplish.
It also means there could be no 'better way' because if there was a better way the omniscient God would have implemented it.
You are making the assumption that God wants to convince people everywhere, but there is no reason to assume that and every reason to believe it is not the case. For one thing, if an All-Powerful and All-Knowing God wanted to convince people everywhere He could have done so long ago, so the fact that atheists exist is proof positive that God does not want to convince people everywhere. For another thing, if God wanted to 'convince people' God would not have given people free will to make their own choices.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It was only by the grace of God that I was able to redo this post and because I have a will made of iron.
And I actually like it better than the previous post since I have made some embellishments.
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ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
Probably right. Although I understand it wasn't the staff but the owners.
You have been contradicting yourself ever since I cited this definition of a fact. First you accepted it and then started going back to the other senses of the word that require it to be known.
How on earth do you think something that isn't factual is going to indicate the truth of anything?
On the contrary, (absolute) proof is necessarily abstract, which is why it's only available in mathematics and pure logic. You are never going to absolutely prove anything about the real world.
Which is as pointless as my time travelling toasters. The real problem is that you have no objective evidence either.
Begging the question again. Just to make this clear, to a impartial observer, the Baha’i Reference Library does not stand out from all the other religious texts in the world, or any other form of superstition or magical thinking, for that matter. There is no prima facie reason to think it contains the truth. Hence, if it is actually the truth, it has been hidden.
Of course, but there's also no reason at all to think that there are any genuine messengers. So why would one go to all the effort of checking everything when it might well be a fruitless task?
Well, strictly speaking, being omniscient and omnipotent, doesn't logically rule out also being an idiot and/or incompetent., and it certainly doesn't guarantee benevolence and not playing cruel games of hide and seek.
Of course, but why would I want to bother with a god that doesn't want to convince me?
Leaving aside the logical problems with free will (because we've been there and just ended up going in circles), giving people free will is useless if you then withhold facts from them.
Well doneIt was only by the grace of God that I was able to redo this post and because I have a will made of iron.
SkepticThinker
Veteran Member
The number of people that believe in a claim has no bearing on the veracity of the claim. That's the thing. If we went with your line of thinking, then we'd have to believe Santa Claus is also real, based on the huge number of kids that believe in him.
It seems to me that the majority of people believe in god(s) because they were raised to believe in gods, by parents and a society that largely believes in gods and positively reinforced that belief.
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
Of course not. That would be that fallacy of ad populum.
My line of reasoning is not that you should believe in God just because many or most people believe in God. That is not a good reason.
That would be akin to me believing in Christianity because many or most people in the Western world are Christians.
How many adults believe in Santa Claus? Adults do not believe in Santa Claus because there is not evidence that indicates that Santa Claus exists.
Children believe in Santa Claus because their brains have not yet developed enough to differentiate what is real from what is imaginary.
That is probably true for the majority, but that does not mean there is no evidence for God. If there was never any evidence for God nobody would have believed in God back through history, passing their belief on down through the generations. The Bible is evidence for God although I would not bank on it since it is not the best evidence. Given all the problems that exist in the Bible, inaccuracies and contradictions, I can see why there are so many atheists. I could not believe in God if the Bible was the only evidence. I would just be confused and lost.
ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
Sorry but this is just silly. People did, and often still do, believe all sorts of things without a scrap of real evidence. Many of the older ideas survive to today in the large variety of religions, versions of god, or gods, superstitions, things like astrology, 'traditional' or 'alternative' medicine, fortune telling, tarot, etc. And we are even adding new baseless myths in the modern world. Think of all the daft conspiracy theories, for example, the revival of flat-earthers, QAnon, antivaxers, all the crackpot 'science' we get here, the paranormal, I could go on...
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
The problem with the definition that you cited is that something can exist in reality and be true even though it is not known as a fact.
Fact: something that actually exists; reality; truth:
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/fact
A case in point is the planet Pluto. Before 1930 it was not known as a fact that Pluto existed, but later it was discovered and then it was a fact.
So, God could exist in reality even though God is not known as a fact. I believe that will be known after we die, but it is better to find out before that.
Facts are known. Here is another definition that is more thorough and it contrasts an opinion with a fact.
A religious belief (that God exists) is an opinion, not a fact, since it is not verifiable.
Fact or Opinion? - Tutor Hints
A fact is a statement that can be verified. It can be proven to be true or false through objective evidence.
An opinion is a statement that expresses a feeling, an attitude, a value judgment, or a belief.
It is a statement that is neither true nor false. Or it may feel true for some, but false for others.
A FACT:
- can be proven true or false through objective evidence.
- relies on denotative language.
- frequently uses measurable or verifiable numbers, statistics, dates and measurements.
AN OPINION:
- cannot be presently verified.
- relies on connotative language.
- can mean different things to different people.
- uses value judgment words and comparisons such as “best,” “most,” etc.
All I am saying is that something can be true even if it cannot be proven to be true. I thought we agreed that?
ratiocinator said: Because just because you can't prove or provide evidence that something is true does not stop it from being "something that actually exists; reality; truth", the definition of 'fact' that you accepted.
That's a good point. How then do you think anyone could ever prove that God exists -- as a fact that everyone would accept, not just believe?
Of course I have no objective evidence for God. If I had objective evidence of God, God would be a fact (see definition above).
God is unknowable, except through His Messengers, so they are the evidence for God. Of course that is only my opinion, my belief.
You are correct. It remains 'hidden to you' until you look at it and find it. Not everyone will find it because not everyone will see the same thing in those texts, since all humans are thinking and processing information with their own mind, and every mind is different from other minds. Everey human mind contains all the knowledge they have acquired to date and includes any and all biases they might have against religion from their past experiences. That is why most people won't even look at the Baha'i Writings and thus discount them before ever looking at them.
“If a man were to declare, ‘There is a lamp in the next room which gives no light’, one hearer might be satisfied with his report, but a wiser man goes into the room to judge for himself, and behold, when he finds the light shining brilliantly in the lamp, he knows the truth!” Paris Talks, p. 103
There's no reason at all for you to think that there are any genuine messengers because you already have the thought in your mind that there cannot be any true Messengers. Do you understand what I mean?
I never heard of the concept of a Messenger of God before I became a Baha'i at age 17 because I was not raised in any religion or with any belief in God, so I went into my investigation of the Baha'i Faith with an unbiased mind, and it made sense to me after I read all the books.
I am not suggesting that you check everything in all the older religions. If you were looking for a vehicle that would get you across the country on a long trip, would you buy an old vehicle that had seen its day?
Being omnipotent doesn't logically rule out also being an idiot and/or incompetent, but being omniscient rules out God being an idiot, and being Infallible rules out God being incompetent.
You are correct, Being omniscient and omnipotent doesn't guarantee benevolence. That God is benevolent is a faith-based believe, it can never be proven.
Do you think it is possible that you only 'believe' that God is playing hide and seek and that is not actually the case?
Just because God is not visible to everyone that does not mean God is hiding. When the sun is hidden by a solar eclipse does that mean the sun no longer exists?
A better question is why you would expect God to convince you, given you have a brain and free will to convince yourself.
God has no need to convince anyone that He exists because God does not need anyone's belief, since God is self-sufficient and has no needs.
Humans are the ones who have needs so they need to convince themselves that God exists, if they want to believe in God.
God has not withheld anything from humans. Through the Messengers, God has revealed all that humans need and are capable of understanding in every age in history.
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
That's true. People did, and often still do, believe all sorts of things without a scrap of real evidence. However, that does not mean there is no evidence for God's existence. Whether or not there is evidence is a matter of personal opinion, and we could argue about it till the cows come home and still end up in the same place, because what is evidence to some people is not evidence to other people.
ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
And...? Accordion to the definition of fact as "something that actually exists; reality; truth:", there are facts we have no idea about, that was the point.
Now you're confusing evidence with the things you're trying to provide evidence for. Evidence, quite obviously, has to be factual and known to be true, otherwise it can't indicate the truth of something else. If your evidence is isn't known to be factual (at least to a high level of confidence), it's worthless as evidence. What's more you've jumped back into using 'proof' which really isn't relevant to matters of fact about reality.
Of course things can be true that we haven't got evidence or reasoning for, but we have to have high confidence of the truth of evidence itself, otherwise it's worthless.
I've never asked for, or expected, proof. The reason we believe most things about the world is that we have strong evidence that they are true. The same standard needs to be applied to any proposed god. Instead, when we look for any sound reasoning or objective evidence, we end up with a big fat nothing.
I see no reason to think there are any genuine messengers. That doesn't mean that there definitely aren't, but the idea sits amongst a vast amount of other ideas and proposals that are possible, but I see no reason at all to take seriously, i.e. to think they are remotely probable.
I don't believe that there is any god to play hide-and-seek. However, if there is a real (omni type) god and it has any interest in us and its message is in one of the world's religions, then the obvious conclusion is that it's playing hide-and-seek, or doing something equally bizarre, like seeking out people with a predisposition to believe without evidence, or something. It would certainly not be a straightforward attempt to communicate.
Why would I want to do that, even if I could? In fact, belief isn't really a choice, you are either convinced by something or you aren't. And, of course, I don't believe I would have any meaningful free will with respect to a god.
Cunningly disguised as just another human-made superstition.
ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
It doesn't but there isn't.
It shouldn't be, if the evidence is any good.
SkepticThinker
Veteran Member
Yes, it would. Glad to know that's not your argument.
Okay, I'm with you so far.
Also because belief in Santa Claus stops being reinforced at some point in a child's life. Religion isn't like that - it continues to be reinforced by family members and peers all throughout adult life.
Well, no, of course not.
I think that's debatable. People believe things on very little evidence or faulty reasoning all the time.
I disagree with that. The Bible contains claims about god, but not the evidence.
That's for sure.
Agreed.
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
Agreed. Reinforcement does have an effect on most people since most people are connected to friends and family.
That's true.
The Bible contains claims, but it is also the evidence for Christian claims and Jesus' claims, circular though it be.
It is not very good evidence since the historical events are not verifiable and the authors are unknown, but sadly, it is the only evidence we have.
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
It doesn't but there is.
It always will be the case since all people think about and process evidence differently. There is no way around that, so even if God circled the earth and spoke to everyone on earth from the sky and said "I am God and I exist" not everyone would consider that evidence for God's existence. Some people might believe it was God, some people would believe it was a hoax, and others might think it is aliens from outer space!
It is for this reason that one type of evidence won't convince everyone that God exists.
For example, many believers see creation as the best evidence for God's existence, but I don't see it that way, since creation could have come into existence without a God. I consider the Messengers of God the best evidence for God since God sent them as evidence, and we should look at what God sent. By contrast, God did not create the earth with the intention of it being evidence of His existence.
ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
So why can't you actually provide any? Circular reasoning can't be evidence, and that's all you've given.
I'm happy to admit that it's going to be difficult to provide evidence that something is unambiguously and definitely evidence for an omni god, but evidence for something way beyond human abilities should be trivially easy. Even evidence for a creator of the universe should be possible. You provide a message and encode the same thing on some process that is a fundamental aspect of the universe.
The thing is that we don't have a single scrap of objective evidence at all that even points to anything that isn't entirely the result of human minds. Nothing.
That would be a fundamental mistake about the nature of evidence.
But that's just circular, as we've already discussed, and therefore literally worthless as evidence because you basically have to assume that a god exists in the first place, and that's what we're looking for evidence for.
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
The evidence is the Messengers of God because that is what God has provided as evidence. God was not thinking "Oh gee, I won't send Messengers because that would be circular." Circular reasoning CAN be evidence is the premise is true, since that means that the conclusion has to be true. As such, the mission, should you choose to accept it, is to determine if the Messenger really spoke for God. It's that simple.
Even if that could be done, why do you think everyone would believe that message?
Whether we have that or not is all a matter of opinion. I believe we have that since I believe that the Messenger of God does not speak with a human mind, He speaks with a divine mind. Of course that is not subject to proof. How could anyone ever prove something like that?
It would be a mistake for the reason I gave. Creation is not 'necessarily' evidence for a God.
Messengers of God are not 'worthless as evidence' for God just because it's circular.
No, you absolutely do not have to assume that a God exists in the first place in order to believe in Messengers. In fact, you would never want to do that. You would have to believe Messengers are evidence of God before you would believe there is a God, and that is the whole point of God sending Messengers!
ppp
Well-Known Member
It absolutely makes sense that people who believe in a god are all into magical thinking.
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
It makes no sense that people who believe in God are all into magical thinking, not unless you can prove that God does not exist.
If you are claiming that God does not exist because it has not been proven that God exists then you are into fallacious thinking.
The fallacy is called argument from ignorance.
Argument from ignorance asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false or proposition is false because it has not yet been proven true. This represents a type of false dichotomy in that it excludes a third option, which is that there may have been an insufficient investigation, and therefore there is insufficient information to prove the proposition be either true or false.
Argument from ignorance - Wikipedia
ppp
Well-Known Member
I dont see a logical entailment there. What about "people who believe in a god are into magical thinking" requires that one "prove that a god does not exist. " That is an interesting pair of assertions, but I do not see a chain of logical statement that go from A to B. Seems like magical thinking.
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