Are there any non-fallacious arguments for non-theism?

[EduChris]

Let's assume for sake of argument that if non-theism were the objective reality, we would be able to offer some positive and non-fallacious argument to support the philosophical viewpoint known as non-theism.

In this discussion, we will use the following definitions:

Theism: the philosophical viewpoint that the non-contingent source and fount of all possibility is not less than personal.

Non-theism: the philosophical viewpoint that theism need not be the case.

God: the non-contingent, not-less-than-personal source and fount of all possibility.

Our universe and our selves constitute the evidence, and we must provide arguments as to why, given this evidence, we should adopt the philosophical viewpoint known as non-theism. In this thread we are not allowed to rely on some supposed "default position of non-theism"; rather, we must provide an actual, non-fallacious argument for non-theism.

After all, if non-theism can be asserted (or adopted, or held) without evidence, then non-theism can be dismissed without evidence.

[EduChris]

...Concluding that A is not the same thing as B, from the permise that it is possible to do A without doing B, is a non sequitur? You are going to have to explain that one..

Agency and necessity certainly are two different things; but this is irrelevant to the fact that they can both be present in the very same act. After all, hydrogen and oxygen are two different things, and yet they are both combined to form water.

The free decision to exercise creativity involves only agency. The decision to exercise a certain kind of creativity may well involve both agency and necessity, as I have demonstrated.

In short, your argument isn't going anywhere. No need for me to respond any further unless you can come up with something that isn't a red herring.

[Ionian_Tradition]

...There is no "middle ground" which exists between the immaterial and the material. By the their very definition, the two are fundamentally antithetical to one another...

This is the heart of our disagreement. You insist on using 'immaterial" in a certain way. Other people use the term in a different way. Your argument thus consists of an equivocation--using the same word as though it meant the same thing, when in fact there are real differences in the way it is used.

It may be that the word "immaterial" is a hindrance to communication; it may be that some other word (transmaterial, supramaterial) ought to be used in its place. But so long as you keep insisting on using the word in one way, while others use in a different sense, nothing worthwhile will ever come of your equivocations.

You have yet to define what such things are and I am quite convinced you've made them up. I also wouldn't be surprised to find some logically inconsistent notion lurking somewhere in whatever definition you provide, but I suppose I shall have to wait and see if you'll be so bold (and might I say hypocritical) as to claim any measure of knowledge concern something so utterly foreign to your experience.

[EduChris]

...It may be that the word "immaterial" is a hindrance to communication; it may be that some other word (transmaterial, supramaterial) ought to be used in its place. But so long as you keep insisting on using the word in one way, while others use in a different sense, nothing worthwhile will ever come of your equivocations.

You have yet to define what such things are and I am quite convinced you've made them up. I also wouldn't be surprised to find some logically inconsistent notion lurking somewhere in whatever definition you provide, but I suppose I shall have to wait and see...

I have elsewhere and often said that God is best understood as "not arbitrarily limited by any spatio-temporal dimensions." This is consistent with numerous sacred texts, and it accords well with the logical principle that arbitrary elements require greater explanation than non-arbitrary elements.

If God is not arbitrarily limited in spatio-temporal dimensions, then God provides the basis for space and time (in whatever number of dimensions are possible, if there are non-arbitrary limits). In this understanding, dimensions are not something "added to" or "foreign to" God; rather, God provides some finite room for us to "live and move and have our being" within God's own trans-dimensionality.

...if you'll be so bold (and might I say hypocritical) as to claim any measure of knowledge concern something so utterly foreign to your experience...

I am not the one claiming "knowledge" concerning something so "utterly foreign" to human experience; rather, you are attempting to force finite limits on that which is not deemed to be finite. You are the one who is insisting that the "context for everything" requires its own separate and larger context. Your requirement is incoherent; it is no different than the non-theists' incessant and incoherent demand for an "explanation" for that which has already been determined to be logically necessary.

[Bust Nak]

Agency and necessity certainly are two different things; but this is irrelevant to the fact that they can both be present in the very same act.

A fact is it? I don't think you have demostrated this, you've yet to come up with a counter-example to my claim that agency and necessity are mutually exclusive. Or addressed my argument for why "both" is impossible.

The free decision to exercise creativity involves only agency. The decision to exercise a certain kind of creativity may well involve both agency and necessity, as I have demonstrated.

I would agree, but you are contradicting yourself when you claim that since causing trauma would be a direct consequence of remove cancerous tumor, such an act involve agency and necessity. So how can you claim that exercising creativity involve only agency when clearly there are direct consequence of such an act?

In short, your argument isn't going anywhere. No need for me to respond any further unless you can come up with something that isn't a red herring.

That's fine. I've already won the debate when you said doctors choosing to cut out a tumor and the resulting trauma was an example of one thing caused by both agency and necessity.

You may not respond, but do expect me to keep bringing this up when you mention your argument here.

[Ooberman]

...There is no evidence, using the universe and our selves as evidence, that the natural world was required to be made by the God of your definition...

If you had been using my definition, you would have seen that the indefinite article, "a," attached to "God" makes no sense.

OK, I fixed it. Better?

...For example, rocks and oceans seem to exhibit no qualities that require them to be made by a "no less than personal" entity...

Do they not depend for their existence on a precise set of physical laws? Where did these physical laws come from?

I don't know, are you arguing for God from ignorance?
Maybe physical laws are properly basic, at least in this universe? I don't know, neither do you.
If the laws came from somewhere, where did the law maker come from?
Or is this where you get to declare the stopping point, not me?
Let's call it a wash. we don't know. No one gets to claim an advantage.

...Space, planets, stars, and 99.9999999999999% of all the universe are similar in nature to the analogs we have on Earth...

Except for life, consciousness, agency, etc.

Begging the question they are non-natural. The vast majority of the universe is explained by natural laws.

why presume the other things are non-natural?

seems you are begging the question again, or arguing from ignorance depending on how you want to go from "I don't know" to "it's evidence for my God".

As it seems to me, if we use the universe as evidence, it's dominated by natural laws and processes, not conscious thoughts.

If you disagree, make your case.

...The little that is made on Earth by personal beings are modest, specific, discrete and have a very different appearance and use...

And yet despite our limitations, we think we know so much, don't we?

I agree, but you seem to be suggesting you know more.

...Life itself is not made by personal beings...

Question begging.

I don't know of any life that was created by a personal being. It's not begging the question, it's an observation.
If you think life is created by some 'not less than personal being' or 'personal being', then provide evidence. I am not saying it wasn't, I am saying that using inference, I see that life forms can make other life forms, but they aren't in charge of bringing the spark of life into the sperm or embryo in a way that requires conscious effort.

Bacteria seem to do quite well without one iota of thought about what they are actually doing.

Just as the formation of stars and planets do. The spark of Life seems to work as other natural laws.

...but made by processes that are not controlled whatsoever by personal beings...

Question begging.

It's not Begging the Question because I am making an observation. I'm not claiming it is proof, only a support for what it seems to me.

If you think sperm and eggs are personal beings and discuss their transformation into a zygote, please make your case.

The point is that our personal consciousness may move our bodies into position, but the actual mechanics of our bodies (heart function, sexual urges, sperm and egg creation, and all the rest) are not conscious actions.

...we cannot manipulate our dna, or the dna of our children in the womb by anything that would be called "designed"...

What is gene therapy, in your view?

gene therapy manipulates existing material and processes, but the underlying process of the sperm joining the egg are not under our personal control.

I'm sorry if you are stuck in some other train of thought.

...I mention these observations because the first, intuitive appearance of the universe and life is that it is beyond our control, and more in the control of natural forces...

What are "natural forces"? Where did they come from? Given these "natural laws," was it inevitable that sentience and agency should arise in this universe?

I don't know. You are welcome to invent any reason you want, but I am almost positive I don't know and positive you don't either.

...Hence why some children, for no seemingly good reason, are born with birth defects, for example...

Certainly there might be any number of explanations for birth defects. And certainly we may be capable of learning how to prevent them and treat them. Don't you agree?

You know you are debating a fundi when they won't agree with one point, but choose to argue against every comment no matter what....

Yes, I agree. It does nothing to damage my argument. Making vague suggestions in general don't defeat an argument.

The point is that if some consciousness was controlling the formation of life, one would presume it would avoid birth defects. After all, if a mother or father could, but exercising their consciousness to know and change their children from one with a genetic defect who will die, to one without who will live, you'd expect, I imagine, that to happen.

This doesn't seem to happen. I don't know of any mother who, at 3 weeks pregnant, says "I knew my baby had a birth defect in the making so I thought about it and fixed it."

...The "appearance of design" the teleological argument appeals to is only metaphorical, and is more likely a case that we design as nature has "designed" because we are of nature - not the other way around...

This is an interesting opinion. What evidence do you have for your opinion? How can we translate it into a hypothesis which can be tested empirically?

I don't know if you can test it one way or another.

Again, I mention it because it shows neither view can appeal to the appearance of design to suggest that the universe IS designed.

Even natural laws.

See how that works?

...So, if this interpretation seems correct, and it does to me, then I am justified in not presuming a personal being created the universe...

You agree that what you have is an interpretation, as opposed to an actual argument?

well goodness me, you got me. How did you figure out I was a humble and finite person?

I wasn't aware I was supposed to come down from the mountain and proclaim truths and kill people if they didn't abide by them...

...The rest can easily unfold from this first, modest assumption.

Can you present your case more like an actual argument, rather than a haphazard conglomeration of assumptions? I'd like to see if your argument can be made without any resort to non-sequitur and question-begging.

[/quote]

1. That which is more attested to is better evidenced.
2. That which is better evidenced has more reason to be rationally warranted.
3. Science and all things proved by science are better attested (from 1 & 2)
4. Those things that are not proved by science are less attested. (from 1 & 2)
5. The supernatural (and all things associated with it, including god) is not as well attested as naturalism.
6. Therefore, naturalism (and all it entails, including atheism) is better attested, thus has rational warrant. (Thus is the Best Explanation)
7. Therefore, supernaturalism (and all it entails, including theism) is less attested, thus has no rational warrant. (Thus is not the Best Explanation)

Theism is unwarranted.

[EduChris]

...you've yet to come up with a counter-example to my claim that agency and necessity are mutually exclusive. Or addressed my argument for why "both" is impossible...

You are sounding so bizarre here that I can only suppose we are talking past each other. There are times when necessity compels me to hiccup. And there are times that I can choose to pretend to make a hiccup-noise. I am a single agent; yet I can choose to do some things, and I can be compelled to do other things out of sheer necessity. I do not need to argue that I can choose to hiccup and be forced by necessity to hiccup--both at the same time (although I suppose it could happen via sheer coincidence).

Sometimes one causal factor is at work, and sometimes the other. And there are times when the choice to do one thing brings about necessary consequences which I neither intended nor wanted. Necessity and agency are not "incompatible" at all. Every one of us engages in actions which are commonly attributed to one and/or the other.

[EduChris]

...Theism is unwarranted.

Your entire argument amounts to, "You don't know, and I don't know, and therefore my 'I don't know' automatically trumps yours." Hardly a compelling argument.

As it appears that you have made no effort to understand the OP here or any of the numerous points already addressed on this thread, there is no point rehashing anything further with you unless and until you take yourself off auto-pilot and actually address the topic of the OP.

[no evidence no belief]

Let's assume for sake of argument that if non-theism were the objective reality, we would be able to offer some positive and non-fallacious argument to support the philosophical viewpoint known as non-theism.

In this discussion, we will use the following definitions:

Theism: the philosophical viewpoint that the non-contingent source and fount of all possibility is not less than personal.

Non-theism: the philosophical viewpoint that theism need not be the case.

God: the non-contingent, not-less-than-personal source and fount of all possibility.

Our universe and our selves constitute the evidence, and we must provide arguments as to why, given this evidence, we should adopt the philosophical viewpoint known as non-theism. In this thread we are not allowed to rely on some supposed "default position of non-theism"; rather, we must provide an actual, non-fallacious argument for non-theism.

After all, if non-theism can be asserted (or adopted, or held) without evidence, then non-theism can be dismissed without evidence.

Dude, are you still on this?

You could but the easter bunny right where you put God in your argument and it would make no less sense.

We don't have to come up with arguments to prove the non-existence of something you are speculating might exist and for which you have no evidence!

I'll present a "non-fallacious argument for non-theism" when you come up with a "non-fallacious argument for non-santaism".

Why do you use such fancy words to mask your bronze age level argument anyway?

This is what you're saying: "We exist therefore GODDIDIT, can you prove that it's not true that GODDIDIT?"

You're a dogmatic Christian. Be proud of who you are. Don't pretend you're a philosopher!

[Bust Nak]

You are sounding so bizarre here that I can only suppose we are talking past each other. There are times when necessity compels me to hiccup. And there are times that I can choose to pretend to make a hiccup-noise. I am a single agent; yet I can choose to do some things, and I can be compelled to do other things out of sheer necessity. I do not need to argue that I can choose to hiccup and be forced by necessity to hiccup--both at the same time (although I suppose it could happen via sheer coincidence).

Yes you do. That's what "both" means. I would also say that if you feel like making a hiccup-noise just as you happens to hiccup, would be a case of necessity.

Sometimes one causal factor is at work, and sometimes the other. And there are times when the choice to do one thing brings about necessary consequences which I neither intended nor wanted. Necessity and agency are not "incompatible" at all. Every one of us engages in actions which are commonly attributed to one and/or the other.

To say that one action can be attributed to one and the other, is to argue that you can choose to hiccup and be forced by necessity to hiccup--both at the same time.

[PREEST]

Evidence, or lack thereof, for god's existence aside, Judeo-christian religions are bizarre and immoral, and on this basis should not, or need not be believed. Why does it matter how the earth came about? There's no evidence for either theism or atheism. So for me, I judge theism on what it offers me. And that is nothing. I am not comforted by some bizarre ultimatum to believe or go to hell. I don't feel enlightened by the bible, it doesn't teach me anything I can't already figure out for myself as I grow and learn. For me, it is intellectually dishonest to put faith and hope into a book of bizarre goings on in the ancient Middle-East, a book of wonderful, yet unproven, promises of an afterlife. Prayer doesn't encourage me or make me feel like I'm talking to god. Truth, wisdom and beauty in life comes from living and sharing with other people. My 'spirituality' need not depend on any kind of deity, but rather the spirituality of being human, and walking the human journey through life.
To me it is waste of time to figure out which god to follow, which theistic viewpoint to subscribe to. An after life ultimatum of life or death is no reason to believe, it doesn't bring you solace and peace. For me, it's what I do in this life that brings me peace. Religion is a waste of time, and this is why I am of a 'non-theist' position.