Let's cut to the chase. Do you have any evidence?

[no evidence no belief]

I feel like we've been beating around the bush for... 6000 years!

Can you please either provide some evidence for your supernatural beliefs, or admit that you have no evidence?

If you believe there once was a talking donkey (Numbers 22) could you please provide evidence?

If you believe there once was a zombie invasion in Jerusalem (Mat 27) could you please provide evidence?

If you believe in the flying horse (Islam) could you please provide evidence?

Walking on water, virgin births, radioactive spiders who give you superpowers, turning water into wine, turning iron into gold, demons, goblins, ghosts, hobbits, elves, angels, unicorns and Santa.

Can you PLEASE provide evidence?

[instantc]

A circular argument is similar in that it starts with a faulty premise, the very conclusion one wants to arrive at, such as in the example where the confused student argues

So lets look once more the rain example you accuse of circularity

(1) If it rains outside, I will get wet
(2) It rains outside
(3) I will get wet

(3) Logically follows from (1) and (2), and NOT from (1) alone.

You say: A circular argument is similar in that it starts with a faulty premise, the very conclusion one wants to arrive at

I start with the fact that IF it rains outside, I will get wet

I arrive at the conclusion that I will get wet

Clearly this argument you accuse of circularity doesn't correspond to your description of circularity.

I submit that if you think that the above argument is circular, then you don't understand the nature of deductive arguments.

[Philbert]

Here's the circularity of atheism.

In order to apply one's logic to assertions about all of reality, one has to first assume that one's logic is binding upon that reality.

You know, if my logic is only binding inside my house, then my logic calculations would be irrelevant to your house and beyond.

So to make atheist assertions you first have to assume that there is nothing supernatural, nothing that is above logic, unbound by logic.

In simple words, when we boil away all the blah, blah, blah, the atheist logic calculation is...

There is no God, therefore there is no God.

This is called faith by the way....

[instantc]

Here's the circularity of atheism.

In order to apply one's logic to assertions about all of reality, one has to first assume that one's logic is binding upon that reality.

You know, if my logic is only binding inside my house, then my logic calculations would be irrelevant to your house and beyond.

So to make atheist assertions you first have to assume that there is nothing supernatural, nothing that is above logic, unbound by logic.

In simple words, when we boil away all the blah, blah, blah, the atheist logic calculation is...

There is no God, therefore there is no God.

This is called faith by the way....

The atheist claim is, there is no evidence for the supernatural, nothing else.

It then poses an epistemological question, what kind of conclusions are we allowed to draw from the above claim? There are different epistemological approaches.

William Lane Craig, for example, would claim that God claim has to be accepted if there are better argument for God than there are against God. That seems like a very odd approach to me. I have never heard of anyone applying it anywhere else.

In my experience, the usual approach in academia is the so called null hypothesis, which means that claims may be accepted only if they are backed up by sufficient evidence/reasoning. According to this epistemological approach the atheist is justified in rejecting the God claim merely on grounds of insufficient evidence.

[FarWanderer]

What the sentence really means can be more clearly shown with two distinct sentences:

1A. Without the being, anything at all could not exist.
1B. If the being doesn't exist, then anything at all doesn't exist.

I don't think that is identical, i.e. an accurate restatement, to the original premise. Your (1A) doesn't say anything.

My version is identical in meaning. Precisely identical. When you separate off a relative clause with commas (making it a non-restrictive relative clause), it functions essentially as a sentence within a sentence. In this case, the "which" in "without which anything at all could not exist" serves as the pronoun for "the being" in 1A. Notice that other than that, I just decompressed your one sentence into two, and left them word-for-word. Not my fault that they came out weird.

1. If the being without which anything at all cannot exist doesn't exist, then anything at all doesn't exist.

But that doesn't work either. It's in fact invalid logic. This is because "without which anything at all cannot exist" becomes integrated into the noun of "the being". Therefore, if it doesn't exist, then neither does it's quality of being necessary for other things to exist.

I don't think this is true, consider an example. Chair legs are necessary for the existence of my chair. If the legs don't exist, then the complete chair doesn't exist. So, their quality of being necessary for the chair doesn't go away even if I take the legs away. What do you think?

Since you have "taken the legs away", it's established that the legs have, in fact, existed, and thus have a real relationship with reality. "The being" is still entirely imagination until it has an established relationship with something real, and for that it needs to exist.

This argument is just awful. First off, "the being" is a loaded term. It should be "the thing", or even better, simply "something". And then the answer is Nature. "The being" is Nature. Simple as that.

It is a loaded term, but how does that affect the validity of the conditional in (1)?

It doesn't.

[Tired of the Nonsense]

[Replying to Philbert]

Yes, this is called atheist dogmatist dodging and weaving. First the forum atheist types about 7 million snotty posts about how stooopid theists are, and then when cornered retreats in to all kinds of equivocations. This is a very tired and worn out technique, and not worthy of your intelligence.

You believe, with childlike certainty, that a corpse came back to life and then flew away. You believe, or at least it is to be found in your book of certain truth, that the earth once stopped rotating for a full day, that hordes of dead people once came up out of their graves and wandered the streets of Jerusalem, and that a man and his family once gathered together a breeding pair of every living land animal, and then contained them and kept them all alive on a very VERY large boat for an extended period of time while the entire planet was covered in water to a height exceeding the tallest mountain. You insist, with absolute certainty, that the end is near and that a man who lived 2,000 years ago is about to return at just about any moment now, despite an ongoing record of being 0 for 2,000 years. And then you accuse those who do not possess your childlike certainty of the necessary truth of such claims with being "snotty" for attempting to point out the flaws in your claims and your belief system. If you encountered a fully grown adult who believed in Santa Claus, would it be "snotty" of you to point out how foolish it is for a grown adult to believe in flying reindeer? How exactly would you enter into a discussion with such a person without appearing condescending, and, well, snotty?

As for atheists dodging and weaving, here is a very straightforward question for you. An empty grave and a missing corpse are far more likely to be the result of actions taken by living people, then of actions taken by the corpse. True or false? Will you answer this question without dodging and weaving? And if you will not, do you now recognize how closely YOU actually resemble the object of your own contempt?

[instantc]

Since you have "taken the legs away", it's established that the legs have, in fact, existed, and thus have a real relationship with reality. "The being" is still entirely imagination until it has an established relationship with something real, and for that it needs to exist..

This doesn't make a difference, the legs need never have existed in order for them to still be necessary for the existence (or construction) of the chair.

What the sentence really means can be more clearly shown with two distinct sentences:

1A. Without the being, anything at all could not exist.
1B. If the being doesn't exist, then anything at all doesn't exist.

I don't think that is identical, i.e. an accurate restatement, to the original premise. Your (1A) doesn't say anything.

My version is identical in meaning. Precisely identical. When you separate off a relative clause with commas (making it a non-restrictive relative clause), it functions essentially as a sentence within a sentence. In this case, the "which" in "without which anything at all could not exist" serves as the pronoun for "the being" in 1A. Notice that other than that, I just decompressed your one sentence into two, and left them word-for-word. Not my fault that they came out weird.

Taken literally your 1A doesn't refer to an existing being, but perhaps to an imaginary one, therefore it seems true by definition, so there is no problem with 1A. With 1B we are back to the original problem, since it still seems like a valid deduction to me, given the definition of the being.

Breaking the proposition down in two propositions doesn't help at all, since the validity of the deduction is better visible in one sentence.

[Jax Agnesson]

1. If A then B
2. A.
3. Therefore B.
This is a valid form. The soundness depends only on the soundness of both 1 and 2 independently.


1. B IFF A
2. B.
3. Therefore A.
Looks equally valid; But the first premise makes two conditional statements about the relationship between A and B: first that B is true if A is true, and secondly that B is not true if A is not true. There is a claim here which is implicit in the qualities attributed to A, rather that presented as an explicit claim about A.
The observable existence of B can be taken as proof of the existence of A, if and only if B could not exist independently of A. The lack of clarity involved in using the 'if-and-only-if' format is compounded in instantC's argument because the 'IFF' relation is not made explicitly conditional, but is rolled into the description of the 'being'.
"
1. If (A: the being, without which anything at all cannot exist,) doesn't exist, then (B: anything at all) doesn't exist.

2. B does exist

3. Therefore A does exist...."
This is circular, as Danmark has observed. The proposition 'that B could not possibly exist without A' is smuggled in through the attachment of a qualifying adjective to the subject A. A is defined as ['b]that which is necessary for the existence of B,[/b]' and then the observation that B exists is used to establish that A exists.
This amounts, in effect, to the statement "If there is a reason why B exists, and B clearly does exist, then the reason why B exists also exists". You can't get much more circular than that.

Editted twice to disentangle misplaced As and Bs!

[Danmark]

A circular argument is similar in that it starts with a faulty premise, the very conclusion one wants to arrive at, such as in the example where the confused student argues

So lets look once more the rain example you accuse of circularity

(1) If it rains outside, I will get wet
(2) It rains outside
(3) I will get wet

(3) Logically follows from (1) and (2), and NOT from (1) alone.

You say: A circular argument is similar in that it starts with a faulty premise, the very conclusion one wants to arrive at

I start with the fact that IF it rains outside, I will get wet

I arrive at the conclusion that I will get wet

Clearly this argument you accuse of circularity doesn't correspond to your description of circularity.

I submit that if you think that the above argument is circular, then you don't understand the nature of deductive arguments.

I think I have explained your fallacious reasoning as well as I can, yet you persist in insisting your circular argument is not circular. Your last two responses have been simple contradictions, plus "You don't understand." I don't see any end to it, so please don't take my lack of future responses as agreement. I just don't see the value in continuing with mere contradiction.

[Danmark]

Here's the circularity of atheism.

In order to apply one's logic to assertions about all of reality, one has to first assume that one's logic is binding upon that reality.

You know, if my logic is only binding inside my house, then my logic calculations would be irrelevant to your house and beyond.

So to make atheist assertions you first have to assume that there is nothing supernatural, nothing that is above logic, unbound by logic.

In simple words, when we boil away all the blah, blah, blah, the atheist logic calculation is...

There is no God, therefore there is no God.

This is called faith by the way....

The atheist claim is, there is no evidence for the supernatural, nothing else.

It then poses an epistemological question, what kind of conclusions are we allowed to draw from the above claim? There are different epistemological approaches.

William Lane Craig, for example, would claim that God claim has to be accepted if there are better argument for God than there are against God. That seems like a very odd approach to me. I have never heard of anyone applying it anywhere else.

In my experience, the usual approach in academia is the so called null hypothesis, which means that claims may be accepted only if they are backed up by sufficient evidence/reasoning. According to this epistemological approach the atheist is justified in rejecting the God claim merely on grounds of insufficient evidence.

Well done. I am in agreement. Philbert has been told several times just today that there is a difference between seeing no evidence for God and and affirmatively claiming there is evidence for there being no god. Yet he continues to project his argument on to atheists:
"There is no God, therefore there is no God."

[instantc]

A circular argument is similar in that it starts with a faulty premise, the very conclusion one wants to arrive at, such as in the example where the confused student argues

So lets look once more the rain example you accuse of circularity

(1) If it rains outside, I will get wet
(2) It rains outside
(3) I will get wet

(3) Logically follows from (1) and (2), and NOT from (1) alone.

You say: A circular argument is similar in that it starts with a faulty premise, the very conclusion one wants to arrive at

I start with the fact that IF it rains outside, I will get wet

I arrive at the conclusion that I will get wet

Clearly this argument you accuse of circularity doesn't correspond to your description of circularity.

I submit that if you think that the above argument is circular, then you don't understand the nature of deductive arguments.

I think I have explained your fallacious reasoning as well as I can, yet you persist in insisting your circular argument is not circular. Your last two responses have been simple contradictions, plus "You don't understand." I don't see any end to it, so please don't take my lack of future responses as agreement. I just don't see the value in continuing with mere contradiction.

Focusing on the rain example for a while, help me understand though, do you claim that (3) does not follow from (2) and (1)? Do you suggest that the argument is circular simply because (3) follows from (2) and (1), or do you suggest that (3) follows from (1) or (2) alone? (then it actually would be circular) I don't quite grasp your thoughts here.

I have taken courses in logic, and this rain argument is presented as the simplest possible text book example of a sound syllogism.