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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • myslsl@lemmy.worldtoMemes@lemmy.mlImportant distinction
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    5 months ago

    Have you studied philosophy of religion? Sounds a lot like you haven’t. Maybe reading up on it will help you? You can fix your reading comprehension and also learn not to say the dumbest shit possible on topics of religion. It’s really a win-win for you.


  • myslsl@lemmy.worldtoMemes@lemmy.mlImportant distinction
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    5 months ago

    Sorry for getting your panties in a twist over paraphrasing your totally irrelevant point. Please understand, I don’t give a shit about what you think you can prove or disprove.

    Any supernatural phenomenon, upon rigorous delineation, becomes provably false

    Great point, one of the MAJOR challenges with arguments about whether a god does or does not exist is that the whole notion of a god is incredibly vague and not “rigorously delineated” in a general sense. Literally any introductory course in philosophy of religion would point this out.


  • myslsl@lemmy.worldtoMemes@lemmy.mlImportant distinction
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    5 months ago

    The lack of reading comprehension here is definitely on your end.

    Me (sans-snarkyness) in the original comment you replied to: “Hey, the field of philosophy where this stuff is studied is called philosophy of religion. Proofs for and against the existence of a god have been critiqued to shit there. You should read about it.”

    You: “Oh yeah! Well I can disprove any god you like.”

    Congrats? Do you want a gold star or something?

    Go study philosophy of religion. These kinds of proofs and disproofs are part of that field along with their critiques. That’s the point I’m making in the comment you originally replied to. Nothing about my point is subjective.




  • myslsl@lemmy.worldtoMemes@lemmy.mlImportant distinction
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    5 months ago

    I never said there was prove god doesn’t exist. And like I said, there doesn’t need to be as long as there is no documented sign whatsoever that points towards god actually existing.

    You also said: “A nonexistent almighty being”. Did you mean no gods exist, or did you mean all the gods people claim to exist so far have been debunked?

    More importantly, for the claim “no god exists” specifically, I disagree that no proof is required in general. There needs to be an actual proof as much as there needs to be a proof of the negation, that “a god exists”, for either to be worth accepting. If neither can be proved, why commit to believing the truth of either?

    Additionally, disproving particular examples doesn’t prove the general rule. Having no documented sign pointing to the existence of a god does not confirm the absence of a god anymore than having no documented signs of a gas leak in your home confirms the absence of a gas leak in your home. Perhaps the detector you are using is broken, perhaps the type of gas leaking in your home is not detectable by your detector.

    It would also be incredibly hard to design any kind of empirical test to confirm or disconfirm the existence of gods in general (not just the christian flavored ones).





  • myslsl@lemmy.worldtoMemes@lemmy.mlImportant distinction
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    5 months ago

    Why is it silly that the claim originally presented should have to present evidence first? The counter-claim only has zero burden of proof so long as the original claim has failed to give any proof of their own.

    That’s not what I’m claiming. I’m saying the claim AND counter-claim should provide evidence/proof before either one is accepted. Blindly believing not B because you can’t prove B is just as bad in my opinion as believing B itself with no proof.

    You wouldn’t have to present an argument yet, at that stage. I’d think you’re really dumb for needing something like that proven to you, but the initial burden of proof would still be on me. However, when I quickly and easily provide proof that 2 + 2 does equal 4, THEN the burden of proof falls to you to prove your counter-claim.

    A lack of evidence or proof for some claim B is not sufficient proof for not B. It doesn’t really matter what claim we assign to B here.

    For example, you might not have evidence/proof that it will rain today (i.e. B is the statement “it will rain today”), that doesn’t give you sufficient evidence/proof to now claim that it will not rain today. You just don’t know either way.


  • myslsl@lemmy.worldtoMemes@lemmy.mlImportant distinction
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    5 months ago

    This ties into the part you absolutely agreed with. The word “God” as it is defined now would not exist without the original unproven claims that God. Even if you’re not responding “God doesn’t exist” directly to someone who said “God exists”, you are if nothing else still responding to the original millennia old claim that they do exist. For that reason, it is always a counter-claim.

    If I say god doesn’t exist to you I feel like I’m making a true or false factual claim to YOU rather than to a bunch of old dead people or some greater historical/cultural context. The history of the word/definition might be relevant for deciding what the word means, but the claim is aimed at YOU. The actual truth status of the claim (even if we call it a counter-claim) that I might be making is either true or false (assuming we subscribe to bivalence like that) regardless of the history or culture that lead us to the discussion.

    As for what makes counter-claims different from regular claims, it’s simply that the burden of proof lies first with the original claim. A counter-claim has no responsibility to prove their claim until such time as the original claim presents evidence supporting itself

    It seems like a silly double standard for only one side to have a burden to prove their claim, but the other gets to claim the negation is true with no burden of proof.

    For example, if you say “2+2 is 4” and my response is “NO IT IS NOT. IT IS 3! I REFUSE TO PROVE IT THOUGH”, not only will I be wrong in a classical arithmetic sense but I have presented no argument for why you ought to believe my new counter claim to your original claim. It would make no sense to believe me without more info in such a case.

    The problem with that is I at least in theory could have looked up the tax code, remembered it, and then told you it correctly. Sure, I could have lied or remembered wrong, but it was 100% within my capacity to give you the accurate information, and even show you where I got the information from. With a claim about God’s existence, that’s impossible for either side of the debate as far as we know, and since the original claim was “God exists”, that side is, possibly forever, stuck holding the burden of proof.

    The fact that you can look up tax code is not really a problem for my hypothetical example. It is not particularly hard to come up with hypotheticals where you just can’t easily obtain the answer. We could rephrase the context, perhaps we are stranded on a desert island? We could rephrase the question, perhaps it is about what some obscure historical figure had in their pockets on the day they died?

    To be clear, I’m not trying to argue for or against the existence of god. My issue is that there should be a burden of proof for the CLAIMS “god exists” and “god does not exist” if somebody is claiming either is true. I don’t think there’s any kind of burden for believing some random claim without proof, but I think it’s silly to commit to the negation of a claim without proof unless you have a reason to believe the negation. You can always just not commit and say you don’t know in such a case, rather than believing the claim or its negation.