It's Christmas Eve and I should probably be doing something other than working on my blog, ah but it's also Tuesday and I'm a little bit OCD as they say. So here it goes.
My last post about the Onus Probandi fallacy attracted some questions. The most obvious being about of all things, the spaghetti monster. Yes, even though I made no mention of that lovable guy he decided to crash my logic party.
For those of you not familiar with the spaghetti monster let me offer a quick explanation. Some people thought themselves exceptionally clever when they invented a fictional being with god-like powers that lives somewhere out in space beyond our ability to confirm or deny his existence. They thought they created the perfect answer to the "you can't prove God does not exist" argument.
The spaghetti monster, they would say, was just like God in that his existence could not be disproved, thus to believe in God makes just as much sense as believing in the spaghetti monster. "Not much", their argument goes.
This was suggested to me in response to my assertion that the burden of proof rests with whoever is attempting to change the other's mind.
They missed the point and on top of that they stepped right into another logical fallacy. The irony of this is rich since one of the names this fallacy goes by is the Divine fallacy.
Divine fallacy (argument from (personal) incredulity, appeal to common sense) – I cannot imagine how this could be true, therefore it must be false.
Some atheists apparently insist that logic must always make sense to them, which is a fallacy. I inferred this last week when I wrote,
"Interesting conclusion, but I can't see how they get to it. And it's not that I'm ignorant or trying to use the fallacious argument that what I personally can't see must not be valid. But it is in fact that they seem to be using it."
That fallacious argument I was referring to there was the Divine fallacy. The spaghetti monster is just a clever attempt to frame a logical quandary its creators don't like in a way to make it look ridiculous. They feel justified in doing it because the implications of the quandary seems ridiculous to them. But they miss the important point that no matter how ridiculous it may seem to them, the challenge is still before them if they wish to change anyone's mind.
They can't prove God doesn't exist and yet they're partly right in saying they don't need to. Just as long as their intent is not to persuade. If it is to persuade, then however they're stuck. The spaghetti monster can't save them unless they're willing to throw logic to the wind and commit the Divine fallacy.
I can't resist making this one last point, or rather completing a thought started above. Belief in God has a lot to do with semantics as in how you define Him. Listen to an atheist some time when he's completing a sentence like this about God, "I don't believe in some guy who ...". How they complete that often touches on how they define him. There's a good chance no one believes in the "God" the atheist is describing. But as for the real God ...
We thank Him for His son.
Merry Christmas!
My last post about the Onus Probandi fallacy attracted some questions. The most obvious being about of all things, the spaghetti monster. Yes, even though I made no mention of that lovable guy he decided to crash my logic party.
For those of you not familiar with the spaghetti monster let me offer a quick explanation. Some people thought themselves exceptionally clever when they invented a fictional being with god-like powers that lives somewhere out in space beyond our ability to confirm or deny his existence. They thought they created the perfect answer to the "you can't prove God does not exist" argument.
The spaghetti monster, they would say, was just like God in that his existence could not be disproved, thus to believe in God makes just as much sense as believing in the spaghetti monster. "Not much", their argument goes.
This was suggested to me in response to my assertion that the burden of proof rests with whoever is attempting to change the other's mind.
They missed the point and on top of that they stepped right into another logical fallacy. The irony of this is rich since one of the names this fallacy goes by is the Divine fallacy.
Divine fallacy (argument from (personal) incredulity, appeal to common sense) – I cannot imagine how this could be true, therefore it must be false.
Some atheists apparently insist that logic must always make sense to them, which is a fallacy. I inferred this last week when I wrote,
"Interesting conclusion, but I can't see how they get to it. And it's not that I'm ignorant or trying to use the fallacious argument that what I personally can't see must not be valid. But it is in fact that they seem to be using it."
That fallacious argument I was referring to there was the Divine fallacy. The spaghetti monster is just a clever attempt to frame a logical quandary its creators don't like in a way to make it look ridiculous. They feel justified in doing it because the implications of the quandary seems ridiculous to them. But they miss the important point that no matter how ridiculous it may seem to them, the challenge is still before them if they wish to change anyone's mind.
They can't prove God doesn't exist and yet they're partly right in saying they don't need to. Just as long as their intent is not to persuade. If it is to persuade, then however they're stuck. The spaghetti monster can't save them unless they're willing to throw logic to the wind and commit the Divine fallacy.
I can't resist making this one last point, or rather completing a thought started above. Belief in God has a lot to do with semantics as in how you define Him. Listen to an atheist some time when he's completing a sentence like this about God, "I don't believe in some guy who ...". How they complete that often touches on how they define him. There's a good chance no one believes in the "God" the atheist is describing. But as for the real God ...
We thank Him for His son.
Merry Christmas!
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