I explain how I came to reject the Theistic conception of God in favor of Pantheism. All excerpts used in this video are either copyright-free or covered under “fair use” in Title 17 § 107 of the USC. Image Attributions: commons.wikimedia.org commons.wikimedia.org commons.wikimedia.org…
Tags: Atheism · Seeing25 Comments
@Grogutz not necessarily. It doesn’t seem all that compatible, but I haven’t taken the time to try. Then again, a lot of people can accept the loopiest explanations to ignore complete contradictions.
@funglip Begging the question is: asserting that which you are attempting to prove as one of your premises. If your conclusion appears in your premises, you’re begging the question.
As I explained already: page 36, in Italics, is the assertion that “human beings occasionally have experiences and show certain behaviours that cannot be reduced to materialistic explanations”.
That is a claim that he doesn’t establish, but takes as a premise. Begging the question.
@brilyn Those 6 things aren’t suppose to explain that the spiritual is real, they are suppose to be used as tools to find out if it’s real.
Please tell me how exactly is the book begging the question. It has a lot of evidences beyond chapter 2. He never tries to explain the paranormal, but merely giving evidences that it exists somehow.
@GoforBroke4 An argument using inductive reasoning could be strong or weak. It just doesn’t contain 100% certainty but it could be convincing.
You should just ask him to explain our sense of smell. That’s right, we still don’t know how it works exactly as of today.
@funglip You’re right, my bad: “I doubt you can read any paper that has relatively new ideas to you in it.” is not an Ad Hominem, just an insult.
The 6 things you list there (a through f) don’t comprise an explanation. The *book* begs the question, not merely chapter 2. You touted this book as proof that materialism is false. It fails to be proof of anything: the author presumes and asserts that his explanations of ‘paranormal’ are accurate and correct. It’s bullshit.
@brilyn
1) He did explain “How do we know the spiritual is real” in Chapter 2,
a. be aware of Pathologies of Cognition
b. the way of experience
c. the way of authority
d. the way of reason
e. Basic Scientific Method
f. process of essential science
He then applies these methods AFTER chapter 2.
2) There’s no argument in chapter 2, so there’s no “Begging the Question”. My last comment is also not an argument; in fact, it’s not even truth-functional. So where the hell is the ad hominem?
Further, if you were to accept Popper’s view of induction, it would be disastrous for your own (currently theistic) worldview. Popper believes that only falsifiable statements that have been scientifically tested can be counted as knowledge (and even then, only tentatively).
So, by Popper’s view, no one would ever be justified to believe in God because God can’t be tested scientifically. He is even more radical about verification than I am.
@GoforBroke4 Induction isn’t a “controversial” form of logic, you complete tool, it’s the basis of science and has been in productive use for over a century. Your laundry list of ignorance isn’t an indictment of science, but an indictment of your own understanding of reasoning…
Good luck with this one, Evid3nc3, you’ll be smashing your face against this wall for a long time…
@GoforBroke4
“lastly this type of logic is very controversial. Some philosophers such as Karl Popper have rejected it.”
Induction is not controversial; it is the default view in science and philosophy. Rather Popper is controversial for rejecting it. In the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy site under the article “The Problem of Induction”, you will notice that they introduce Popper’s view as “controversial” and that the article itself ultimately sides with the validity of (good) induction.
Deduction is simply impossible for any human being in all but the most well-defined conditions. That is why, for almost every decision human beings make about the world, induction is necessary.
You (and any other sane human) probably spend 95% of your reasoning doing induction. People who think they are never wrong, that all of their reasoning is 100% accurate, are either clinically insane or idiotic. In the real world, we can be wrong.
@GoforBroke4
“So not only do you use a controversial form of logic: induction, and *possibly*..”
GoforBroke, I’m trying hard not to laugh at this attempt discrediting my reasoning. *Everyone* uses inductive logic. In fact *you* are using it right now. And you’ve used it in almost every argument you have made on my videos. You just didn’t know it was called “inductive logic”.
Any time someone makes an argument but admits that it is possible that they are wrong, they are using inductive logic.
So not only do you use a controversial form of logic: induction, and *possibly* commit an inductive fallacies along the way (open to argument), you falsely claim that most phenomenon have been “fully explained”. You list “illness” as one. Well nothing could be further from the truth. I challenge you to name ONE illness, (take your pick among the simpler ones like diabetes, hypertension, mycoardial infarction, etc….) that has been fully explained.
Therefore, one of the fundamental causes of lightning, i.e. electrons, have an unknown origin, in that sense lightning is still unexplained.
I guess I don’t need to tell you that gravity is unexplained.
Now when it comes to illness: there are about 3000 types of illness, and if you think the cause of these diseases is known for even the minority you’re mistaken.
Lastly, healing, it is UNKNOWN how some forms of healing work. The molecular mechanisms have not been demonstrated.
Lastly, ignoring all of that just looking at your list of phenomenon that have turned out to be natural, let’s look at a select few: lightning, gravity, illness and healing.
Yes, lightning is the movement of electrons through air, but let me ask you what are electrons? Are they strings? Are they particle or are they waves? It is unknown. So yes, the cause of lightning in very general terms in known, but ultimately every cause and effect, and the origin of electrons leads back to the Big Bang.
@Evid3nc3 and lastly this type of logic is very controversial. Some philosophers such as Karl Popper have rejected it.
An analogy would be, I take a sample of 600 objects on an island find them to be red in colour, and assume it is likely that all objects on that island are red in colour. If these objects share no underlying property in common besides being on the island, your generalization would be invalid. Also it is impossible to know the size of the population you’re taking a sample from.
@evid3nc3
So, I see two problems here, if you’re in fact using a generalization and not an argument from analogy, how can you form a coherent and *well defined* sample and a population? Furthermore, how can you study metaphysical events like you would study a population of say people which have concrete unifying properties which makes generalization possible.
Your logic here is so unclear that your whole argument breaks down in my opinion.
@Evid3nc3 “*Generalization* is a valid inductive argument.”
As you know a generalization requires a population to be studied and a representative sample. Could you tell me how you define the population in this case, and how you have taken the sample to be representative of the population?
Can you study metaphysical events like you would study a population of say people, in order to be able to form a generalization?
If these population shares no underlying properites, can you still generalize?
@GoforBroke4
“evid3nce is in fact committing an inductive fallacy rather than a deductive one”
No, GoforBroke, if the argument is used as an inductive inference, then it is not a fallacy. *Generalization* (the type of inductive reasoning I used) is a valid inductive argument.
There is no general “inductive fallacy”. Rather, the term “Inductive Fallacies” refers to a large collection of more specific fallacies, and I made none of them in my Generalization argument.
Truth has become synonymous to the pursuit of happiness. To me, and apparently to you.
@jbz3 sorry the only thing i know about hedonism is what you just told me so i don’t know if hedonism believes in a god and that a man named jesus was sent to save them.
@GoforBroke4 look up the prayer study for heart patients… google it
Evid3nc3.. i’m glad you stopped believing in talking snakes and talking donkeys and illiterate jewish carpentar god zombies.
You’re using circular logic. Your conclusion is assumed in your premises and vice versa.
Your premise is that object B (events now assumed to be supernatural) follow cause and effect (therefore are natural). Therefore you’re building a false analogy.
Which then you use to arrive at your inference that object B is natural because it is similar to object A, and this similarity is that they’re both natural.
This is circular reasoning, and I am surprised you didn’t catch it.
What you’re arguing for here, is that object A has property X, and object B is similar to object A therefore it is also LIKELY to have property X.
Therefore you have to point of how object A and object B are similar. This is inductive reasoning.
The analogy you’ve drawn so far is that object A and object B (events in our universe) follow causation/contigency, which would allow one to infer that yes object B is likely to be natural given that object A is natural.
conitnued….
“You could do this by attacking the truth of the premises that a large amount of phenomenon discovered to have natural causes, or by providing evidence for supernatural claims.”
I disagree. This is not the only way to show he’s committing an inductive fallacy. An inductive fallacy can also be committed by false analogy. And this goes back to my original point, if two groups are not-homogeneous in some underlying property any inference one may make will be false. continued…