I agree that "Biting The Bullet On Adam and Eve" is silly.
But doesn't SIA has it's own similar bullet? Let's call it "Asexual Eve".
Suppose that Eve doesn't want to have sex with Adam. Adam insists that if they don't have children human race will go extinct, but Eve dismisses it. Surely human race will be fine regardless of whether they have sex or not! After all, under SIA it's extremely unlikely that they are the only people in the universe. And the only alternative to SIA is SSA which claims that she can't possibly get pregnant, so there is no point in even trying.
I don’t think that the Adam and Eve hypotheticals are actually that absurd in a way that helps SIA. The absurdity is being smuggled in from other sources.
1. Adam having sex with Eve is said to have no risk of procreation because doing so would create large numbers of people. But this is only absurd because we’re assuming for the sake of the hypothetical that having sex once will somehow create oodles of people.
I believe the Bible gets around this by saying that Adam loved for 930 years and had plenty of children.
So it seems like the real source of the absurdity is not that SSA creates magical contracpeption, but the fact that we assume having sex once will create a massive number of people. Conflating the two artificially makes SSA seem worse.
The Deer dropping dead at feet hypothetical is even worse. Not only does it inject the same artificial doubt as merely having sex, it also injects additional absurdity by artificially making Adam’s commitment to way more ironclad than need be. The much more loudly scenario than a deer spontaneously dropping dead at Adam’s feet is that Adam just doesn’t follow through on his promise, or is somehow blocked from doing so. The absurdity comes from arbitrarily positing that his strength of will to create massive numbers of beings (and not get randomly killed or distracted) is so strong that the most likely event is actually a deer dropping dead at his feet.
Once again. Assuming absurd stuff in your hypothetical and then claiming that your hypothetical is absurd… is not an argument!
//Adam having sex with Eve is said to have no risk of procreation because doing so would create large numbers of people. But this is only absurd because we’re assuming for the sake of the hypothetical that having sex once will somehow create oodles of people.//
Imagine God foretells that Adam's children will have many children.
For the deer case, it doesn't have to be about having sex. It's just about creating a bunch of offspring.
> Imagine God foretells that Adam's children will have many children.
Sure. If Divine intervention is required to make the scenario work, then I have no problems biting the bullet. Divine intervention is whacky, and biting the bullet doesn’t add any more whackiness.
I agree that "Biting The Bullet On Adam and Eve" is silly.
But doesn't SIA has it's own similar bullet? Let's call it "Asexual Eve".
Suppose that Eve doesn't want to have sex with Adam. Adam insists that if they don't have children human race will go extinct, but Eve dismisses it. Surely human race will be fine regardless of whether they have sex or not! After all, under SIA it's extremely unlikely that they are the only people in the universe. And the only alternative to SIA is SSA which claims that she can't possibly get pregnant, so there is no point in even trying.
I don’t think that the Adam and Eve hypotheticals are actually that absurd in a way that helps SIA. The absurdity is being smuggled in from other sources.
1. Adam having sex with Eve is said to have no risk of procreation because doing so would create large numbers of people. But this is only absurd because we’re assuming for the sake of the hypothetical that having sex once will somehow create oodles of people.
I believe the Bible gets around this by saying that Adam loved for 930 years and had plenty of children.
So it seems like the real source of the absurdity is not that SSA creates magical contracpeption, but the fact that we assume having sex once will create a massive number of people. Conflating the two artificially makes SSA seem worse.
The Deer dropping dead at feet hypothetical is even worse. Not only does it inject the same artificial doubt as merely having sex, it also injects additional absurdity by artificially making Adam’s commitment to way more ironclad than need be. The much more loudly scenario than a deer spontaneously dropping dead at Adam’s feet is that Adam just doesn’t follow through on his promise, or is somehow blocked from doing so. The absurdity comes from arbitrarily positing that his strength of will to create massive numbers of beings (and not get randomly killed or distracted) is so strong that the most likely event is actually a deer dropping dead at his feet.
Once again. Assuming absurd stuff in your hypothetical and then claiming that your hypothetical is absurd… is not an argument!
//Adam having sex with Eve is said to have no risk of procreation because doing so would create large numbers of people. But this is only absurd because we’re assuming for the sake of the hypothetical that having sex once will somehow create oodles of people.//
Imagine God foretells that Adam's children will have many children.
For the deer case, it doesn't have to be about having sex. It's just about creating a bunch of offspring.
> Imagine God foretells that Adam's children will have many children.
Sure. If Divine intervention is required to make the scenario work, then I have no problems biting the bullet. Divine intervention is whacky, and biting the bullet doesn’t add any more whackiness.