I have never understood why a number of internet theists will choose to ignore the probabilistic arguments for God. After all, they're arguing for a fairly controversial position, and one would think they would use any good argument they could to defend their belief. Then again, I get the feeling that a significant portion of these individuals are not great at philosophy in the first place and that many of them would be far less certain of their positions had they taken the time to engage with some good atheistic philosophy.
Nothing about external reality can be ever “proven”, because the existence of external reality cannot be proven. This is obvious and immediate.
We prove relations between mental objects. Every single proof always involve objects in our own mind. If you know something for sure, it is only about yourself. This is implicit in Aristotelian inversion of Plato idealism, more explicit in Occam and the nominalists, and finally proven explicitly by the empirists (while it is implicit in the dependence of Descartes on the ontological fallacy to transcend beyond its own self).
The arguments for theism often rest on bad premises as well. The idea that the ‘laws of the universe’ were ‘set’ to precise values that enable life to flourish assumes that a universe is created and such values are set. But we have no reason to think this must be the case. Arguments for often revolve on sketchy physics theories of multiple worlds that probably will not hold up to future scrutiny.
What do you mean that the argument doesn't assume that? The argument as you sketched it in that article ibasically:
1. The universe came into being through a process involving particular set of initial conditions, laws, and constants
2. If the elements of this set had not been sufficiently close what they are, it is vanishingly unlikely that the universe that came about in that process, assuming one did at all, would contain creatures like us
3. If God does not exist, it is vanishingly unlikely that the elements of this set would set would have been sufficiently close to what they are
4. Therefore God's existence is extraordinarily more probable than not
...and the assumption seems baked into the premises
1. The result "6,853" came from a "100 billion machine", made by a machine designer with a known affinity for 6853, according to a particular set of conditions
2. If the conditions had not been sufficiently close to what they are, it is vanishingly unlikely that the machine would give the result "6,853", assuming it gave any result at all
3. If the machine designer had not rigged the machine, it is vanishingly unlikely that the conditions would be sufficiently close to what they are
4. Therefore, rigging is extraordinarily more probable than not.
The universe with creatures like us is the result 6,853. God has an affinity for a universe with creatures like us, just like the machine designer has an affinity for 6,853. God's existence is the machine designer's rigging. The baked in assumption is about what sort of outcomes we can associate with what sort of conditions
The fine tuning arguments presented again imply that the cosmological constants, human constructs for understanding physical phenomena rather than actual existing things, are ‘set’ when the universe is ‘created’. This is begging the question.
The variables for cosmological constants are constructed. The idea of them being variables modified is only in the human imagination. What we know for sure is that what exists, exists, not how or why it may have been created
Why do you find it fruitful to repeat the same point 3 times when I've pointed you to where I've addressed it at length. Do you have a response to the arguments I give?
The arguments in the link state that it is improbable to draw any other conclusion except that cosmological variables are fine tuned. I am restating that taking such constants as a measure of probability is assuming a lot in the premises to begin with. Unless I missed something in the article.
Deductive arguments, inductive arguments, and abductive arguments are all important. Gavin Ortlund defends both the ontological argument and the fine-tuning argument in his Youtube videos.
Quantity and quality of arguments are important. If we put a list of theistic arguments together, how well do they cohere into a worldview? How much do we learn from each argument about God?
Probabilistic reasoning seems like a bad way of deciding between theories if it follows this pattern::
1. We first have an intuitive sense of the plausibility of the theories
2. We then translate our intuitive sense into a formal probabilistic model and apply probabilistic methods, treating the theories as if reality herself instituted the true theory through a probabilistic mechanism analogous to the one in our model
3. Reality herself did not in fact institute the true theory in any such way.
I grant that it is at least possible that probabilistic reasoning is not so bad in cases where the third condition does not hold.
For example, if you are in a prison where there are a million fully isolated cells, and you are told that a coin will be flipped such that:
Heads = "999,999 prisoners will be executed in their sleep tonight"
Tails = "Only 1 prisoner will be executed in their sleep tonight",
then you may well be able to derive some sensible meaning from an SIA-type calculation the next morning, provided you do indeed wake up.
It turns out, however, that these situations are so intuitively implausible that we might as well invoke the principle we are arguing against and conclude that the expected benefit of mastering the peer-reviewed academic lore concerning probabilistic decision theory constructs is insufficient compensation for the for the intellectual resources we must spend in order to do so. After all, who would deny that you would likely have a more productive experience at our hypothetical prison if you had spent your life learning the art of sucking up to authority figures instead of the "science" of analytical philosophy?
I have never understood why a number of internet theists will choose to ignore the probabilistic arguments for God. After all, they're arguing for a fairly controversial position, and one would think they would use any good argument they could to defend their belief. Then again, I get the feeling that a significant portion of these individuals are not great at philosophy in the first place and that many of them would be far less certain of their positions had they taken the time to engage with some good atheistic philosophy.
Nothing about external reality can be ever “proven”, because the existence of external reality cannot be proven. This is obvious and immediate.
We prove relations between mental objects. Every single proof always involve objects in our own mind. If you know something for sure, it is only about yourself. This is implicit in Aristotelian inversion of Plato idealism, more explicit in Occam and the nominalists, and finally proven explicitly by the empirists (while it is implicit in the dependence of Descartes on the ontological fallacy to transcend beyond its own self).
The arguments for theism often rest on bad premises as well. The idea that the ‘laws of the universe’ were ‘set’ to precise values that enable life to flourish assumes that a universe is created and such values are set. But we have no reason to think this must be the case. Arguments for often revolve on sketchy physics theories of multiple worlds that probably will not hold up to future scrutiny.
Nope, the argument doesn't assume that--see the section titled "Can’t do probabilistic reasoning about the constants." https://benthams.substack.com/p/the-fine-tuning-argument-simply-works
What do you mean that the argument doesn't assume that? The argument as you sketched it in that article ibasically:
1. The universe came into being through a process involving particular set of initial conditions, laws, and constants
2. If the elements of this set had not been sufficiently close what they are, it is vanishingly unlikely that the universe that came about in that process, assuming one did at all, would contain creatures like us
3. If God does not exist, it is vanishingly unlikely that the elements of this set would set would have been sufficiently close to what they are
4. Therefore God's existence is extraordinarily more probable than not
...and the assumption seems baked into the premises
Or to use your "100 billion machine" analogy:
1. The result "6,853" came from a "100 billion machine", made by a machine designer with a known affinity for 6853, according to a particular set of conditions
2. If the conditions had not been sufficiently close to what they are, it is vanishingly unlikely that the machine would give the result "6,853", assuming it gave any result at all
3. If the machine designer had not rigged the machine, it is vanishingly unlikely that the conditions would be sufficiently close to what they are
4. Therefore, rigging is extraordinarily more probable than not.
The universe with creatures like us is the result 6,853. God has an affinity for a universe with creatures like us, just like the machine designer has an affinity for 6,853. God's existence is the machine designer's rigging. The baked in assumption is about what sort of outcomes we can associate with what sort of conditions
The fine tuning arguments presented again imply that the cosmological constants, human constructs for understanding physical phenomena rather than actual existing things, are ‘set’ when the universe is ‘created’. This is begging the question.
Did you read the section?
The variables for cosmological constants are constructed. The idea of them being variables modified is only in the human imagination. What we know for sure is that what exists, exists, not how or why it may have been created
Why do you find it fruitful to repeat the same point 3 times when I've pointed you to where I've addressed it at length. Do you have a response to the arguments I give?
The arguments in the link state that it is improbable to draw any other conclusion except that cosmological variables are fine tuned. I am restating that taking such constants as a measure of probability is assuming a lot in the premises to begin with. Unless I missed something in the article.
Deductive arguments, inductive arguments, and abductive arguments are all important. Gavin Ortlund defends both the ontological argument and the fine-tuning argument in his Youtube videos.
Quantity and quality of arguments are important. If we put a list of theistic arguments together, how well do they cohere into a worldview? How much do we learn from each argument about God?
No, but deductive arguments against God establish certainty, as argued here: https://neonomos.substack.com/p/god-does-not-exist-or-else-he-is
Probabilistic reasoning seems like a bad way of deciding between theories if it follows this pattern::
1. We first have an intuitive sense of the plausibility of the theories
2. We then translate our intuitive sense into a formal probabilistic model and apply probabilistic methods, treating the theories as if reality herself instituted the true theory through a probabilistic mechanism analogous to the one in our model
3. Reality herself did not in fact institute the true theory in any such way.
I grant that it is at least possible that probabilistic reasoning is not so bad in cases where the third condition does not hold.
For example, if you are in a prison where there are a million fully isolated cells, and you are told that a coin will be flipped such that:
Heads = "999,999 prisoners will be executed in their sleep tonight"
Tails = "Only 1 prisoner will be executed in their sleep tonight",
then you may well be able to derive some sensible meaning from an SIA-type calculation the next morning, provided you do indeed wake up.
It turns out, however, that these situations are so intuitively implausible that we might as well invoke the principle we are arguing against and conclude that the expected benefit of mastering the peer-reviewed academic lore concerning probabilistic decision theory constructs is insufficient compensation for the for the intellectual resources we must spend in order to do so. After all, who would deny that you would likely have a more productive experience at our hypothetical prison if you had spent your life learning the art of sucking up to authority figures instead of the "science" of analytical philosophy?
The McGrews are spinning in their graves.
I'm just being silly, btw