this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2024
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Say I have 6 people all guessing a different result of a roll of a D6. It's inconceivable that they are all right, and it's absolutely not a "reasonable conclusion" that they are all wrong.
Additionally, if we include the people who believe they know there is no god (a position held with no proof) as a religion (which is not much of a stretch) then it's also included in the " they are all wrong" group.
I lack a belief in a god because I've been provided no evidence that own exists, but the logic in this picture is full of holes.
If you think his logic is bad here, wait till you read his position on the Iraq War.
The Christopher Hitchens style of atheism is very heavy on the pithy one-liners and very light on real philosophy, reason, or ethics. Neoconservatism in a nutshell.
In this strawman, you are correct as you 1) already know there are only 6 possible answers to choose from; 2) you know at least 1 of the participants will get it right as you set the conditions to be "different results" and 3) the result is discrete and absolute.
None of the above conditions apply to religions in general... 1) we do not know how many possible right answer are there; 2) the options are endless and can overlap and 3) if one of them is right in someway, it would 100% be a matter of perspective and context
You are pointing out how a 6D dice is different than picking/defining a religion. I'm not saying they are the same thing, I'm giving you an example where just because it is inconceivable all answers are correct, that doesn't mean no answer can be correct. There is no strawman in my argument, I'm just applying the logic to something we would all agree one.
This is expanding, by leaps and bounds, the argument in the OP's image. You are now introducing a bunch of other things. Unprovable, of course. Seriously, how could you know that being correct about a religious would be "100% a matter of perspective and context"? Why couldn't it be just objectively and patently correct? The fact that some might be partially correct doesn't change the fact that one could be completely correct.
So you are ok with Op narrowing down all religions to 6 discreet choices where one is absolute truth but I'm the one with the scope problem?
Well, op declared that one must be correct and therefore the actual initial argument was wrong. Lol how can you blame me for saying religion is unprobable while defending an argument that claims some religion is certainly right without an iota of proof???
No one narrowed anything down to 6 discreet choices. I demonstrated a case where it is inconceivable that all people are correct, while at the same time demonstrating it is completely unreasonable to claim that no one can be correct.
At no point did anyone claim one must be correct.
The question "why couldn't it be" is not even remotely equivalent to the claim that "it certainly is."
Yes but the validity of that "demonstration" is showing an equivalent scenario, which you did not. If I claim "a bird is a living thing and flies, ergo all living things fly" I would be wrong and even if that line does apply to many living things, it is still a gross generalization.
All I am saying is that you are arguing a flawed argument with another flawed argument.
Your reduced scenario assumed one must be, otherwise you'd be agreeing with the quote posted by OP
I can... but we cannot know if that is the case so we should ALSO not be acting as if it already is right and certain
I used the equivalent logic. I'm demonstrating the logic is wrong, not the conclusion.
Nit picky. Change it to a million sided die and 999999 people all choose different answers. One doesn't have to be true, but it's still ridiculous to claim they all have to be wrong.
I started this whole thing by saying I lack a belief in a god because I see no evidence of one. You gotta shake the black and white thinking. Just because I recognize his logic here is garbage, that doesn't mean I don't agree with his conclusions.
By using a scenario that nowhere near resembles the original claim? that's the part I disagree with
OK, 99999 side, no option is correct. How does this disprove the original claim which concluded that "none are correct"?
I'm not, my initial criticism of your logic is precisely that we cannot reduce it to a simple right or wrong. Almost everything is more nuanced than that, specially religion
It exactly resembles the logic. Which is the important part. You can argue there is more to it because religious beliefs are much more complicated, and I would agree, but you would also be agreeing with my point that the logic itself is bad.
? There is only a 1 in a million chance that noone is correct. To say the only reasonable conclusion is that they are all wrong makes no sense because it is almost certainly incorrect.
? Your last argument that I responded to is literally that we shouldnt be acting like a belief is right or certain. Which was also in a chain of you accusing me of saying one must be right.
This is really going off then rails.
Not if the components of the formula you are subbing in the logic are so far departed. But this is my opinion and I feel we are just going in circles here. I do agree with you in that the Hitchens original claim is flawed (actually I never found him as wise as people seem to) but I do not believe your reduced scenario proved that.
How is me saying that an indication I am thinking in black and white?! Precisely saying we shouldN'T be acting like a belief is right or certain is the opposite of black and white thinking.
You're right. Sometimes Hitchins said things that were only 6/10 smart, not 10/10. Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to have to post a bunch of Spongebob memes to 196 to recover the karma I'm about to lose.
Or any kind of philosophy, for that matter. You can always play at God of the Gaps and insist the scientific worldview is incomplete. You can always lean on the Gödel's incompleteness theorem to assert a certain amount of unknowableness in the universe.
Does that mean every effort at understanding the world around us is pointless? Or does it mean the task of building a working model of the universe is more difficult than any single lifetime - or civilization's worth of lifetimes - can hope to accomplish?
Which seems like it would add some degree of value to our overarching understanding of our human condition. Something worth studying and learning from, rather than casually dismissing as wrong for being incomplete.
I have no idea what you are shooting at with this latest goal post move.
I simply stated your analogy was a poor strawman you used to attack the original point
Where the hell did I even come close to suggest the contrary?
Absolutely. Get some proof and we'll talk. But that's not what you want, you want to define your own version and expect the world around you to follow suit
Study it all you want. Just don't make civil law based on it
Proof of lived experience and philosophical conjecture?
Neither... get proof that religion is right/accurate. That is what we are talking about and what I replied with "get proof". No need to move the goal post.
How do you prove a moral philosophy is correct?
That's precisely the point bud.
You cannot and therefore we should not use religion (in this instance) to write laws... it would be like banning musical genres based on my taste
I do not agree with the original quote from Hitchen that every religion must be wrong (although I do not think any are right since they are all just made up stories) but I do believe that should be left to people's personal choice and not a centimeter more.
Strictly speaking, we don't. Legislation has to be in line with the constitutional authority of the acting branch.
But when you talk about rationales for that action, there's no filter that exists to screen an individual's religiously informed ideology from their legislative, judicial, or executive behavior.
Hell, given the nature of popular democracy, there can't be. What are you going to do? Establish a religious exclusion test for candidates? For voters? Who would support that in a country with enormously influential and active religious organizations?
When large numbers of people engage in the same personal choices, they create an implicit policy. When state officials campaign, they appeal to the local customs and taboos. And those customs/taboos become laws, on the ground that they service some useful social function.
What prevents this snowball from forming? Are you going to forbid a plurality of people from propagating their views?
Well, that is not where the USA is going if they continue down the MAGA rabbit hole. They are now even quoting the Bible as a reference for law writing.
No but you are taking it too far. All I want are laws that are not based on religious beliefs. If they coincide with some religious belief I have no issues, I just do not want religion doctrine to be the driving force.
Which can objectively be avoided or mitigated.
Why should they? this is exactly what I am talking should not happen and something you just claimed "strictly speaking" does not happen.
Now you are just pearl clutching for effect
"Strict Constructionism" is a central tenant of the conservative movement. A big chunk of their revanchist ideology is embodied in the slogan (Make America Great Again), implying we left the rabbit hole and we need to go back.
That's a shit basis for a legal system, as it does nothing to protect individual civil liberties or form an egalitarian basis of enforced legal standards. I can shave the serial numbers off all my religious precepts and implement a secularized fascist government without anyone noticing the difference.
How do you mitigate majority rule in a democracy?
Constitutional law is a secularized standard of customs and taboos. The legalism stands in for the religiousity, but yields the same practical results.
We've seen this anti-religious hysteria in action within the US/UK before. It just got pointed at minority religious groups. Hell, Hitchens himself had no problem striking a common cause with UK sectarian Anglicans and Catholics when it came time to wage a Holy Crusade on the majority Muslim states of Iraq, Iran, and Syria.
Secularizing your bigotry makes you no less of a shit.
People are attacking this as if it’s a hard deductive proof and if is very clearly a statement of what is “most reasonable.”
The most reasonable conclusion is that they aren't all correct.
I don't think that's an accurate comparison, it's more like a few hundred people guessing a different result of a practically infinite-sided die. For all we know, the origin of the universe can be anything, and it's maybe (who are we kidding, definitely) something even beyond our imaginations. For all we know, we're trapped in Charlie's Chocolate Factory. What are the odds that anyone who ever wrote a book about a diety/universal origins actually got it right? Hint: it's not 1/6 odds, or even 1/1,000,000,000, it's 1/∞. Technically not zero, but c'mon, it's practically zero.
The argument put forth is not that the chances of them being right is small, but that because they can't all be right, they must all be wrong. I gave a counter example that demonstrates, pretty clearly, that this logic doesn't make sense. I'm not comparing religious beliefs to a D6, but giving a demonstration as to why the logic is bad.
Gotcha, I see where you're coming from. I think that the phrase isn't meant to be taken as cold hard logic but a rule of thumb for the default position on a theory. To reiterate, we don't know that any religion is right, but because they contradict each other, we do know that some must be wrong. Since none provide proof, and especially because they all contradict each other, a reasonable person would assume that they're all all wrong until actually finding some evidence.
So yeah, the way it's worded it does sound like a logical expression, but really it's "If 20 people tell you the answer and they all give you different answers without showing their work, it's not safe to bet that any one of them are right"
Right but they are right that it's not zero.
It might be that everyone is wrong, but just maybe someone got it right...
Remember that next time the crazy man walking down the street screams at you that they made the world with their fart and a lighter... Cause it might just be the correct answer.