What is this "weak atheism" thread that keeps being mentioned?

Thx

I really don't understand why you make a post not only affirming my opinions, but acting like you are somehow original in doing so.

Please relate your own experience in logic.

Here you go.

You made this claim:

I have been arguing that this definition is incorrect. The meaning you claim here for "fallacy" is only true of formal fallacies, but not of informal fallacies. I demonstrate this by providing a counterexample - providing an ad hominem argument that would generally be considered fallacious, but where the conclusion still follows from the "precepts." Thus, either the argument I presented isn't fallacious, it isn't valid, or your definition of "fallacy" is incorrect.

If I've misunderstood your position, and you actually agree with me, good.

I took a few graduate courses in logic and taught undergraduate Logic 101 classes.

Ok - you are obviously more knowledgeable than I on this topic, so I am inclined to defer to your views rather than stubbornly stick with mine, but I don't understand how in one breath you can say "a fallacy is an error in reasoning" and in the next offer an example where the *reasoning* is entirely valid?

Thank you

I think your view is more charitable than the majority of atheist posters in this forum. Based on the types of antagonism expressed towards and about religion and religious adherents, it would seem that searching itself is perceived negatively by that population.

This is where I would start to lean in a bit to try to discuss something like "behaving as if X is true." This is different from some sort of mere abstract assent to consequentialism, in which you assert a belief but it has no practical application in how actually analyze your decisions. So if you take action X intending/expecting a positive outcome, but in reality the outcome is negative, your ability to intellectually/emotionally reckon that event as being a moral ill because your consequentialist commitment (instead of another analysis that takes into account all of the good things you had hoped would happen as a result of your action) would then stand as a way to measure your commitment to the belief.

This is a little bit of a stretch for a philosophical commitment of this type, as it's merely an analytic framework. But if you were to assent to something additional, such as a desire to make morally good decisions, then one might have a more robust way of measuring your philosophical commitment by also comparing your actual decisions with the abstract analysis.

You might be correct under the view of human behaviors as merely being based on outcomes. The assessment becomes far less clear if you also view human behaviors in light of motivations and truth.

For example, you can take two identical situations of one person treating another person well. One might be doing it from a place of genuine care and concern for the other, and the other may be doing it with the future intention of doing something exploitative.

I agree that in the consequentialist perspective, these are the same as long as the point of future manipulation doesn't happen because the fact would be that the other person was only treated well.

But if one peels back that first layer and can see intent, it becomes less clear
that we should actually view these behaviors as being the same.

With regards to "truth" I would argue that motivations that are grounded in truth should fare generally better than those that are not. And if (for example) it is true that people are made in God's image and that a consequence of this is that people should be treated well, then it makes a moral difference between treating people well for that reason or treating them well because you intend to exploit the relationship in the future.

In this way, I would say that a purely consequentialist perspective is unnecessarily limiting in the same way that a goddidit explanation is unnecessarily limiting. It doesn't necessarily make the position right or wrong (or true or false) to adopt that position, but there are consequences to it.

In mathematical terms, it's possible to get entirely different universes of conclusions based on different assumptions, even if the general goals are the same. The classic example is Euclidean and Non-Euclidean geometry. You can have your goal as "understand the properties of triangles" in both situations and end up with two different sets of beliefs about triangles by just changing the assumptions and not changing the motivation.

So I don't reject that motivation matters (because the types of things you would end up believing would depend on the types of questions that motivate the pursuit), but it seems to me that assumptions matter more because these are the things that actually separate distinct belief systems from each other.

Why wouldn't I pray?

Probably, your question is grounded in the assumption that the purpose of prayer is to get God to change something. This would be a far too narrow understanding of Christian prayer.

You're welcome to try to argue differently, but as you do so you run the very significant risk of arguing something that's not connected to the reality of human experience.

If that's reality, then that's reality. I don't see why the question matters.

Deductive validity refers to only one aspect of reasoning - that relating to the logical form of deductive arguments. When we make an error of reasoning in deductive logic, we are making an invalid argument. However, deductive logic is not the only kind of reasoning we do. We also make inductive arguments, scientific arguments, etc. The errors we make with these arguments are not typically that they are deductively invalid (eg it is typically not a useful criticism of a scientific theory that the conclusion doesn't follow necessary from its premises). The informal fallacies list some of the typical errors of reasoning human make that are not just a matter of the logical form of deductive arguments. So when you say that "fallacy" means that the conclusion doesn't necessarily follow from the premises, you are defining the broader term "fallacy" by the meaning of a subset of, "formal fallacy."

Because it would mean that all religions that postulated things happened because God decided to do something are erroneous. Yet it would also make it erroneous to say that deism is essentially the same as atheism.

Okay. And this matters because... ?

Because if people believed deism plus afterlife they would spend more time making sure they do the right thing and less time taking comfort from the thought that they can do wrong and then confess their way out of it.

Ummmmmm... sure. Whatever.

I sort of get where you're coming from, but I'm getting a bit lost in the verbiage.

I am looking at this as follows:

1. We have premise (or premises)
2. We have some logical thought/argument
3. We have a conclusion

An example might look like this:

1. All fronds are green
2. Spink is a frond
3. Spink is green

This is formally valid.

Another example might look like this:

1. All fronds are green
2. Spink is green.
3. Spink is a frond.

This is formally invalid.

I'm hoping we agree up to this point. Now for some more interesting examples.

1. All fronds are green
2. Spink claims to be a frond
3. Spink is green

Your view?

1. Spink claims to be a frond
2. All fronds are green
3. Spink is green

Your view?

While I don't particularly warm to most of Sklansky's posts (although there are definitely a few diamonds in the rough, even in this thread), your dismissive tone is eerily reminiscent of the tone you continuously criticise me for. Would you like some cinnamon sprinkles with your sanctimony bun, Aaron?

I suspect this is where you are getting confused. The right way to put this is:

We have premises
We have a conclusion.

We also use rules of inference to see if the conclusion follows validly from the premises, but the rules of inference are not themselves part of the argument. You can expand on what you mean by "Logical thought/argument," but it looks confused to me. Validity (which is what is generally meant by "logical") is a property of arguments, not statements/thoughts/propositions. An argument, by definition, requires at least two statements (even if they are identical). So in none of the following examples is (2) a "logical thought/argument" - instead, in all these arguments (2) is a premise.

Agreed.

These are both identical invalid arguments. The order of the premises (i.e. (1) and (2)) doesn't affect the logic of the argument. This argument is invalid because it can be true that Spink claims to be a frond while not actually being a frond.

My guess is that you were at some point taught Aristotle's syllogistic logic. Aristotle developed a theory of logical inference which applies to certain specific kinds of arguments involving categorical statements with what he called "major" and "minor" terms (and correspondingly a major and minor premise). There is a convention about how to order these premises, but this order has no bearing on the logic of the argument itself. However, Aristotle's syllogistic is mostly just a historical curiosity today (except in Catholic schools).

I've criticized you for making up facts, being bad at recalling the trajectory of the conversation, presenting bad arguments, being a hypocrite, willful misrepresentation of others, failing at identifying a true Scotsman fallacy, coming up with random objections, conflating language, being unwilling to admit error, being delusional, and several other things... but I'm pretty sure I haven't criticized your tone. I could be wrong. There's a lot to criticize.

Edit: Not knowing what words mean, being anti-science when it doesn't conform to your beliefs...

Quite the cacophony of criticisms, there.

Ironically, the only thing I regret in my interactions with you in this thread is tone.

Thank you - having read through this, I now understand where I was thinking about things incorrectly. You are quite right that (2) in my examples is not an argument, and, looking back at it, I have no idea why I ever thought it was. In fact, looking back in that light, my whole previous post is quite idiotic.

There's no irony there. Since you are so nonchalant when do things like reject scientific literature, misrepresent others, and make literally false statements, it should really be no surprise to anyone to discover that the location of your head is adjacent to the sigmoid colon.

Aaron, back on the topic of religiosity and logic, here is a quote from newly elected Montana congressman Greg Gianforte, who has been in the news recently due to his proclivity for body-slamming reporters.

Oh yeah, he is a YEC as well.

Now, the fact that he just got elected, means that some significant % of people in Montana would read the above and think that it is a reasonable view to hold. Are these people being reasonable or logical in your view?

The guy (Gianforte) has a B.E. in electrical engineering and an M.S. degree in computer science from Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1983 and made himself a billionaire and you think he is an illogical person? You could've picked somebody else. LOL. (btw I anti-Gianforte).